Been a weird few days in my town. This is not a place where you’re supposed to worry about being out at night. There didn’t used to be random crime just happening. The General gets nervous if I wander after nightfall and prohibits me at all to come all the way to his workplace unless it’s early. There are a lot of clocked doors in my life ATM. It’s just the mood the world’s in. A woman went off her rails and slashed tires on something like 130 cars right here, right where I live. A guy tried to rob a train station teller and robbed a hotel clerk for pocket change at gunpoint. Whether or not it was a real gun I don’t know, but this sort of shit didn’t used to happen. You could go into the park, into the woods, walk to the movie theatre outside the town at any hour …

I was watching videos about a girl who hiked the Appalachian Trail and she answered questions people asked her about it… One of those was a question ‘do I need a gun on the trail?…’ Not a rifle, as if against wolves and bears, but a handgun, for protection. It would not occur to anyone around here to ever carry a gun for protection – protection from what? There didn’t used to be situations in which a normal person would require to carry a weapon. The knife I wear is usually for cleaning mushroom or cutting apples in half and opening cans of dog food..

Whether the world has changed or whether I have changed, I didn’t used to be the person to worry about bad stuff happening – staying inside, enjoying indoors, putting a stopper on plans of the wild adventure.

Odd feeling. I don’t like it.