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annie's blog 1 weeks ago

It’s either a poem or a piece of cheese // Week 20 — 2026

Are these weeknotes? Yes they are! Will I do them again next week? Who knows! Sunday 10 May: Got home from hospital shift around 7:30pm. Exhausted, hangry. Walked into a clean tidy home, flowers and cards, and the kids cooking dinner (spring roll bowls which were so so so good). Plus! a NEW CHAIR for the balcony. We ate and talked and did that thing where you laugh so hard you cry. Then I sat on my new balcony chair & had some nice bourbon while they cleaned everything up. Anyway it was a great Mother's Night 💗 More spaces in my life for uncensored unfettered thinking. Less platform, more workshop. Less stage, more garage. Less producing, more tinkering. Tuesday 12 May: Took a sick day. Felt off, sore throat, achy yesterday. Woke up with the full experience. This was to be an uncomfortably busy day and instead I am canceling all the things I can. Left with a couple of items to do from the comfort of the couch. Hot tea. Window open. Cats sitting in the sun. Breeze and blue sky outside. If I feel enough energy I’ll take a slow walk later. Dreamed about being evicted. Felt very real. Woke up panicked. Relieved to realize it was a dream and I have a two-year lease. Wednesday 13 May: Took my chemistry final. Not as difficult as anticipated! A relief, since I didn’t study as much as planned. “I want you to see all kinds,” he would say to her. “I want you to realize that this whole thing is just a grand adventure. A fine show. The trick is to play in it and look at it at the same time.” “What whole thing?” “Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they’re not pleasant things. That’s living. Remember, no matter what happens, good or bad, it’s just so much” — he used the gambler’s term, unconsciously — “just so much velvet.” —from So Big by Edna Ferber Denial and suffering may be good methods for undoing the old / destructing but they are not good methods for creating / constructing what you actually wish to build. Thursday 14 May: Still sick. Tried to do a bit of work. Mostly just rested. Feeling somewhat better but end of day. Friday 15 May: Mara’s college graduation day. Those two years have flown by. Many feelings! So proud of her. Saturday 16 May: Lily’s birthday! A weekend full of celebrations. Took her and a group of friends to one of those combo bowling / laser tag / arcade / overstimulation places. They did all the things & had fun. I got some studying done. But is it doable? Sunday 17 May: Hiking church. Warm today, 70℉ when we started. Chubb Trail from West Tyson. It is a painful confession but the art of poetry carries its own power without having to break them down into critical listings. I do not mean that poetry should be raffish and irresponsible clown tossing off words into the void. But the very feeling of a good poem carries its own reason for being. …primarily Art is its own excuse, and it’s either Art or it’s something else. It’s either a poem or a piece of cheese. —from On Writing , Charles Bukowski 💪 One gym session (Monday) before the sickness took me out Tues-Thurs, then it was A Weekend of Events. Back to our regularly scheduled program next week, I hope. 👟 A few short walks, and a nice hike. 📺 Unfamiliar (loved it) and season 1 of The Thaw (liked it, will watch the rest). Lots of tv time with sick days. 📚 So Big by Edna Ferber (finished) and On Writing by Charles Bukowski. 🔗 The old world of tech is dying and the new cannot be born // Baldur Bjarnason No matter the flavour of Christianity, a core idea baked into every aspect of the religion is that singular revelatory events can fundamentally change the world. There’s the “before”. Then the “event”. Then an “after” that has been completely transformed. In Christianity itself this is usually associated with Christ’s chaotic transit schedule – “He is here! He has left! He is about to arrive again! Now he’s leaving again! But he’s also somehow always been here! And not.” – but the mode of thinking is common throughout literature, philosophy, and storytelling in the Christian west. 🔗 Letting things build // Tracy Durnell The way I often read non-fiction — snatches of twenty pages here, twenty pages there, putting a book down for two months (or two years) at a time — is not conducive to *finishing* books, but I do find it conducive to thinking . Rich texts can take a while to sink in, so I’ll jump to another book while I let the first one marinate. 🔗 You are here // Sebastian As I approach my topics and ideas through writing—whether in the form of brief notes or by looking back when I pick up the journal and flip through its pages—a process of contextualization takes place. And that is important. For me, this is a form of metacognition: observing myself as I think and being able to analyze and categorize my thoughts “from the outside.” It doesn’t completely solve the black box problem of self-perception, nor does it eliminate the blind spot of the mind that seeks to explain itself from within itself, but it does make things a lot easier and more accessible.

Java

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annie's blog 1 months ago

It’s a lot to process

… everything. I need to know less, but I know more. Trying to cultivate a life which allows me to know less while still participating in society requires me to know more and do more than simply laying back and passively allowing the unending flood of information to drown me. Please note that we are all being drowned. What is it that is drowning us? Information and misinformation. Part of the drowning is the effort required to try to distinguish between the two. You’re trying to keep your head above water and there are waves and in order to not be pulled under by a wave you have to quickly look at it (while it’s looming larger and larger above you) and decide: Real or not real? Looks real. Is it real? Decide! Quick! I think it’s worth noting that when people don’t seem interested in the distinction between real and not real it may not be that they don’t care about what’s real. It may be that their capacity, their energy, their ability to distinguish is less than yours. And here I am. I’m adding to the information by writing this and publishing it. How do I feel about that? Weird. Really terribly weird and odd and disjointed and uncertain. Perhaps it would be better to stfu, one part of me says. Sometimes that is absolutely what is best. But not always. I don’t know about a lot of things. I can’t have that many opinions. I can’t understand that many issues. I can’t research that many topics. And I don’t like the pressure to be certain about things. All the things, all the time. It’s okay to say I don’t know . What I do know: I am real. Here’s a vignette: I’m on my balcony. Of course I’m on my balcony. I love this tiny little space. I mention it. I post photos sometimes, the sunset view through power lines or my feet up on a small table that wasn’t meant to be outdoor furniture. I can hear a kiddo inside talking to his girlfriend on the phone. The traffic, slowing but still there, on the road. The sound of neighbors as they walk in, talking softly. Here’s what I want to tell you. First, let’s imagine you’re here on the balcony too. There’s another chair. Let me know if you want a beverage. We have options. Don’t worry about the cats. I promise they won’t jump off. I want to tell you that I am real and you are real and that’s enough to know right now.

