Latest Posts (18 found)
annie's blog 5 days ago

Reading notes: August, September

I need to get back on the monthly routine because I’m squinting back at August like Uuuuuuuuuuh I vaguely remember it  so anyway let’s see how this goes. What could she say? What sentence would pierce him while leaving her intact? She had built her life so carefully around him. To say something, to do something, to feel something, would be to self-destruct. Okay. So. I want to like this book. I love books about food, involving food, including food. And this book has a lot of food. Of course it’s a tool, a metaphor, a… I don’t know, an environment. But still: Food. Hell yeah. Actually maybe that’s what I don’t like. I love the messy earthy good realness of food and people taking pleasure in it, cooking and sharing and enjoying it. Food in this story is not that. It is a measure of control, self-inflicted punishment, purgatory, avoidance, annihilation. And that makes me sad. ALSO I think if we’d moved things along and had the final inevitable explosion happen at, say, page 215 instead of page 300-ish, that would have been better. Also also, I said the writing was good and it was but.   But there were a lot of stretches of text that went like this: She (did a food thing). She (did another food thing). She (did another food thing). Details of the ingredients. She (did another food thing). Sizzle. She (did a food thing). She (did another food thing). She (did another food thing).  Etc. I don’t know how you’d write it different but it got repetitive. It was too much. I was inwardly screaming OKAY I GET IT I GET IT SHE IS COOKING AS A WAY TO HAVE CONTROL SHE IS EATING AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR ALL THE OTHER THINGS SHE SHOULD BE DOING I GET IT. Also it annoyed me that he (the fiance) did a horrible thing that ruined it all but we treat it like a big mystery and it is never clarified. I know the point is it doesn’t matter what he did . The point is he betrayed her and instead of rising up with immediate willpower and boundaries and hell naw  she just cooks and eats and pretends it’s fine. (Until she doesn’t.) I get that in a really personal way of having done the same thing myself (less cooking, less eating, but just as much pretending it’s fine) and I know it doesn’t matter how  the betrayal happens, what matters is that the betrayal happened and what matters even more is the self-betrayal that happens and then keeps happening. Until it doesn’t. Again: I GET IT. But also: I WANT TO KNOW. Tell me what he did. This book both destroyed and healed me. I don’t want to talk about it. I want to talk about it. It’s beautiful, it’s full of music and connection and fear. It’s a time-outside-of-time book but you know, the whole time, that there is a reckoning, there is an end, and you know it will pluck your heart out and smash it like a grape and you go forward anyway. Because you are there too and the music you can’t hear is carrying you along and the slow threads are weaving together and you are somehow woven in and then your heart is broken and you have no one to blame but yourself. And Ann Patchett. Is there a satisfaction in the effort of remembering that provides its own nourishment, and is what one recollects less important than the act of remembering? That is another question that will remain unanswered: I feel as though I am made of nothing else. First pick for the book club. We had our first meeting the last week of August and I picked this book without knowing anything about it other than I wanted to read it. It wasn’t what I expected. I’m not sure what I expected. Something lighter, I guess. Anyway I loved it but I felt kind of bad about picking it for CBBC because it is weighty. It is depth. It is pondering.  It is kind of bleak. Also beautiful. Also heavy. It’s a book I want to read again in a few years and see how it hits me. Perhaps, when someone has experienced a day-to-day life that makes sense, they can never become accustomed to strangeness. That is something that I, who have only experienced absurdity, can only suppose. I guess this is a stranded-on-a-desert-island book, kind of . But only in the sense that the environment, the context, has been set up to give us this thought experiment, this experience, this long echoing question of purpose and the even more important unignorable thump-thump-thump of loneliness. Anyway this book is excellent. Read it. Or don’t. But do. Also read The Wall by   Marlen Haushofer. I was not sure about this book but Stewart wrote and produced Xena, Warrior Princess so I figured it would be worth a shot. And yes: It was. If you like well-written badass heroines doing cool shit in a dystopian world (I do) you will like this. Really quite gorgeous. I liked the characters, good adventure, good pacing, good story. A satisfying if bittersweet fantasy (don’t worry, the ending is good). Loved this one. Scifi, really, but reads like fantasy. I should say more about it but I’m tired and I have already said a lot of words. Okay thriller. Plot twist was not so surprising. Tolerable writing. Good escape for a few hours.

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annie's blog 1 weeks ago

Two small UI things that might not bother me if I were a completely different person

But I am who I am and these two small very small really inconsequential things enrage me so here we are STOP IT. If I am logging in do you think I want the pre-login home page to stay open in a separate tab NO. I do NOT. I am here for one purpose and one purpose only and that is to login. Tabs are precious. I do not have any to waste on the prior page, the pointless page, the unused and unneeded pre-logged-in home page that you insist on keeping open in its own tab. Do you think I’m going to tab back to it and read your latest homepage copy or peruse the social proof or NO. I am NOT. I am ALREADY using the product that is why I am here to LOG IN. Quit target blanking the login button. Want to do action? Click this button here on the right side! Want to see things related to the action you just took or will most likely take next? No problem! Click this button. Where is it? On the right side near the last button you clicked? NO IT IS WAY OVER HERE ON THE LEFT SIDE! SURPRISE! Click it. Go ahead. Want to do the final action in this sequence of clicks which have to be clicked sequentially to do the thing? Okay! Click the third button. Where is it? Here? On the left side where we’re now putting buttons? NO! On the right side where the first button was? ALSO NO! It’s at the BOTTOM. You fool. You absolute idiot. Why didn’t you know that.

