Struggling with multiple health issues right now while also struggling with misinformation about said health issues. What would make me feel incrementally better? If people who aren’t medical professionals would stop explaining my immune system to me.
Race Forward has released a new toolkit, From Project 2025 to Project 2029: How We Resist an Authoritarian Takeover and Turn Public Administration into a Force for Equity and Justice. Is there anyone else reading this who wants to meet and discuss?
At Saturday’s Micro.blog Analog Tools meetup we each shared our three top tips for stationery. 🖋️📓🗂️ We’ll meet again in December for our first techo kaigi together! You don’t have to use a paper planner to learn how to plan for 2025. Let @jessekelber and me know if you’d like to join us.
Listening to “Old Tape” by Lucius (feat. Adam Granduciel) 🎵 This song, whew. So good! “Once in a while / You turn up the dial / To an old tape playing in my head / I’ll tune it out and live instead”
I wrote a whole post about what it’s like to wear a mask all day at work, and then deleted it because it sounded like I’m not grateful to have survived long enough to have that choice. But I am grateful. This is not the world I imagined, but I get to be alive in it.
Doomscrolling and feeling powerless? Here’s something tangible we can do: Normalize wearing masks. Let’s protect our health and decrease the spread of airborne diseases. Out of masks and don’t know where to start? r/Masks4All Wiki is a great resource.
Currently reading: Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman 📚 I’m enjoying the second section of this book, which is all about taking action. “Imperfectionism” is really resonating with me right now.
Idea: Create an “introverts' corner” at all future gatherings. Provide an out-of-the-way space with puzzles and craft supplies. As an introvert, I don’t always want to be alone; I want to share energy and joy, and I want to share community, just not in extroverted ways.
The reminder for the next Micro.blog Analog Tools Meetup has been emailed! 🖋️📓🗂️ If you’re not on this list and would like to join us, let @jessekelber or me know.
Yesterday I was struggling to care about cooking for the two of us. It happens more often than I’d like to admit. Luckily, past-me had saved recipes that I tagged “easy”, like this mushroom and potato paprikash in the Instant Pot. 🥘 It was quite tasty and made enough leftovers to freeze.
I’ve seen several people discussing the switch to a low/slow media diet. Use your local library to try before you buy. Many public libraries offer free access to newspapers and other periodicals through PressReader.
Currently reading: We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption by Kaira Jewel Lingo 📚 Trying to move through it today, and this book is helping.
Today I was grateful for texting with loved ones, commiserating with FunkyPlaid, and filling my journal with everything I cannot say out loud. I’ll be ready to get back to work soon. Until then, here’s Crivens.
I have such thoughtful coworkers. What’s in your election anxiety support kit?
I love voting by mail. 🗳️📫 This isn’t a cute sticker, but it will have to do. Now it’s time to librarian: Here’s a resource on fighting election disinformation on Bluesky and the Fediverse.
I’m feeling shy and anxious today, so here’s an analog interlude. 🖋️ Our houseguests brought us fountain pen ink, among other thoughtful gifts. Here are swatches of Octopus Fluids' Medusa, a vivid violet with green sheen, and Goblin, a medium green with violet sheen.
Building community offline
I was overwhelmed by the response to my last post, and so grateful for the reminder that there is still connection to be found online, I just need to push through my own self-consciousness to find it. And I have many good models for this behavior, people who are quick with a kind and supportive word, people who do not shy away from nuance.
Today I spent the day offline in the company of people like this, a small group of friends that gathers once a month to share our love of stationery: pens, ink, paper, notebooks, planners, postal mail, and the like. We sit around a big table and journal together while chatting, snacking, and drinking lattes carefully crafted by FunkyPlaid. The middle of the table soon fills with stickers, stamps, inks, and washi tapes that we’ve brought to share with each other.
As I look around the table at these treasured people, I think about how much work goes into building community. Healthy communities take intention, upkeep, energy, and shared values. This gathering happens every month because we invest all of this into making it happen. As hosts, FunkyPlaid and I make sure people feel cared for with food and drink in a clean and welcoming space. As guests, everyone brings what they want to share, and expresses interest in what they are interested in (and refrains from expressing disdain for what they aren’t).
It’s a lot of work, joyful work. And this work results in a day each month to anticipate, and memories to hold close the rest of the month. I hope never to take this community for granted.
Writing through cringe
For the first day of NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), I want to start with something difficult, and the reason why I’m participating in this monthly challenge.
I’ve lost all affection for my writing voice, and I don’t entirely know why.
These days, it’s challenging for me to get excited about writing anything personal. Everything I post, aside from ink swatches, makes me cringe, even simple replies to others' posts. When I started writing online, it was so easy to share any little moss-bulb of detail, despite lacking confidence in my voice or purpose. It was enough to noodle in public; I had a stage (my website) and tap-tap-tapping its microphone didn’t make me feel immediately self-conscious.
A few years ago, I pushed — harder than I’ve pushed for many things in my life — for the “community” aspect of Micro.blog to be more than a shared timeline. I wanted it to be something I could lean back softly into, both an audience and support group, comprised of people who shared the same penchant for collecting and amplifying small treasures of moments.
The people exist (and they are wonderful, I read what they share with delight) but the community? I know now that what I was asking for doesn’t exist online in the same way it did, but I didn’t know that yet. I kept pushing and pushing, until one day I just … stopped. Everything I said seemed to repulse people instead of drawing them closer. It was easier to find what I needed and wanted in the friendships I was slowly and intentionally building offline than it was for me to do that online. And that was a first for me. Much of my life, up to that point, had been spent focusing on connecting online.
Because much of my life, up to that point, had been lived online.
I don’t really want to go back to living so much online. But sometimes I’m nostalgic for the feeling of being understood through my writing, shades of myself that I don’t know how to represent except through words.
It’s supremely cringey even to post this, but I’m going to push through in the hopes there’s some self-acceptance on the other side of it. I’m not ready to stop writing altogether. In some ways, I feel like I’ve barely begun.
