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Diaries

even my third eye is sleepy

2024-02-15 /

Although I’m not actively practicing yoga atm, I’ve been studying it (as I am wont to do with random subjects). I like to study stuff by getting into communities and absorbing discussions.

I just saw someone talking about how he’s done yoga and meditation a long while, and after his third eye opened*, he just didn’t care about over-performing at his job anymore. He was in a really competitive field and started getting poor evaluations because he stopped striving to meet stressful goals.

(*A lot of people don’t like talking third eye or other spiritual/metaphysical concepts, but I argue it is only terminology, and we can call it whatever we want. I am not a literalist. The general concept here is reaching a kind of personal understanding that you feel like…everything makes sense. Self and universe in unity.)

I opened my third eye a while ago. Now I’ve been off weed for three weeks, it has not closed (yet?). I still have this deep, profound sense of peace gained from years of psychedelic meditation. I am just not interested in artifice, external goals, or performing.

I spent my 20s chasing goals but didn’t get satisfaction when I achieved them. Literally I did not celebrate hitting the New York Times Bestseller list. Didn’t celebrate when I hit my first million sales. Nor when I got an agent. Or any of the other milestones that seemed to matter so much when I was younger. It was everything for so long, and I spent so much time working on it, and then I realized it didn’t make me happy. I was so accomplished and i was never happy. I was just more scared.

I am happy now. And so I am satisfied with what I accomplished Back Then, more than I used to be, but…I did that, so why would I go back to chasing goals again? I know now that isn’t where happiness rests. Happiness is something I can only give myself. It’s a matter of surrender and presence in the moment. (Theoretically I could feel this while chasing goals but I haven’t figured it out yet.)

When I think about what matters now, it’s basically my family, of the furry persuasion and otherwise. It’s both scary to know that I can’t keep them forever (as losing my darling Annie has reminded me, yet again) but it’s also so satisfying to know I am with my family now and we are together and this moment is really good, and it doesn’t feel like anything matters beyond distributing snuggles and emotional support to mi familia. I’m just gazing at my dogs while I type this lol.

Obviously I’m still doing stuff. I am still writing a lot and have a couple trunked books. I’m gonna finish Fated for Firelizards because I think it’s important to complete some projects. I am drawing and crocheting constantly, too. But I’m not doing any of this because I wanna accomplish anything beyond the moment of engagement with it. I’m not sure how to tell people what they will get out of interacting with my art (my purses are chaotic, my game is weird, my reviews are silly) because I am just experiencing the creation of it.

I don’t feel unsatisfied, or like anything is missing. Art is just something I do because I am here and that is one of my most fundamental methods of self-expression and it’s rather like breathing, dreaming, thinking, or anything else I can’t stop.

The weirdest thing about this peaceful state is the fact that I seem to no longer have any relevance in the world, and the world has minimal relevance to me, and I’m not entirely sure what to make of that. Surely this is not sustainable, just existing peacefully.

I think the most hilarious side-effect of my shifted attitudes is that I give the vast majority of movies 5* because I just think they’re nice. lol. Did the movie establish and meet its goals? Was I amused? Five stars for you! And you! Five stars everywhere!

Comment

Sara Reine

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Rory Links

Rory’s links #3: Sound it out

2024-02-12 /

Welcome back to links! Only took me three months to come back! Let’s start by collecting my initial year-end wrapup posts, if you haven’t seen them. (I spent my time and energy on these for a while instead of linkspams.)

1. Movies pt. 1 (there will be a pt. 2 next month, along with Oscar posts)
2. Music
3. TV
4. Books
5. Video games

I felt late posting these, but I did manage to squeeze them in right before Lunar New Year, so maybe I was right on time.

A couple links on literacy: The Loss of Things I Took For Granted, a Slate column with a college professor that has watched literacy in their students drop over the last decade, and At a Loss for Words, about the flawed US teaching method of three cueing that has left kids and young adults struggling to read. The short version: sounding out words is a valuable skill.

