Headphones & Hoodie

Image from user louisponce on Midjourney.

“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

I’ve entered a new phase of my work-life balance, in that I’m really trying to find a balance that is more life-life. I am spending far more time calculating when work can end and life can begin. Scientists have speculated that life began about 4.5 billion years ago, but for me I’m ready to kick off in the late afternoon, early evening at the latest. Yes, I’m spending a lot of my time matriculating when I can retire.

I say “retire” but I really mean stopping working for someone else and starting doing the things I want to do for once. How many years do you have to keep doing someone else's projects before you can start working on your own? Of course, I ask this from a place of privilege. I've worked for over 30 years and for many of those years I've contributed to retirement savings plans and other investments. Some years (the 2008 financial crisis say) a lot of those savings were wiped out, and other years economic downturns have wreaked havoc on those plans. That's sort of what's happening now. Economically speaking, "Orange" is the new red; a chaotic American administration is destroying markets and all of my savings are in those markets. Also, it’s not a good time to have Canadian dollars and portfolios of stock made up of companies that are leaking value with every fart from below the 49th parallel. The losses are such that I should probably put the retirement abacus aside and focus on getting back to work.

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Full of Great

A 19th-century engraving of Bacon observing the stars at Oxford, Wikipedia

I’m grateful for hot water. In fact, I’m grateful for warm water. Warm water which I can use in my Waterpik because it feels like a spa day in my mouth. I’m grateful for the Waterpik! That thing has made a lot of dentist visits a whole lot easier. I’m grateful for indoor plumbing, electricity and refrigeration. I’m grateful for many appliances that depend on electricity, especially the one that depends on electricity and indoor plumbing: the dishwasher. There are so many people on this Earth who don't have such basic needs as water you can drink that simply pours out of pipes from the walls, but here we are drinking it, washing ourselves, our clothes and our homes with the stuff. If your parents grew up in a rural, isolated place like my father's, they probably had to take a bucket and fetch water, but our well feels endless and comes right into the house. Electricity also comes from the walls. Apparently, we have magic walls! It gives light, heat or cooling and so many more things.

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Be Fallen

Landscapes, Zhang Feng - Chinese artist, dated 1644.

We lingered in the warm winds and sunshine for too long. Summer persisted despite the date on the calendar. The moon foretold us that autumn was here, but the Earth did not listen, until suddenly, we fell into fall like a comedic turn out of a hammock. We should have seen it coming, clearer than the morning mist. We were warned of the arrival of the coming season, but were distracted by the departure of another. Following Summer's reign, the sun did wane, with withering skies came cold rain, until Autumn's footsteps could be heard. The omens of fall were evident, abundant and all around us just as we know from aphorisms of old, here the signs of autumn were foretold:

The Basil Harvest.

Each year as summer ends and autumn creeps, we wonder how much more the basil bush can bear. Should we allow a night-shivered herb to bask and warm in the day or should we shed the plant of its herbal leaves to be mashed with oils, nuts and cheese, to be frozen and used as we please? Or let it stand another day?

When the donning of the socks and cardigans has occurred.

The morning, brisk and breezy, suggests another layer or three-zy. Socks are a must unless you just, would like to suggest to us, how, without a fuss, we might from the cold keep our toes?

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You can ride, but you can't hide

Is it "adult" to reward yourself with ice cream? Image AI-generated after Wayne Thiebaud.

I’m ashamed to admit something, maybe even more than ashamed. If there is some ladder or pyramid of shame to climb then I would be up there at the very top of the shame chart (or bottom? I’m unsure of how a shame chart would work). I just did my 2023 taxes. It’s a relief. I was sure this year I would owe money rather than get a refund, so really I should not have put it off as the penalty for such a late filing would’ve made it that much worse. In the end, though, my rebate was actually a bit more than I’ve received in recent years. Not doing my taxes in a timely manner always makes me feel like an idiot, or more correctly, a juvenile idiot. It feels like a sign of maturity to just do this task of adulthood on time.

Once I’d finally done it, I celebrated in the most childish way imaginable: by raising my hands above my head, running around the house like a naked infant declaring I am now going to have ice cream! Chocolate peanut butter, if you care to know.

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Forthwith & Posthaste 

Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson

I’m not as patient as I used to be. I’m also more patient than I used to be. In private, amongst friends or at work or even when trying to make considered decisions, I am like a zen master. I can sit silently and contemplate the nature of my existence. Yet, if in a lineup waiting to pay for something, I cannot abide the person in front of me who has decided to bury their credit card in a wallet, deep in the bowels of a backpack, purse or messenger bag, and only after every item has been scanned and bagged decides to begin their spelunking adventure for the one card they require to pay for the things they knew they would have to pay for when they entered the store. You just wasted my precious time, but don't think twice, it's alright. Many people commit this act of time terrorism. I find glaring at the back of their head is calming. It’s a coping mechanism.

Why worry about a few moments lost in a lineup given the immensity of hours lost connecting one device to another device via bluetooth, or watching the spin of a loading graphic or trying every password you've ever used to log into a computer you rarely use. None of which compares to the time spent sitting in front of my computer in service of somebody else's business. That is my job. I am literally paid to sit there and take it. I fill the time by taking copious notes, colour coded, with diagrams and arrows and instructions with sticky notes.

I'm not sure it's because I'm being paid for this time that makes it tolerable whereas when I'm out in public it feels like everyone else is wasting my time, but shopping in particular is an excruciating experience for me. Let me be clear, I don't mean window shopping or browsing, for those are times I've chosen to slow down, but when I need to buy something as dull as dish soap it feels like I'm wasting my life on this unredeemable task. I'll never get that time back and I get nothing from it, except dish soap.

