annie's blog

Contentment is a spectrum, too

2026-02-11T00:23:18Z

I am quite content to be alone except on a mild evening at twilight.

During the quick hours of the day I am busy. Busy with things I enjoy doing, for the most part. Or busy with people I enjoy being around. I count myself among the luckiest alive.

During the night I am dreaming. Night is dreaming time whether I am asleep or awake. The dreams are all mine. I stretch out in the bed and in my mind. I never had such space before. Even in my childhood, my dreams were so small, so bordered. Always tied to some other person, some predetermined identity, some set of standards to uphold. Now my dreams and I can wander at will. For this spaciousness, this freedom, I gladly pay the price of whatever loneliness may peek over the headboard or rattle in the closet.

I don’t mean fantasies, here. Though the physical need for another person, another body, is real and present. That’s just a fact of being human, for most of us. Not loneliness so much as lust. I handle both with the means at hand, and am largely content.

But twilight comes.

On a cold winter day, twilight enhances the coziness of my space, my routine, the comforts of my home and children and friends and hobbies. I can make a pot of stew and dance in the kitchen and get lost in a book and there are no emotions to navigate but my own. This is a peace I do not take lightly.

But twilight comes. Twilight comes on a day when the windows are open and the light is mellow. The sunset streaks of gray and orange and blue linger behind a row of trees. I want to turn to someone and say, Look. The music filters through an open door as a bird sings. I want to turn to someone and say, Listen.

I want to let this awe and gratitude bubble out and be seen for a moment by another person before it lifts up and away and disappears, as all things do. I want to be a point of reflection for someone else’s awe and wonder. Or pain. We all contain multitudes.

Contentment is a spectrum. As is loneliness.

I have been together and I have been alone. Loneliness is part of both experiences but it has different flavors.

I have been together and I have been alone. Contentment is part of both experiences but it too has different flavors.

We have to decide, each moment, what problem we are solving. Sometimes we get so busy solving the problem of loneliness, or lust, or ambition, or insecurity, or sadness, or fear, that we don’t see the larger context. Our larger context, our story, in which this one emotion, this one want, is but a single piece. A significant one, perhaps. But not the wholeness of our being.

I want to fold things in, not push them away.

This one goes out to the ones we love

2026-02-06T01:37:39Z

And he will never never never never never never never get to meet you
And I got to meet you
Yeah, I got to meet you.

—Mikey Mike

I write in praise of the ones we love: their weaknesses and fears and nobility, their moments of madness, their genius. Sometimes we hold each other and feel stronger, safer, better. Sometimes we stand in opposite corners and hurl things at each other: words, accusations, feelings, disappointments. And worse.

We can be so cruel.

We get so confused.

But look at this magnificence! Look at it, look at them, look at us! Look in these eyes. Listen to these voices.

Feel what it is to be in the presence of someone you love.

Nothing is like it, nothing is like you, nothing is like me, nothing.

Love is worth the risk.

Here we are, us two, us three, us ten or twenty or hundred, us thousand or million or billion.

In our small way, striving. In our broken way, fucking everything up worse than it was. In our stupid way, feeling guilty for crimes we were never important enough to commit. In our slow way, holding on too long, grasping, clinging, fearing. In our own way, learning.

An organism, a colony, a civilization, a god: we know not what we are. To avoid the embarrassment and pain of not knowing, we define and split each self into its own piece of aloneness: I!

I, human. Individual, separate, distinct. An entity complete. A being apart.

Apart.

A part.

A part of what?

A part of all, a part of the whole, a part of this mad collective of all we have created, the good and bad of it, the big and small of it. There is never a place where you do not belong. Being is being part of all beings.

Feeling something is okay I guess

2026-01-31T00:18:05Z

Most of us think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, but we are actually feeling creatures that think.

― Jill Bolte Taylor

If you’re not feeling as good about life as you want to be, that’s okay.

If you feel stressed about a lot of things, that’s okay.

If you get nervous, that’s okay.

If you feel overwhelmed, that’s okay.

If you freak out and yell, that’s okay. If you break down and cry, that’s okay.

If the uncertainty of every little thing is panic-inducing, that’s okay.

If your feelings fling you around, if you bounce between longing for the familiar and longing for the unknown, if you don’t know what you’ll feel any given moment, that’s okay too.

If you feel rushed and boxed in and panicked and unsure and unsettled and overwhelmed and under pressure and inadequate and afraid, that’s okay.

It’s not fun. It’s probably not how you want to feel.

But here we are. You, me, the feelings.

All the feelings are part of this experience. Right now. Take a deep breath. Oh, hello. I am also here, on part of this planet, breathing. Take another deep breath. I’ll do the same.

