The First Week of the New Free World

Shout out for Shelter

Before I really dive into my week, I’d like to start this post with a quiet moment of gratitude. Last Friday I wrote my blog, which was exhausting but a productive thing for me to write (at this time the post has a record-breaking 97 reads on Medium!). Usually on Fridays I co-work with a friend and her cats but that didn’t work out. So by about 2 pm I found myself having gone most of the day without talking to anyone. 

I reached out to my friend, the Closeted Philosopher and asked if he might be available for a hug. We were able to meet for all of ten minutes but I wanted to give him a shout out, here and now, because those ten minutes meant so much to me. 8/10 minutes were spent under and umbrella, walking to the train station and that brief moment of shelter from both nature and politics was a gift. Thank you.

Fluid Mechanics of Protests

In the past week and a half I have participated in three events that each had more than a thousand people. Two of these were designated as protests, the other was just a really really big group of people riding bikes together. 

One of the marches was the National Women’s March, which I participated in the Key Route City. When asked why I marched this weekend, this was my response:

I marched this weekend to simply state that I am entitled to equal human rights as any man. I march to protest the appointment of Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, Ben Carson, Mike Pompeo, Betsy DeVos, Rick Perry, Scott Pruitt, and Steven Mnuchin as members of an executive cabinet representing my country and myself as a constituent. I march to protest the defunding of the EPA, the Affordable Care Act and Planned Parenthood as many American casualties will ensue from these cuts. I march to protest the lack of appointment for the seat of NNSA chair, limiting the reasonable checks and balances between President Trump and our national nuclear stockpile.

When I was in high school my mom gave me this pin:

I was so honored that she passed to me a symbol of her own resistance to the patriarchy (though we hardly used that word in conversation). To some extent I cannot believe that I am fighting for the same things as my mother in her youth. 

I have been doing a lot of thinking about protesting, resisting and organizing effect those with disabilities, especially invisible disabilities. In all of the protests there is the activation energy of going on public transit to arrive at the specified location at the time indicated. I tried to lower that activation energy for my friends by instigating a meeting spot at my house before the march. This backfired in some ways that I hope to learn from but overall was quite successful. 

My little pod of people stayed together within the 100,000 other folks on the street. When we finally moved after waiting a while for the route to solidify, there were two flows that developed, parallel to street and curvy-but-ultimately-perpendicular to street. Once the march picked up speed, however, people funneled to all be parallel to the street. The slow-moving nature of Saturday’s march made it easier to not become a pebble but the phenomenon of fluid pressure on a fixed object was definitely felt during the bike group event. 

Overall the march was a little confusing to me. I felt like there were a lot of people marching for a lot of reasons. I wore a pussy hat because a friend made it and donated the proceeds to Planned Parenthood. But I was personally challenged about my wearing of such a hat when a 12 year old asked me why it was a cat hat. I (with permission of her parent) explained that pussy is a derogatory term for women’s genitalia. Besides being embarrassed about answering, it also made me look at myself and question whether by supporting this grassroots effort by my friend to make the statement “pussy grabs back” was being sufficiently inclusive within my own definitions of feminism. Still don’t have an answer on that one.

I feel like I didn’t do enough active questioning or put sufficient effort into inclusivity during this march. There’s a picture of a man holding a sign at a march that says “See you nice white ladies at the next #Black Lives Matter March, right?” I had my “Free Hugs” sign (which now includes #blacklivesmatter on the back) and I offered hugs to police officers with 98% acceptance rate. I wore chem safety goggles, and steel toed shoes and a bandana with extra scarves on my person because I was afraid of things getting violent. They didn’t. Which is great! But it’s also a sign of privilege that 100,000 predominantly white protesters can have 0 arrests but if there are even a tenth of that number and those folks are people of color there are dozens of arrests and possibly tear gas. It’s really difficult to articulate when I’m experiencing White Fragility firsthand. If Brene Brown has taught my anything, it’s that sometimes you have to say “pain” out loud before you can recognize that’s what’s going on for you, then you can experience it and then move on.

Quick note on self-censorship

So, it finally happened this weekend: I unfriended someone on Facebook due to their support of Trump and general alignment with the political group of “alt-right”. I had a lengthy conversation about why I made this choice and it came down to this:

The person I unfriended was not just in a different political affiliation to me. He broke consent boundaries when I interacted with him in person and he continued to pursue a close friend of mine after she told him he wasn’t interested. I think a really big challenge of keeping viewpoints different from your own on your curated personal newsfeeds is the possibility of boundaries and standards of interactions one holds close being broken without warning.  