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annie's blog 2 weeks ago

Shelter or prison

A mental model or set of values starts as a shelter from the unrelenting chaos of reality. We need these shelters. Living without them isn’t really possible. We can’t take in and process adequate information fast enough to make truly new decisions. We need to categorize things and go with default reactions, otherwise we’ll get stuck, overwhelmed, never able to move from processing and analysis to action. Beliefs, mental models, values: These are shortcuts to decision-making. We adopt the ones we are given, adapt them according to our experiences, and use them as a way to understand the world (at least in some fashion). They tell us what the best thing is when we face a choice. They tell us how to react to other people’s choices. These structures give us shelter from chaos. They give us shortcuts so we can live. We stack a bunch of these structures together and call it something bigger: a religion, a culture, civilization. The interactions between the structures form the system we understand as reality. The problem with every system is how it evolves. It begins as a means of supporting the structures, keeping everything working; it ends up as a self-referential entity with the core goal of sustaining itself. The individuals within a system may change and grow and need the system to change and grow with them. But systems resist change. The individuals in a system are often not served by the system, but they’re serving it. They’re trapped within it. Does it shelter them? Does it provide some resources? Does it, perhaps, even keep them alive? Sure. So does a prison. Scifi tell us to fear AI; at some point, the artificial intelligence will become real , exert will, take over. But we should, instead, look at what we’ve already created that has taken over: our structures, our systems, our organizations, our civilizations. Gaining sentience was not even necessary. We, the inhabitants of the system, provide the necessary sentience to grease the wheels, crank the gears, repair the breaks, patch the holes. How could we refuse? After all, it keeps us alive. This shelter, this system, this prison.

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annie's blog 2 weeks ago

Why do I love my Pika guestbook so fucking much? Let’s discuss.

This blog is on Pika . Part of having a Pika blog is having (if you want it) a guestbook . I have it, I want it, I fucking love it. I was kind of surprised by how much I love it. I had a self-hosted WP blog for years and years, but many years ago I turned off comments. The maintenance effort wasn’t worth it. I haven’t had analytics of any kind for years either. I like it better that way. I blog about whatever bullshit is on my mind; maybe I have a little chat about it on Mastodon with a few folks; maybe I get an email or two. The end. It’s lovely. Let me be clear, lest I sound like I do not want attention or praise: I love attention and praise. What I don’t like is pressure. Dealing with comments and comment spam feels like pressure. Receiving and responding to an email feels like a conversation. Knowing how many clicks or visits happened on my blog feels like pressure. Getting a little note or drawing in my guestbook (aka friendbook) feels like a little treat, a hello from a neat person. Maybe there’s even a link to a blog I’m gonna love. I recently had a blog post show up on Hacker News and the way I knew is that my inbox was full of Someone signed your guestbook notifications.  It took me a day to figure out why. I enjoyed all the notes and drawings and figured a dubiously important internet personage had linked to my blog for some reason and brought me all these new friends. Close enough, I guess. Things have been quite busy for the last couple of months. I haven’t done much in the blogging world, reading or writing, and I’ve missed it. I read a bunch of comments on Hacker News and thought Oh boy I better blog about something really smart and insightful next. And then I was like, Nah. No pressure. I’m not here for pressure. Only friends.

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annie's blog 1 months ago

Encourage purposeful friction

Friction is a force of resistance. Overcoming friction takes energy. More friction takes more energy. Reducing friction frees up energy. Friction is a force of resistance. It resists, or opposes, motion. Overcoming friction takes energy. In general, if you can reduce the friction required to start doing or continue doing a thing, you’re more likely to do that thing, and keep doing it longer. Great! Helpful. Unless the thing is something you don’t want to keep doing. A lot of our optimizing behavior is about reducing friction. We try to set up the easiest, smoothest ways to manage all the tasks. This can be helpful. But I find that sometimes what I actually need is more friction, not less. Reducing friction can enhance efficiency, but efficiency is overrated. With the advent of Open AI, Gemini, Midjourney, Apple Intelligence, and other services that seem more intent on thinking and creating for us— we would do well to hold on to meaningful friction in our lives . We must be even more vigilant and intentional about how we interact with technology. For me, opportunity and balance are found in intentionality : being deliberate about the tools I use, setting boundaries around consumption, and prioritising quality over quantity. It’s a dance. I get lazy and am guilty of following ’shiny new things.’ But I’m also committed to resisting the tyranny of convenience . And high school physics taught me that friction is a form of resistance . — Aleem Shaun, Of Cassette Tapes and Dial-up Internet For example, having a frictionless to-do app means I end up with too many fucking tasks . Some things need to be unsaved, neglected, forgotten, ignored, left undone so better things can be done. Or so I can spend more delightful moments at ease, not doing  but being. Let there be lapses . I am not  a machine. Having a phone constantly with me for frictionless communication means I can be easily overwhelmed, inundated by what is sent to me rather than what is developed within me. I get distracted by voices not my own, unable to commune with myself. Do you ever find yourself saying or thinking or feeling things that don’t seem to belong to you? Hmm. Wonder how that happens. We are biologically very interested in saving energy. Whatever is frictionless is appealing. We are emotionally very invested in predictability. Whatever is familiar is appealing. Known things make us feel safer than unknown things. This is true even if the known things are objectively shitty. Overcoming friction takes energy. This is a good thing when we don’t want to start or continue doing something because it’s actually dumb and self-sabotaging and makes us feel yucky but it also provides one of those delicious dopamine hits we crave. We can use purposeful friction to make dumb things more difficult, to make familiar but shitty defaults less convenient. Friction can force more awareness. When doing something is so easy it requires no pause, no thought, it’s easy to act without conscious choice. Inserting friction does not guarantee we’ll be more thoughtful, but at least it gives us an opportunity for it.