A random hobby wiki page: Did you know DND 5e allows characters to get married for an armor class boost? Why did no one get fake married in the DND movie or Baldur’s Gate 3? Wasted opportunities.

Do you like space? Watch some documentaries and clips on NASA+. I think there’s Earth stuff on there, too.

Totally respect if you don’t want to click Substack links, but here’s one person’s alternatives to Spotify. I’m not fully ready to ditch Apple Music in 2024, but I agree with the poor ethics of using these services and plan to prioritize buying music this year, especially for smaller artists.

If you’re wondering why I’m bringing up Substack, the company has been really reticient about banning Nazis and white supremacists off the platform. (All the articles that came up when I searched were paywalled, like this Atlantic article, but they’re there.) Substack made a token reversal effort in January, but if we’re talking about digital ethics, moving off Substack is great to do in that regard. If you want alternatives: Egregious is WordPress + domain; Rory Learns is on Buttondown, Casey Johnson has talked on Bluesky about how She’s a Beast uses Ghost.

JP Brammer of ¡Hola Papi! fame has an interesting column about Latino identity in the LA Times. So many good lines in this one, such as “…language, nations and identity are all ghosts with teeth, phantoms that aren’t real until they bite you and draw blood.”

Black Twitter Remains Unbothered in Elon Musk’s X. I’ve limited my Twitter usage for a variety of reasons, both ethical and functional. In the past, I’ve also witnessed and been a part of online communities standing firm against profit machines that don’t care about people. No judgment from me (except for soulless billionaires).

This might be paywalled if you’ve looked at New York Magazine much lately: Apple Vision Pro Owners Are Struggling to Figure Out What They Just Bought. Sounds like Apple is selling expensive VR headsets to people too cool (or work-focused) to buy already-existing VR headsets. I think there’s space for work apps on VR; I think most people buying the Vision Pro don’t have the skill to use them. Still, if Apple wants people to promo the Vision Pro, they should give one to Sara, who has VR experience and wants work apps. Just saying.

Interesting YouTube videos recently (expanding the info box will allow you to click to a transcript, if you prefer to read):

FD Signifier’s short take on cultural appropriation pointed out that Travis Kelce started sporting a fade because it was a way to signal that he was dating Black women. (That was pre-Swift, of course, but he hasn’t changed his hair since that started.)

Slowly going through Variety’s latest Actors on Actors series, and I think Andrew Scott & Greta Lee’s is going to be tough to beat. Past Lives is my favorite Best Picture nominee so far (it’s on Prime Video right now), and I can’t wait to see All of Us Strangers, which I can pretty safely say got snubbed without even seeing it (but it’ll be on Hulu as of February 22nd, so I’ll speak more authoritatively about it then).

An essay about east Asia and buying luxury. I got into cdramas a few years ago and was surprised to see how many Chinese actors/idols had deals with luxury brands. It was helpful to get perspective on how economic/social trends coalesce within collectivist cultures in this way.

It’s hard to be remotely a US film nerd and not have heard about how Sofia Coppola ruined the Godfather Part III, but this essay put into perspective how much Francis Ford Coppola failed his daughter. It’s fascinating because only a nepo baby could have the career Sofia Coppola has after decades of (undeserved) attacks, but also, she never would have been made the face of the movie’s failure if she hadn’t been a nepo baby in the first place.

Creative ownership and copyright have been hot topics the last few months, between tech bros stealing from artists for their fancy autocorrect, Steamboat Willie entering public domain, and hbomberguy’s big plagiarism essay, to name three prominent examples. A different essay talks about some creative copyright infringement from the past and asks where we go from here. You should mostly watch it to see Turkish Star Trek and Filipino musical Batman, if you haven’t.

Comment

Rory Hume

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Diaries

the scientist withdraws

2024-02-11 /

What kind of oddball drug tests herself periodically through withdrawal to see when the THC has cleared from her system? This oddball, right here. I got a pack of THC drug tests when I quit weed.

These tests work the opposite from pregnancy/COVID tests: when you are negative for THC, you get two lines. So far I have only had the control line.