By contrast, I have several people within my "friend" group who support Trump. However, they respect my personal boundaries and respect me as a full person. So until that changes, I will not change my relationship with them.

Here out, I am trying to make an effort to check multiple news sources regularly so I can see how information is being described. I am checking the Executive Orders themselves in addition to op-eds about them. I am looking into Satyagraha and active non-cooperation with behaviors I don’t agree with, like limiting personal freedoms.

Yet this week has already seen mass censorship, particularly around climate change information. None of my dystopian totalitarianist novels prepared me for Park Rangers to lead the revolution against censorship, but I’m totally OK that they are.

 Becoming a Golden State Scientist

Great news!! After months of unemployment and dead ends I have found a surprising amount of hope applying to work with The Golden State itself. It turns out that I am extremely qualified to become an Engineering Geologist! I was really surprised because I looked through the required areas and immediately thought “Yeah! I have experience in at least 75% of those.” Then I took the test (with a friend sitting next to me for moral support) and I passed it with 80%. Really interesting note on their application process: they offered a box that asked if I would prefer not to take a test on a Saturday due to religious reasons. I checked that box because I actually would prefer not to but have never been given the opportunity to express that. 0__0

So far I have submitted an application to be an Environmental Scientist with the conservation department and next week I will submit the application to be an Engineering Geologist, Professional Geologist track. I am so jazzed that within the year I could be making sure residents have access to safe water and building conditions, even if the larger political climate of the country is not interested in things like potable water and publicly available science.

In the short term, I have been struggling with feeling valued for my time. A company whose mission I admire and support (getting k-5 girls interested in science) has been stringing me along since October. I met the co-founders at a Maker Faire and gave her my resume. I followed through with two interviews, the second of which I made a lesson plan, purchased materials and practiced with my niece The Little Bear. I provided references and they were contacted, despite being difficult to track down and respond. For all of this effort, I was offered 10 hours of employment. Not per week. Total. And this job will pay less than $200 for that time. It makes me feel like my time is not worthwhile if that is the outcome I should expect from such an extensive process.

I told some of my friends how I was feeling strung along and frustrated and they immediately put me in touch with a temp agency. The temp agency has already reached out and lined up jobs for me two weeks out so I can make some income while the state takes their merry time getting back to me on the applications. It will feel really empowering to have an income of my own after a few months without.

Garbage filled sausage exercise

I wanted to talk for a bit about some of the cool self care stuff I’ve been up to. My work with Sparkles helped me solidify a morning routine for myself. My weekly goal has been to bike 25 miles a week (up from 20 when I started) and I have been achieving that by biking to a nearby lake in the mornings. I like seeing the water birds, especially the herons. As of writing this I have biked 30 miles this week. So I’m doing well on setting and achieving my goals!

Since the beginning of the year I’ve been substituting my breakfast with a super green shake. Central ingredients have been kale, chia seeds, cucumber, avocado, coconut water and cooked squash (this week it’s pumpkin). I add protein powder and it’s pretty nifty how filling it all is. And yummy too, since I’m acclimated to it. I know some people who would be pretty grossed out by thinking of eating kale, but I like it.

This past Sunday when I was feeling really un-valued because of the aforementioned non-job the timing worked out that someone invited me salsa dancing! The basic steps are fairly intuitive and there is a lot of interpersonal chemistry and problem solving that I would be really interested in continuing to learn. I really appreciated the friends’ commitment to making me feel included, even though she had been dancing for 15 years she came to the beginner’s class so I wouldn’t have to do it alone. Commitments are so much easier to make when you don’t feel alone in making them.

Finally, PartnerPenguin and I have started a new ritual of doing plank for a minute before we go to bed. This was inspired by Dr. Bow’s blog post about her experiments with doing plank. I don’t think there will ever be a time when I’m as ripped as her, but I am able to hold the pose for the full 60 seconds and I’m getting better each day. 

But PartnerPenguin and I lovingly refer to this minute as our “garbage filled sausage” time. Because that’s how doing plank for a minute makes you feel.

