I got some hours in front of a couple of different text editors this weekend. Two pages about what were maybe the local epicenters of trauma shared between my parents and I. It is not what I expected to come out, but it did. I rushed off the first draft of these spare pages to a good friend. Tears came out too. A couple of guttural cries even. Yesterday I banged out some useless Swift code to solve notional tutorial problems.
Anytime there’s news of a child dying, and most especially by the hands of their own parent or caregiver, my heart breaks for days.
While I haven’t used it much, no regrets to my micro.blog renewing. Happy to see Ulysses will let me post directly from the app to here, and wondering if WWDC is going to inspire me and my cough copious cough amounts of spare time.
And then Apple Music suggests “Stay Positive,” from the Hold Steady.
It might be looking up by now, more vaccine available. Biden has moved the needles in certan specific ways. And christ, every day I am saddened by the news of so many who have had it more worse than we have. But it’s been a fucking year. We can all say that. In my case: Just trying to be a first-time parent of an ~18mo Child care not stable (and no real rebound, backup) At least one close relative vax-hesitant Not getting to see family (or get their help) to the degree we would have with the kid if it weren’t a pandemic Being buzzed by Hueys on top of normal stupid helo traffic in this town Fences and razor wire cutting off main thoroughfares to rest of the city Most close friends have moved away Spouse doing double-time at her job, dictated by current events (and overwhelmed with the failure of policy to support a certain vulnerable population before COVID even became a thing) No time between anything, not if I’m going to keep (or set) pace at work and with the toddler.
If there is a Biden win, how will you demonstrate against his platitudes and short-sells with regards to our future? How will you celebrate his inauguration by attending and not letting him off the hook? How will you insist that he face our existential challenges with the broadest inclusion and the maximum effort possible? One of the opportunities for Trump, besides giving space to the racists and mysgonists, and magnifying the likewise tendencies of those harboring fear, was the reality that so many folks were effectively written off cynically or by mealy-mouthed compromise-on-compromise by Democrats.
I’m not sure why the existential threats actually bearing down on us aren’t somehow apart of a every day proactive effort. Instead, in my country, we are preoccupied still with the horce race of how fascists are getting away with things and how other far milder corporate shills, who speak more compassionately to peoples fears but won’t actually do anything about them, may be preferable.
We get out and I am grateful that it isn’t as hard for us as it is for many.
But I could really use getting out.
Need a night or two on the AT by myself or something.
For too long this week I underestimated the power of a shower and some stretches. And breathing.
I would like standard keyboard shortcut conventions on macOS for showing sidebars and side panels and whatever. I’ve got to remember one for BBEdit (cmd-0), another set for different Ulysses modes (cmd-1,2,3,4), no option for Notes (yes, I write stuff in all of these apps, maybe that’s part of the problem), something else for Things (cmd-/). I understand the “side bar" experience is slightly more complicated in a couple of these cases, but I feel like there could be a default behavior apps could add subtlety on top of.