15 days after quitting, I got the faintest line – meaning it detected very very little THC. This was using my most dilute sample (end of day, very well-hydrated) so I suspect I’d have zero line testing again tomorrow morning, but! I am getting there.

Technically *any* line is a negative because these tests are qualitative (yes/no) not quantitative. Community apocrypha says you pee clean after a month, but I might get there sooner – pretty wild considering I was such a heavy user for almost a decade. But it also makes sense considering that I was cutting back the last couple months and mostly inhaling (versus edibles), which clears faster.

I’m still expecting to have weed-related cognitive issues for months, even when it’s out of my system. I am told I could remain intermittently foggy for almost a year. Also, THC binds to fat, and I’ve stored a bunch in my adipose tissue. It can release if I lose weight or exercise hard.

The process isn’t linear, is what I’m saying, but this is cool progress to experience.

I told my spouse that I was drug testing myself and I was like “I know it’s really weird, but–” and he was like “No this is just you having a scientific mind, like always, and it’s why I love you.” I love him. It’s true though — any excuse I have to run tests on myself, I will do it.

I haven’t been posting Sara Reads the Feed posts (or much else) mostly because this quitting process has totally thrown me off my groove. I’ve made mood-management, self-care, and adjusting to sobriety kinda my full-time job during this period, which is also how I got off nicotine and alcohol. It’s telling myself “this is the most important thing right now” and giving myself lots of space to Feel Stuff.

Of everything I have quit, weed is by far the easiest on me. Alcohol was emotionally easy because FUCK THAT STUFF, it is POISON. Nicotine was the worst. The most brutal withdrawal, the most intense cravings. But I did that! I am free. It’s awesome.

Still, here I am, babysitting myself again. Hopefully this will be the last substance abuse self-babysitting for the rest of my life. It’s funny how I feel Very Done With This but I am neither embarrassed nor regretful about what all I’ve done. That was just like…the road. You know? That is the road I was on. No hard feelings, cannabis, but we’re done now. Thank you for what we had together. Bye. Can’t wait to see two bold lines on the drug test.

Comment

Sara Reine

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Annie (2008 – 2024)

2024-02-06 /

I resent that other people have emotions. That they have weight. I resent that other people must need to take space during a time when I cannot hold the weight of my own emotions. I wish I didn’t have to be a mother when I’m very sad. I wish other people would be fine without me. I wish I could just fall into the donut hole of myself and stay there until I feel better. Once the weight becomes not so smothering.

~

Sixteen years ago I got a kitten. She came from a box behind a grocery store. She was riddled with mites and ticks. We took care of her very closely, our first medically complicated mammal-friend.

She grew up so loving that it was annoying. She couldn’t take no for an answer. I tried to give her to my sister so I wouldn’t have to keep dealing with that tortoiseshell attitude, but at the last moment, I got way too sad. I loved her much more than I recognized.

So she stayed.

~

I don’t want to remember everything because it just makes me feel sad.

~

The cost of loving very, very much is hurting very, very much when something ends. And everything ends eventually. You know you’ve been lucky if it hurts a lot.

They say that our little mammal-friends give us the best years of our life, and then the single worst day of our lives.

~

This is the last of the cats my husband and I had before we got married. She was a little box baby found in a Walmart parking lot. We nurtured her through ear mites and ticks and watched her grow into the biggest personality. After I had Moonlight, thirteen years ago, little Miss Annie ate one of their baby bottle nipples and needed $3000 surgery to remove it. I spent a while calling her the other things I could have used that money for. “Little Miss Caribbean Vacation.” “Little Miss Used Car.”

When Little Sunshine was born, Annie used to curl up in bed with both of us and lick the baby’s head. She would put him down for naps like that. When he went through the grabby baby hand stage, she loved it and would position herself so that he could squeeze her face.

We chose not to remove a tumor that developed on her shoulder. It grew very aggressively, and she couldn’t compete with her siblings for food/water anymore, so we gave her the entire spare bedroom as an apartment. It helped her perk up a ton. She spent her last year in there getting multiple daily visits, where I would groom and tend her, and we would snuggle extensively. I loved her more in this last year than I have ever loved a cat. Something about taking care of someone who is sick becomes so intimate.