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annie's blog 1 months ago

GOOSE IT UP

I’m in school again. I’m going back to school because my work, my entire career, for my entire adult life, has been writing things for the Internet. That’s going away, at least as a livable career option. By livable, I mean an option I can live with . When I started writing for the Internet, early 2000s, I could find decent paying gigs on Craigslist. A quarter a word wasn’t uncommon. It wasn’t easy — I spent a lot of time searching and researching and answering inane qualifiers and writing samples for zero money. So we’re not talking about a pot of gold at the end of the freelance writing rainbow. But you could gather enough gold thru your efforts to make it worthwhile. I wasn’t pleased when SEO became a thing I had to do to keep working. I am less pleased with AI. I have been lucky and somewhat insulated for the last year or two but things change, and I can see the trend. I still have a job with a great team but already the work is shifting in a direction I do not want to go. So, I am not going. I am making a different choice. I am choosing a different direction. I am goosing it up , baby. I have started over several times in my life. New places, new communities, new jobs, new scenarios, new perspectives. I feel, at this point, that I have lived a few complete different lifetimes already. That’s kinda cool, even if it’s not always by choice . Starting over requires a lot of energy but it also a relief. Every time I start over I establish a new baseline. I get to reset. I get to peruse my space, both exterior and interior, and declutter: Throw out old junk, worn-out habits, misplaced loyalties, dusty grievances, faded beliefs. Starting over, at any scale, always means leaving things behind . You do some grieving , releasing , mud-scraping . You definitely light up the bullshit cabinet (there’s no better time really). Hopefully you also do a lot of self care . Then you take the next step. And the next. Along the way you decide who you get to be now.

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annie's blog 2 months ago

When (not) to break rules

You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction. — Alvin Toffler A rule (or boundary) turns a theoretical or philosophical stance into a clearly defined behavior: Do this , and your behaviors align with your belief. Congruence. Do that , and you miss it. Conflict. Internal conflict doesn't feel good. Break dumb rules . Break arbitrary small rules (or don’t). Break rules that exist only to create convenience for one group of people. Break rules that are immoral even if they’re not illegal. Whenever you can, break rules that exist only to uphold a system . It’s important. Don’t break the rules that define who you are… …Unless that’s not who you want to be anymore. Break all the rules that define who you are if you didn’t choose them, don’t want them, or don’t like how they fit anymore. Break ‘em all the time. Break them into pieces. Be prepared for a breakdown of your existing self too, since that’s what you’re doing. Reconfiguring yourself is tough work and you’ll need to have naps and sometimes a small tantrum. Is there a rule in your heart that says you should feel the pain and bear the responsibility of things outside your control? This is a good rule to break. Break it now. Try it. Go ahead. Tough, huh? Feelings don’t cooperate with commands. They follow patterns, well-worn grooves. You have to keep at it for a while. You have to give yourself a new mantra and repeat it. You have to let your feelings be whatever they are and say, Okay that’s fine, yes, I hear you, ouch it sure does hurt! And then carry on about your business and remind yourself that feeling bad doesn’t change reality, so it’s okay to pay less attention to those bad feelings. Maybe over time they get quieter. Try it out, see what happens. I am against the pattern we seem to have developed as an intelligent but oh so emotional people of feeling bad as a way of bearing responsibility. I am against it because it’s nonsense. Nothing changes in the world because I feel bad about it. The bomb doesn’t reroute into an uninhabited wasteland. The layoffs don’t reverse. The cancer doesn’t curl up and wither away. The bullet doesn’t retreat into the gun. So this is a dumb rule and one worth breaking. Feeling bad about bad things doesn’t make you a good person. But it does drain your energy so there’s not much left for action. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Maybe there’s a better rule to put in place. Once you have determined the spiritual principles you wish to exemplify, abide by these rules as if they were laws. — Epictetus

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annie's blog 3 months ago

Contentment is a spectrum, too

I am quite content to be alone except on a mild evening at twilight. During the quick hours of the day I am busy. Busy with things I enjoy doing, for the most part. Or busy with people I enjoy being around. I count myself among the luckiest alive. During the night I am dreaming. Night is dreaming time whether I am asleep or awake. The dreams are all mine. I stretch out in the bed and in my mind. I never had such space before. Even in my childhood, my dreams were so small, so bordered. Always tied to some other person, some predetermined identity, some set of standards to uphold. Now my dreams and I can wander at will. For this spaciousness, this freedom, I gladly pay the price of whatever loneliness may peek over the headboard or rattle in the closet. I don’t mean fantasies, here. Though the physical need for another person, another body, is real and present. That’s just a fact of being human, for most of us. Not loneliness so much as lust. I handle both with the means at hand, and am largely content. But twilight comes. On a cold winter day, twilight enhances the coziness of my space, my routine, the comforts of my home and children and friends and hobbies. I can make a pot of stew and dance in the kitchen and get lost in a book and there are no emotions to navigate but my own. This is a peace I do not take lightly. But twilight comes. Twilight comes on a day when the windows are open and the light is mellow. The sunset streaks of gray and orange and blue linger behind a row of trees. I want to turn to someone and say, Look. The music filters through an open door as a bird sings. I want to turn to someone and say, Listen. I want to let this awe and gratitude bubble out and be seen for a moment by another person before it lifts up and away and disappears, as all things do. I want to be a point of reflection for someone else’s awe and wonder. Or pain. We all contain multitudes. Contentment is a spectrum. As is loneliness. I have been together and I have been alone. Loneliness is part of both experiences but it has different flavors. I have been together and I have been alone. Contentment is part of both experiences but it too has different flavors. We have to decide, each moment, what problem we are solving. Sometimes we get so busy solving the problem of loneliness, or lust, or ambition, or insecurity, or sadness, or fear, that we don’t see the larger context. Our larger context, our story, in which this one emotion, this one want , is but a single piece. A significant one, perhaps. But not the wholeness of our being. I want to fold things in, not push them away.