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annie's blog 1 months ago

Ritualize anything

I love a habit. I adore a routine. Doing things in a certain order, or certain time, or certain way. Over and over. I love the dependability. I love the resonance, the echo, the beat. I love the surprising power. Layering one small movement over another and another until the tiniest action builds itself into a structure. A wall of your identity’s home. Rituals? I can’t stop myself. They’re so good. Absolutely breathtaking. Humanity’s finest work, perhaps. They make no sense. It’s all about beauty, about made-up meaning, about art. Rituals add unnecessary, arbitrary extra requirements to a simple action. Light a candle first. Kneel. Wear a certain outfit. Carry flowers. Make this shape with your hands. Take off your hat, or put it on. Not that hat, the special one. I love talking to kids around 4 to 6 years old. You can ritualize anything and they’ll go along and they’ll be so serious but they know what you’re doing and they’ll join in. You say, Oh no we can’t climb the stairs until we’ve dinged the stairway bell! And they nod and go, Oh yes of course. And you ding the bell and they nod along. It can be an imaginary bell. Just make the motion. They get it.  You say, Okay now we can go. But they one-up you. They say, Uhmm you forgot to bow to the big stair first. And you have to say Oh you’re right! And follow along as they lead you in the appropriate bow. Dinging the bell took 15 seconds. This bow will take 4 ½ excruciating minutes. Do not try to rush it. They stuck with you through your bit. It’s not their fault your imagination is lazy. They can construct a 249-step bow with no repeated moves on the fly and all you could come up with was dinging a bell? Try harder. Do better. You’ll make it up the stairs eventually. Who cares. It’s not about the stairs. It’s about the art. It’s about each other. It’s about being alive. You can ritualize anything. Your whole life. Light a candle before you pay bills. Light the bills on fire. Never mind, don’t listen to me. You can combine rituals. Change rituals. Exorcise old crusty rituals that hold pain instead of beauty. Build brand-new rituals to convert shame into love. You can wear a red shirt every Tuesday and it means you are holy.  You can think about how you want to feel and what you want to experience and you can give it to yourself in slow drips, all day, any day, while doing the most regular stuff. You can choose meaning and when you don’t like the available options you can create meaning. Rituals do not add anything sacred to life. Life is already sacred. We know this whenever we face death. Rituals remind us, let us acknowledge it. Help us push our heads thru the fog a bit. Help us grapple with this weight, this heart-rending joy.

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annie's blog 1 months ago

Quit being support staff

There are a lot of support needs in life. That's great. We all need and help each other. What's not great is when the support needs turn you into support staff . The needs take all your time. They come first in the priority list. And your core activities, the things that are you and that you do for yourself , get shoved to last place which, inevitably, becomes not at all. Martyrdom may have its place but it’s not a great way to live. Sometimes we don’t know how to exit a support staff role because we feel disloyal. We feel guilty. We've filled the role for so long, and now it's expected of us. If we walk away, Oh the drama . The suffering we will cause. The dependencies we will break. We think if we say, "There are more important things for me to do," then we are saying to all the people we love and support that they are not important and they do not matter. However, that’s not true. You’re not sending a "You're unimportant" message by default when you define what is most important to you. You’re choosing to respect and support yourself the way you have already been respecting and supporting others. If they have any respect for you, they will offer their encouragement and support as you step toward what's important for you . If they respond with resentment and resistance, they don't respect you as an equal. They see you as support staff. Being supportive: Caring about people, keeping your commitments, incorporating  kindness into how you live, helping when you can, choosing gentleness and graciousness over anger and impatience. is not the same as Being support staff: Subordinating your needs and priorities to others’, making your life choices based on what others demand, pouring your own energy and time into the well-being of others at the expense of your own. That's an enormous difference, but that difference isn't taught, is it? Or, worse, the latter option is taught as the right way .  The kind way. The family way. The good way. The Biblical way. 1  The moral way. Many stories in society teach us that people are fundamentally different in the roles they’re meant to have. The narrative goes like this:  some people are meant for hero roles 2  and some people are meant for support staff roles . Everyone is happiest when they stick to the role they’re meant for! Those in the hero roles get to live out their individual destiny, go after their prime objectives 3 , pursue their passions, make history, you know, stuff like that. Those in support staff roles get to do the boring stuff but that’s okay! Because they actually like it better and they’re happier and more fulfilled doing the supportive stuff. None of us are immune to the impact of narratives. Stories matter. Stories help us make sense of the world. Stories help us figure out where we fit in, and we all want to know that. Stories help us predict outcomes. Stories help us survive. Whether we want to admit or not, we’re influenced by the stories we grow up with, the stories that surround us. When you grow up with a story telling you that you’re meant to be a hero, you develop expectations. Assumptions. Behaviors. Ways of seeing and being. When you grow up with a story telling you that you’re meant to be support staff, you develop expectations. Assumptions. Behaviors. Ways of seeing and being. The expectation that you will always receive support  becomes entitlement. The expectation that you will always provide support  becomes obligation. When someone who feels entitled gets together with someone who feels obligated, well: It’s a perfect match. The pieces fit. The sad warped little pieces fit just right  and form a sad warped gross unhealthy little connection. This connection happens in all sorts of encounters and interactions. Romantic partners, friends, work colleagues, community groups, so on. It can be obvious or it can be subtle; it can be deliberate or unconscious. My belief is that it is always damaging. There's some truth in every lie that lasts. That's why it's so hard to fight against the really long-lasting lies. The truth buried in this twisted narrative is simple: We all  are meant to support one another. At different times, in various ways, as we have skills and inclination and resources and empathy, we are all capable of and benefited by serving and supporting others. It’s called community. In community: We offer support from love, not obligation. We receive support with gratitude. We are all heroes, and we all get to help each other. The way we support others and the way we are supported by others is not solved by any universal formula or methodology. We have to work it out, all the time. Seasons of life, capabilities, relationships, circumstances: All of these change. With those changes, there is a natural ebb and flow of support needed or given or received. It takes humility and openness and curiosity to let ourselves adjust, to release patterns, to accept changes, to flow. But we can do it. That’s especially odd, since if Jesus had lived as support staff he would never have completed his mission; he'd have been too busy pursuing political power (for his disciples) and healing people (really helpful for sick people) and raising the dead (a great kindness for those who don’t want to be dead yet) and going around being a Nice Guy Doing Good Things to Help and Support All the People Who Really Need Him . Traditionally this role has been limited to well-offish white men, huh. Whaddya know. The biggest most important prime objectives are often presented as a unifying cause for those in hero roles to pursue jointly. The labels change, from  manifest destiny  to  nationalism  to, ohhhh, project 2025 , but the idea is never new: Give the heroes an enemy to fight, control anyone who resists, accumulate property, hoard wealth, and subdue any lingering other-ness, as violently as needed.

