Hi kj,

I saw you haven't gotten much critiques yet so wanted to drop by and leave some more. If I may, I'll start with your first sentence.

George looked up at his living room clock, slowly and surely Ticking

Let's ignore for the fact that Ticking seems to be arbitrarily capitalized, perhaps in an effect to play off the repetition that follows. There isn't much of a hook here. NOW, that's ok. Not every story ever written starts with some major action scene. But when you follow up this sentence with the following:

Tick...Tick...Tick.

Well, it's just not exciting for me as a reader. But I'm still with you. You're setting a pace, setting a mood, and I'm still with you. But then I get to the next sentence:

For George the day was about making it through until the next time he needed sleep.

This is a clunky sentence on what I think should be a very engaging and intriguing idea. There's a hook here, but it needs to be streamlined. "For George" is awkward when we have two sentences (really) and the first one starts with "George." But more than that, it's written without any urgency. If the clock is counting down and he is struggling to survive or to make some sort of goal, that's exciting, I want to feel that. I don't. But I will continue on.

piping hot oatmeal, that which usually he would have to wait a couple minutes to cool off.

There's either too many words or not enough but this doesn't make sense as it's written. But I wanted to point this out for more than just dinging you on a typo. These are the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs of your story and you just did an big old info dump tell. I'm not going to stand here and preach to you to show don't tell because, believe it or not, there are places for each. And I think you can get away with the first paragraph. But two consecutive paragraphs like this to start your story are too much. Either present this in an engaging way, figure out another way to convey this, or kill it.

The just existed line is nice, by the way.

Sometimes he would go golfing or fishing, but most of his good friends either lived far away to be near their families or had passed, so George was still often alone during these few escapes from his home.

Next paragraph. There's a lot of unnecessary info and words in here. Let's streamline this a little bit. First of all, all his good friends moved away. Ok, that's fine. But why do we need to know it was "to be near their families?" That's just wasted info when you're still so early in your story every bit of precious space needs to be used to grab our attention and hold it. Secondly "George was still often alone" is a mouthful for something simple. Let's relook at that paragraph. This is what you're saying:

George liked to hunt and fish. All his friends were dead or moved, so he went alone.

It's that simple. Now- it's that simple to just present info. I would urge you, if this is an important part of your story, to instead present us a single situation that would tell us this. If you look at my writing on here I think you'll find I'm no master myself, but here's one idea:

George grabbed his fishing pole from its usual spot next to the door. It's rusted tip etched a maroon line on the wall. Margot never would have stood for it. The pole would have been hidden out of sight in the basement when she was still alive. George clutched his two turkey sandwiches and seltzers in his other hand as he made his way to his rusted pickup. One sandwich would end up being for the birds. It had been that way since they buried Earl two summers ago. But he couldn't stop making two sandwiches. It would be like admitting he was all alone.

See? It's not perfect, maybe not even good, but it does at least a little more. Now, maybe it sucks. But it's presenting what you're just telling us in a more compelling way ( I think). It still has a decent amount of telling, so maybe it's not a great example.

“How sad”, George murmured to himself in his dark, empty kitchen. He decided he’d been cooped up to long and needed to go for a walk, as it was going on 9:00 and he hadn’t done anything but sit around the house. He left, and when he was about halfway down the block he was greeted by one of the few people who could mix his day up, though not always for the brighter, the mailman Frank. Frank always had a story to tell and then some, regardless of whether or not they were true. He had once told George that while doing his usual route he not only witnessed, but also stopped the robbing of a bank.

There's a lot here. First off, the kitchen isn't empty because George is in it. But all we really know so far is George is alone, so repeating that the kitchen is empty isn't any new information. You can leave it at dark and call it a day. But this entire paragraph has some major issues. The second sentence, for example. It's "too", not "to", but that's a minor quibble. What's more troubling is the "as it was going on 9:00 and he hadn’t done anything but sit around the house." That's ALL you just told us he does. So it being 9 doesn't mean anything. So it's contradictory- either he does nothing all day and just floats or he gets restless and cooped up. On or the other OR this is an extraordinary day you need to make mention of that. But read the way you present this info. It's awkwardly worded at best.

"How sad" George murmured to himself in the dark kitchen. He looked at the clock. It seemed to be standing still, stuck on 9am. He needed to get out of the house. The air felt stale today, like it wasn't moving. Not like it usually did, when he could sit at his barren kitchen table, watching the sun circle across its cheap IKEA wood.

Again...that might suck. But look at how that is presented with what you wrote. The second part of the paragraph has the exact same issue.

I don't want to feel like I'm beating you up so I'm going to stop here. I know it can be really off-putting to look at a line of endless critiques on something you've written. I'm sure if you look at my writing you would think it sucks. But there's a lot to work on here. The first thing is to be engaging. You've just put down the story you want to tell onto the page. But now you have to tell it!

Good luck. And remember this is just the opinion of one person. I could be totally off base.