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annie's blog 4 months ago

Feeling something is okay I guess

Most of us think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, but we are actually feeling creatures that think. ― Jill Bolte Taylor If you’re not feeling as good about life as you want to be, that’s okay. If you feel stressed about a lot of things, that’s okay. If you get nervous, that’s okay. If you feel overwhelmed, that’s okay. If you freak out and yell, that’s okay. If you break down and cry, that’s okay. If the uncertainty of every little thing is panic-inducing, that’s okay. If your feelings fling you around, if you bounce between longing for the familiar and longing for the unknown, if you don’t know what you’ll feel any given moment, that’s okay too. If you feel rushed and boxed in and panicked and unsure and unsettled and overwhelmed and under pressure and inadequate and afraid, that’s okay. It’s not fun. It’s probably not how you want to feel. But here we are. You, me, the feelings. All the feelings are part of this experience. Right now. Take a deep breath. Oh, hello. I am also here, on part of this planet, breathing. Take another deep breath. I’ll do the same. Okay. That’s not much better but it’s a little better. Sometimes we don’t get to good. Good is a privilege. A gift. A delight, when it happens, when we’re in it. But we don’t always get to be in it. And that’s okay. It helps to remember that good still exists, is still real, even when you’re not in it. The possibility of good is always present. The more you reach for it the more possible it becomes. Meanwhile, survival. Keeping on. Treading water. Breathing. If you cover up your feelings with a veneer of calm, that’s okay. If you avoid the unpleasant and the negative, if you run from the deep discomfort of feelings you have not yet named, that’s okay. If you turn sadness into anger because it’s easier, that’s okay. If you choose frustration over vulnerability, that’s okay. If you don’t want to face the guilt or shame rustling beneath the surface, that’s okay. If the fear pushes its way up your throat until you have to scream or cry, that’s okay. All we are is children and sometimes we are afraid of the dark. It’s okay to be there, wherever you are with it. It’s okay to let it be. It’s okay to let yourself be. If the dark feelings come, you can let them be, too. They will seem like heavy burdens, like stones, like looming mountains, like terror or death. But they pass like clouds. They are not something you have to climb or conquer, just something you have to endure. Don’t spend your energy fighting the feelings. We have other work to do. And we cannot do the work we are able to do if we are too busy hiding from the feelings. So let them be. Let them wash over you, through you. In and out like waves. It may feel like you will drown. Keep breathing through the waves. Cry or scream or run or hug or whatever helps you keep breathing. Darkness cannot drive out light. The clouds come and pass. The waves rise and recede. The world remains and here we are, in it. What can we do to make it better? Here are some ideas .

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annie's blog 4 months ago

To be defeated by ever greater things

How small that is, with which we wrestle, what wrestles with us, how immense; were we to let ourselves, the way things do, be conquered thus by the great storm,— we would become far-reaching and nameless. What we triumph over is the Small, and the success itself makes us petty. The Eternal and Unexampled will not be bent by us. …growth is: to be the deeply defeated by ever greater things. from The Man Watching by Rainer Maria Rilke

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annie's blog 5 months ago

To sigh a deep sigh of releasing

Today has felt like a deep, deep exhalation, an enormous, slow, long sigh of relief and releasing. Fitting, perhaps, that it is winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. I don’t have any rituals to mark it except for this one, what I’m doing right now: sitting on the couch with a cat curled by my legs, sipping whiskey, tapping these small words into a space that isn’t real (digital? website? internet? can’t possibly be real) but will somehow, perhaps, be read by actual real people in actual real places. Hello, friends. How are you? How are you, what are you, where are you, why are you, what’s happening with you, what are you thinking about, what’s humming in the back corners of your brain, what does your heart know right now, what makes your breath come faster or slower, how do you feel about this moment, what do you hope for, what do you fear, what would you ask for, what wishes do you hold tender and close, what desires do you lean away from, what rooms are laid bare, which doors are closed and which ones opened, what candles are you lighting and watching on this the longest night? I have a few candles lit. I know what I would ask for and what I do ask for. Tonight is the time to look at the space between those points. To consider. To sigh a deep sigh of releasing. What could be different if we did not drag the past with us into the future? Let us lay aside every weight that hinders us and the errors that so easily entangle us so we can move forward (with patience — gently, child, gently) on the road we walk, the reality of this moment which is all that we ever have

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annie's blog 5 months ago

Do you want to read a detailed post about eyelid surgery? Here it is. With photos.