Okay. That’s not much better but it’s a little better.

Sometimes we don’t get to good. Good is a privilege. A gift. A delight, when it happens, when we’re in it. But we don’t always get to be in it. And that’s okay.

It helps to remember that good still exists, is still real, even when you’re not in it. The possibility of good is always present. The more you reach for it the more possible it becomes.

Meanwhile, survival. Keeping on. Treading water. Breathing.

If you cover up your feelings with a veneer of calm, that’s okay.

If you avoid the unpleasant and the negative, if you run from the deep discomfort of feelings you have not yet named, that’s okay.

If you turn sadness into anger because it’s easier, that’s okay.

If you choose frustration over vulnerability, that’s okay.

If you don’t want to face the guilt or shame rustling beneath the surface, that’s okay.

If the fear pushes its way up your throat until you have to scream or cry, that’s okay.

All we are is children and sometimes we are afraid of the dark.

It’s okay to be there, wherever you are with it. It’s okay to let it be. It’s okay to let yourself be.

If the dark feelings come, you can let them be, too. They will seem like heavy burdens, like stones, like looming mountains, like terror or death. But they pass like clouds. They are not something you have to climb or conquer, just something you have to endure.

Don’t spend your energy fighting the feelings. We have other work to do.

And we cannot do the work we are able to do if we are too busy hiding from the feelings.

So let them be. Let them wash over you, through you. In and out like waves. It may feel like you will drown. Keep breathing through the waves. Cry or scream or run or hug or whatever helps you keep breathing.

Darkness cannot drive out light. The clouds come and pass. The waves rise and recede.

The world remains and here we are, in it.

What can we do to make it better?

Here are some ideas.

To be defeated by ever greater things

2026-01-02T21:38:33Z

For the new year, a resolution

How small that is, with which we wrestle,
what wrestles with us, how immense;
were we to let ourselves, the way things do,
be conquered thus by the great storm,—
we would become far-reaching and nameless.

What we triumph over is the Small,
and the success itself makes us petty.
The Eternal and Unexampled
will not be bent by us.

…growth is: to be the deeply defeated
by ever greater things.

from The Man Watching by Rainer Maria Rilke

To sigh a deep sigh of releasing

2025-12-22T03:39:16Z

Today has felt like a deep, deep exhalation, an enormous, slow, long sigh of relief and releasing. Fitting, perhaps, that it is winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. I don’t have any rituals to mark it except for this one, what I’m doing right now: sitting on the couch with a cat curled by my legs, sipping whiskey, tapping these small words into a space that isn’t real (digital? website? internet? can’t possibly be real) but will somehow, perhaps, be read by actual real people in actual real places. Hello, friends. How are you?

How are you, what are you, where are you, why are you, what’s happening with you, what are you thinking about, what’s humming in the back corners of your brain, what does your heart know right now, what makes your breath come faster or slower, how do you feel about this moment, what do you hope for, what do you fear, what would you ask for, what wishes do you hold tender and close, what desires do you lean away from, what rooms are laid bare, which doors are closed and which ones opened, what candles are you lighting and watching on this the longest night?

I have a few candles lit. I know what I would ask for and what I do ask for. Tonight is the time to look at the space between those points. To consider. To sigh a deep sigh of releasing. What could be different if we did not drag the past with us into the future?

Let us lay aside every weight that hinders us

and the errors that so easily entangle us

so we can move forward (with patience — gently, child, gently)

on the road we walk, the reality of this moment

which is all that we ever have

Do you want to read a detailed post about eyelid surgery? Here it is. With photos.

2025-12-14T18:17:21Z

I find this sort of thing fascinating. I looked for detailed info before my own surgery because I like to know what I’m getting into. If you’re grossed out by surgical/medical descriptions or photos, skip this one.

So I had this spot — like a pimple or small wart — appear under my right eye years ago. 2017, 2018? Sometime in there. It was very small, directly under/partially on the lash line near the inside corner of my right eye. Not really noticeable, didn’t hurt or itch or grow or change so I didn’t worry about it¹.

Anyway over the last year it got a bit bigger, so I had it checked out. My dermatologist did a biopsy. Result: basal cell carcinoma. So I needed to have the spot removed. Due to its location, it was likely the lid margin² would be affected. So after the removal, I’d need eyelid reconstruction surgery by an ophthalmic surgeon.

Here’s how they do it: They schedule the Mohs surgeries³ in the morning. They schedule the reconstruction surgeries the same afternoon.