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annie's blog 2 months ago

Navigating the Obvious Shoulds

Have you noticed there are a lot of dumb little decisions to make? Have you also noticed that most of these decisions, while dumb, are not necessarily easy ? There’s not an obvious answer. Sometimes there’s an obvious “I should” feeling, but I have a heavy distrust of shoulds. So I’ve been using this little matrix. Example: “OH NO. I have recently learned that XYZ tool/software is controlled by an absolute shitpile of a person! I do not like this! What should I do?” This is a case of the Obvious Should. As in, obviously you should stop using it! And, yeah: I’d rather not use anything created by a shitpile-person. I don’t want my money to support more shit being added to the pile. However: There are so many things to do. Have you noticed this? Everything keeps happening, all the time. While the Obvious Should might be the ideal move, I can’t forget all the other stuff there is that needs my attention. And I can’t forget that I myself, a human being with needs and wants and feelings and relationships and something called sleep debt, apparently, am a limited creature. This does frustrate me endlessly. The ideal version of me can do everything, gracefully and well. The ideal version of me does not need this dumb little matrix. But here we are, stuck with the less-than-ideal version of me in the less-than-ideal world, filled with numerous small and large decisions. So I like to bring the Obvious Should to the matrix of impact & effort: How much effort would it take? How much impact would it have? If it’s low-effort, high-impact: GREAT. I’LL DO IT. If it’s high-effort, low-impact: PASS. If it’s somewhere in the middle: I’ll put in on my list of Things That Would Be Nice To Do. And when I have time to tackle stuff on that list, I tackle it. I won’t sacrifice my sanity, well-being, sleep, time with people I love, time doing things I love, the quality of my work, or the care needed to keep my life functioning for an Obvious Should. Because the Should is often not so Obvious. The Should may have value, but it also has cost. The Should may align with my beliefs, but it may not align with my capacity. I’m not sharing this in response to any specific bit of news. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about. I also use the matrix in a slightly different way. Instead of high or low impact, I think about negative or positive impact. There are a lot of low-effort tasks and activities I can do, like reading a book, scrolling social feeds, watching a show, checking the news, texting a friend, reading blogs, listening to music, sharing a photo, scribbling a dumb little box in my notebook. Which ones have a positive impact, and which have a negative impact? I can’t answer that question for anyone else, but I can answer it for myself. Sometimes it’s a bit difficult to determine negative vs positive impact. When it’s not apparent, having a standard is helpful. A personal standard. Then you can judge the impact by its effect on the standard: Does X activity make it easier or harder for me to meet Z standard? Sometimes things that seem good, that are helpful or positive in many cases, have a negative effect on what you’re aiming for personally.

