- This blog post really spoke to me: We mourn our craft. I also feel this disconnect from my work. When I started learning HTML back in 2004, I felt the internet as a medium was a playground and there were many subcultures celebrating that playfulness. But the playfulness is only found in small pockets and this touches not just users, but those who craft digital experiences. Most of my work in my job is assembling lego pieces in a standard way. There is creativity in playing with workflows and visualizations, but slowly that is being eroded as well. I just wonder what's next. I don't really want to supervise AI output.
- There’s a magic in a good cookbook. To me they are small works of art. The photos, the way the recipes are laid out, the ubiquity of words like frangipane, crisp, encrusted, autolyse, laminated. I remember many a weekend I would dive headlong in a cookbook, only to find myself in a flurry of activity a few hours later.
- I am having a hard time this week and was also struggling to regulate with all the things going on in my life. But I was doing one of my very relaxed longer workouts (which in itself shockingly helped) and I heard a Northern Cardinal again. It sung in more earnest today, unlike the few tentative little pips from recently. Something about hearing it made me feel less alone for some reason. There was a lot of sweetness and comfort in its singing.
- I need to re-read The Little Prince.
- Time seems to be expanding lately. I read a book and lose myself to it, only to notice when I resurface that only 35 minutes have passed.
- K had a bad meltdown at school because her friend had to be sent home sick. I want to mark this moment because I cannot articulate how emotional it made me feel. This is the first time she has felt an attachment to a schoolmate. It's so so hard sometimes. I worry so much that so much doesn't click and how will she navigate life as she stands and what will happen when I'm gone and can't protect her. She's growing. She's really just going at her pace and that is more than ok. But she has a friend and she cares about them. I still can't coherently express how big this is and how I am glad she's finding ways to externalize her love of others. Learning to regulate on days like this will happen too. But the real part was her show of care. She reciprocated to a peer.
- The next day she cried that no one likes her. I don't think I can write how that felt because it was just manifesting the dread I had of creating a child that was so different. My partner tells me that it's good because now she'll learn to do things to keep her peers happy. I feel torn about that. I spent all my life softening myself to keep the neurotypical people around me happy. The cost to mental health, self esteem are so high and no matter how much masking happens often the mask feels uncanny enough to not even move the needle. And the worst part? It's all a twist of fate because the fact that most humans evolved with the majority wiring made it so everyone else was signed up to a life we didn't want.
- I realize on re-read how utterly emo this post is. I'll be sunnier again soon.
- ART, of course and always. Birdsong, again. ATEEZ NASA performance video (this one's choreo actually dethroned HALA HALA for my top one for me)
It came to Ho Thi Thao that perhaps she wanted to learn how else the scholar was beautiful, and even in what ways the scholar might be ugly, which could also be fascinating and beloved.
– Nghi Vo (When the Tiger Came Down from the Mountain)