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In Between Moons 

"What’s happening with you?" He asked.

Such a loaded question!

So much can happen in a month, in between new moons, waxing and waning, in between tides, like all that water sloshing and pulled between the Earth and the Moon that it can all be a bit overwhelming.

“In between moons
I was the spring, I was the spring

In between moons
I was the sea, I was the sea”
– Eleanor Friedberger’s In Between Stars

Here’s a rundown:
Last year’s tax refund literally got lost in the mail, and I was unable to register to file online this year’s taxes until very recently (they had my home address wrong due to a mistake my accountant made when filing last year. It has since been corrected).

Work is completely unfulfilling which I guess is why they call it “work” and not “happy fun playtime”.

I spent all my secret squirrel savings on new windows.

It continues to be the worst wet and cold spring in years.

I’m still overweight AF (sure Mom, that means “as fudge” what else would it mean?)

Yet, on the bright side:
Raps win by a buzzer beater and despite the strangely sexual tinge of that expression, it was a good thing… and with four bounces off the rim and a ball going straight in the hole, it actually was the best sex I’ve had in years. It was definitely the best sex Toronto has had since the famous “bat flip” (no bats were harmed in said flipping). Though now they find themselves back on the ropes.

Working from home a lot = restorative napping at work.

Due to last year’s tax filing mix-up, I will hopefully get a windfall of two years of tax refunds in the next month or so which may put a dent in “window debt ceiling” and restore the secret squirrel funds.

New windows are “fire*” as the kids say (*yes Mom, that’s a good thing!)

At least it’s not winter. It isn’t even raining this morning.

Enjoying Game of Thrones and Veep finales unlike others who started a petition to rewrite this season of Game of Thrones and think you can rewrite another person’s art if you get enough signatures.
This long weekend is as vital to my current health as any penicillin to a dying man.

Champions league final should be a cracker.

Writing it all down makes it seem less overwhelming. I wouldn’t go as far to say underwhelming but maybe an even whelmed. Yes. I’m back on an even whelm which is not the sort of thing they write songs about (ooo Baby, I’m back! Back on an even whelm!) but it’ll do.

I left Twitter for a week and you won’t believe what happened next 

This is what happens when you unplug yourself from a single app

After the New Zealand Mosque attack, amid thoughts and prayers and the horror and the agony and the unity there was of course the bilious spew of the Internet but in even weirder and weirder ways. For context: a young woman of colour wearing a Bernie Sanders campaign t-shirt, was recorded righteously confronting Chelsea Clinton at a memorial ceremony for those who died in New Zealand, and saying that Clinton had used the kind of language against Muslims that led to such attacks on Muslims. What were those words? Ms Clinton had “retweeted” a comment that went something like, while criticism of Israel may be valid, we most push back from any antisemitism, which was in itself a retort to the only female Muslim representative who had commented on another tweet about “it being all about the money” (paraphrasing) — “it” being the suggestion that American Jews who contributed to any lobby for a foreign country (namely Israel) was questionably close to unpatriotic behaviour (or something? This rabbit hole is deep and weird). So to recap, Clinton’s stance on antisemitism was seen as an attack on an American Muslim woman which was somehow to blame for violence against Muslims everywhere so she shouldn’t attend memorials in the names of those who perished due to her words (which, by the way she did not utter nor type but reposted as an implied agreement of sentiment). This, of course, was a colossal exaggeration and wholly unnecessary especially as Clinton is a known supporter of immigrants and immigration and women of all faiths and races. Then some people righteously, on Twitter, defended Chelsea Clinton which led others, on Twitter to fire back that it was so predictable that the perceived worst victim of a shooting of almost 50 Muslims by a racist in a foreign country was an affluent white woman in New York.

I probably did injustice to the entire fustercluck of Twitter outrage that has led to some very nasty confrontations in real life. Yet, it was this debacle that led me to delete the Twitter app on my phone. Not my account mind you, just the application on my personal phone. I’ve been on Twitter for over a decade (member since 2008). I’ve learned of the death of every major artist, entertainer or politician over that decade via Twitter. It was my second most used phone app after e-mail. Now, I’ve spent the entire week away from Twitter and this is what happened: Read more »

Creativity Killjoy 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge probably thinking about opium, image via The Times

Kubla Khan
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! … [knock on door]

that deep romantic… [knock on door, harder now]

chasm that flowed, crap, no… Chasm which [more knocking on door]

Oh for FU… “HANG ON!”

There is a story, most likely apocryphal, that Samuel Coleridge had many more stanzas of his famous poem in mind but was disturbed from his reverie by an insurance salesman knocking on the door. It’s probably more likely that Coleridge’s opium high dissipated, thus ending a soaring stanza-generating drug fuelled high. Downer, man.
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It Really is OK 

Image via Secret Holiday

Lately, a lot of things seem to be spiralling uncomfortably, like a little bit of a cosmic/karmic vertigo. I know, as Louis CK says, "Everything's amazing and nobody's happy." but when I saw this image, I thought, "Yes, little banner, you're right." I think this little flag reassures us the real truth that "It is OK" and "It will be OK" and we will be OK. Think of this as your mantra, your slogan and a motto to live by, "I'm OK, You're OK, It's OK."

Things I know 

Stating the obvious. Image via Smashing All Toys

It occurs to me that no one reads this. That, in fact, as I type this sentence I may be the only person who ever reads this sentence. That's a little depressing, and a little weird. Like posting your diary poster size on hoarding and knowing people walk right by.

I'm okay with that.

Here's an idea. If Nasa is having so much trouble with their Space Shuttle Tiles falling off perhaps they should try using the same adhesive Ikea uses on their product stickers.