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annie's blog 2 months ago

Small Web July recap

I did some of what I wanted to do and completely missed on other things. This was a nice focus for the month. I’m really glad small cypress came up with the Small Web July challenge/invitation . It was a nice way to recalibrate, shift my focus, and put more attention into habits I want to cultivate and less energy into habits that aren’t great for me. My personal guidelines were to blog more, read and respond to blogs more, finish a couple of projects, and stay on track with my physical goals. Blogging more: Not as much as I envisioned, but I’m always waaaaaay too optimistic when I set personal goals. Anyway, I got 9 posts out there and I’m happy about that. Reading & responding to blogs more: I did a lot more blog reading. Not so much responding! Oh well! Maybe this month. Projects: I got an iPad set up for blog reading & small web browsing. I find myself reaching for it often when I don’t feel quite up to a book but don’t want to mindlessly scroll. It’s a sweet spot and I’m liking it. I also got my little notes garden going, very much in an as-is state, but that’s okay. (It’s OKAY! GET IT???? BECAUSE THE DOMAIN???) Physical goals: The 2nd week of July hit with a vengeance of fatigue, so instead of pushing myself I R E S T E D. Amazing. What a concept: Listening to your body and nurturing your wellness instead of punishing yourself for being human. I think I’m maturing as a person.  Anyway, the remainder of July went well. I got my steps in most days (aiming for 12k/day) and lifted weights 3-4 times each week. Not to brag but I added 20 lbs to my squat so now I have a big plate AND a little plate on each side of the bar. Also, wow, all these years of learning to ignore imposter syndrome as a writer is really paying off when I go to the gym. It’s not imposter syndrome at the gym, it’s reality: I actually have no idea what I’m doing! But turns out ignoring the sensation of being inept is about the same as ignoring your actual ineptitude, so the skill transfers nicely. I know Blaugust is happening this month and I’ll enjoy reading along as people post and share. I’m not  up for taking on another challenge myself. I think I’ll just keep my personal Small Web July guidelines going for a while.  :)

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annie's blog 2 months ago

Reading notes: May, June, July

Summer reading: Escapism served hot and fresh. Now I’m off to buy myself a hot and fresh personal pan pizza because baby, I earned it. TW: Suicide, depression Short, mind-bendy, horror-ish? But, I dunno, I wasn’t horrified. There were definite Ew gross horror nasty scenes and the whole setup is horror-y but it felt more like a sad psychological trip into desperation represented by the ew-gross things and the whole, um, plot. Maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood. I liked it? But also I’m not sure I liked it in the way it is supposed to be liked? If that makes sense. TW: Child hurt/in danger Easy read, thriller. A bit of a twist but it’s not really about the twist, it’s more about how in the heckin heck will they survive? Some pretty gruesome scenes. I can’t watch that kind of thing on tv but I can read it fine. The Druid, The Hunted, The Betrayed Zoomed through the first, strolled through the second, and kind of plodded through the third. Your enjoyable basic fantasy with magic, threatening evil, a rising-from-poverty heroine and a nice cast of characters. All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol Started watching the show and realized I’d never read the books? Could have sworn I did. Maybe I did and just completely forgot. That does happen. Anyway, I like these. Currently reading the 4th novella ( Exit Strategy). I read this one in March but forgot to include it, oops, so here it is. Anyway, I loved it. This was a random library pick and what an absolute delight. A quirky, thoughtful, funny but deep (also, short) scifi adventure. Read it. Anyway I loved it so much I immediately grabbed Robson’s other two novels :  Drunk on All Your Strange New Words and  Tomorrow Never Knows . Enjoyed both, especially Drunk on All Your Strange New Words. I hope Robson will write more novels. Absolute easy-read scifi escapism. Kept me entertained. Homey, hopeful, fun. Magic and family ties. A decent fantasy for escaping the current reality, but not enough to pull me back for the rest of the series. I love Jemisin. This “novelette” (wth is a novelette) isn’t as gripping as her novels but still a great read. I don’t know. I liked a lot about this book but also it just made me depressed. I probably should have expected as much from the guy who wrote Lord of the Flies . Our community pool has a little book cart with discarded library books. I happened to grab this one and honestly did not expect to like it, because look at the cover: Anyway, I liked it! So that was a pleasant surprise. Tropes, yes. But like, they were done well enough I was entertained rather than annoyed. I liked the characters mostly. Plus I love a feisty little resistance standing their ground against galactic evil. No one stood out any more than I did, and I realized that we’d all perfected the art of blending in and avoiding notice. Maybe Hourglass Mile had nothing to do with it, because the whole galaxy was a freaking jail. Not everyone needed bars to be locked up, and what I saw around me was evidence of entire populations falling into complacency for the sake of personal peace. I liked it enough to read another by Bouchet, A Promise of Fire. It’s a fantasy romance which my Kindle history tells me I already read several years ago but thanks to my ability to completely forget things I have read, I was able to read it again for the first time. Anyway, it was fine and I’ll keep Bouchet on tap for pure escapism reading which I find myself turning to a lot lately. Another fantasy. I liked the world-building, I liked most of the characters, I got annoyed with our main girl, the bitterly self-pitying and alcoholic Bleak, who needs a solid kick in the arse. In fact, she gets several but they don’t seem to have much of an effect. I love a flawed (and female) main character but I do need them to show some personal growth over the course of, I don’t know, multiple life-changing events. Anyway, it ended on a cliffhanger and I’m down to give the next book a chance to see if Bleak gets her shit together or not. This book could have been a blog post. I use that phrase so much for nonfiction. I should switch to an acronym maybe. #TBCHBABP Some good stuff. I took some notes. I found some helpful bits. Also, I scanned large chunks of text with illustrative anecdotes or just bland restatement of the thing that had already been said. This book also falls prey to the Just Do It! mode of instruction/advice, in which the writer tells you what to do  and then, instead of telling you how to do it , just tells you what to do   again, in slightly different words. However, this book’s greatest sin is quoting from Gary Chapman’s vomit-inducing Five Love Languages , non-ironically. 🤮 Gross. Fuck right off with that bullshit. DNF. I liked the explanation of tools and models for decision-making. It’s very corporate-y, which is yuck and all the examples are like How Can Company Y Expand in Z Sector When Facing ABC Market Uncertainties? Who cares. Anyway I just skimmed the annoying bits till about page 100, when Bowman declares that companies are shifting toward conscious capitalism and sustainability and considering their “ethical impact” and then cites BlackRock as an example of this exemplary corporate behavior. Hahahahh WOW bye. I’m not even linking to this one. (Side note: I thought perhaps Bowman wrote this book in a simpler, more hopeful time which would kind of partially explain these amazingly dumb takes about corporate goodness. Um, no. Published in 2025.)