They do this because Mohs surgeries can take… hours. They don’t know till they’re doing it. The surgeon takes off the cancerous area and a layer of the skin around it, then examines it under a microscope. If they still see carcinoma cells⁴, they take off another layer. Inspect the removed layer. Repeat until there are no carcinoma cells visible in the removed layer.

The removal is quick. The inspection takes longer. So each “layer” (removal + inspection) can be over an hour.

Once that’s done, they either sew you up there or send you off for reconstruction surgery.

I was at the hospital from 7am to 5pm. Most of that time was spent waiting. The Mohs surgery required two layers removed. I was done there around 9:30. They bandaged my eye and sent me off for reconstruction which was scheduled for…. 2:30pm. So, yeah, lots of waiting.

Mohs surgery

Local anesthetic (needle in the cheek below the right eyelid).
They lean you back in a chair and tuck surgical drapes around the area.
Assisting docs hold the head still and hold the eyelid open or closed or whatever it needs to be.
It’s pretty surreal to see a scalpel coming directly toward your eyeball.
But the most surreal part was hearing the snip-snip-snip of scissors knowing it’s my skin that’s being snipped off my face.
Pain: none. They gave me another shot of anesthetic right before they patched me up which was nice.

Waiting

Hungry (no eating allowed before the reconstruction surgery).
Did some Christmas shopping.
Pirate impressions.
Thought about food.
Went to the bathroom a couple of times to peek under the bandage and make sure my eye was still there. Then the anesthetic wore off so I didn’t need to do that anymore.
Contemplated the hierarchy of snacks.
Assured 4 different nurses that there is zero possibility of pregnancy, no really, I promise, I do not have a uterus.
Speaking of the beast (not) in me: Watched a couple of episodes of The Beast In Me.
Looked at the entire Internet.
Thought about food some more.
Napped a little.

Eyelid reconstruction

Sedation (via IV) plus local anesthetic. I was very relaxed and full of warm happy thoughts.
This part was fascinating: The removal took about half the width of my eyelid rim above the area of removed tissue. They took skin from my left eyelid and grafted it on. To do that, they cut right along the crease of my left eyelid, removed some skin, and sutured the eyelid back together. Then they sewed those two strips of skin (I think it was two, I was a little drowsy) below my right eye, creating a new portion of eyelid rim and filling the hole. Amazing that we can do this stuff.
The surgery itself took about an hour.
Recovery was quick. I was home eating a giant Chipotle bowl very soon after. It was delicious.

Recovery

Pain: minimal. Took Tylenol that first night and following day, then didn’t need it again.
Antiobiotic ointment applied 3x a day. This is annoying as fuck because I have to make sure I get a lot of ointment on that lid margin (very important to keep it moisturized) which means some ointment always gets in my eye so vision is blurred for an hour+ every time I apply.
Swelling: yes.
Bruising: some. Not as much as I anticipated.
Itchy and irritated: YES. OMG.
I get the dressing & sutures off tomorrow morning and I CANNOT WAIT.

Here’s how it looks today (six days post-op):

Oh, what’s that? You were hoping for an EYELID SURGERY RECOVERY MONTAGE of POOR QUALITY PHOTOS documenting the healing process from DAY 1 TO DAY 6 POST-OP? I’ve got that right here for you.

Also I did not have health insurance at the time so even if I had been worried about it I probably wouldn’t have done anything. Say you're in the U.S. without saying you’re in the U.S.
The eyelid margin is the “edge” of the eyelid. Also known as the mucocutaneous margin. Eyelashes grow from the margin & there are glands that produce oil to help keep the eye moisturized.
Detailed explanation of Mohs Micrographic Surgery.
Molecular imaging of different skin cancer cells vs normal skin cells.

Telling myself stories

2025-12-12T15:29:43Z

To tell the story of your life would take another life of equal length.

There is no such thing as a true story because every story, to be told, must leave out something. And every something left out matters. It’s all the somethings that lead us to one point and then another; it’s all the somethings that merge into reality; it’s all the somethings, subconscious and conscious, that make up our experience.

I can tell you a story, I can tell you my stories, I can tell you many versions of many moments of many stories of my life, and still:

No one will ever know the life I live.

And no one will ever know the life you live.

This is true.

I am a child. Alive in a loving family. Growing up in a small Mississippi town, 1980s edition. I am: Unsure, voracious, timid, curious, wild. I keep my wildness locked up in a small box, shelved in my heart’s interior room. I memorize courtesies. I swallow down rules. I want to be good. I want to be good. I want to be good. I ask questions using polite words and careful tones. I learn that some questions cannot be asked even this way. I am loved, I am safe, and I am trying very hard to push the shape of myself into the slots around me. None of them fit. I try harder. I find ways to trim off those awkward bits of self, to unwind and tuck down those sideways curling threads of self, to starve thin into skeletal compliance those juicy curves of self.

