skepticlysm

Tag: relationships

  • En Guarde!

    En Guarde!

    • The status quo has got to go!
    • On this trip to the great North, I received nothing but good news.
    • The neuro surgeon told me she didn’t want to see me again.
    • The infectious disease guy stopped the current antibiotics.
    • I now reside in the Mad Eye Moody realm.
    • …
    • “Constant vigilance!”
    • Wait and see, but … they think they got it.
    • Not a diagnosis with a name or anything like that, because nothing about this is easy or makes sense.
    • But …
    • I’m not sure what to do with this.
    • Process it in public, obviously.
    • When you have a giant growth in your head that has gotten into your brain, and the fucking Mayo can’t figure it out, you start to count your remaining years in single digits.
    • The worry feels immense.
    • Hope … well, hope is fucking dangerous.
    • Even now.
    • I still have to manage my hope.
    • The Specter looms, you know?
    • Because they don’t know what it was, they can’t say for sure, so we don’t know for sure.
    • Hope has to be managed.
    • It’s all a different kind of trauma, right?
    • Takes time to heal.
    • Minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, year-to-year.
    • And having something like this changes your perspective.
    • Affects your Evaluation Matrix.
    • There’s a lot that becomes “not good enough.”
    • Hence that opening line, which no doubt I heard somewhere else.
    • (No, I’m not going to look it up.)
    • “Rage, rage against the dying of the light!”
    • Yeah, definitely going to get the tattoo now.
    • I have hoops to jump through there.
    • But I’m jumping.
    • So much of our lives are treading water.
    • Or you’ve switched fulfillment for jumping through hoops at your job, trying to advance.
    • More and more, to me, that seems a waste of time.
    • You’re limited in your jobs by managers or bureaucracy.
    • You think you’ll advance.
    • Because that’s the contract.
    • But that contract doesn’t actually exist.
    • It doesn’t actually matter how good you are.
    • How much time you give them.
    • How many KPIs you help achieve.
    • It’s all about the circumstances.
    • Timing.
    • Bah.
    • Too long others held the wheel.
    • Is it the same for you?
    • Hmm.
    • Yesterday afternoon, we hit some vintage shops here in Rochester.
    • I bought … And Justice for All on vinyl.
    • I don’t … own a record player.
    • The kid does.
    • I may hang it on the wall in my office and be done with it.
    • Last week on Discord, we talked home offices/working spaces.
    • I’m proud of mine.
    • First official one I’ve ever had.
    • One entire room in the house dedicated to all the categories of my nerdom.
    • There are a lot of books.
    • Computer.
    • Keyboards.
    • How lucky am I, right?
    • There it is.
    • Luck.
    • Do we ever give credit to the fortune in our lives?
    • Where you were born.
    • The opportunities you take for granted.
    • We’re hard-wired to notice the negative.
    • Like I’ve heard mention 5-to-1, 7-to-1, 10-to-1 positive to negative.
    • Meaning, it takes 5/7/10 positive things to overpower one negative.
    • I started seeing that first in regard to relationships.
    • And then it spread to everything else.
    • Think about it like this.
    • If you’re a boss, that ONE time you get onto your employee weighs as much as five compliments.
    • If you’re a husband, that one shitty comment weighs as much as five good deeds.
    • Because we’re wired to be on guard.
    • Too look for the bad.
    • So we can survive.
    • This is the root of the division in America.
    • The Bootstrap Bullshit.
    • (Go look up the etymology on that when you get bored.)
    • (It’s a retread of “Let them eat cake.”)
    • You only control you.
    • I’m sitting here typing on a table with wheels in a hotel room.
    • The Wife’s in a Teams meeting, headphones on.
    • The kid’s “asleep” behind us on one of the queen beds.
    • Walgreen’s keeps calling.
    • My legs are going to sleep and everything itches (again. still.).
    • Shortly, we’re going to have breakfast at Hollandberry, which is an amazing diner we found about half our trips here ago.
    • They serve this thing called a Pannekoeken.
    • They yell the word when they bring it to you.
    • Sounds like, “Panic again!”
    • I still haven’t tried it yet, but I am today.
    • I’ll post a picture later.
    • Goddamn, I love breakfast places.
    • Somehow, I have not been to Blue Moon in … half a year?
    • On my agenda for when I get back, even if I have to go alone.
    • Deep breaths.
    • Holy shit, you guys, I may be cured.
    • Sure, my car’s motor has a hole in it.
    • But …
    • Sigh.
    • Still here.
    • Still breathing.
    • Still sharing.
    • The bar’s been reset.
    • Maximum fulfillment is the goal now.
    • The status quo has got to go.

