This is my 100th post
Leaving Twitter, getting a new couch, emotional weirdness, and International Women's Day
I originally had the idea to comment on the right wing’s hissy fit over the Bad Bunny Super Bowl performance and how white Christian nationalism seems to despise authentic joy while demanding the performance of emotions, but I feel like I’ve gone to that well too many times lately, and current events make me too angry to really want to spend much time writing about them. If you’ve read my newsletter for long enough, you probably already know what I think about what’s going on and the people that helped bring us to this point. I’m not tossing that draft altogether, but it will probably need to change shape as events dictate and I find a way to better articulate my point.
I deleted Twitter for good last month. I had been thinking about it for a while, but figured that whatever negative aspects of using what became Elon Musk’s playground for AI, bots, and Nazis was offset by the some of the SNL related connections I had on there, and could be mitigated by locking down profiles and limiting my use. Even so, it became one of those places that you just don’t want to stay in for long. The last straw was the reports about Grok making particularly disturbing sexually explicit deepfakes, as well as Musk treating any sort of call for accountability for this as an attack.
If the last few years have taught me anything, it’s that the worst people in the world somehow find a way to sink even further into depravity. I know that hypervigilance won’t do me any good, especially with regard to things that are completely out of my control, but sometimes I need reminders that others see what’s happening.
Who else is done with winter? Now granted, I’ve been done with winter since it began, but I really feel weighed down by the snow and ice by this time of the year, and when I get home after work I have no desire to go back outside for the rest of the night. We also had some brutal cold days in Halifax this year; even when the sunlight looked inviting, the cold air and wind would quickly disabuse me of any ideas about doing anything after work besides heading back to my warm apartment. At least it looks like the worst is behind us, cold-wise, and while the whole concept of Daylight Savings Time is bullshit (losing an hour of sleep and the whole messing with circadian rhythms thing), the days are actually getting longer. I actually found myself sticking around downtown after work one day; it was mainly because I was hungry and didn’t want to wait to get home or have to cook something, but I can see myself doing that more often once we get into spring.
In other news, I bought a new couch on the weekend; my old one is well over 20 years old so it was definitely well past time to get a new one. My younger sister’s also coming over to visit at the end of the month, and while I wasn’t sure I was going to have it delivered before then, this was a purchase I was planning to make for a while; I just needed to have enough time and energy to make it to The Brick so I could sit on the different ones they had available1. The couch will be coming on Thursday, though, and that also means moving things around in my apartment so the people hauling the old one away and the people delivering the new one will be able to maneuver.
The other day, I was listening to a few episodes of You Are A Lot about the way neurodivergent people experience emotions that felt particularly resonant to my own life. She discussed the concept of emotional permanence, and how we can also feel two conflicting emotions at the same time, and it made me think about how I have the need for connection fighting against the desire not to be perceived, as well as how I can go a long time without reaching out to someone or really keeping in touch. I often feel like I have a bit of a social hangover even when I spend time with people I like, and need a recovery period afterwards. This is an explanation, not an excuse.
Time just feels like it works differently for me. If I haven’t been keeping in touch, it’s usually a combination of me feeling the lingering residue from our last conversation as if it just happened, rejection sensitivity (a big issue for ADHD/AuDHD), and, if it had been a while since we actually connected, an awareness that we’re living our own lives and we may just be different people. I may also be tired or low on executive function, and don’t feel like I actually know what to really say to you anymore (or say anything in general). This is an explanation, but it’s not an excuse.
This past Sunday was International Women’s Day. This Martha and the Muffins song from 45 years ago is still quite relevant, the last verse especially so.
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The Brick is the closest furniture place to where I live; it’s also in a business park that’s particularly unpleasant to visit when you don’t have a car. Actually, it’s also unpleasant to visit with a car. Either way, I rarely have the spoons to actually go there.
Rock on to 200!