Using any and all social media feels like crap these days. Very little of it is interesting or particularly engaging. I’ve made little traction with making new friends on places that aren’t Twitter (still not going to call it the new thing) and most of the sites I’m on look like they’re speed-running the whole rise and fall of every social media site from the last two decades. One is struggling to remain afloat as they adhere to their values over what sometimes seems like good sense or reasonable planning (which is a criticism, but I mostly like when they do this so it’s difficult to really fault them for it outside of one or two specific instances where they probably should have seen a problem coming) and another is being filled to the brim with people who will just tell you that you’re wrong, without any evidence, about everything from your own life events, basic facts about the world, and your expressed emotions.
Continue readingConnection
The Drudgery Of My Job Is A Metaphor For My Life
Yesterday (well, yesterday from the day I wrote this a bit over a week and a half ago because of holiday blog displacement and me trying to bank some writing before I’m hosting people), I spent two hours turning a hefty box full of various electrical components on and off. My calculations tell me that I did it approximately eight hundred times in those two hours, using a total of four different combinations of powering up and down steps. I was trying to get it to burn out since we’ve been getting reports of issues in the field with this particular box of electronics burning itself out when users are turning it on in the morning. While this did not make a lot of sense to us, given how hard we hit these things in the lab during the course of developing them and then testing them, we figured it was worth looking into. By which I mean the engineers and my manager figured it was worth looking into and the other testers figured it was worth me testing because, now that my urgent project is done, I don’t have anything that needs to be done yesterday while all the other testers are still working on that schedule.
Continue readingI Spy, With My Little Eye, Something Weighing On My Mind
I started watching Spy x Family recently. It’s a wonderful, warm show that I find positively delightful. I sincerely hope everything works out for everyone in the show. I’m also absolutely terrified that it won’t since I’m only a few episodes from the end of the show and there is still plenty of time for things to go bad. By the time this goes up, I’ll have watched the remainder of the show and had plenty of time to rue my optimism, scoff at my fear [this is the one I wound up doing], or spin my wheels pondering a cliffhanger. Normally, for a show with only one season that is such a joy to watch, I’d have watched my way through it in a few days, staying up later than I should in order to cram in a few extra episodes every day. Instead, I’ve been watching this for over a week because I’ve been careful to only watch a few episodes at a time.
I wish I could say I was savoring it, but the opposite is true. This show is actually emotionally difficult for me to watch, despite being so lovely. Not because I’m lonely and jealous of the budding family depicted on screen (the only thing akin to jealousy I feel is the broad and fun kind that grows from seeing something you like and wishing you were a part of it; a wistful “if only I could be a Pokémon Trainer/Jedi” kind of thing), but because this is a show about “family” and that’s a topic I have a difficult time engaging with these days.
Continue readingA Turning Point In My Relationships
One of the side effects of leaving behind the trauma of my youth (along with all the places and peace I associate it with) is that I don’t have many relationships that are more than a decade old. I have a few friendships that have finally hit that age, but I wound up losing (or ending) contact with a lot of the people I was close with in my first few years of college and I didn’t really get close to most most of the poeple I’m still friends with until my final year, so most of them are only just now hitting the 10-year point. I have only one person I knew in high school that I’ve spoken to in the last few years and our current time zone difference means we’re pretty much never awake and online at the same time, which would put a damper on reconnecting even if I was so inclined. The only people I’m still in contact with from further back are two of my siblings, and that’s a weird situation to bring up in this context given my complex feelings about family and the life my siblings were a part of. Most of the people who are still a part of my life are from just the most recent third of it, despite the prevalence of social media, and that list seems to only ever get smaller with time rather than bigger.
Continue readingA Piece of Something Greater
As I reflect on the life I’m currently living, one marked by solitude and distance chosen over potential social engagement and closeness due to the risks of the on-going pandemic, I find myself thinking about all the moments in my life that I actually felt like I was a part of something larger than myself. Generally speaking, these moments happened in crowds or as part of some collective action since I’ve never really been one to attach my sense of self to a cause or group identity (like fandoms or social archetypes), and there are far fewer of them than I thought there’d be when I started this reflection. As I’ve worked through it, though, it started to make more sense. After all, my childhood was marked by a sense of being lesser-than, my college years were filled with me attempting to rationalize that sense of self with the way other people treated me (both those who treated me well and those who took advantage of me), and my entire life has been marked by a desire to avoid chaos, crowds, and spaces in which I have no control. It is no wonder I rarely felt like I was a part of something more than myself, though it does hurt a bit to realize how rarely I felt like that in spite of how frequently I sought it out.
Continue readingRecorded and Reposted: Lost Connection
Dancing dots spin and whirl
As I fret and watch the screen.
Seconds tick and minutes pass
As I mourn what might have been.
Passcodes take too long to type
As I start to make a scene.
Why’d my phone have to shut off
As you started to come clean?
Lost Connection
Dancing dots spin and whirl
As I fret and watch the screen.
Seconds tick and minutes pass
As I mourn what might have been.
Passcodes take too long to type
As I start to make a scene.
Why’d my phone have to shut off
As you started to come clean?
I swear I want to hear you out
As I quickly make my case,
But anger soon fills up your voice
Knocking patience out of place.
My words become lost in yours
And then vanish without a trace
Because your pain and questioning
Have left my answers with no space.
I sit and listen for a while,
Until I can take it no more,
Then I gently set my phone down
And think back to moments before.
That sudden sound of silence
As my stomach dropped through the floor:
I felt relieved that I’d not need
To put up with you anymore.