I find this sort of thing fascinating. I looked for detailed info before my own surgery because I like to know what I’m getting into. If you’re grossed out by surgical/medical descriptions or photos, skip this one. So I had this spot — like a pimple or small wart — appear under my right eye years ago. 2017, 2018? Sometime in there. It was very small, directly under/partially on the lash line near the inside corner of my right eye. Not really noticeable, didn’t hurt or itch or grow or change so I didn’t worry about it 1 . Anyway over the last year it got a bit bigger, so I had it checked out. My dermatologist did a biopsy. Result: basal cell carcinoma. So I needed to have the spot removed. Due to its location, it was likely the lid margin 2 would be affected. So after the removal, I’d need eyelid reconstruction surgery by an ophthalmic surgeon. Here’s how they do it: They schedule the Mohs surgeries 3 in the morning. They schedule the reconstruction surgeries the same afternoon. They do this because Mohs surgeries can take… hours. They don’t know till they’re doing it. The surgeon takes off the cancerous area and a layer of the skin around it, then examines it under a microscope. If they still see carcinoma cells 4 , they take off another layer. Inspect the removed layer. Repeat until there are no carcinoma cells visible in the removed layer. The removal is quick. The inspection takes longer. So each “layer” (removal + inspection) can be over an hour. Once that’s done, they either sew you up there or send you off for reconstruction surgery. I was at the hospital from 7am to 5pm. Most of that time was spent waiting. The Mohs surgery required two layers removed. I was done there around 9:30. They bandaged my eye and sent me off for reconstruction which was scheduled for…. 2:30pm. So, yeah, lots of waiting. Mohs surgery Local anesthetic (needle in the cheek below the right eyelid). They lean you back in a chair and tuck surgical drapes around the area. Assisting docs hold the head still and hold the eyelid open or closed or whatever it needs to be. It’s pretty surreal to see a scalpel coming directly toward your eyeball. But the most surreal part was hearing the snip-snip-snip of scissors knowing it’s my skin that’s being snipped off my face . Pain: none. They gave me another shot of anesthetic right before they patched me up which was nice. Hungry (no eating allowed before the reconstruction surgery). Did some Christmas shopping. Pirate impressions. Thought about food. Went to the bathroom a couple of times to peek under the bandage and make sure my eye was still there. Then the anesthetic wore off so I didn’t need to do that anymore. Contemplated the hierarchy of snacks. Assured 4 different nurses that there is zero possibility of pregnancy, no really, I promise, I do not have a uterus . Speaking of the beast (not) in me: Watched a couple of episodes of The Beast In Me . Looked at the entire Internet. Thought about food some more. Napped a little. Eyelid reconstruction Sedation (via IV) plus local anesthetic. I was very relaxed and full of warm happy thoughts. This part was fascinating: The removal took about half the width of my eyelid rim above the area of removed tissue. They took skin from my left eyelid and grafted it on. To do that, they cut right along the crease of my left eyelid, removed some skin, and sutured the eyelid back together. Then they sewed those two strips of skin (I think it was two, I was a little drowsy) below my right eye, creating a new portion of eyelid rim and filling the hole. Amazing that we can do this stuff. The surgery itself took about an hour. Recovery was quick. I was home eating a giant Chipotle bowl very soon after. It was delicious. Pain: minimal. Took Tylenol that first night and following day, then didn’t need it again. Antiobiotic ointment applied 3x a day. This is annoying as fuck because I have to make sure I get a lot of ointment on that lid margin (very important to keep it moisturized) which means some ointment always gets in my eye so vision is blurred for an hour+ every time I apply. Swelling: yes. Bruising: some. Not as much as I anticipated. Itchy and irritated: YES. OMG. I get the dressing & sutures off tomorrow morning and I CANNOT WAIT. Here’s how it looks today (six days post-op): Oh, what’s that? You were hoping for an EYELID SURGERY RECOVERY MONTAGE of POOR QUALITY PHOTOS documenting the healing process from DAY 1 TO DAY 6 POST-OP? I’ve got that right here for you. Also I did not have health insurance at the time so even if I had been worried about it I probably wouldn’t have done anything. Say you're in the U.S. without saying you’re in the U.S. The eyelid margin is the “edge” of the eyelid. Also known as the mucocutaneous margin. Eyelashes grow from the margin & there are glands that produce oil to help keep the eye moisturized. Detailed explanation of Mohs Micrographic Surgery . Molecular imaging of different skin cancer cells vs normal skin cells. Local anesthetic (needle in the cheek below the right eyelid). They lean you back in a chair and tuck surgical drapes around the area. Assisting docs hold the head still and hold the eyelid open or closed or whatever it needs to be. It’s pretty surreal to see a scalpel coming directly toward your eyeball. But the most surreal part was hearing the snip-snip-snip of scissors knowing it’s my skin that’s being snipped off my face . Pain: none. They gave me another shot of anesthetic right before they patched me up which was nice. Hungry (no eating allowed before the reconstruction surgery). Did some Christmas shopping. Pirate impressions. Thought about food. Went to the bathroom a couple of times to peek under the bandage and make sure my eye was still there. Then the anesthetic wore off so I didn’t need to do that anymore. Contemplated the hierarchy of snacks. Assured 4 different nurses that there is zero possibility of pregnancy, no really, I promise, I do not have a uterus . Speaking of the beast (not) in me: Watched a couple of episodes of The Beast In Me . Looked at the entire Internet. Thought about food some more. Napped a little. Sedation (via IV) plus local anesthetic. I was very relaxed and full of warm happy thoughts. This part was fascinating: The removal took about half the width of my eyelid rim above the area of removed tissue. They took skin from my left eyelid and grafted it on. To do that, they cut right along the crease of my left eyelid, removed some skin, and sutured the eyelid back together. Then they sewed those two strips of skin (I think it was two, I was a little drowsy) below my right eye, creating a new portion of eyelid rim and filling the hole. Amazing that we can do this stuff. The surgery itself took about an hour. Recovery was quick. I was home eating a giant Chipotle bowl very soon after. It was delicious. Pain: minimal. Took Tylenol that first night and following day, then didn’t need it again. Antiobiotic ointment applied 3x a day. This is annoying as fuck because I have to make sure I get a lot of ointment on that lid margin (very important to keep it moisturized) which means some ointment always gets in my eye so vision is blurred for an hour+ every time I apply. Swelling: yes. Bruising: some. Not as much as I anticipated. Itchy and irritated: YES. OMG. I get the dressing & sutures off tomorrow morning and I CANNOT WAIT. Also I did not have health insurance at the time so even if I had been worried about it I probably wouldn’t have done anything. Say you're in the U.S. without saying you’re in the U.S. The eyelid margin is the “edge” of the eyelid. Also known as the mucocutaneous margin. Eyelashes grow from the margin & there are glands that produce oil to help keep the eye moisturized. Detailed explanation of Mohs Micrographic Surgery . Molecular imaging of different skin cancer cells vs normal skin cells.

