Hello, and Happy New Year, and all other usual greetings of the season that, although sincere, still come off like obligatory sound bytes devoid of meaning.

Anyway. Here we are. Where that is, exactly, I don’t think any of us knows. I know I am here in New York City, on the Upper West Side, in my crazy apartment that I adore, with a crazier cat whom I adore, in pajamas that I quite like, contemplating more coffee, which will turn into a reality the moment I hit “Publish”, which of course means that I now have incentive to get this thing out there. This … thing … where I’m not even saying anything.

Or am I?

But where are we? And where was I on this “Where are you” front? Ah, yes, saying I don’t think we know where we are. Or where we’re headed. Although Facebook and Twitter are clogged with everyone saying, “We are doomed!” and “We’re all going to die!” and running around with their hair on fire, their panicked faces melting down into their necks, with their mouths somehow still magically functioning.

I won’t be talking about the P(E)O(TU)S here on my “blog”, because I don’t want to sully my entries. I’d rather write about picking off a scab from my knee, starting at the edges, and peeling it up a little with a bit of a wince and grimace, revealing a slightly gooey pink bit of skin, or about a baby’s phlegm, or the squish of maggots that writhed beneath a tombstone my sister lifted in a graveyard next to a house my parents were looking at as a possible home for us. I would rather write about mold and lint.

This is not putting my head in the sand. This is just my need to have a space of my own free from the bleakness of social media, in which I barely participate these days. I deactivated Facebook, am on Twitter really only to get news from reliable sources and to occasionally toss my hat in the ring on a particularly hilarious hashtag game, and to post photos on Instagram, the least social media-y of the social media, of a round bread I baked and ate all in the same day, an occasional drawing, and photos of dogs and/or cats.

But here I am in my own little corner of the world, if you need me for general whateverness. Hello.