Category — Uncategorized

I’m usually not into voting for best of lists, but I saw a friend had voted in the Goodreads Choice Awards and I decided to make some choices, too. I thought she had opted to share her voting record, but after I made a choice, I realized that MY vote had posted, too. There was no way to opt out — if you wanted to vote, you had to be okay with everyone knowing how you voted.

Talk about low stakes knowledge.

I mean, I am not shy at stating what I read. I am not even shy about stating how I vote in political elections or ballot questions. But there was something about Goodreads taking the choice away from me — forcing me to state my choices vs. choosing to announce my choices — that made me make no choices. I stopped voting in the Choice Awards.

Whomp whomp.

How do you feel about platforms making your behind-the-scene choices public?

Right before news about Omicron heated up, I went back to the theater for the first time in almost two years. I waffled all afternoon, but the reality was that the theater situation (vaccine-mandated and masked) was better than the twins’ school situation (only masked). If we sent them to school, we should also be willing to go into the theater.

I mean, yes, school is mandatory, and theater is a choice. But still.

I expected to feel emotional entering the theater. I went from attending shows several times per month to staying home for two years. Of course it was going to be emotional. But I sobbed as we walked to our seats. I was overwhelmed to be in a space that felt like home.

I didn’t expect to feel so panicked about sitting in a seat. I felt like my nervous system was inflamed from being around so many people. (It was a small theater, but I haven’t been around other humans in almost two years.) It took me a long time to calm down afterward.

And I didn’t expect to cry so hard at the end of the show. We were seeing Hedwig and the Angry Inch — a favorite — and the song “Midnight Radio” gets to me on a normal day.

But this wasn’t a normal day. This was my first time in two years being at an opening night, seeing hundreds of arms stretched up to the ceiling at the same time, swaying in unison. I haven’t missed going to the movie theater because I can recreate watching a film at home. And I haven’t missed eating in a restaurant because I can bring the food home. But I’ve missed having a collective experience with people, feeling the same thing at the same time.

It’s the last month of 2021. I’m going to be honest: I don’t know where this year has gone. I can’t believe we’ve done another full year of the pandemic. Like the pandemic started in 2019 — it’s in the name. How are we going to be in 2022 in 31 days?

And the weird thing is that my life hasn’t changed much post-vaccine. I am still mostly staying in. Still not hanging out with friends. Still not traveling or dining out. I go out a little more — especially when we have a mask mandate — but overall, my life in December 2020 looks a lot like my life in December 2021. So it’s not as if I’ve gotten back in the swing of things and time feels like it’s moving quickly because I’m doing so many interesting new things.

I am not, for instance, making “this year count after a lost year.”

Nor is this year emotionally that different from last year. It is more of the same; the same unknowns and the same questions and the same frustrations and the same gratitude.

Except 2020 felt like it took a long time, and 2021 felt like it took no time.

What about you?

I love a game. And everyone I show it to loves it, too. You can only play it once a day, so our friends text us how many moves it took to win. It’s hard to wait until the game resets the next day.

The game is called Wordle, which… isn’t the greatest name but don’t let that deter you.

You are trying to guess the word of the day. You start by typing any random 5-letter word. The game then tells you one of three things:

• The letter turns green if it is in that day’s word and in the correct space
• The letter turns yellow if it is in the word but not in the correct space
• The letter turns grey if it is not in the word at all

You take that information and make a second guess. It once again tells you how close you are to guessing that day’s word. You win when you guess the word.

My first word above was “boxer.” I learned that “e” and “r” are in the word but not in those spaces. “B,” “o,” and “x” are not in the word of the day at all. I then tried “retry,” getting the “e” in the correct place. That led to trying out “heard,” which gave me three letters (not sure why I skipped using “h” in the next two words considering I knew it had to be in the word). So on and so on.

It is so simple but brilliant. The moment you finish, a timer starts counting down until the next time you can play. That part breaks my heart, but I am so happy this game exists.

Every so often, I think to myself that the Wolvog should speak to a friend of mine who has an interesting job that marries the Wolvog’s two passions of computer science and sound engineering. So I go on Facebook to send a message, and I suddenly remember that my friend is gone. He died in 2015, so not even recently. I should be able to hold this fact in my mind, but I’ve done this several times now.

It’s hard sometimes with people you don’t see every day. Who are only marginally in your present day life, even if they took up a chunk of your memory in a past life. Social media makes everyone feel like they’re still present; just a click away.

And then with Facebook open, mourning the fact that I can’t connect these two wonderful brains together to talk about sound, a friend comments on a blog post and I remember that he too works in the same field. And so a different connection is made; bringing the past into the present.