Today I’ll sign off with the only song that seems appropriate for the National Womens’ March. Released 22 years ago and the line “Oh, I'm just a girl, all pretty and petite/So don't let me have any rights/Oh, I've had it up to here!” still rings pretty fucking true today.

Thanks, Obama

I am sad. I am almost done, but not quite done, with mourning. Today I am writing this piece as my own small act of protest. Tomorrow I will act bigger. But this is my act today.

I am new, by comparison, at being an adult. I have lived and voted under one administration. When Obama got elected, I was living in a housing complex where the lease passed from person to person, you never called management, even if someone OD’d and you had to call the cops. My neighbors lent me a bright green mixing bowl to mix scone batter because I couldn't afford luxuries like mixing bowls. But I'd be damned if I didn't make celebratory scones in honor of my first act of democracy, voting in the general election for the first Black president.

Obama has been my president as I struggled through my own health crises and understood better why my parents health crises contributed to their bankruptcy. Obama has been my president while I scoured, interviewed, petitioned in some cases begged to have access to housing after my initial family home was lost to foreclosure. Obama's stimulus package hit about the second year I had a “real” job out of high school and I used the funds to pay for textbooks.

In the past couple years, it has been my friends turns to experience the costs of having to choose between health and housing, financial stability or going to the ER. When their mom (or primary care provider, or spiritual leader) tells them “Oh it's fine sweetie, it's just in your head,” they listen. And it's easier to listen to what they know to be abusive language because it's cheaper in the short term to listen to this advice, keep one's head down and drink some more tea.

Obama’s healthcare reforms have led, in some ways, to this getting better. I am sad and scared and worried that there is a real chance my friends will die without it. Someone related a story to me recently about being in a room with a speaker trying to get the participants to calm down. “Stop ‘freaking out’” the speaker said. “We got through the Reagan administration just fine, we'll get through this.” The person relating the story said, “Not everyone did.” The person relating the story works for the AIDS foundation, who still hold a moment of silence before meetings to remember who they are working for, who is not among them to work.

I didn't live through Reagan. But the ease with which the general populace has forgotten how many gay men died of AIDS due to Reagan’s ignorance touches my life. It touches my faith community.

More than that, one of my grandparents was nearly executed in WWII. Plenty of my community members had grandparents who were sole survivors of the camps in Europe. I visited the mass graves of all the dead from the Budapest ghetto while I was in Europe. 6 weeks, the ghetto lasted. 4000 dead. How how how how HOW are these events so far from the present that we don't collectively remember them? How are there people who don't believe it happened?

We easily and comfortably forget marginalized people’s casualties to the point of allowing them to potentially happen again. But even if registries don't happen, even if camps don't happen, that doesn't mean “we’ve” won. People won't die immediately due to lack of healthcare. People won't die immediately as climate change gets worse. It will mostly happen to the invisibly huddled masses.

The first victims will be the homeless. But who cares, homeless people die every year due to exposure. They the main demographic who does. Yet the homeless demographic is more intricate of a population than “yelling crazies” who were dumped by cuts of the healthcare system. A very large portion of today’s homeless population belong to the LGBT community. The current administration just deleted https://www.whitehouse.gov/lgbt , rendering that community nationally invisible. The current administration advocates for "conversion therapy" creating toxic environments for LGBT youth to even come out. Setting the stage for a new wave of LGBT homeless youth, going into increasingly harsh political and physical climates.

The next set of victims will be Native people in the Northern hemisphere or poorer folks living in rural areas in the Southern hemisphere. America doesn’t really have the best of relationships with the mainland Native tribes, I can’t imagine there will be much in terms of emergency relief acts as more and more Inuit tribal folks are displace. This is just the beginning.

Obama has been my president while my friends and I got married, including my friends with same gender partners. It was only three years ago I celebrated with thousands of people in Oroenpaz City at the repeal of DOMA.

Obama has been my president when I worked at The Lab on The Hill, funding basic science so that American citizens could benefit from things like clean water and air. The engineering team at TLoTH work actively with NASA for space missions and inventing things for space. There, employees were committed to being good stewards of the nuclear stockpile, making sure that no one sent off a nuke just because they were extra grumpy with China that day. All of these people’s jobs now could be in jeopardy.

As Trump gets sworn in today, I acutely feel a chapter of my adult life coming to a close. That chapter where I can be quiet, complicit, or invisible is over. I can’t allow my straight-passing relationship obscure that I’m bisexual. I can’t allow my white skin to suppress the voices of those with brown or black skin. I commit to supporting art made by my friends. I commit to supporting art made by women, transfolx, Native and African-American people.