Personal Experience Surgery Health

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annie's blog 5 months ago

Telling myself stories

To tell the story of your life would take another life of equal length. There is no such thing as a true story because every story, to be told, must leave out something. And every something left out matters. It’s all the somethings that lead us to one point and then another; it’s all the somethings that merge into reality; it’s all the somethings , subconscious and conscious, that make up our experience. I can tell you a story, I can tell you my stories, I can tell you many versions of many moments of many stories of my life, and still: No one will ever know the life I live. And no one will ever know the life you live. This is true. I am a child. Alive in a loving family. Growing up in a small Mississippi town, 1980s edition. I am: Unsure, voracious, timid, curious, wild. I keep my wildness locked up in a small box, shelved in my heart’s interior room. I memorize courtesies. I swallow down rules. I want to be good. I want to be good. I want to be good. I ask questions using polite words and careful tones. I learn that some questions cannot be asked even this way. I am loved, I am safe, and I am trying very hard to push the shape of myself into the slots around me. None of them fit. I try harder. I find ways to trim off those awkward bits of self, to unwind and tuck down those sideways curling threads of self, to starve thin into skeletal compliance those juicy curves of self. I am a child and I learn to read early and I eat books like snacks. When all the feelings choke off my air, books help me breathe. I move swiftly, with determination, like I have a purpose, through the children’s section of our small town library. The picture books. The rhyming books. The early chapter books. Gulp them down. I cruise onward to the teen section. It’s small. I dive headlong into the adult section. My mother, so careful in all other ways, so conscious of what might hurt me or bring me to some truth I should not face, never thinks that books hold danger. I read without limits, without reservation, without pause. And I discover: lives I had not dreamed of, and cannot know, fully, ever. Here, in stories tucked away on a shelf, is enough to teach a girl in the southern United States a small but essential truth of what it is to be a thousand other things, to live a thousand other lives. I step into the larger world. I am a queen, I am a prostitute, I am shipwrecked, I am starving, I am fighting a war, I am tending a field, I am an ecstatic nun, I am a murderer, I am I am I am I am I am I am until the last page turns and I wake up in my own room, disoriented. Myself, but more than myself. Myself, but larger, a little louder, unfurling, fattening up. None of these stories are complete. Most are not even factual. And yet: They are true. I am an adult. I have within me a picture of what this means and I try to live up to it. It is an odd thing to be. I have responsibilities. I make decisions, so many decisions. I am still unsure, voracious, curious, wild. Less timid, now. I do not knock on doors and wait, polite. I push them open. I walk in. I look around and decide if it is a space I want to be in. Then I stay or I go. I still want to be good, but I have learned I get to define it for myself. I am unlearning domestication. I am telling myself stories. They are true because I make them true.

Books

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annie's blog 5 months ago

Gratitude knows that there is always a gift

Whatever it is, let me start it with gratitude. Gratitude is fertile ground. Put in the seeds of your dreams and desires. Keep the ground watered and pull the weeds. Soon the seeds will grow. (Conversely, worry is fertile ground for all your fears. Stay worried and you will harvest an abundance of fears.) Gratitude has nothing to do with what you have, how good or easy you’ve got it, whether you get what you want or don’t. Gratitude is not concerned with such petty measurements of value, such judgements of experience. Gratitude embraces it ALL, looks at the big scope and opens wide with a YES, with brave willingness to receive every gift, no matter how unexpected. Gratitude is not just training yourself to notice good instead of bad, to see positive and ignore negative. Gratitude is the skill of finding the good in the bad, highlighting the positive in the negative. Gratitude removes the need for illusions. You don’t have to act as if you like everything, or pretend that everything is ok, no problem, we’re all fine here . Gratitude frees you from the need for a polished-up societal veneer of happiness. Gratitude teaches you how to be okay with unhappiness, how to be okay when things are not okay. This is powerful, because then you don’t have to pretend to be happy all the time . You’re able to look at what hurts, voice the pain, start dealing with obstacles and opening up more options. You can use gratitude to reduce the power that bad situations have over you. Mostly, what we fear is pain. Bad situations are bad because they cause us pain, in one way or another. Gratitude is not a state of ignorance, where you need to pretend that pain is not real. No. Pain is real. Gratitude is the ability to acknowledge the pain, to receive it (instead of resisting it), and to pull the gift from it. Gratitude knows that there is always a gift. Gratitude is necessary for acceptance. When you accept without gratitude, you’re submitting to something you don’t value. You’re being passive, surrendering out of fear or frustration. Giving up. That kind of passive surrender either deadens you or pushes you to an opposite reaction, an extreme. Gratitude is an alternative route. It is a balance of acceptance and intention. It is both hands open. Gratitude helps you to accept what others can give, without giving up on what you really want to receive. Gratitude lets you say, “It’s all okay, even when it’s not,” and actually mean it. Gratitude helps you relax in the moment, even in the most painful or difficult or uncertain moments. You can only relax in two situations: when you feel fully in control, or when you’re okay with not being in control. The former is always an illusion. Gratitude enables the latter. The more you practice gratitude, the easier it gets. You get better at finding the good, embracing the whole experience, receiving the gift. Gratitude is a gentle way to face your fears. No aggression or intense conflict needed. Gratitude doesn’t demand a victory; it just diffuses the power so there’s no longer a threat. That’s a good place to be: free from threat, out of danger. Gratitude helps you face that deepest fear of scarcity: the fear of not being enough. Gratitude shows you, graciously, over time, how much you are. You send thankfulness outward: for others, for things, for experiences. But gratitude cannot be aimed like an arrow. It is not a weapon loosed but a perspective gained. It’s the way you begin to see what’s already there. It’s a different kind of seeing-is-believing . It’s a reframing, it’s a language that opens up new concepts, enables new and better definition. Of the world, of others, and of yourself. Gratitude helps you assign your own meaning to anything that happens. It provides a larger context. It removes the need to pretend or defend: With gratitude, the pain is not an illusion, but it’s also not the whole story. One chapter is not the whole book. Things have happened to you, but you also get to happen to things. Gratitude puts the pen in your hand. Gives you the space to think your own thoughts. Says, “Here. It’s your turn now. What do you want to say?”