Her tumor became so large, it really bothered her. She seemed worn out. I made a little sweater for her with a webbing inside to hold crocheted cotton bandages, that way we could cover the tumor and the kids could still visit. But she was so tired. It was time. I miss her already.

~

There is no dying without regret. It’s one of the things that makes it so hard. You can’t do it perfectly. It’s like how you can make a birth plan when you’re pregnant, listing out all your preferences, but your body and baby will decide how it happens. Death never comes at the right time. It’s never pretty. It is hard and unpleasant.

~

I do think we will meet again someday, somehow, in some form.

I truly believe that.

Comment

Sara Reine

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tv shows

Rory’s 2023: TV

2024-02-05 /

TV and YouTube-esque video are the only media where I don’t get auto-generated stats about my year. (I still don’t have a great way to track YouTube watching, so I’m not recapping 2023.) But I did track TV via Notion in 2023, to somewhat messy results. I’m not happy with it. Unfortunately, I have no better ideas on how to track it right now, so I’ll probably do the same for 2024 (unless Letterboxd actually launches TV tracking and I don’t hate it).

Still, messy or not, I can talk broadly about the shows I watched.

Old rewatches

-Community: It’s hard to be Very Online at my age and not have seen at least some Community. During my early-2023 winter slump, watching in full was a good way to pass the time. It’s not an uncomplicated watch—many of the jokes and stances haven’t aged well, and there’s a whole lot of behind-the-scenes goings-on that I can’t begin to watch—but Troy and Abed are two of my all-time favorite TV characters.

-The Untamed: I started 2024 with a rewatch of this, too! Wonder who I have to bother to get a US physical release of this show so I can stop worrying about it disappearing forever. I think this is the only comfort rewatch TV I have at the moment, and I’m happy to have it.

-Big Love: I watched Big Love in full as it aired and remembered loving the ending, so I wanted to see how it held up on a rewatch. (Answer: I still like it, but the last season is largely silly and undermines it.) It’s fascinating how the show’s fiction is built around the myths of Mormon polygamy just as much as some of the realities; watching Sister Wives and looking up analysis of that has taught me a lot in that regard.

(Yes, I also watched Sister Wives and Shiny Happy People this year, but I’m largely refraining from commentary because TLC is completely morally bankrupt, and I would have to do a lot of grounding in greater context to feel like I’m even beginning to do that justice. I rec Shiny Happy People if you can handle it, though; look up trigger warnings first.)

-Interview with the Vampire s1: I made a point of rewatching when they had the episodes up on (HBO) Max temporarily. A quick marathon was nice after doing a week-to-week first watch. It worked great both ways! I wish there were more episodes, but the writers filled the time beautifully. Makes me regret how dull I found Mayfair Witches (but then, I’ve always been more into Vampire Chronicles).

Shows that finished in 2023

-Succession: A show that rushed its ending, but they were far from the only HBO show to have that problem in 2023. (I suspect the looming strike was also a factor.) Endings are hard, but even with everything, I found Succession’s last season satisfying and emotionally devastating in parts. I’m extremely pleased that this was the Sarah Snook-Kieran Culkin award season. My faves!

-Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: I never fully clicked with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but Scott Pilgrim Takes Off was a fascinating revisit with a lot of the same people. In this case, age came with evolved perspectives on people and relationships. I like art that recognizes that we can grow and be kinder over time!

-The Crown: This was a comfort show for me in the first couple seasons, so seeing its writing degrade over time was a real bummer. (Nothing in the show topped 2×06.) I don’t regret watching the rest because I liked the production design and some of the casting. Plus, I felt like they were circling a monarchy-is-dying message in the finale that was interesting. But ultimately, it was a lot of unchecked bigotry and unchallenged regurgitation of palace narratives.

-Schmigadoon!: One of two shows I moved from my “may have more seasons” to “finished” column before I started writing this. It’s a shame because there was a lot of talent and fun here, but I’d be lying if I said season two didn’t capture me like season one did. Maybe it’s better that Apple canceled it before it became Ted Lasso? Still, disappointing to lose an outlet as an agoraphobic musical-theater kid.

