Category: observations/thoughts (Page 6 of 14)

Finally Feels Like Spring

Today, it finally felt like a real spring.

We had a false spring — a false summer, really — in the middle of April, when the temperatures got up into the 80s, but after that it was cold, colder than normal, and snowy too, a few days.

Now, it’s finally warm enough to go out with only a sweater or light jacket, warm enough to feel the breeze against your cheek and it feels good, not biting or cruel.

I went for a walk, my usual route down the main road near our house, and the smell of freshly cut grass and wet earth and lots of running stream water was everywhere. And I listened to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and got ideas for a couple of stories, one a new idea, the other a wrinkle to add to an idea from last week.

Spring is the best walking weather (maybe autumn is tied with it too) because it’s usually never too hot, and the coolness is bearable with the right jacket and accessories. And everything is coming alive, so for me, story ideas seem to come alive too. I just hope we get a few more weeks of real spring before summer’s heat descends and makes afternoon walks too scorching.

A Little Patch of Trees

It was just a little patch of jack pine and maybe some white pine too, a few brambles and sumac, the last remnants of a slightly larger bit of woods, the bulk of which was cut down a while ago to make way for two subdivisions of McMansion-style houses. But the little patch that was left after that initial devastation — the little patch on the corner of the road — was still something. Something to enjoy as we took our family walks down to the gyro restaurant. Something to enjoy as I took my twice-daily walking breaks while working from home. Something worth savoring, even if it was a meager smattering of trees.

Now, it’s being cut down.

I’m embarrassed, on some level, to confess that it bothers me this much to see these trees cut down. Why should a few pine trees matter? It wasn’t like some beautiful, ancient forest was being plowed to make a strip mall. These were just skinny, scrawny jack pines, not the Forest of Dean. To say this is a “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot” moment would be total overkill. They already destroyed much of the little woods several years ago. This was just a tiny remnant.

But I can’t help it, overkill or no. I enjoyed those trees. I imbibed those trees, from the wet piney smell on damp days to the way they shaded the ground beneath them on sweltering summer afternoons. Those trees hid squirrels and birds and so many dragonflies and butterflies, and they made the walks we took down the sidewalk just a little more pleasant, a little more wild.

I would often walk alone past the trees and the wildflowers that grew up around them, and the sumac and milkweed, and stare into the denseness of the undergrowth, and think and dream, projecting strange images into the shadows and brambles that populated that little patch of wilderness. It was a respite from the zooming cars on the other side of the road, the noise and the speed. The patch of trees absorbed all that and quieted things, and looked especially beautiful as the sun set behind it on wintery Saturday evenings, the pale pink and orange glow of the sky enveloping the thin browns and greens of pine needles and bare branches.

Now, all that’s gone.

A few more houses will be built, I’m sure. And I guess I don’t begrudge someone wanting to buy a house. I live in suburbia, so what should I expect, right?

But that doesn’t mean my heart can’t break a little. That doesn’t mean I can’t feel a lump in my throat when I look at all those trees, cut down to thin logs and stacked into neat little piles, and now the sky is too glaring and huge, with nothing to soften it, and the houses that’ll be built there will be built without any trees in the yard, so that the skyline will be nothing but triangle roofs and too-big houses on too-small lots.

I’m not against all development, but if we’re going to build new housing, why can’t we concentrate it in downtown districts? Why can’t we build multi-unit housing? Why can’t we leave these patches of trees alone?

I’m a hypocrite, of course, because I live in a single-family house and not in the downtown district. I’m a NIMBY, and I’m ashamed of it. Maybe my husband and I made a mistake in not trying to find housing in a more walkable neighborhood, in an apartment or townhouse or duplex or whatever. I think about that a lot and do sometimes regret our housing choice.

But the little bit of wilderness we once had by our house is now nearly gone. That little patch of trees was the last bit. And while the stream and wetlands that are also near that corner probably can’t be developed for environmental reasons (thank goodness!), they are a mere fragment of what was formerly there.

It’s not like we didn’t see this coming. We knew that land would be developed someday. And when it was — when that first bulldozing of the woods happened — we were sad. But a little patch of trees remained, and I’d sort of gotten used to it, thinking that at least that little patch would stick around for us to enjoy.

But I should’ve known better. If there’s land to develop, it will someday be developed, even something as meager as that smattering of pine trees. I’m sure whoever owns the lands, and whoever buys the houses, will be much happier with the trees gone, and what say do I have in it anyway? It’s not my land. It never was. Those were never my trees. But even if I never owned them, I knew them, and seeing them gone is like seeing a friend move away forever.

Just a little patch of trees. But they mattered, at least to me.

Killing Silverfish

There’s one on the wall of my office right now. I hate trying to kill these gross insects because they’re so flipping fast when they move, and then when you do kill them, they basically disintegrate into a weird silvery smudge.

It’s gliding along the wall, going back and forth, trying to shimmy its way up the wooden molding, but I think it’s unable to do it for whatever reason. Maybe it’s legs aren’t strong enough.

