Category — Uncategorized

Kottke announced that he is stepping back from the internet for the next 5 to 6 months. The archives on his site go back to 1998; an extraordinary amount of time to be writing regularly. You can imagine the billions of words and images he has posted in those 24 years, probably the equivalent of writing dozens of books. No wonder he is exhausted.

He asks in his post so many questions that have been rolling around in my mind:

Does what I do here make a difference in other people’s lives? In my life? Is this still scratching the creative itch that it used to? And if not, what needs to change? Where does kottke.org end and Jason begin? Who am I without my work? Is the validation I get from the site healthy? Is having to be active on social media healthy? Is having to read the horrible news every day healthy? What else could I be doing here? What could I be doing somewhere else? What good is a blog without a thriving community of other blogs?

Specifically, identity wrapped up in work resonated with me. And do I still make a difference? I think I did once upon a time. Maybe less so now because of that other big question he asks: “What good is a blog without a thriving community of other blogs?”

The reality is that when I started blogging, there wasn’t a thriving community of blogs. There were hardly any blogs. My first blog was in 2004, and this blog started in 2006. Back then, I could read every single other blog I knew on a daily basis because there weren’t that many posts. Within a year or two, there were way too many posts to get through in one sitting, and by 2010, it felt like the blogosphere was a wild and crowded space. Now it’s back to quiet, which isn’t a bad thing, but it can feel strange after watching a vibrant community quietly fade away.

I am not going anywhere right now, but I’m always curious when people step back. Do they return? How do they feel while they’re away? I guess I’m waiting for another post, 5 or 6 months from now, when he comes back to tell us how the break went.

I’m not sure why I keep obsessing about the formula shortage. I don’t have a baby. (Clearly.) Everyone I know who has a baby breastfeeds. But I think about everyone I don’t know. There are a lot of families out there, dependent on formula.

As we were. Two different kinds of formula. I couldn’t breastfeed; we were totally dependent on formula for the first year.

Instead of lawmakers thinking about more ways they can force women to carry children into the world, they should be focusing on how to feed the children who are here.

Instead, this is what you get:

Asked a handful of senators tonight if they’re concerned about the baby formula shortage. They had no idea what I was talking about.https://t.co/30YBqHb29I

— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) May 9, 2022

The air is teeming with bad ideas, and kind of like COVID, we intellectually know they’re there, even though we often behave like we’re breathing in bad-idea-free air. It seems close to impossible to not get infected with societal ideals, such as the mentality that all women are mothers or there’s something wrong with your body if it doesn’t look like X.

Ness Labs introduced me to the idea of mental immunity, and I love it because it’s empowering. Because there’s something you can do.

Mental immunity is a psychological theory that is also known as cognitive immunology. With origins dating back 70 years, this field of research is based on the premise that not only is there an immune system for the body, but an immune system for the mind as well.

It’s protection against fake news or damaging beliefs or peer pressure. I’d go even farther and say that someone with a healthy mental immune system doesn’t become infected by their own “what ifs” and the fake news we tell ourselves. Thought-provoking, right?

When I was little, there was only one way to mark a day. A birthday was marked with a birthday cake. Not a birthday salad. Not even birthday candy. There was a cake and candles and usually a birthday party somewhere close to my birthday. And at that birthday party, there were games and goodie bags and… well… cake again.

The point is that when you’re little, traditions are set by the people delivering the traditions, and sometimes we think that is the “right” way or the only way to mark a day. I loved my childhood birthdays, but as an adult, we’re more likely to have birthday cookies and birthday reading time, which fit me better than a birthday party. The way we mark events can change. We make days how we need them to be.

If this day is easy or hard for you; if it’s something you’ve been dreading or looking forward to; if you’re looking at the screen and thinking, “What is she talking about? I don’t know what is  happening today” — it’s all okay. You get to choose the traditions.

I’m marking the day by reading about art thieves (as one does) and seeing my mum. Because that makes me happy.

Remember in the olden days of blogging that there was your online world and your offline world, and they rarely overlapped. The type of post you almost never see nowadays that was a common theme in 2007? My friend/aunt/town librarian found my blog, and I don’t know what to do.

Facebook (and Twitter, Instagram, etc) kind of changed that. Embedded had a post about this recently (sort of). They recount a conversation they overheard in a coffee shop. One person found the other’s Instagram account and followed it, and the other person responded that they never followed back people they know in “real life.” (I personally prefer online and offline because everything is real.)

They write that they don’t know “why someone would refuse to follow their friends on social media.”

But I completely understood because I only follow tourism boards for countries on Instagram and a handful of family members. It means that when I open Instagram, there are either pictures of places I’m going or I’ve been, or pictures of nieces and nephews. And that’s it.

And while I’m not against reading blog posts from people I know, it definitely usually works the other way around: I find the blog, I read the blog, I like the blog, I start a conversation off-blog. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Facebook is a little of column A and a little of column B: people I know in the offline world that I found online, and people I met in the online world that I’m connecting with in another medium.

It is a fascinating post. Go read it and tell me what you think.