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annie's blog 2 months ago

Let there be lapses

Let there be lapses Weeds in the garden, unswept porches, A walk never taken, A flower unnoticed, Missed bill, missed text, missed appointment. Let there be undone things Half-written sentences never finished A stack of books never read Blank pages, unseen lines Words never seen or heard or spoken. Let there be glory in what-is-not — All the unachieved Unbelieved Underserved Overlooked. Let us glory in these. Let there be errors Not just the tiny ones we can laugh away But enormous, life-altering errors. Huge risks taken which do not end well. Huge efforts made which result in what we call failure. (In fairness, Any effort is success in certain realities.) But let us — for a moment — judge by the world of machines, Of binaries Of industrialized morality And call it failure. Failure is the word we assign to all unexpected outcomes. So, let there be failure. Let failure warp our seeing and diminish our being, Let it ride among us waving a torch, Shame-blasting and guilt-smearing, Blinding us with ridiculously disproportional fiery judgment, Grinding nose to dirt Binding self to work. Let there be mistakes which make us weep Keep us awake at night Cause us to question our sanity, our decency, Our right to be here, Our ability to keep being here. Let there be broken edges Sawed-off pieces we cannot smooth down Pointy bits irritating and upsetting Dangling splinters and shards over chasms of regret. Let there be surrender. Let us call it what it is: giving up. Surrender sounds too noble, Enlightened, as if I didn’t have to but I chose to. That’s not what this is. Let there be quitting. Let there be Done. Not because we see what we have made, and it is good. This is not putting a bow on a gift. This is saying some things are too broken to be fixed. Let there be giving up. Lay down there, lay down, be still, give up. Face in the mud, breathing in, wheezing in the stuff of life, the dirt, The lowly dirt, the trudged-upon dirt, the worthless dirt From which we came and to which we all return. Let us lay there, breathing in this dirt, This pure self This known self This elemental self. Hell yes, failure. I embrace you. Brother! Sister! Mother! Father! Come quickly! Come and rejoice, for I have failed! Come and celebrate! Set out the feast! Call the guests! And enter into the joy of your child: Humanity raw Humanity broken Humanity dirty Humanity ill-fitted to survive Humanity traumatized Humanity doing such a fucked-up job of it Humanity violent and stumbling Humanity bruised and crusted at the edges Humanity clawing its way from the dark tunnel of history Humanity side-eyeing the stars while blood drips from our fingers Humanity bargaining for the right to squirm Humanity bringing a sword to a gunfight Humanity bullshitting Humanity asking clever little questions Humanity dressed in robes, obsessed with ovaries Humanity unhinged and in charge Humanity waving exasperated hands in the air Humanity dishing out pieces of pie Humanity weeping at the sight of spring flowers Humanity with big rough hands so careful so gentle holding a tiny new fragile thing Humanity with smooth precise hands making deals, ending lives Humanity dropping bombs Humanity being a big dumb bully Humanity the most awkward of the species Humanity voted most likely to secede from the planet Humanity pointing and saying look at this! wow! Humanity wondering, always wondering Humanity exhausted sitting in a patch of sunlight Being dirt. Dirt with form, dirt with spirit. Pale faces float through quiet rooms, ghostly fingers flutter in hallways. Pens move across expensive paper. Golden liquid sloshes in crystal while murmuring voices ooze and wind and hush and tell us there is nothing to worry about.  But this is no time to be civilized.  Let there be lapses: Lapses of courtesy, lapses of decorum. Failures of politeness. Refusals to conform. Let there be a wildness ringing in us for each other — Hissing, bared teeth, spitting — Reverberating, thrumming, cracking the marble palaces full of dead men’s bones.

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annie's blog 2 months ago

Hey, I care about you, but I do not care what the robot says about you

When little trends roll around the blogging world that I’m not into, I ignore them.  People get to do things. I don’t need to be part of it. I can put my attention elsewhere. I don’t need to express my opinion of everything. I am breaking that personal rule because this trend has spread from the blogging world to the world of face-to-face conversations. As I see it, I now have two options: 1) Projectile vomit on the next person who attempts this in conversation or 2) Blog about it. Maybe if I were a stronger, better person I could find some third or fourth option. Too bad. Here we are. So, um, listen: I care about you but I do not care about the hallucinating robot and I do not care what specific combination of words it glommed up from the dark reaches of Scrapelandia and cobbled together into seeming-sense and bracketed between the servile, saccharine phrasings of a pretend personality and spewed onto the screen at you. I like your personality. I like the stuff you make and do. I like how you see the world. I care about your thoughts and feelings. I want to see your imperfect output and your unfinished projects. I’m into your insights and your mundane observations. I care about your art and I enjoy your dumb jokes and I’m curious about your music taste and I want to hear your hot takes. But I do not care about the plagiarizing pretend bot or what it told you about your personality or ideas or business or art or future or whatever. I don’t think AI is the devil. But I know that AI is not your friend. Or your coach. Or your therapist. Or your business partner. Or your dev team. Or your editor. It cannot know and it cannot think and it cannot feel and it cannot even summarize properly. It is a tool, a piece of tech. It has its uses. But it’s not you, it’s not anything like you. It’s not interesting. It’s not alive. I don’t care about its feedback or opinion or observations because it literally cannot produce any of those things. It is a glorified search engine cobbling together random bits of knowledge from what humans have actually produced, arranging it into a facsimile of conversation. That can be useful but it is not interesting. What are you having for dinner? How will you prepare it? How did it turn out? Did you like it? Will you have it again? How much garlic did you use? (Use more next time, trust me.) I care about that. Tell me. But I don’t care what your refrigerator thinks about your dinner selection. And I don’t care what a chatbot says about you.