And, as my grandfather described me in a memo to the college Math department where he teaches: I commit to being a Women in STEM activist.

I commit to saying what needs to be said.

Even if this terrifies me.

I am safe, I am whole, I am home

My biggest accomplishment of this week was completing the following project:

I started this project about a year ago when I was working at TLoTH. I distinctly remember the afternoon because I was hanging out with The Tenor and The Triple Point Dude watching football. I was reading Come As You Are and Dr. Nagoski returns to this phrase as her mantra throughout her book: “I am safe, I am whole, I am home.” This resonated so deeply with me that I decided I needed to see it every day, in my own handwriting. Also football is boring to me and I wanted something else to do. ^___^

I finished the last “I” while I was volunteering  at the library this week. It made me very happy but everyone around me was like…”That’s great…but I need to continue putting these books away…”

I have been working on a lot of projects, mostly related to my New Years Resolutions and my work with Sparkles.

People Keeper Project

A major new years resolution I spoke about last week was gathering about 150 people and being more diligent about staying in touch with them. My internal motivations for this goal stem from examining some of my social patterns, particularly during time of increased depression. I used to carry around a duffel bag with the following quote on it:

“I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word.” –Augusten Burroughs

It has been a good motto to live by, for much of my life. However it does not adequately address how to maintain relationships (I have very high demands with quotes). A big issue I saw was a pattern within myself when I’m depressed wherein I forget people exist. Usually not the people I see every day, but people who live far away. And it is not that I forget them entirely: I’m readily able to recall important parts of our mutual history when I think of them. But I forget to reach out.

I’ve noticed that in a lot of ways, this creates a huge cognitive burden for me. A burden so large that it overwhelms me when I’m depressed and I can’t surmount it and do one of the things that would help lower depression most: connect with people who care about me. By increasing regularity, I hope to make my life more boring in some ways so that I can concentrate on putting more of my energy into being creative and being more effective with my time. (I stumbled upon a TEDx talk about being boring and I think it’s the cutest thing ever.)

I am designing my “People Keeper” project to help me lower that cognitive load by automation. Thus far in the year I have been keeping very close track of the 150 people I chose to be on my list. I took the most recent date of contact and then did a bit of math on this (comment or ping me directly if you’d like to see my math) to predict when the next time I should reach out to each person. From there, I have spent the time putting each person in my phone with a recurring reminder based on the timeline I made in the spreadsheet. Someone commented, with glee, that he really hoped there was a spreadsheet. Of course there’s a spreadsheet. I’m a scientist.

I feel like this organizational method is already working for me. I acknowledge the immense privilege I have in being able to work on this for many hours during 9-5 period in the past couple weeks. That being said, I really feel like in enacting these guidelines for myself I have already been better at keeping in touch with people. And I’m learning how to just say “Hi” in a new way. I have finished inputting my weekly and bi-weekly folks, now working on monthly, and then quarterly.

I also appreciate that working on this project gives me concrete, achievable goals with the potential reward of having closer friends. ^__^

Accountabilibuddies

One really big difference that I’ve built for myself in the past 4-5 weeks has been creating communities of accountabilibuddies (buddies who help maintain accountability). This generally looks like co-working with 1-2 people for several hour chunks throughout the week. Sometimes it’s in my home, sometimes in other peoples’ homes, sometimes at the coffee shop. But always with other people.

I have been reading The Power of Habit (as recommended by Sparkles) and I like that the thesis is very simple, yet not easy. Habits exist because having to think through every detail would be overwhelming and exhausting. But you are not necessarily conscious of when and how habits form. You can re-write new habits onto old ones, by changing the routine. Routines change providing you use a framework starting with the same trigger and ending with the same (or similar) reward.

But the final ingredient in solidifying habits is to be part of a community who believes that change is possible. Even if that community is only two people; that can be enough.

This week I added a new accountabilibuddy to the roster for writing my novel. I have spent a lot of time in the past week doing research and preparing things. But I really appreciated sitting opposite someone and telling me “at some point you just have to write.”

Another major accomplishment today was helping the KinkyKabuki apply for a tenure track professorship in less than five hours. I swear to Glob, if you’re listening, help get this guy an interview. He’s perfect for the position.

