Biz Admin Who Loves Technology
Lessons learned about life; pearls of wisdom I’ve gleaned through pain, failure and honest reflection
Happy Friday, everyone! And it’s a long weekend…Monday being Memorial Day and all.
I find this old bit from Ren and Stimpy to be joyfully nerdy and, thus, delightfully obnoxious, in a dad joke sort of way.
Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful, refreshing, and joy-inducing weekend.
The writer of the piece below is someone I’ve known a LONG time. I’ve always delighted in Addy’s creativity and thoughtfulness. She wrote this post last year, but I just found out it was published in a print version of Flaunt magazine. I’m quite proud of her!
I don’t want to give too much away, but this post is a personal look at trauma and recovery with a poetic bent.
So, without further ado, please follow my recommendation and give her a read.
Justice for late summer, using fish to tell the future, and giving yourself permission to move on. Read on Substack
shortly after dusk
the trees embracing silence:
birdsong before dawn
Today, May 6th, is Sigmund Freud’s birthday. So, call your Mother!
Yeah, I know how wrong this is….
night air cooling
quiet breeze moving gently
holding drifting mists
rainfalls lovely sound
pollen’s excess washed away
the air now refreshed
I spent several years of my life in the US Navy on submarines. Now, I had NO issues with the cramped spaces, nor with being many, many feet under water. I even crawled into very tight “void spaces”. Things like tanks. Not a problem! However, that’s not the case anymore. I look at this image above, and I feel claustrophobic. Deeply. And this isn’t that crowded. I’ve seen other images/videos where the train staff are literally pushing people together into the car. People are crushed into each other! Yeah, I’d be hyperventilating big time.
For me, this juxtoposition is striking. Nothing traumatic happened in the decades since. I have simply lost any tolerance for confined spaces. On a related note, I also didn’t have any issues with heights back then, but now I struggle.
Weird, methinks. Have you noticed any evolutions like this in your life?
I stumbled upon this image on Pinterest. It brought back some stuff for me. I have long had a fondness for typewriters. I have long valued my typing skills highly. Once, I could type over 100 words a minute with high accuracy. Well, my speed is still pretty high, but my accuracy has weakened. I chalk that up to, first, spell-check, and later autocorrect. The tools have made me lazy. I’m working on building that back up, as I still value this.
Anyway, though I first learned to type on a typewriter, they were electric (I’m not THAT old). My first typing experience was on the IBM Selectric. A lovely, if noisy, machine.
I used these heavily from high school all the way through the Navy. Then they faded from dominance, though I’d still need to use one on occasion (usually for government forms). By the 2000s, they’d vanished.
Now, though I liked the act of typing, I was also motivated by envisioning a future dominated by computers. Being able to use the keyboard would be a powerful, powerful tool. Clearly, I called that right!
Yeah, perhaps the image above is AI (I’m quite confident it is), but that’s not really the point. I found it fun and “enough”. Which might be AI’s main contribution: it’s enough. Mediocrity commoditized. But it’s enough to get me thinking, to capture a mood. Enough, I guess.
I came across this little gem earlier today over on Instagram.
The one that most strongly resonated with me was the first one: “To get somewhere, you have to leave where you are…” As someone who is rather risk-averse and values comfort, this one speaks strongly to me. I do wonder if I might be a Hobbit.
Another one that spoke to me: “Stillness notices what distraction misses…” Living fully immersed in the distraction economy/society, but somewhat against my will. I feel a strong pull to work on this. Little things like spending time reading books, as in paper, not my Kindle, not blog posts, nor Tweets.
I like starting the day with some reflection, with challenging the ways society pulls us…sometimes against our will, sometimes like an undertow in the sea of numbed distraction.
I went to Emerald City Comicon on Friday, March 6. I’ve been meaning to go for decades. There’s always something, some reason, some conflict. I finally felt compelled to go. It helped that I’d talked with several other folks, so had accountability partners, including my wife. I’m so glad I did. It was an awesome experience. Below are just a few thoughts on finally going.
Man, the cosplay! I love the passion of cosplayers. The artistry was so impressive. Understanding SO many references mad me feel that I was amongst “my people”. Recognizing so many characters and knowing their key lines made me able to validate others. Understanding the references just made it that much more wonderful for me. Valuing the same things is just so lovely.
Another thing I adored: the inclusivity. The boldly open affirmation of the LGBTQIA+ community delighted me, as did the way they embrace neurodiversity. Things like quiet rooms made the space safe.
The immensity, the scale of it all. My goodness, there was so much going on. So much space in use. So many people. It was perfect. All the vendors, and all the cool stuff was great, too. Floors of stuff.
I opted not to photograph much. Mostly just a few things that caught my eye. Nothing to share. It felt rather like a rather invasive thing to do. I’m probably overthinking that, but I REALLY wanted to be respectful. Maybe next year I’ll be more deliberate about photography.
My wife loves it as much as I did. She’s insisting that we go the full week next year. I’ll see if I can break away that long in 2027. And, who knows, maybe I’ll need to expand out to other cons.
Did any of you go? Or have you gone to a different Comicon? What did you think? What was your favorite part.