I am a child and I learn to read early and I eat books like snacks. When all the feelings choke off my air, books help me breathe. I move swiftly, with determination, like I have a purpose, through the children’s section of our small town library.

The picture books. The rhyming books. The early chapter books. Gulp them down.

I cruise onward to the teen section. It’s small. I dive headlong into the adult section. My mother, so careful in all other ways, so conscious of what might hurt me or bring me to some truth I should not face, never thinks that books hold danger. I read without limits, without reservation, without pause.

And I discover: lives I had not dreamed of, and cannot know, fully, ever. Here, in stories tucked away on a shelf, is enough to teach a girl in the southern United States a small but essential truth of what it is to be a thousand other things, to live a thousand other lives. I step into the larger world. I am a queen, I am a prostitute, I am shipwrecked, I am starving, I am fighting a war, I am tending a field, I am an ecstatic nun, I am a murderer, I am I am I am I am I am I am until the last page turns and I wake up in my own room, disoriented. Myself, but more than myself. Myself, but larger, a little louder, unfurling, fattening up.

None of these stories are complete. Most are not even factual.

And yet: They are true.

I am an adult. I have within me a picture of what this means and I try to live up to it.

It is an odd thing to be. I have responsibilities. I make decisions, so many decisions. I am still unsure, voracious, curious, wild.

Less timid, now.

I do not knock on doors and wait, polite. I push them open. I walk in. I look around and decide if it is a space I want to be in. Then I stay or I go.

I still want to be good, but I have learned I get to define it for myself.

I am unlearning domestication.

I am telling myself stories.

They are true because I make them true.

Gratitude knows that there is always a gift

2025-12-10T14:52:10Z

Whatever it is, let me start it with gratitude.

Gratitude is fertile ground. Put in the seeds of your dreams and desires. Keep the ground watered and pull the weeds. Soon the seeds will grow.

(Conversely, worry is fertile ground for all your fears. Stay worried and you will harvest an abundance of fears.)

Gratitude has nothing to do with what you have, how good or easy you’ve got it, whether you get what you want or don’t. Gratitude is not concerned with such petty measurements of value, such judgements of experience. Gratitude embraces it ALL, looks at the big scope and opens wide with a YES, with brave willingness to receive every gift, no matter how unexpected.

Gratitude is not just training yourself to notice good instead of bad, to see positive and ignore negative. Gratitude is the skill of finding the good in the bad, highlighting the positive in the negative.

Gratitude removes the need for illusions. You don’t have to act as if you like everything, or pretend that everything is ok, no problem, we’re all fine here. Gratitude frees you from the need for a polished-up societal veneer of happiness.

Gratitude teaches you how to be okay with unhappiness, how to be okay when things are not okay. This is powerful, because then you don’t have to pretend to be happy all the time. You’re able to look at what hurts, voice the pain, start dealing with obstacles and opening up more options.

You can use gratitude to reduce the power that bad situations have over you. Mostly, what we fear is pain. Bad situations are bad because they cause us pain, in one way or another. Gratitude is not a state of ignorance, where you need to pretend that pain is not real. No. Pain is real. Gratitude is the ability to acknowledge the pain, to receive it (instead of resisting it), and to pull the gift from it.

Gratitude knows that there is always a gift.

Gratitude is necessary for acceptance. When you accept without gratitude, you’re submitting to something you don’t value. You’re being passive, surrendering out of fear or frustration. Giving up. That kind of passive surrender either deadens you or pushes you to an opposite reaction, an extreme. Gratitude is an alternative route. It is a balance of acceptance and intention. It is both hands open. Gratitude helps you to accept what others can give, without giving up on what you really want to receive.

Gratitude lets you say, “It’s all okay, even when it’s not,” and actually mean it.

Gratitude helps you relax in the moment, even in the most painful or difficult or uncertain moments. You can only relax in two situations: when you feel fully in control, or when you’re okay with not being in control. The former is always an illusion. Gratitude enables the latter.

The more you practice gratitude, the easier it gets. You get better at finding the good, embracing the whole experience, receiving the gift.

Gratitude is a gentle way to face your fears. No aggression or intense conflict needed. Gratitude doesn’t demand a victory; it just diffuses the power so there’s no longer a threat. That’s a good place to be: free from threat, out of danger.