-Our Flag Means Death: Here’s the second show I moved to “finished”. The trajectory this show took in my life is fascinating. I went from elated and telling everyone I knew about it as season one aired, to cooling on the show while waiting for season two, to sad while watching season two. It definitely didn’t deserve the obvious shoestring budget it was working off, and I loved all the ensemble. Here’s hoping I can watch Vico Ortiz in something else soon.

Continuing shows

-Heartstopper: I might not have a lot of comfort TV shows, but Heartstopper is one of my comfort comics, and I love its TV adaptation deeply. Season two was even better than season one for me, although I watched both back-to-back and had a great time. I’m so glad season three’s in progress.

-Good Omens: I love the Good Omens book, but I haven’t quite clicked with the show in the same way. S1 wasn’t a bad adaptation of the book, but it still missed something for me? And then s2 was forging its own path and worked even less. (This might have been because I didn’t get to watching the new episodes right away, and the online hype grew too big.) I’ll still watch the last season, whenever that happens.

-What We Do In The Shadows: Guillermo! It’s hard to keep a show fresh for multiple seasons, but I’ve loved Guillermo’s journey the whole way through. I think 2024’s going to have the show’s last season, and while I’m sad, I do think it makes sense and doesn’t feel overly rushed. Maybe this will be a comfort rewatch show when I have all of it. (Fingers crossed they don’t blow the landing.)

-Wheel of Time: I love this show despite myself? Some of it is that I imprinted on the book series as a young teen and seeing some parts onscreen will never not be a thrill. But there are several arcs that dragged, and several things that were iffy in the books and felt worse onscreen (sul’dam/damane, anyone?). All that said, I still felt a huge rush of joy watching the finale. Sometimes, you just wanna see the ride, even if it’s flawed. (It helps that the Forsaken are fantastic so far!)

Star Trek

This gets its own section!

-Lower Decks: I think Lower Decks is as good as any show can be in its fourth season. Which is really good, but definitely showing a little wear? I thought the Mariner arc was fun, and there were some highlights this season that were as good as any of the best episodes in other seasons, but they’re in a place where they kind of had to promote everyone, and that moves it away from some of the ensemble charm and core lower-decks identity that’s always been my favorite part. That’s pretty nitpicky on my part, though. I still enjoy every episode more than basically any other show on TV.

-Strange New Worlds: High highs and low lows. Lower Decks does a good job at channeling the 90s era Treks, and SNW does a decent job at translating classic Trek into the 2020s. I wish I could jettison the post-Enterprise grossness around military and ethics, and I wish it was remotely queer. Still, I definitely have fun most of the time. They had body swap! A musical episode! Red-shirt and time-travel shenanigans! I just wish it didn’t also have “eugenics is good actually” and “M’Benga can just kill whoever he wants”? But unevenness is also in line with original Trek, so…good job, I guess?

-Lower Decks on Strange New Worlds: SO GOOD. I can’t believe how well they translated animated comedy characters into a live-action show! Boimler and Spock blowing things up together was so fun, and I loved Mariner bonding with the crew. Possibly one of my all-time favorite episodes of Trek?

Comment

Rory Hume

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2024-02-02 /

I don’t have much commentary right now because my brain has announced it doesn’t plan to function today. Trying to grab at thoughts is like trying to grab laser beams in drifting dust.

~

I’ve been listening to sahn this week. Her music is a chill, bittersweet vibe – one of love and loss. The mood is no surprise given that sahn is Chadwick Boseman’s widow, Simone Ledward Boseman. Imagine a more aurally sparse and grief-focused Solange that sparkles like morning light through a prism. Much recommended.

~

Florida’s manatees may be recovering. (NPR) We love a community of happy sea cows!