Business

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annie's blog 5 months ago

All feelings mean something but it might be something dumb

If your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can. — Marcus Aurelius What we learn as children programs us in certain ways. These programs run subconsciously. They determine our default emotional responses to everything and the meaning we derive from those responses and the behaviors we enact based on the meanings we derive. Some of these programs served me well in childhood but don’t work for helping me be the person I want to be as an adult. There are healthy ways to deal with difficult things. Sometimes those are the routes I take. Sometimes I am not taking any routes, I am just sitting in my chair being a glazed donut of a human. It feels good to remember that’s okay. I don’t have to feel bad about everything. Being perfect is never a precondition for peace. Self-acceptance doesn’t come when I do enough but when I realize I am enough. There are small cycles and big cycles. I know myself well enough to know what I come back to, most of the time. I’m okay with my equilibrium. It tilts this way and that, but it never tilts all the way over. The center can hold. Or maybe it can’t. Maybe things fall apart, and the center cannot hold, and it’s tumultuous but not apocalyptic. There’s this option I like to call forming a new center. It does create vast periods of feeling lost, unmoored, ungrounded. Big feelings, behavior shifting. Generally, lots of swinging and flailing. When you’re in the middle it seems chaotic, and mostly it is, but there’s something else going on too. A planting of feet on new ground. Disorientation is just the feeling you have before you get oriented.

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annie's blog 5 months ago

Dishonesty is a rejection of life

Any future perfectly known, said Alan Watts, is already the past. But life is not in the past. Life is now, life is here, life is this moment. The only way to live it is to be as truthful as you can be. With others, of course. But mostly with yourself. Doing anything else is not living or being in the moment. Anything less than truthfulness is an attempt to distort the past or control the future. When you’re busy trying to distort or cover or rearrange the past, you’re not in the present. When you’re focused on managing and controlling the future, you’re not in the present. You are in a time that does not exist: past or future. When you focus on the past or the future, you opt out of existing in the present. As long as you choose to stay there, in the not-now, you don’t exist in the now. Since now is all that exists, we might say you opt out of existing at all. Until you return to what does exist, the only thing that exists (if anything does): the present, this moment, now.