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annie's blog 2 months ago

Setting up an iPad for blog reading and small web browsing

This is very simple but sometimes the simplest changes work really well. I have this 5th generation iPad (2017) sitting around, not in use. I love reading blogs and visiting personal sites and browsing the small web but I don’t like doing these things on my phone. I don’t even like using Mastodon on my phone. Mostly because I don’t like reading anything longer than a text message on my phone. (And gtfo with multi-paragraph texts. Stop it. Break that shit up.) I also don’t like writing on my phone.  I get annoyed. I’m a slow thumb typist. I’m a fast touch typist. My own inefficiency when writing on my tiny iPhone 13 mini screen irritates the heck outta me. I like a bigger horizon. Give me some space. I want to spread out. I want split screen. I want room for long sentences to breathe. But I don’t like being on my computer all the time. More accurately, I’m on my computer all the time for work and it is sometimes hard for my brain to accept than I can use my computer for other things. So the languishing iPad is perfect. I didn’t do anything complicated but I like it and I’m using it. I ordered a case with a bluetooth keyboard. I got a cheap one because I wasn’t sure if I’d actually use the keyboard but I have used it quite often. The main apps: Orion, Tot, Ivory, Lire, Reader, and Raindrop. The home screen is just those apps (plus Kindle) and a shortcut to my secretly published blogroll because I like RSS but I also like traipsing through the actual blogs. So much personality. I have Orion as the only browser and set up Kagi with the blocklist and a couple of lenses from Flamed Fury . I switched to Lire as my RSS reader and organized my feeds in folders so that’s made my brain happy. I’m popping the iPad open in the morning and reading blogs. Sometimes I want to make a note so I’ll open Tot in split screen and that works beautifully. Anyway, nothing complicated here and I’m sure I’ll keep tweaking a bit. Let me know if you have suggestions for cool things I haven’t thought about.  :) Long live the small web.

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annie's blog 3 months ago

Small webbing along, update 1

A week notes addendum with an actual update, maybe. For Small Web July , my little stack of goals: More blogging More reading blogs and responding Finish (or work on) a few small web projects Stay on track with exercise More blogging: ✅ Not as much as I’d have liked but I got a few posts in over the last 9 days. Also cleaned up some languishing drafts. More reading blogs and responding: ✅-ish Definitely more reading blogs, and this has been lovely. Over the last few months I let my online browsing/reading time get sucked into news and sadness and outrage. It’s good to recalibrate. I haven’t done much responding yet. Finish (or work on) a few small web projects: ✅ Set up an old iPad as a blog/RSS reader + small web browser ✅ Get my little notes/micro/commonplace garden set up - in progress Finish some of those half-done slash pages - next? Stay on track with physical goals: ✅ / ❌ First week of July was great: got in my cardio/steps almost every day + weights @ the gym 4 times. Felt good. This week has been not so great. I feel very fatigued and like I can’t get enough sleep. Maybe I did a bit too much, maybe I’m fighting something off, maybe it’s just some health issues flaring up. I don’t know. I do know that pushing through exhaustion leads to more exhaustion. So I’ve been resting as much as possible and trying not to feel too discouraged about not meeting my goals this week. So: ❌. But also ✅ because actually listening to my body and taking care of myself in the way I need right now  is good and something I want to keep doing.

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annie's blog 3 months ago

This is not the greatest cat in the world; this is just a tribute

My therapist said humor is a healthy coping mechanism as long as I can also honestly acknowledge my real feelings. This is a tribute to Gasoline Balenciaga aka Mr Business the cat, who has left this mortal plane for the catnip fields of forever. My real feelings are sad and also okay. Gasoline was a good cat and my snuggle bud. He slept on my bed almost every night. He only really liked me but would tolerate pets from other people until he would not and then he would glare with the indignation of a thousand burning suns. He was young, only 4 years old. I have no idea why he died. I was out with my best friend eating chips and drinking beer when Rob called me. Here is how the conversation went: Me: “Hey, what’s up?” Rob: “Do you have a Gasoline-sized box?” Me: “What?” Rob: “Do you have a Gasoline-sized box anywhere?” Rob: slowly, enunciating “Do you have a box big enough for Gasoli— Oh never mind I see one.” Me: slowly “Why do you need a Gasoline-sized box?” Rob: “Oh. Um. Well. He’s dead.” Apparently Rob walked over to pet Gasoline who was sleeping on the couch. This was where, and how, Gas spent most of his time. But Gas was not napping, or, I guess, he was: The nap that never ends. The eternal catnap. The endless blissful snooze. Gasoline always wanted to be eating or sleeping. Mostly sleeping. He also always wanted me to be sleeping. After 5pm he would sit in my bedroom doorway and when I walked by he would meow and try to lead me into my room and jump on the bed and look at me like: IT IS BEDTIME NOW. GO TO BED. I explained to him carefully that although I do like to go to bed early, 5:37pm is a little too early even for me. This did not seem to sink in, as he repeated this routine almost daily. He would eventually give up and try to herd me to the couch instead and this was much more effective, as a tactic. He had absolute disdain for any surface that took my attention away from his gloriousness, as you can see: He was obsessed with the printer. He pretended to be annoyed by but secretly enjoyed cuddles with his little sister, Hazelnut Gooby. He had a squeaky purr and I will miss him.

