Category — Uncategorized

I have all of the old mixtapes that Josh and I made each other back at the beginning of our relationship. (Of course, I do. And I have VCR tapes, even though we have no way to play them.) I remember the anxiety I felt choosing songs: What they said about me, what messages he may glean from the lyrics, whether he’d like listening to the music while we took road trips.

One afternoon, I downloaded the songs from Apple Music and recreated the first two he made for me except for a few songs — A Juicy song called “Fuck You, I’m Cool” (which doesn’t even seem to be on the Internet at all) and a few Michelle Shocked tunes.

I meant to play them in the car when we drove back from dropping off the kids at college, but I was crying too hard and forgot the mixes existed until I saw them again on the phone days later. I guess I’ll save them for future road trips.

Having been on the Internet for a long time — like a long, long time (This blog is over 17 years old.) — I find it amusing when people discuss changes in Internet behaviour. Was social media more social in olden times? Sure – more people commented when they read on their computer instead of their mobile device. More people paused to answer questions on Facebook or retweet something they found amusing. Social media is definitely a little less social than before; we read more than we react.

But delurking week — that first week in January — has been around for 15+ years. We’ve been telling people that they’re not being social on social media since the beginning of social media. Things have changed fractionally. Social media was always more people reading than reacting because life offline was also more intaking than extending.

Think about how much information you gathered either through people telling you stories, or overhearing gossip, or reading it in the local paper. And then, think about how much outreach you did after taking in the information. Life isn’t quite as social as we think when you consider how many people observe, hear, and know something vs. reach out, ask, and take action.

Maybe it’s harder for new apps to catch on because we know exactly how things will be on the app before it begins because we’ve seen the trajectory before. It’s not the apps themselves, though certainly the easier you make it to use on the go, the more people will use it when they’re not really in a position to pause, reflect, and reach out.

For what it’s worth, it’s okay with me if you just want to read. If you saw I was upset about the twins, noted it, but had nothing you could add except a head nod I couldn’t see. I sensed the vibrations in the universe and appreciated them.

A friend unpacked the term “empty nest” recently in her Substack. “I’m still shocked by the inadequacy of our language for this phase. Should we even call this a phase? Empty nesting lasts for the rest of our lives.”

Because that’s sort of the thing. I had an empty nest before I had kids. I had prepared a life, arranging the twigs just so in anticipation of an arrival that took a long time to manifest (and a lot of drugs and procedures). Their empty bedrooms felt more like empty nests.

But I am now in the time that people refer to the empty nest because the twins have flown away. And it doesn’t really feel like the term fits because it’s forever. I mean, yes, the twins may move back, but the idea that they’ve reached adulthood is forever. Are my parents still empty nesters? Are yours? When does a person stop being an empty nester and become someone who has family members who exist in other places?

It wasn’t something I thought about prior to reading it in her Substack.

Last week, I set a timer for five minutes before the test alarm was set to go off across the United States. The alarm I set to help me not jump when the big alarm went off made me jump instead, and I went into the living room to protect Beorn.

“Sweetie, in a few minutes, an alarm will go off. And it’s going to be loud. And you are going to hate it. But I am here to protect you.”

He stood and stared at me, and I looked down at my arm and realized that I was WEARING A WATCH THAT PROJECTED ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED ON MY PHONE. In other words, my arm was about to make an explosive noise, and I had brought said arm right next to the pig.

I ran out of the room, trying to get as far away from him as possible, and the test alarm went off two minutes early, blaring out of the devices I put on silent. (So much for testing the idea that my phone would just buzz to warn me that the world was coming apart.)

Beorn hated it, as predicted. And I had to give him 1.5 alfalfa cookies to coax him out of the corner of his habitat. Actually, I tried with the half cookie, and he accepted it. But he also thought a half cookie was bullshit, hence the second full cookie.

Worst guinea pig mum.

The twins have never been to an internet cafe. They were a staple of my post-college travel world. Finding the internet cafe in a new city, paying the fee, buying a coffee, using the hour to try to log in and see one or two messages while chatting with the person next to you, who was also waiting for their email to slowly load on the screen.

We now travel with portable wifi, and while slower than the internet speeds at home, the twins have no clue what life was like in the late 90s and decade beyond.

It was slow communication even though it was technically fast communication because there were long pauses between messages. Now, you expect people to get your message instantly or within a few hours. Back then, it could be days before I ventured into an internet cafe, plunked down the money, and logged in to see what was waiting in my inbox. Emails were closer to letters than text messages. You had to prioritize how you spent your time online because it was so expensive.

We’re planning a trip, and I thought about how we used to plan our itinerary, noting where the internet cafes were in a country. And now we can FaceTime someone across the Atlantic, whenever we want, wherever we want if we can get a signal. It’s a bizarre world.