Philosophy

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annie's blog 5 months ago

Fish bowl

Our very brains, our human nature, our desire for comfort, our habits, our social structures, all of it, pushes us into being fish bowl swimmers. Tiny people moving in tiny circles. Staying in the circumscribed ruts of our comfort. Ignoring a whole big world of what's different and new and interesting just beyond. That's the problem: stuff out there might be new, and interesting, but it's also different. The newness — which is really not new, at all, it's just new to us, so — the differentness, of another mindset or culture, language or belief system, method or opinion or morality or lifestyle, sends our inward threat-o-meter into overdrive. We interpret new and different as scary and difficult , because in terms of our emotions and our mental somersaulting, it is. We don't know how to act. We don't know how to evaluate. We don't know what is safe. We don't know where we fit in. We don't know how our safe, comfortable fish bowl living is affected by this new, different, expanded puddle. Sameness makes us comfortable. And comfort is the height, the very pinnacle, the crowning achievement in our pursuit of happiness. What I mean is that we've mistaken comfort for happiness. All the ways we could pursue happiness, all the freedom and technology and abilities we have to pursue meaning and joy and interaction and challenge and exploration and improvement and aliveness … All of that, at our fingertips, and being comfortable tends to top the list of what we actually want, what we're willing to put effort towards. This seems pathetic. It is pathetic. But also: We're working hard all the time in ways we often don't acknowledge. We have infinite options but finite agency. We have endless information access and very little processing power. We get fucking worn out. It's a lot of work to make a string of decent choices for 10 or 12 hours at a time. It's a lot of effort, some days (most days), to do what is required of us to feel like decent human beings, and the idea of putting in more effort, expending more energy, is exhausting. So we value comfort highly. We're tired. We're exhausted by constant inputs, invisible demands, and the burden of infinite options. Of course we don't leap out of our comfort zones when the opportunity arises: we've already been out of it for so long, on high alert. Our brains are efficiency machines. By valuing comfort so highly, and by equating comfort with sameness, we have programmed our brains to ignore the unfamiliar. Ever wondered why you can feel bored when you have constant stimulation? This is why. We carefully allocate our energy to the highest priorities. Things that aren't familiar don't help. So we ignore them. Of course, we can't always ignore stuff that is different. Sometimes it is right there, glaringly obvious, annoyingly immune to our discomfort, and we are forced to see it, acknowledge it, encounter it, at least mentally. But don't worry! We have defenses! Oh baby, do we have defenses. If we can't keep these alien objects from encroaching upon our consciousness, we can, at least, quickly evaluate the threat they pose and deal with them appropriately. Threat is precisely how we see things that are different. Comfort is bolstered, even built, by the familiar. All things unfamiliar are threats to our comfort. So we're quick to see other groups, philosophies, lifestyles, belief systems, family structures, choices, etc., as weird and wrong. We want to believe they are wrong, because we want to believe that pursuing our own comfort is right. We want to believe we have our priorities in check. Our very desire for comfort creeps into our logical reasoning, so deeply does the desire go. So insidiously does it carry out its programmed mission: to keep us from being uncomfortable, our brains will subvert objectivity and keep us from seeing the fallacies in our own thinking, keep us from recognizing that we are, at heart, selfish and misguided creatures whose greatest delight is sitting around and feeling pretty good about ourselves. If needed, then, we will happily sacrifice the validity and value of every thing, person, or choice that is different from what we know and define as normal. We will, for the sake of our own rightness, define all different things as wrong. We don't even hesitate. Hesitation is a sign that you might be starting to see the truth of your own motivation. If you start hesitating before defining, before casting judgment, before categorizing and labeling, look out: your comfort is at stake. Your brain is scurrying, be sure of it, to come up with great reasons for you to resist this awful urge to be fair. Fair. Fair? Fair! Fair has no place in the pursuit of comfort. Equality is not a factor here. If we value all people equally, we must admit that our own comfort is not the highest priority. We must admit that others, too, have valid needs, valid ideas, that the fact of their differentness is not adequate reason for us to deny them the same respect and autonomy we demand for ourselves. We can't have that. That sort of thinking gets us in trouble. That sort of thinking demolishes the layer upon layer of defensive triggers and traps that we have laid, so carefully, over the entire course of our lives. We are aware, so very aware, of how it could all fall apart. We know the reasons are thin. We know, deep down, the very idea of a fish bowl is absurd. We live in an ocean, and it's big, and it's full of creatures, and we're terrified. We want to believe we can limit what is around us. We want a fish bowl so we can feel like the biggest fish in it. It is the only way we know to feel safe. But there is another way: to see, first, that the fish bowl is an illusion of our own making, with imaginary walls upheld by discriminatory defense systems. If we can begin to see that the walls are not even real, we can see a way out. Maybe we can stop putting so much work into keeping them in place. It's scary. It is being alive. The threat only exists when we think we have something of our own, something utterly more important than all else, to protect and defend. But we don't. We are swimming in this together, all of us. There is no safer ocean, only this one.

AI

UI

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annie's blog 6 months ago

My new business + tech podcast

After reading 1 the recent news about the unsurprising lack of diversity in podcasting — 64% of the hosts of the most popular US podcasts of 2024 were men…Shows with video are more likely to have male hosts; the worst gender balance is with business and technology podcasts, where men host 92% of shows. — I have decided to start my own business and technology podcast (with video) to help balance this dreadful imbalance 2 . Please enjoy. Show transcript available upon request 3 . Don’t forget to like, subscribe, share, burn it all down, etc. Thanks to Chris for sharing this , which I otherwise would never have seen because I don’t follow podcasting at all but I am sucker for reports about anything especially when I am procrastinating on actual work I should be doing which is really what this entire post is all about. I can only help with the gender aspect. Better than nothing, I guess. Transcript: Dramatic intro music. Eyes. Nodding authoritatively. Pause. Thump. Coffee slurp. Coffee sigh. “Today in business-tech podcast we’ll look at the state of business and tech. Business: bad. That’s right. Tech: Also not good. Tune in next time. “ Thanks to Chris for sharing this , which I otherwise would never have seen because I don’t follow podcasting at all but I am sucker for reports about anything especially when I am procrastinating on actual work I should be doing which is really what this entire post is all about. I can only help with the gender aspect. Better than nothing, I guess. Transcript: Dramatic intro music. Eyes. Nodding authoritatively. Pause. Thump. Coffee slurp. Coffee sigh. “Today in business-tech podcast we’ll look at the state of business and tech. Business: bad. That’s right. Tech: Also not good. Tune in next time. “

Business

Media

AI

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annie's blog 6 months ago

Outside sad is better than inside sad

I was feeling sad and overwhelmed and unmoored yesterday so after work I didn’t go to the gym or get groceries or any of the other things I should do. Instead I drove to the park and walked in circles around the pond. I was still sad but outside sad is better than inside sad. The nice thing about being outside is that you can feel smaller. And if you’re smaller, the sadness is smaller. When I was a kid, I was lucky enough to live in rural places. Homes on country roads that fed into woods, creeks, fields. I did a lot of exploring and fort-building and tree-climbing, alone and with friends. As an adult, I have discovered that no matter where I go, I feel at home, at ease, as soon as I’m around trees. That’s a superpower. My hiking buddy 1 and I talk about sadness often while we walk around in the woods. How scary it is. How much we fear it. How it feels like it will swallow us, eat us up. How it feels bigger than other emotions. How it feels like a place you will never leave. But all sadness needs is to be felt 2 . Not ignored. Given a moment, a little space. My default reaction to sadness used to be: Box it up tight, tuck it away, pretend like it isn’t there. This is not helpful. It leaks out, disguises itself, gets stale and dense and brittle. Better to feel the sadness as it comes, in waves, instead of freezing it into sharp-edged pieces rattling around inside. To me, it feels safer to be sad outside. Like I can let it well up and leak out and there’s room for it to be big and there’s still room for the rest of me. The trees and the ground and the sky are a witness, a reflection, a reminder that I have existed before and will keep existing. That nature is truth and I am part of it. That even where there is no path, I can find my way. Jenn. We became close thru hiking together. Now, even though our friendship is much more than that, I still refer to her as my hiking buddy/friend which is a term of endearment and respect. I am referring to regular garden-variety sadness, not depression. Sadness is a feeling. Feelings are temporary. Depression is a persistent mental health condition. Big big difference. Jenn. We became close thru hiking together. Now, even though our friendship is much more than that, I still refer to her as my hiking buddy/friend which is a term of endearment and respect. I am referring to regular garden-variety sadness, not depression. Sadness is a feeling. Feelings are temporary. Depression is a persistent mental health condition. Big big difference.