Gratitude helps you face that deepest fear of scarcity: the fear of not being enough. Gratitude shows you, graciously, over time, how much you are. You send thankfulness outward: for others, for things, for experiences. But gratitude cannot be aimed like an arrow. It is not a weapon loosed but a perspective gained. It’s the way you begin to see what’s already there. It’s a different kind of seeing-is-believing. It’s a reframing, it’s a language that opens up new concepts, enables new and better definition. Of the world, of others, and of yourself.

Gratitude helps you assign your own meaning to anything that happens. It provides a larger context. It removes the need to pretend or defend: With gratitude, the pain is not an illusion, but it’s also not the whole story. One chapter is not the whole book. Things have happened to you, but you also get to happen to things. Gratitude puts the pen in your hand. Gives you the space to think your own thoughts. Says, “Here. It’s your turn now. What do you want to say?”

All feelings mean something but it might be something dumb

2025-12-07T22:15:12Z

If your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can.

— Marcus Aurelius

What we learn as children programs us in certain ways. These programs run subconsciously. They determine our default emotional responses to everything and the meaning we derive from those responses and the behaviors we enact based on the meanings we derive.

Some of these programs served me well in childhood but don’t work for helping me be the person I want to be as an adult.

There are healthy ways to deal with difficult things. Sometimes those are the routes I take. Sometimes I am not taking any routes, I am just sitting in my chair being a glazed donut of a human.

It feels good to remember that’s okay. I don’t have to feel bad about everything.

Being perfect is never a precondition for peace. Self-acceptance doesn’t come when I do enough but when I realize I am enough.

There are small cycles and big cycles. I know myself well enough to know what I come back to, most of the time. I’m okay with my equilibrium. It tilts this way and that, but it never tilts all the way over. The center can hold.

Or maybe it can’t. Maybe things fall apart, and the center cannot hold, and it’s tumultuous but not apocalyptic.

There’s this option I like to call forming a new center.

It does create vast periods of feeling lost, unmoored, ungrounded. Big feelings, behavior shifting. Generally, lots of swinging and flailing. When you’re in the middle it seems chaotic, and mostly it is, but there’s something else going on too. A planting of feet on new ground.

Disorientation is just the feeling you have before you get oriented.

Dishonesty is a rejection of life

2025-12-06T13:38:52Z

Any future perfectly known, said Alan Watts, is already the past.

But life is not in the past. Life is now, life is here, life is this moment.

The only way to live it is to be as truthful as you can be. With others, of course. But mostly with yourself.

Doing anything else is not living or being in the moment. Anything less than truthfulness is an attempt to distort the past or control the future.

When you’re busy trying to distort or cover or rearrange the past, you’re not in the present.

When you’re focused on managing and controlling the future, you’re not in the present.

You are in a time that does not exist: past or future.

When you focus on the past or the future, you opt out of existing in the present. As long as you choose to stay there, in the not-now, you don’t exist in the now.

Since now is all that exists, we might say you opt out of existing at all. Until you return to what does exist, the only thing that exists (if anything does): the present, this moment, now.

Fish bowl

2025-12-05T17:30:31Z

Our very brains, our human nature, our desire for comfort, our habits, our social structures, all of it, pushes us into being fish bowl swimmers. Tiny people moving in tiny circles. Staying in the circumscribed ruts of our comfort. Ignoring a whole big world of what's different and new and interesting just beyond.

That's the problem: stuff out there might be new, and interesting, but it's also different. The newness — which is really not new, at all, it's just new to us, so — the differentness, of another mindset or culture, language or belief system, method or opinion or morality or lifestyle, sends our inward threat-o-meter into overdrive.

We interpret new and different as scary and difficult, because in terms of our emotions and our mental somersaulting, it is.

We don't know how to act. We don't know how to evaluate. We don't know what is safe. We don't know where we fit in. We don't know how our safe, comfortable fish bowl living is affected by this new, different, expanded puddle.

Sameness makes us comfortable. And comfort is the height, the very pinnacle, the crowning achievement in our pursuit of happiness.

What I mean is that we've mistaken comfort for happiness.

All the ways we could pursue happiness, all the freedom and technology and abilities we have to pursue meaning and joy and interaction and challenge and exploration and improvement and aliveness… All of that, at our fingertips, and being comfortable tends to top the list of what we actually want, what we're willing to put effort towards.

This seems pathetic. It is pathetic.

But also: We're working hard all the time in ways we often don't acknowledge. We have infinite options but finite agency. We have endless information access and very little processing power. We get fucking worn out. It's a lot of work to make a string of decent choices for 10 or 12 hours at a time. It's a lot of effort, some days (most days), to do what is required of us to feel like decent human beings, and the idea of putting in more effort, expending more energy, is exhausting.