~

North Carolina healthcare plans are cutting coverage for GLP-1 products prescribed for weight loss. (Ars Technica) These shots can cost a ton of money. It’s important to preserve supply for diabetics anyway, but I foresee a world (which we may already live in tbh) where being medically skinny is entirely a class indicator, and the movers and shakers of world culture no longer have any motivation to support body positivity. I suspect we will move away from body diversity in pop culture, basically, as the ruling class continues use medications and surgery to trim down, while poorer people have medicalized weight loss dangled at a distance and are judged for its absence. So you know, business as usual in a society without a flat hierarchy.

~

Reactor (formerly Tor dot Com) shares a trailer for a National Geographic programme about Black people on the American side of the space race. Here’s the synopsis:

The Space Race weaves together the stories of Black astronauts seeking to break the bonds of social injustice to reach for the stars, including Guion Bluford, Ed Dwight and Charles Bolden among many others. In The Space Race, directors Lisa Cortés and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza profile the pioneering Black pilots, scientists, and engineers who joined NASA to serve their country in space, even as their country failed to achieve equality for them back on Earth. From 1963, when the assassination of JFK thwarted Captain Ed Dwight’s quest to reach the moon, to 2020, when the echoes of the civil unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd reached the International Space Station, the story of African Americans at NASA is a tale of world events colliding with the aspirations of uncommon men. The bright dreams of Afrofuturism become reality in The Space Race, turning science fiction into science fact, and forever redefining what “the right stuff” looks like, giving us new heroes to celebrate, and a fresh history to explore.

~

This isn’t the most recent article, but I’ve been saving it a couple days – it looks like we might have found Amelia Earhart’s plane? (NPR)

~

Lee Hutchinson was not amused by Elvis’s series, Masters of the Air. (Ars Technica)

~

Tom Selleck talks about how he was in over his head while appearing on Friends – on the comedy end of things, anyway – and how Matthew Perry helped him with funny line readings. It’s nice seeing people reminisce about him with such love. (Variety)

~

BookRiot shares 100 Must-Read New Books by Black Authors.

~

Here’s a fun article about weird virus-like obelisks found in the human mouth. We still don’t seem to know all that much about ourselves, huh? (Engadget)

~

I really hope Elon Musk is lying about sticking Neuralink in an actual human. (Ars Technica)

~

Are we at risk of another major entertainment industry strike this year? IATSE and Teamster Talks Will Open With Focus on Pension and Health Plans (Variety)

In an unusual move, all of the “below the line” guilds — IATSE, the Teamsters and the other “Basic Crafts” unions — will join forces to collectively bargain on health and pension issues for the first week of talks in March, the unions announced Wednesday. […] Both contracts are set to expire on July 31. The unions have said that, unlike in previous years, they are not inclined to grant extensions. Bargaining with the major studios is expected to be contentious, though both sides took a significant hit last year.

~

I’ve been watching Will Ferrell shop around a documentary about a road trip with his friend, who is a comedian and a transgender woman. Netflix picked it up. Yay! (Variety)

~

The VFX team reporting to James Cameron on the Avatar movies has voted to unionize. Good luck comrades! (Engadget) If you have to make 2020s Sigourney Weaver into a blue teenage catgirl for a billionaire’s satisfaction, I hope you get paid well for it.

~

Reportedly, Justin Timberlake hates how Britney Spears’s older music keep beating his new music on the charts, and I just love it for him. lmao. (Page Six)

~

I am genuinely upset about this one. Google Search is getting rid of its cached page feature. (Engadget) It’s one of the most useful features that still has me coming back to Google. With this gone, I don’t know why I’d use this search engine anymore, period. Weird to live long enough to see the “don’t be evil” company become the villain and then become too shitty to even be worth such a word.

Comment

Sara Reine

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Imbolc awakenings

2024-02-02 /

Posted 1/27/24 at 9pm.

Day One of my new weed-free life went well. I pined for my vape several times but got over it quickly. I have no appetite, I still felt stoned all morning, and now I’m getting that weird empty feeling. That’s all fine.

My weirdest symptom of withdrawing from cannabis: My gag reflex is back, and it’s more sensitive than I’ve ever experienced.

I did not discover that by doing the thing you’re thinking about. But go ahead and think that I did, because it’s much funnier.

