Of course, the week I wrote about being resilient and capable of managing my stress is the week the world takes another step down the “gone to hell” path. My workplace announces an end to mask requirements, Russia invades Ukraine (keep in mind I wrote this on February 24th and February 24th Chris has no idea what has happened between now and then), and the conservatives of my country have continued to do their best to prove what absolute shithead fascists they are. I really need to stop writing about how I’ve finally gotten my feet underneath me or how I’m managing my stress. It feels too much like tempting the fuckers to fuck something up in the world at this point.
Continue readingMusing
Weird Weather And Warming Walks In Wisconsin
Lately, the weather has been changing more than usual. Setting aside all the potential problems this might indicate (for sanity, not because they aren’t necessary), I’ve been enjoying the variability. There are very few places in the world where the weather can go from “potential frostbite if the wind blows long enough” to “you’ll want a sweatshirt, but you’ll need to roll the sleeves up before long” in less than twenty-four hours without drawing remark. I happen to live in one of them (the midwest of the US). As a result, I got to enjoy a pleasant walk in the sunny fifties one day and then had to bundle up tight against a frigid wind that sought to claim my exposed skin the next day.
Continue readingEven Small, Every-Day Accomplishments Are Still Accomplishments
It can be difficult to maintain context in your life. At the very least, it is difficult for me. I haven’t figured out how to really compare notes with people in my life about the way we remind ourselves of the context of our lives and our daily deeds, so I’m not sure if this is a problem I face because of my childhood, or if it’s something everyone struggles with. As a child, I got very skilled at normalizing the things happening in my life. It was a key survival skill, going hand-in-hand with hiding the way I felt and learning to live with people who did not treat me well. While I’ve made a lot of personal progress on the latter two things (which will still be the work of a lifetime, rather than a labor I can reach the definitive end of), I still struggle with maybe too-readily normalizing whatever is happening in my life.
Continue readingChallenging Assumptions
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the habits and knowledge in your life that you don’t realize are arbitrary. All the things you “know” or do because that’s just what you were told or the example you had to follow and then never really thought about again. For example, you can just eat the whole dang apple. It doesn’t really have a core and the seeds can’t hurt you unless you eat a huge number of them, so you are wasting a whole bunch of apple if you eat around the center, fibrous bit and throw that away.
Continue readingI Did Not Sleep Well And Now That’s Your Problem Too
Today has been rough. I apparently ate something that vehemently disagreed with me last night, but not until more than 9 or 10 hours after I finished my dinner, aka 4am. I did not get back to sleep after that and the sort of restless stress and general depression I’ve been battling this week meant I only got about 3 hours of sleep last night. Still managed most of my workout routine, though. My to-failure point on the cycling portion of my routine was about half of what I’ve done the rest of the week, but that kinda makes sense given how terribly my gastrointestinal system hurt all morning and how little sleep I got. Still, I’ve managed to keep up my routine to the best of my abilities and wasn’t even THAT late to work after all was said in done. The week is mostly over at this point, I’ll be able to rest soon, and the only stressful item left to do today is my weekly grocery shopping.
Continue readingUnderstanding Story Adaptation Between Mediums
I’ve always been interested in the way stories change as they are adapted from one form of media to another. For most of my life, the only examples I had were books to movies. I didn’t follow comics closely enough to really consider how comicbook characters were represented in superhero movies and TV shows, and I knew that most comicbooks had such varied, ever-renewed stories that adaptation was fairly open-ended. When the Lord of the Rings movies came out, I was given my first real chance to evaluate something I was familiar with as it moved from books to movies. I didn’t have the skills required to do it in a good, critical way when the first movie came out, but the movies remained a part of my life for long enough that I was still thinking about them and the books when I finally had the skills to do a thorough critical analysis.
Continue readingI Have Post-Workout Sludge Brain
As part of my general efforts at improving myself and my life, I’ve started waking myself up at 6am again (something that I stopped doing a couple months into the pandemic) and immediately getting out of bed so I can exercise. Even with the extra hour I’m spending on working out, this has meant that I’m now at work by 8:30 every day, thirty to ninety minutes earlier that I was previously. Even though I’m only getting up an extra hour earlier. After all, if I get out of bed and start working out right away, that means I’m not spending thirty to ninety minutes of every morning laying in my bed, browsing twitter or reading comics on my phone. Or, you know, wallowing in depression as I struggle with motivating myself to get out of bed and actually do stuff with my day.
Continue readingOut, Damned Spotify!
After a few years of being a subscriber to Spotify, I’ve decided to cancel my subscription. Beyond the general controversy of the day, Spotify’s decision to publish and promote a pretty terrible person despite their purpoted misinformation rules, they’ve never been terribly good to musicians. I’ve been vaguely aware that streaming via Spotify was never a lucrative deal for most of the musicians, which is why I’ve always made efforts to use Spotify only as a vehicle for finding and easily accessing music while supporting the artist more directly through other platforms, but the whole Joe Rogan controversy has brought a lot of other problems with Spotify into the limelight and I can no longer give them money without betraying my conscience.
Continue readingTalking “Post-Pandemic” Sounds The Same As “If I Won The Lottery”
I was talking to one of my friends about how he is hoping that his daughter will be able to start getting vaccinated soon. There was a bunch of discussion about how the vaccination effort is proceeding, discussion of how US government is failing its people, and how life changes when you can dial the pandemic anxiety down a bit after everyone around you is fully vaccinated. Not that you should throw aside all precautionary measures and join the growing throng of people pretending there isn’t a pandemic, but just that you can accept a small increase in risks taken because you’ve had a corresponding decrease in risk of severity. He talked about going out to restuarants again, safely as can be of course, and it got me thinking about what it would be like to be able to just go out to dinner again.
Continue readingA Bright Spot In A Cold Winter
Today (day of writing this) was a wonderful, warm day. By which I mean the temperature hit the 40s in the sun and I celebrated by going for two walks, both of which eschewed my heavy coat and hat. I even rolled my sleeves up to maximize my total amount of exposed skin so I can get the most benefit from the sun as possible. I know this warmth is short-lived because the temperature is already beginning a slow decline towards the single digits (which it should hit by tomorrow), but it gives me hope that things are improving. Or at least that the winter is turning away from frigid cold and back toward moderately freezing.
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