So we value comfort highly. We're tired. We're exhausted by constant inputs, invisible demands, and the burden of infinite options. Of course we don't leap out of our comfort zones when the opportunity arises: we've already been out of it for so long, on high alert.

Our brains are efficiency machines.

By valuing comfort so highly, and by equating comfort with sameness, we have programmed our brains to ignore the unfamiliar. Ever wondered why you can feel bored when you have constant stimulation? This is why.

We carefully allocate our energy to the highest priorities. Things that aren't familiar don't help. So we ignore them.

Of course, we can't always ignore stuff that is different. Sometimes it is right there, glaringly obvious, annoyingly immune to our discomfort, and we are forced to see it, acknowledge it, encounter it, at least mentally. But don't worry! We have defenses!

Oh baby, do we have defenses.

If we can't keep these alien objects from encroaching upon our consciousness, we can, at least, quickly evaluate the threat they pose and deal with them appropriately.

Threat is precisely how we see things that are different. Comfort is bolstered, even built, by the familiar. All things unfamiliar are threats to our comfort.

So we're quick to see other groups, philosophies, lifestyles, belief systems, family structures, choices, etc., as weird and wrong. We want to believe they are wrong, because we want to believe that pursuing our own comfort is right. We want to believe we have our priorities in check. Our very desire for comfort creeps into our logical reasoning, so deeply does the desire go. So insidiously does it carry out its programmed mission: to keep us from being uncomfortable, our brains will subvert objectivity and keep us from seeing the fallacies in our own thinking, keep us from recognizing that we are, at heart, selfish and misguided creatures whose greatest delight is sitting around and feeling pretty good about ourselves.

If needed, then, we will happily sacrifice the validity and value of every thing, person, or choice that is different from what we know and define as normal. We will, for the sake of our own rightness, define all different things as wrong. We don't even hesitate. Hesitation is a sign that you might be starting to see the truth of your own motivation. If you start hesitating before defining, before casting judgment, before categorizing and labeling, look out: your comfort is at stake. Your brain is scurrying, be sure of it, to come up with great reasons for you to resist this awful urge to be fair.

Fair. Fair? Fair! Fair has no place in the pursuit of comfort.

Equality is not a factor here. If we value all people equally, we must admit that our own comfort is not the highest priority. We must admit that others, too, have valid needs, valid ideas, that the fact of their differentness is not adequate reason for us to deny them the same respect and autonomy we demand for ourselves.

We can't have that. That sort of thinking gets us in trouble. That sort of thinking demolishes the layer upon layer of defensive triggers and traps that we have laid, so carefully, over the entire course of our lives. We are aware, so very aware, of how it could all fall apart. We know the reasons are thin. We know, deep down, the very idea of a fish bowl is absurd. We live in an ocean, and it's big, and it's full of creatures, and we're terrified. We want to believe we can limit what is around us. We want a fish bowl so we can feel like the biggest fish in it.

It is the only way we know to feel safe.

But there is another way: to see, first, that the fish bowl is an illusion of our own making, with imaginary walls upheld by discriminatory defense systems. If we can begin to see that the walls are not even real, we can see a way out. Maybe we can stop putting so much work into keeping them in place.

It's scary.

It is being alive.

The threat only exists when we think we have something of our own, something utterly more important than all else, to protect and defend. But we don't.

We are swimming in this together, all of us.

There is no safer ocean, only this one.

My new business + tech podcast

2025-11-13T15:26:30Z

After reading¹ the recent news about the unsurprising lack of diversity in podcasting —

64% of the hosts of the most popular US podcasts of 2024 were men…Shows with video are more likely to have male hosts; the worst gender balance is with business and technology podcasts, where men host 92% of shows.

— I have decided to start my own business and technology podcast (with video) to help balance this dreadful imbalance².

Please enjoy. Show transcript available upon request³.

Don’t forget to like, subscribe, share, burn it all down, etc.

Thanks to Chris for sharing this, which I otherwise would never have seen because I don’t follow podcasting at all but I am sucker for reports about anything especially when I am procrastinating on actual work I should be doing which is really what this entire post is all about.
I can only help with the gender aspect. Better than nothing, I guess.
Transcript:
Dramatic intro music. Eyes. Nodding authoritatively. Pause. Thump. Coffee slurp. Coffee sigh. “Today in business-tech podcast we’ll look at the state of business and tech. Business: bad. That’s right. Tech: Also not good. Tune in next time. “

Outside sad is better than inside sad

2025-11-08T16:45:02Z

I was feeling sad and overwhelmed and unmoored yesterday so after work I didn’t go to the gym or get groceries or any of the other things I should do.

