Notes

I’ve been feeling directionless lately, like a boat adrift at sea, but every time I look up at the moon, I feel comforted. Phenology, or paying attention to nature’s rhythms, is a word I learned last year, and it, like the moon, has become my lodestar in troubled times.

I try to be stoic with most things in life, as in, I try to only focus on the things I can actually control, but goddamn, sometimes life just wears me down so much. I was feeling down already this week, but then the universe just piles on more shit and more shit that it feels like the universe is just having a laugh at my expense now.

But what doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger, right?

I prefer coffee but creek water works, too, I guess.

Watching The Plot Against America on HBO almost a month after an attempted coup and after 4 years of a Trump presidency was a traumatic experience. And I couldn’t look away. David Simon knows how to make some great art.

“It can’t happen here? No, it is happening here!”

All bark and no bite makes Mario a nice young man you might want to introduce to your parents one day.

Winter vibes.

Made a detour on my way to work today.

Met some guys who planned a morning of ice fishing. It was 16° out, so I wished them luck.

Took a few photos of the sunrise and the mountains, got back into my Jeep, and drove to work. It was a very lovely morning.

I stopped taking photos, especially macro photos, and that has made me sad. I asked a friend the other day where all the bugs have gone, and she said there are no bugs during winter. So I looked it up on the internet: Where do insects go during winter? Thought this was cool.

Normal People on Hulu was just as good as the book, in its own way. I’m both in awe and in tears. It hits a melancholy note that reverberates throughout my current life’s circumstances. I love art like this so much.

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson should be required reading for everyone on the planet. The book is endlessly quotable, but this one jives with my current life philosophy:

Even the longest lived of our species spends but a blink of time in the span of human history. How dare anyone cause harm to another soul, curtail their life or life’s potential, when our lives are so short to begin with?

Highly highly recommended.