I just looked them up, and it turns out silverfish eat paper, which means they can destroy books, and I have several piles of books on the floor of my office (taken from my old classroom), and I wonder: Do I need to worry about them? Can the silverfish really destroy my books? How many silverfish are gliding their way through my basement at this very moment?

It almost made it up the molding just now. I thought it was going to fall off the wall, its little body sort of dangling as it tried to clutch the molding and pull itself up. But it gave up and scooted back down onto the drywall.

That’s when I squashed it. With a book catalog that came in the mail today. It left a streak of silver on the back page, smudging a few words: the advertising copy for a new book.

I don’t feel bad about killing the silverfish, but I do feel bad that it never made it up the molding.

Blahs

Kids were sick, so we stayed home and watched a lot of Hilda. I tried to read a couple of books but was too tired and ended up taking a nap. Tried to write in my notebook but only managed a page. Tried to find the will to do something — anything! — but found myself sinking back into the couch every chance I got.

At long last I roused myself to write a bit more in my notebook and then came down to the computer to write this blog.

I have blah days like this at least a couple of times a month (sometimes more). I’m tired, brain-fogged, out of gumption, and I wish I could do some work, but there’s just nothing left in the tank. These days are most likely tied to my cycle and I’m PMSing, but that doesn’t make them any easier. I wish I could get up and do something, but I’m just, well… blah.

I wish as a parent and adult, I could have more days where I’m allowed to be blah and just lay around watching TV and listening to music and doing nothing. I feel SO guilty about a day like today. What did I accomplish? Nothing.

(N.B.: I did write some fiction this morning in the early hours after waking. I’m trying to make this a thing, so I made sure to follow my new morning routine. So I did accomplish about 700 words.)

But why do I have to feel guilty about having a blah day? Are adults not allowed to spend a day doing nothing? Are parents not allowed to just veg on the couch with their kids for the afternoon?

Am I the only one who feels guilty for not having a more “productive” Saturday? Are other people having blah Saturdays and just not caring?

I wish I could be a not-caring type. I wish I could relish these blah days and go with the flow. I’m allowed to have a blah day. I’m allowed to spend my Saturdays doing nothing in particular. I wouldn’t want every Saturday to be like this, but a few every once in awhile is fine. Good, even.

The thing about the blah day is that it’s so slow and melancholy that it makes me start to think of all the stuff I could be doing if I had just a little more energy. And then I start making plans and looking forward to stuff, and pretty soon, a few days after the blah day, I’m back to normal and ready to get on with my work. So, if the blah day eventually helps me get back to my normal self, why shouldn’t I embrace it? Why shouldn’t I luxuriate in the blah day and accept it for what it is. It’s my body and mind telling me I need to rest, and that it’s okay to idle the whole day through.

There’s still some hours left before I need to go to sleep. Maybe I’ll spend them vegging on the couch or trying to read those books again. And if I happen to doze off, then all the better. That’s what blah days are for.

500 Max

I’ve noticed these past few days, as I’ve tried to trust my writing process and get words done for my current work in progress, that after cycling back through the manuscript and adding new words and continuing the story, I can only manage a maximum of approximately 500 words before I stall out. Sometimes I only manage 300 or so, other times I get close to 600, but without fail, I get near the 500 mark and I feel my energy ebb.

When my mind starts to wander and I disengage from the story, I usually get up from my desk and walk around. If I’m diligent and sit back down after ten minutes, I usually can continue writing, following the same process again of cycling and adding and moving the story forward. But another 500 words later and my brain is melting again and I need to take a break.

It’s interesting that 500 words seems to be my max. I get close to that number and then my brain just nopes right out of the story. Why does that happen? Is there something about 500 words that breaks my concentration? I don’t watch the word count when I write either. I only know that when I feel that disconnect happening and then look at the word count, it’s hovering somewhere between 300-500 words.

Weird.

Substack, Notes, Time, and Attention

Substack — the platform I use to publish my monthly newsletter — has been introducing a range of different services lately, including a Chat option and now something called “Notes,” which is a bit like Twitter, minus the hellscape stuff.

(They also have an app which you can use to read newsletters, participate in chats, and now follow and read Notes. I guess an app was inevitable, but the whole “app” thing is just annoying to me. It’s another way to keep people in constrained ecosystems instead of allowing them the freedom of the entire internet. Whatever, I’m just old, I guess.)

I haven’t used Chat yet, and I’m not sure how I feel about Notes either, though I do welcome healthier alternatives to places like Twitter.

But that’s just the thing. Is Substack’s Notes going to be healthier for society, and for people individually? I suppose if Notes stays committed to Substack’s goal of being a place for quality writing, meaning they’ll avoid adding all the features that have made Twitter and Facebook and the rest of the major social media sites so damaging to our psyches, it’ll be fine. I guess. Maybe. Like I said, a healthier alternative to Twitter is generally a good thing.