Posted 1/28/24 at 8am.

My vet told us that if you see a pitbull with a docked tail, it’s not a breed standard, but a sign the pitbull injured its tail wagging too hard and it couldn’t heal because the pibby wouldn’t stop wagging, so they dock for safety. Literally pibbies are such happy dorks they wag their tails off.

Posted 1/28/24 at 4:30pm.

I think it’s really funny how I excuse drawing mostly women by saying “I’m not as good at men,” but I was just looking through all the 3D assets I’ve acquired and…it’s almost entirely hot girl stuff. lmao. I should be honest with myself that I just like looking at hot girls and that’s that.

I haven’t done art commissions in a long time but I took on a Very Special Project for a friend of a friend, which has me going back into 3D. I have so much stuff. I forgot I actually know how to do this. I was getting pretty good at rigging and lighting scenes and stuff.

I guess I wonder…how do people kinda…keep track of all the skills at their disposal as they age? I’m in my mid-30s and I’ve been obsessively following interests all over the show so long, I am getting to a point where I forget how much I know.

Like…I used to know enough about fitness to pass a physical trainer test. Before that, I knew a *lot* about being a doula and lay midwife. I used to volunteer in women’s health counseling. I have learned crochet. I cartoon, I draw charcoal, I do 3D modeling and layout, a tiny bit of digital painting. I’ve got bits of some programming languages. Very technical with computers, even worked with mainframes in the past. Did facilities & maintenance a couple years. I still launch a new website every year or so. A construction class once. Lots of biology and botany! I’m a writer obviously. I can write very diverse styles and formats. I’ve researched tons of bizarre stuff like poisons, history, demonology, trauma care, etc. And whatever else I’ve forgotten! Parenting stuff? Baby stuff? I could probably still give lectures on any of the above subjects.

It seems like by the time you hit your 50s or 60s, you must just be utterly *pouring* experience out your ears. Doesn’t it get to be A Lot? HOW DO YOU DO THIS?

I’ve always laughed at the Sherlock Holmes “attic mind” thing where he’s like, I just throw away the stuff I don’t need to remember anymore. Obviously that’s not how brains work. But I kinda think you gotta be able to throw this stuff out somehow.

Otoh, this makes me look at all my older friends with enormous heart-eyes because I’m like, omg, you guys must feel this too yeah? You guys must have EVEN MORE THAN ME. I want to sit at everyone’s feet and listen to them tell me about the specific cool stuff they know.

Posted 1/28/24 at 8pm.

Day Two of my weed free life has me LAUGHING that I was so scared to quit because so far it is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING compared to nicotine, lmao. I guess they really aren’t kidding when they say that nic is the second (third?) most addicting substance in the world. Wow, man. I kinda wanna go back in time two yearsish to when I quit nic and give myself some hugs. That Was Some Shit All Right. How does ANYONE do that.

Posted 1/30/24 at 10am. Bluesky.

I do not like football or Taylor Swift, but I am very reluctantly amused to watch the NFL learn they’re small potatoes compared to a pop star and learn to take the knee for her influence on the media.

Ever since I read this paper about how sports constructs gender – and put it together with the kind of cis womanhood that is constructed by Taylor Swift’s brand – I suddenly understood why my nonbinary ass finds the whole thing annoying, though she is demonstrably as skilled as any artist I follow.

I’m like, “Everyone says if you don’t like tswift, you’re sexist, but I don’t think I am? Am I sexist?” and kinda sat in that a while. But no, it’s just my general inability to have any interest in binary gender and the commercialization of it as such. Same thing that bounces me off a lotta romance.

Hey! I just scrolled past another post describing what’s wrong with me if I dislike a music artist. “If you have a negative reaction towards her as a person, it’s because our society still goes after successful women in a way that men avoid.” There is a lot of simultaneous right and wrongness going on.

Aside from being unable to grasp personal taste, the number of posts I see that act like taylor swift is somehow subversive is…staggering. I assume that people who think she’s subversive are living in very oppressed regions/cultures tbh. I must be coming from such a wildly different perspective.