  • But What About Oregon Trail?

    But What About Oregon Trail?

    • My Grandpa Fillmore was the first computer geek I ever knew.
    • This was back when I was like 11 or 12, mind you.
    • He’d had a ton of different jobs, but did tax prep then.
    • So he had one of those early PCs with the two giant floppy disk drives.
    • The first time I used a word processor, and tried to write a fantasy story, was on his computer.
    • He bought me my first computer in college.
    • Hell, he bought me a TI-99 way before that.
    • I learned how to code in BASIC.
    • I’m saying I’m a long-time, hard-coded PC guy.
    • Windows has never inconvenienced me.
    • But then …
    • Up until this year, the last time I bought a PC was in 2014, a Microsoft Surface Pro 3.
    • Pure Windows.
    • No shitty software from another company.
    • Loved that thing
    • But then I didn’t buy anything else for more than a decade.
    • I found myself surfing around on my work laptop, which is no bueno.
    • Thing is, two years ago I got a MacBook Pro for work.
    • I have not worked on a Mac since junior high.
    • And I kinda like that thing.
    • A lot.
    • I have been converted is what I’m saying.
    • What. The. Fuck.
    • I now own one.
    • A MacBook Air.
    • And a PC, but that’s a different story.
    • Kind of like my Grandfather.
    • If you noticed that last name, we’re descendants of President Fillmore.
    • I know jack about that guy.
    • Never really looked him up.
    • The same way I do not know my biological dad, which again is another story entirely.
    • My grandfather was one of the best, greatest men I have ever known.
    • Hell, I lived with him most of my senior year of high school.
    • I miss that man so much.
    • I wish the Teenager had gotten to meet him.
    • He was about 5’9”.
    • Always wore slacks and a button-down shirt with a white tank top beneath.
    • Had a pocket protector with all manner of things in it.
    • Big glasses.
    • Balding head.
    • Used to work for the State employment agency.
    • And own a garage in downtown Sand Springs.
    • Had a yellow Ford Ranchero for a long time.
    • He died while I was in France.
    • …
    • This is a weird one, right?
    • Not a lot of pop culture.
    • I really just started typing to talk about computers.
    • I do not control the stream.
    • I just saw this AI ad on the book of Faces with this tagline: “Working to live? Try living to work!”
    • F You.
    • I am so tired of all this “productivity” bullshit.
    • All these tips on how to make you a better worker … for someone else.
    • I’m sorry, but that’s the Indentured mentality they want you to have.
    • That your worth is what someone else says it is.
    • And all this AI shit.
    • AI can help you as a tool, but it isn’t making you better.
    • Go find those early studies on its effect on chronic users’ ability to think.
    • I can use it to brainstorm.
    • And that’s about it.
    • It’s not better than I am at writing anything yet.
    • And the day it becomes that, the day AI takes over most white collar jobs, they’d better have UBI figured out or they’re not going to like the world version of the French Revolution.
    • …
    • Hi!
    • Goddamn ad.
    • Back when I worked at Urban Tulsa, I had this idea for a screenplay about … a middle class Dr. Marten Luther King/Malcom X thing.
    • Would’ve been the height of middle class white privilege.
    • However …
    • It would’ve been prophetic.
    • That was late ‘90s mind you.
    • Imma stop with that at the moment.
    • Cause we’re getting back to my theme song.
    • You know what I love?
    • Poorly Drawn Lines
    • If you’re not following that comic, you’re missing out.
    • I stick one at the bottom of the TCC student newsletter every week.
    • I hope the guy’s gotten follows and sales from it.
    • It’s funny almost every damn time.
    • Between him and The Oatmeal … I’m in comic heaven.
    • The Oatmeal is fantastic, though he is wheels off.
    • If you can get offended, maybe don’t fan the Oatmeal.
    • I mean, you should anyway.
    • Expand your horizons.
    • Okay, so update:
    • Staples are out.
    • Scab is gross.
    • Doc says everything is healing well.
    • That’s the whole update.
    • We’ll have to wait on the Mayo for diagnosis stuff.
    • What else?
    • The Wife and I sent to Savoy for lunch today.
    • Thursdays are the Turkey special.
    • If you haven’t had it, you’re missing out.
    • Fucking amazing.
    • What else?
    • Got The Terminator on 4k Blu-ray.
    • Glorious.
    • Feeling good.
    • Thank you for all the support.
    • I’m leaving with my pocket full of sunshine.