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annie's blog 6 months ago

Who’s in charge here anyway

All systems have rules. Understanding and applying the rules well is different than memorizing and obeying the rules perfectly. Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries. — Milan Kundera There are lots of systems you can choose from. Productivity systems, for example. An easy example. You can choose any sort of productivity system. You can choose a pre-made one or make up your own. You can use a simple or complex productivity system. It can be analog, digital, or hybrid. It can require a lot of fine-tuning and specific tools or it can be as simple as an index card. Or you can choose not to use a productivity system, which is itself a system. In any system, what makes it successful or not successful depends on how well you understand and apply the rules . Understanding and applying the rules well is different than memorizing and obeying the rules perfectly. When you understand the rules, you’ve moved from memorizing them to analyzing them: how well they serve you, when they serve you, which ones matter, which ones are just for looks, which ones are actually detrimental, which rules help in some cases and not in others, etc. If you understand the rules, you can apply them well for your needs and goals. Sometimes applying a rule well will mean ignoring it completely. You take ownership of the system in this way. You make the system a servant. You master it. If you just memorize and obey the rules of the system — any system — you’re not running the system. The system’s running you.

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annie's blog 7 months ago

Duck duck duck dichotomy

Have you ever played Duck Duck Goose 1 and the person who’s it keeps walking and walking and walking and walking around and never picks the goose? It’s really boring. There are very few actual dichotomies. Most choices are not binary. Most choices are more like: “Here is an array of options you can recognize (the subset of a potentially infinite array of options you can’t even see because you’re only able to recognize what’s familiar). Pick one!” No wonder making decisions is so exhausting. I can spend a lot of time musing over the array of options, but eventually I narrow it down to one option and then it’s time to make the real choice which is a dichotomy: Yes, do it, action, go, forward. Choosing an option and then saying No to the option I selected for myself is wild! Why would I do that? Because choice is dangerous. Exerting the force of my will upon the world, or at least attempting to do so, is a risk. Risk of pain, risk of failure, risk of being wrong (whatever that means), risk of ending up in a worse situation, risk of being misunderstood, risky risky risky! Sometimes it feels safer to just hang out, not move, wait and see. It isn’t safer, usually, but it feels safer. Passivity is a way to live but it’s not the way I like to live. I like to happen. I like to be the thing that’s happening in my own life. I like to be the main character in my own story. And I only get to happen by choosing. nothing happens and/or things happen to me but I never happen. I make choices all day long but most of those are inconsequential, like: what time will I get up, what food will I eat, will I be impatient or kind with my child, will I be impatient or kind with myself, will I make that phone call, will I go to the gym, will I worry, will I be grateful, will I floss today, will I finish this blog post, will I actually put away the clean laundry? The answer to that last one is No. It’s going to sit in the basket for a few days. These choices all seem inconsequential but maybe they aren’t. Tiny choices become a trend, the trend creates a groove, the groove becomes a rut and I walk the rut because it’s easier to stick with what’s familiar than to enact change, so here I am: that’s my life. I can change it by making different tiny choices, one after another. It’s not about the right choice or wrong choice or the accurate choice or idiotic choice or worst choice or best choice. It’s about exerting your will. Choosing something. Selecting an option and then acting on it. Saying Yes. Duck duck duck duck duck goose. It’s about the goose. It doesn’t matter who the goose is. It matters that you pick a goose. Otherwise there’s no game, just a bunch of kids sitting in a circle being bored and sad. Everyone sits in a circle. One person walks around the circle, tapping others and saying duck until choosing a goose . The chosen goose tries to tag them before they sit down in the goose’s spot. nothing happens and/or things happen to me but I never happen. Everyone sits in a circle. One person walks around the circle, tapping others and saying duck until choosing a goose . The chosen goose tries to tag them before they sit down in the goose’s spot.

Data Analysis

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annie's blog 7 months ago

Love letters 11-13

Seeds are shitty little bastards. You put them in the ground. Nothing happens. You water. You watch. You pull weeds. Nothing happens. You wait. You water. You watch. Nothing happens. You give up. You figure it’s over. Bad seed. Bad soil. Too much something. Not enough something else. You turn your attention away. In silence, a tiny stem pushes through the soil. Delicate roots reach and cling. Fragile new yellow-green leaves open. Just like that. Whatever you’ve planted that is stubbornly not cooperating: leave it alone. Quit messing around with it. Go ahead and give up! Face and bear the anguish of love. Face and bear bravely your own responsibility. (I am so proud of you.) Sometimes we bury seeds in a garden, sometimes we bury seeds in a grave. I see your effort, your love, your heart. Wow, what a heart. O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red! Now: stop hiding in martyrdom and entertainment. Stop playing in the shallows. Dive. Dive in. Dive the fuck in. Start using all that you are to be who you are. Release all the resentment, fear, and self-pity. It’s not about whether you’re justified. Of course you are. It’s about whether it helps you live. Sometimes it does help you. Keeps you safe, or at least makes you feel safer. Then the walls that were a fortress become a prison. Time to knock ‘em down. You have stuff to do.