Instead I drove to the park and walked in circles around the pond.

I was still sad but outside sad is better than inside sad.

The nice thing about being outside is that you can feel smaller. And if you’re smaller, the sadness is smaller.

When I was a kid, I was lucky enough to live in rural places. Homes on country roads that fed into woods, creeks, fields. I did a lot of exploring and fort-building and tree-climbing, alone and with friends.

As an adult, I have discovered that no matter where I go, I feel at home, at ease, as soon as I’m around trees. That’s a superpower.

My hiking buddy¹ and I talk about sadness often while we walk around in the woods. How scary it is. How much we fear it. How it feels like it will swallow us, eat us up. How it feels bigger than other emotions. How it feels like a place you will never leave.

But all sadness needs is to be felt². Not ignored. Given a moment, a little space.

My default reaction to sadness used to be: Box it up tight, tuck it away, pretend like it isn’t there. This is not helpful. It leaks out, disguises itself, gets stale and dense and brittle. Better to feel the sadness as it comes, in waves, instead of freezing it into sharp-edged pieces rattling around inside.

To me, it feels safer to be sad outside. Like I can let it well up and leak out and there’s room for it to be big and there’s still room for the rest of me. The trees and the ground and the sky are a witness, a reflection, a reminder that I have existed before and will keep existing. That nature is truth and I am part of it. That even where there is no path, I can find my way.

Jenn. We became close thru hiking together. Now, even though our friendship is much more than that, I still refer to her as my hiking buddy/friend which is a term of endearment and respect.
I am referring to regular garden-variety sadness, not depression. Sadness is a feeling. Feelings are temporary. Depression is a persistent mental health condition. Big big difference.

Who’s in charge here anyway

2025-11-04T01:27:44Z

All systems have rules. Understanding and applying the rules well is different than memorizing and obeying the rules perfectly.

Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries.

— Milan Kundera

There are lots of systems you can choose from.

Productivity systems, for example. An easy example.

You can choose any sort of productivity system. You can choose a pre-made one or make up your own. You can use a simple or complex productivity system. It can be analog, digital, or hybrid. It can require a lot of fine-tuning and specific tools or it can be as simple as an index card. Or you can choose not to use a productivity system, which is itself a system.

In any system, what makes it successful or not successful depends on how well you understand and apply the rules.

Understanding and applying the rules well is different than memorizing and obeying the rules perfectly.

When you understand the rules, you’ve moved from memorizing them to analyzing them: how well they serve you, when they serve you, which ones matter, which ones are just for looks, which ones are actually detrimental, which rules help in some cases and not in others, etc.

If you understand the rules, you can apply them well for your needs and goals. Sometimes applying a rule well will mean ignoring it completely. You take ownership of the system in this way. You make the system a servant. You master it.

If you just memorize and obey the rules of the system — any system — you’re not running the system. The system’s running you.

Duck duck duck dichotomy

2025-11-01T00:23:58Z

Have you ever played Duck Duck Goose¹ and the person who’s it keeps walking and walking and walking and walking around and never picks the goose? It’s really boring.

There are very few actual dichotomies. Most choices are not binary. Most choices are more like: “Here is an array of options you can recognize (the subset of a potentially infinite array of options you can’t even see because you’re only able to recognize what’s familiar). Pick one!”

No wonder making decisions is so exhausting.

I can spend a lot of time musing over the array of options, but eventually I narrow it down to one option and then it’s time to make the real choice which is a dichotomy:

Yes, do it, action, go, forward.

Or No.

Choosing an option and then saying No to the option I selected for myself is wild!

Why would I do that?

Because choice is dangerous. Exerting the force of my will upon the world, or at least attempting to do so, is a risk.

Risk of pain, risk of failure, risk of being wrong (whatever that means), risk of ending up in a worse situation, risk of being misunderstood, risky risky risky!

Sometimes it feels safer to just hang out, not move, wait and see. It isn’t safer, usually, but it feels safer.

Passivity is a way to live but it’s not the way I like to live.

I like to happen. I like to be the thing that’s happening in my own life. I like to be the main character in my own story.

And I only get to happen by choosing.

Otherwise:

nothing happens and/or
things happen to me but
I never happen.

I make choices all day long but most of those are inconsequential, like:

what time will I get up, what food will I eat, will I be impatient or kind with my child, will I be impatient or kind with myself, will I make that phone call, will I go to the gym, will I worry, will I be grateful, will I floss today, will I finish this blog post, will I actually put away the clean laundry?

The answer to that last one is No.

It’s going to sit in the basket for a few days.

These choices all seem inconsequential but maybe they aren’t.