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annie's blog 3 months ago

Week notes: Road trip edition

Lots of driving. I am made of iced coffee and beef jerky. The highway is life. 11:24am, Sunday In a not entirely unexpected but also definitely not scheduled turn of events, I am spending 10 hours on the road today. So the afternoon I imagined — a leisurely blog browsing session followed by a leisurely week notes writing session, accompanied by an array of snacks and beverages — is now a less leisurely tapping out a post on my phone while Zeke (16yo) drives for a bit and I eyeball the traffic and  the road and try not to panic-breathe when he does not brake or change lanes as soon as I think he should. He’s doing fine, it’s fine, I’m fine. We’re driving to Little Rock to pick up a car. The ratio of teenagers who need a car: availability of affordable decent used cars is grim. Unless you are the one selling the used car, I guess. Anyway thanks to my Dad (who lives in Arkansas) we found a good one and today it’s finally available so we’re going to get it. Mara is along to help with the driving. She also did not plan on this day of driving but as it happens her boyfriend is currently in LR on a travel work thing soOoo we’re gonna pick up a car, swing by wherever he’s staying and say hello, then drive back home. Okay. 3:15pm, Sunday Oh hey. There was a pit stop for gas,  then my turn to drive. Now it’s Mara’s turn and I’m in the backseat and sipping the last of my 72oz iced coffee and picking beef jerky out of my teeth because that’s who I am as a person. Have I ever mentioned that like 90% of the people I work with are European? They love me so much. ( Wait, maybe it’s pity, not love??? Fuck.) My cat died yesterday. I know I’m just throwing that in here like an afterthought but it’s not that. It’s that saying things out loud to someone or writing things down makes them real. No, they are already real. It just makes you acknowledge they’re real. And sometimes you don’t want to. So you say it but sideways. Or you write it, but hidden a few paragraphs down in a dumb rambling recap of something and you’re giving yourself a way to kind of halfway accept it, to slide it in. Is this what Emily Dickinson meant when she said Tell the truth / but tell it slant. I am sad. About my cat dying and also about so many other things. And also while I am sad I am sitting in the backseat while two of my children who are basically whole adults (how??!!) talk and laugh and play music and this is beautiful and miraculous and it is everything and yet also sadness is here. I don’t understand anything about life. 01:58am, Monday Dear sweet all the things in the universe we made it home and I am tired and why do I think I can do this shit. We did the thing. Retrieved car. Brief visit with the (grand)parents. Briefer visit with the boyfriend. 6 more hours of driving with rain and construction and nighttime. One gas station stop which involved me and an employee of said gas station singing Summer of 69  to each other. A lot of things can happen in a gas station in Missouri around midnight. I meant to write about small web things, that was kind of the point of this post, and It’s been lovely actually but now I am so tired. Here is a short statement: I did some small web things and it was good. the end good night

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annie's blog 3 months ago

The inevitable result of what we do today

I’ve been slowly sorting through and cleaning up my disorganized collection of notes. I came across one from a few years ago when I was reading Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown. This quote in particular keeps ringing ringing ringing in my head: The future is not an escapist place to occupy. All of it is the inevitable result of what we do today, and the more we take it in our hands, imagine it as a place of justice and pleasure, the more the future knows we want it, and that we aren’t letting go. Hope matters so much. So does a willingness to take responsibility, not for all the things in all the world but for what is ours: The limited but meaningful scope of what we do today. Sometimes (okay a lot of the time) (okay all the time) I don’t know what to do. Today or any day. There are both too many options and not enough. Out of all these possibilities, how can I find the ones that are doable and actually helpful? I guess I can start with doable and go from there.

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annie's blog 3 months ago

Small Web July

I saw this invitation to A Small Web July  from small cypress and knew I wanted to join in. Here are my personal guidelines: I haven’t been blogging much lately. I want to post more often. More reading blogs and responding. Maybe responding with my own post, maybe sending an email. More interaction via blogging. Finish (or attempt to finish) a few small web projects. I like the “replace scrolling with building” idea so I’m going to copy that. Less time on my phone, less scrolling or aimless clicking, more building. Stay on track with my physical goals. I’m trying to (re-)establish a few habits after dealing with health issues that left me fatigued through the first few months of the year. I’ve done well over the last 8 weeks with daily walking + lifting weights 2-3x/week. I want to keep it going and bump it up a bit. (But not too much! Baby steps.) Accountability is helpful and fun. If I post more (or don’t), that will be obvious from my blog. Maybe I’ll do week notes for July to share how I did on blog reading/responding, little projects, and exercise.

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