Her fanbase is so hostile, I have tried to just mute/block everything related to her name on platforms where that’s possible so I can try to know as little as possible, and hence Not Be A Negative Nelly, but it feels like I’m being beaten over the head with a club by this pop culture moment.

All that said, I like tswift more than I like the nfl, reluctantly, given that she is the kind of person who would date Matty Healy, but she has given many fewer young men major brain trauma than the NFL. So i’m like, go ahead, Taylor, eat them up.

Posted 2/1/24 at 8am.

The injection for King’s cancer has gone *really* well. He seemed to feel so crappy the first couple days. The tumor got all bulging and swollen and black and gross. I think the mast cells were releasing crap into his body as they died off, and the steroids/antihistamines/etc could only do so much. He was very low.

Yesterday the last of the tumor fell off. It just shriveled into a black raisin and disappeared (I don’t need to know what King did with it, let’s pretend it fell off). Now there is a hole on his stomach. Just a big round clean circle leading straight to muscle. Sounds gross, I know, but it’s *extremely* clean, great margins, no signs of infection whatsoever, inflammation reducing. And basically the instant the last of the tumor-raisin fell off, his mood improved 20,000%. He’s cheerful again!

The circle is already constricting so I suspect it won’t be long before the tissue closes up and then it will mostly be a memory. We’ll keep an eye for more tumors obviously. Hopefully we won’t have to do this a lot in the future, but right now it’s looking really really good.

Posted 2/1/24 at 9pm.

Okay y’all. I’m now six days from quitting cannabis. I still feel stoned most of the time.

THC, the complex of psychoactive compounds in cannabis, binds to fat cells. I gained sixty pounds from the low point of my eating disorder (I was hospitalized January 2020) through the depression of the pandemic. That means I gained sixty pounds while absolutely *slamming* sources of THC. That means I have sixty pounds of adipose tissue stuffed with it. I’ve been doing daily walks, and once I start walking, my body releases a bunch and it’s like I’ve taken a massive bong rip. I’m stupid and kinda stumbly. (I’m avoiding driving for now.)

Also, your body makes a ton of receptors to accept the flood of chemicals that THC provides. Once you stop adding new sources of THC, there’s all these empty receptors weeping for neurotransmitters. It’s going to take a while for my body to regulate receptors to the amount of chemicals I produce endogenously (and I’m probably producing less endogenously at this point too).

So basically, I feel foggy and stoned all the time, but also completely bereft, like my brain cannot get any traction. Weirdly, I am not really fighting with cravings. I don’t feel any urge to relapse. My mood is mostly okay. But I also just…kinda…don’t exist. Mentally. I’m spending so much time standing/sitting around staring at nothing.

This reinforces that I’ve done the right thing, tbh, and realizing what a commitment it is to regain sobriety/clear brain makes me just wanna never use it again. I mean, you really do gotta pay the piper eventually.

It’s really nice to be sobering up (sometimes I feel awake) and realize how much I’ve grown up, though. My eating disorder is a *lot* of the reason that I got into alcoholism, nicotine, and overuse of cannabis. Getting my eating disorder under control is easily one of the best things that has happened to me in my life, period, end of subject. I used to live as an enemy and stranger to myself, and I’m now so fully inside my body, perfectly happy with it, genuinely grateful, and I just don’t have all those difficult feelings that I used to run away from anymore. Having food become a source of cope and comfort and bonding with family was massive. I think I’m probably going to lose weight from quitting cannabis because I don’t have the munchies 24/7 anymore and I don’t even think of it as a benefit? I’m happy to just let my body rearrange into whatever.

I feel really good. Just. Also completely empty, unmotivated, and almost braindead. lmao. It makes it hard to feed/hydrate/exercise myself, and I am struggling to remember my prescriptions, and that part will make me feel crappy. But everything else is a big gray blanket of nothingness.

I was hoping to finish writing Fated for Firelizards in February but at this point I’m not married to it, just because I’m even less verbal than usual and I think recovery needs to be a priority.

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Sara Reine

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