Tiny choices become a trend, the trend creates a groove, the groove becomes a rut and I walk the rut because it’s easier to stick with what’s familiar than to enact change, so here I am: that’s my life.

I can change it by making different tiny choices, one after another.

It’s not about the right choice or wrong choice or the accurate choice or idiotic choice or worst choice or best choice.

It’s about exerting your will. Choosing something. Selecting an option and then acting on it. Saying Yes.

Duck duck duck duck duck goose.

It’s about the goose.

It doesn’t matter who the goose is. It matters that you pick a goose. Otherwise there’s no game, just a bunch of kids sitting in a circle being bored and sad.

Everyone sits in a circle. One person walks around the circle, tapping others and saying duck until choosing a goose. The chosen goose tries to tag them before they sit down in the goose’s spot.

Love letters 11-13

2025-10-24T23:15:23Z

11

Seeds are shitty little bastards.

You put them in the ground. Nothing happens. You water. You watch. You pull weeds. Nothing happens.

You wait. You water. You watch.

Nothing happens.

You give up.

You figure it’s over. Bad seed. Bad soil. Too much something. Not enough something else.

Forget it.

You turn your attention away.

In silence, a tiny stem pushes through the soil. Delicate roots reach and cling. Fragile new yellow-green leaves open.

Just like that.

12

Whatever you’ve planted that is stubbornly not cooperating: leave it alone.

Quit messing around with it.

Go ahead and give up!

You tried.

Oh well.

Face and bear the anguish of love.

Face and bear bravely your own responsibility.

(I am so proud of you.)

Sometimes we bury seeds in a garden, sometimes we bury seeds in a grave.

13

I see your effort, your love, your heart.

Wow, what a heart.

O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red!

Now: stop hiding in martyrdom and entertainment.

Stop playing in the shallows.

Dive. Dive in. Dive the fuck in.

Start using all that you are to be who you are.

Release all the resentment, fear, and self-pity.

It’s not about whether you’re justified. Of course you are.

It’s about whether it helps you live.

Sometimes it does help you. Keeps you safe, or at least makes you feel safer.

Then the walls that were a fortress become a prison.

Time to knock ‘em down.

You have stuff to do.

Make rules, break rules

2025-10-22T20:36:01Z

On the joy of making arbitrary small rules for yourself which you can break at will but which also might help you steer your own obstinate behavior a bit more in a direction you like

A long time ago I gave myself a little rule about what I would post on my blog or any social media: No complaining.

A self-imposed rule that, for me, meant I wouldn’t post for the sole purpose of complaining about something.

Obviously, I break this rule. Have done, will do.

But the number of times I do not break this rule exceeds the number of times I break it.¹

You can’t know that, of course. When I don’t break it, when I stop myself from complaining because of my own rule, no one knows but me.

I’ll be busily composing a witty complaint in my head and anticipating the commiserative responses, when the spectre of my self-created, self-imposed Rules Master bops me on my figurative head (which is inside my literal head) and says in a shrill voice²: NOoooOoooOOoo complaining!

Obviously: Making a rule doesn’t stop me from doing the thing I made the rule about. I have all the power here. I make the rule, I break the rule.

But, often, I honor the rule. The voice sounds off, I pause, I think Ugh, never mind, and I move on to something else³. If I didn’t have the rule at all, I wouldn’t be mentally pausing. There would be no friction, even imaginary. No internal voice making me feel just ever so slightly guilty.

Self-imposed rules like this add purposeful friction. They help me pause and pay attention. What do I want to do? Or not want to do? How do I want to steer my little leaky ship of behavior today?

It’s the old what-gets-measured-gets-managed rule, just less, um, formal: I’m not going to mark on a spreadsheet or log in an app when I do or do not complain online. But if I have a little rule, I will, at least, notice. Usually.

Reading notes: August, September

2025-10-10T01:06:41Z

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.

Piglet by Lottie Hazell

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.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

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.

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

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.

Crazy Hawk by R.J. Stewart

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.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

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).

Dream Snake by Vonda M. McIntyre

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.

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

2025-10-02T01:47:14Z

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.

2. When the buttons are just scattered around all over the place WTF IS THAT.

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.

Shelter or prison

2025-10-01T02:58:02Z

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.

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

2025-09-25T02:44:41Z

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.

Encourage purposeful friction

2025-09-02T17:14:14Z

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.

Ritualize anything

2025-08-27T03:10:26Z

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.

Quit being support staff

2025-08-22T19:15:59Z

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 roles² 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 objectives³, 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.

Navigating the Obvious Shoulds

2025-08-12T21:09:54Z

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.