But does being healthier than Twitter mean actually healthy and good? Twitter (and other social media sites) have business models that incentivize bad behaviors and content. No doubt about that. But even if they reformed their ways to be less toxic, does it really benefit society overall to have everybody jawing away on the internet, scrolling through feeds and threads and all the rest of it, commenting on other people’s posts, and generally spending huge chunks of time online consuming media?

I say this as someone who has spent a huge chunk of her life since her early twenties scrolling through feeds and threads and consuming media. I know the allure. I have found much worthwhile and beneficial content by scrolling through threads. I used to love the old Twitter when it was mostly me following a bunch of old movie fans and critics who wrote about arts and culture, and I learned a lot and met cool people.

But I can’t help feeling like we’re still trading away our attention and our time to activities that are not as enriching or as sustaining as other things. I’ve long been a fan of blogs, and I’m a fan of newsletters now, because these are usually longer and more sustained forms of communication. They’re more like reading the newspaper or a magazine. There might be a conversation in the comments section, and that’s great. But the comments are always there, at the bottom of the post, waiting to be discovered by any reader at any time now or in the future, and I can choose to engage with those comments or not based on my own time and attention. Both the blog post and the comments are in a fixed place within the internet ecosystem. They are there for me to discover weeks, months, or even years from now.

But social media sites — even better ones like Substack’s Notes — are still social media sites. They still operate on a FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) basis. The conversation is on-going, and if you don’t keep up with it everyday, and devote lots of time to scrolling and commenting (or maybe just lurking), then you will miss out on… well, on something. We all celebrate the “conversations” that happen on these sites, but a conversation happens in real-time; it’s a temporal experience.

(Yes, okay, I can always go back and read an old Twitter thread or whatever. I understand that. But to really optimize what Twitter, and now Notes, is all about, you need to join the conversation as it’s happening, not months from now. A comments section on a blog or newsletter is similar, but a good comments section becomes a text unto itself, and I can read through one without feeling a need to comment or participate. And also, due to the more permanent nature of newsletters and blogs, we understand that the conversation that might stretch for days, and even if I write a comment months later, someone might still read it because those posts are waiting in the archives for anyone to read at anytime. Social media sites, on the other hand, move too quickly, and they are meant to be interacted with on the daily, so going back to an old Twitter thread and leaving a reply is pretty pointless. No one’s going to see it. You might say no one’s going to see a comment on a year-old blog post, and perhaps in most cases that’s true, but I can tell you that many, MANY times I have stumbled upon someone’s blog from years ago, and I’ve read those comments, and many of them have been helpful. That really never happens with a social media site unless I already know the post and the thread I’m looking for.)

Anyway, I don’t want to be too Debbie Downer about Substack’s Notes platform, but I’m not ready to race over and give it my time and attention. It’s the new, flashy thing on the block and everyone appreciates Substack’s subscription-based business model, so we’re all eager to support this Notes thing too.

(And for the record, I think the subscription model is great, though I’m not sure how sustainable Substack’s version of it is in the long run, because there are many newsletters I read for free only because I can’t afford to pay $35 to $50 per year for twenty different newsletters. If Substack would let us lower the subscription fee to $5 per year for our newsletters, I’d probably become a paid subscriber to nearly all the free newsletters I get now. But with a yearly subscription being at minimum $30, it’s just impossible for me to give money to all the writers whose work I enjoy.)

But I avoid social media sites precisely because they are time-sucks for me. They’re the reading equivalent of sugar — tasty and fun, but not very filling — and when time and attention are limited, I don’t want to consume these empty calories. I want something substantial. There are times when a post and thread on Reddit are really great reading with useful information (these are usually the RPG/OSR posts, because people are there to share ideas), and there are times when someone on Twitter (and now Notes) will post a link to a great article. But you know what? I can post links to articles here on my blog too. And so can everyone else. We don’t need a social media app to share links to cool articles. So if Notes is just about sharing links, then why don’t we share links in our newsletters? I mean, many of us already do this!

I don’t see the benefit to Notes (for me personally), other than it’s a “nicer,” “safer” social media space. Again, that’s good, as far as it goes, but it’s not something I really need in my life. I know as a writer and indie publisher, I’m shooting myself in the foot AGAIN by not jumping on the discoverability/marketing bandwagon of social media, but I just can’t bring myself to spend my time doing something that leaves me so unsatisfied. I don’t begrudge anyone using Notes or Substack’s Chat or anything else, but it’s just not for me. I like my blogs and my newsletter and my early 2000s iteration of the internet. And yeah, okay, I like my RPG/OSR subreddits.

But I gotta be picky when it comes to my time and attention. The older I get, the more precious these things become. And Substack’s new features don’t interest me. I’m cool with writing and reading newsletters, and I don’t feel much need to join in the latest “thing.” Especially when that thing takes my attention away from the other things I already like.

I guess I did feel a need to get this rant off my chest, though. Sorry about that!

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