1
I’m surviving a lovely winter in Iowa. And by lovely I mean bitterly cold and windy. It’s always the latter that gets you. We just had a nice big scheduled February snowstorm and it was just beautiful to behold (from inside the house).
Found myself consuming a lot of podcasts attentively. I am hoping to put up some notes on this site soon. A favorite one has been Sean Carroll’s Mindscape. I subscribed to If Books Could Kill and a huge fan of the hosts’ snark and humor ♥️
All else remains boring and blissful and blessedly so. Wife, friends, movies, books, dog, tiny crafts, programming, learning, humor where I can find it. Boring and uneventful is simply fantastic where I am in life. I’ve also put on around 15lbs over the past few months in Holiday + Winter weight. It’s nice being lazy. I have begun fasting on Sundays. Nothing too extreme: tea, coffee, soup maybe. Just keep the calories under 500 or so. I used to have this practice about ten years ago and still remember the mental and physical benefits. And I do need both if I am to emerge mostly-okay after the next few years.
2
A lot as changed in the world since the last time I updated this. Things are pretty hopeless as we spiral towards dysfunction with glee. I remember how overwhelming 2016-2020 were simply with the news cycle. “What the fuck happened now?”
So to save my sanity and avoid a repeat of these glorious years, I’ve unsubscribed from almost everything news-related. The only way I know of what’s happening is via friends and family (and mostly through memes) which is some kind of attenuation of the non-stop barrage of cruelty, incompetence, and greed.
I am full of nothing but despair and hopelessness for this Great Experiment. And it hasn’t been a full month. I hope to talk to someone who finds this erosion of rights and democratic norms acceptable and encouraging. I’ve drastically reduced the amount of alcohol I consume in a bid to help with sleep more than anything; might make an exception for that evening.