Enjoying life

Having the time and space to work on necessary but not uplifting stuff, I really focused on having fun in the evenings.

I was invited to a burlesque show so I went in style:

By which I mean I was in a weird mood and decided I needed green lipstick. The dancing was fantastic at the show. I really like burlesque because it draws together a sense of theatricality with a sense of shamelessness. There are so many textures and sparkles and glitter and everything is very rich. There was one performer who did a number that was exactly what I had imagined the first time someone explained what burlesque was. She had a very 1920s aesthetic, complete with giant feather fans. It was fantastic.

At this point in our story I need to introduce two new people. At her request, I am going to call this friend The Thunder from Down Under, or TTfDU for short. Wow, that doesn’t make it any better. HAHA! TTfDU also has a Husfriend but he doesn’t become relevant until later.

TTfDU and I have talked, at some length, about the role of stable women’s friendships and how they are often lacking in mainstream media except for Steel Magnolias.  These relationships tend to have few conflicts as compared to romantic relationships. But due to the representation of these types of relationships (and a personal lack of role models) I am often befuddled about how to establish and maintain a stable friendship with women.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago we went to see 20th Century Women for this exact reason. The movie was excellent, but the demographic of the crowd was…well TTfDU and I were about half the age of most of the audience. I declared that we are baby old ladies. Which is great because it means we can grow into our true selves as we age! Later, TTfDU sent me an article that confirms my hypothesis and demonstrated that not only is it a thing, but it’s actually trendy as hell!

This week for #babyoldladymovienight me, PartnerPenguin, TTfDU and her Husfriend all went to see Hidden Figures. IT WAS AMAZEBALLS AND YOU SHOULD ALL GO SEE IT NOW. I brought a box of tissues but then I was the only one to use them. We all had a great time and I got to learn more about TTfDU, Husfriend and three badass women scientists!

Food

To close things out, I wanted to share with you two food things that I found noteworthy this week.

PartnerPenguin and I found the gentrification of pretzel rods! They are “breadsticks” but they are intentionally stale and they are covered in sesame seeds. And the waiters hardcore judged us for eating all the butter.

The other is a dinner I had this week. I was just really proud I put it together because it looks so grown up.

Dumplings from Trader Joes. Rice is that brand that is pink on the outline and is short grained. PartnerPenguin’s relatives gave us a new rice cooker that actually works and now I’m eating all the rice. With fancy rice seasoning. Veg are daikon radish, regular white radish, carrots and shittake mushrooms in a mixture of sesame oil, canola oil, soy sauce, fish sauce and a smidge of rice vinegar.

And to close out today, I’m including a song I found by way of Marvel’s Luke Cage. I really appreciated how that show used song both actively and passively to advance plot action. However, it completely spoiled my expectations of Mahershala Ali which mildly impaired seeing him in Hidden Figures. I was very very very very relieved that Colonel Jim Johnson did not share Cornell Stokes’ disposition.

I dedicate this song to our outgoing President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. Long Live the Chief.

Shining Light Into the New Year

Welcome to the first post of 2017! This week has been moved me in a positive direction and I hope it has for yourself as well. I realize that many people do not keep their New Years Resolutions but seeing people do the work required to set out goals for themselves…it brings joy to my heart.

New Year’s Resolution

This year I have resolved to strengthen my friendships. I posted to following on Facebook:

“Happy New Year friends!

My new years "resolution" is, in part, to strengthen my relationships and thus strengthen my world. I set this past Jewish New Year with the goal of focusing on "tikun olam" which loosely translates to "healing/fixing the world." I am choosing at this point of the secular year to re-prioritize my relationships and allow space for my relationship to myself to remain #1. I look forward to including you in this journey.

I hope this new year finds you peace, prosperity and happiness!!

With love,

Sara Be”

The way I hope to enact this is very methodical so I’d like to break it down in case anyone would like to copy and/or join me on this journey. The first step was that I identified about 140 people I would like to remain close with or get closer to. This is inspired by Dunbar’s Number of how many people humans can realistically be close with. I then broke down levels of intimacy based on what my current relationships are. For example, PartnerPenguin is on my “Every day” list. The categories of intimacy are thus:

·       Every day

·       Every week

·       Every 2 weeks

·       Every month

·       Quarterly

In some ways I am doing this to track the way my energy currently flows. I have found that in a lot of habit building/dismantling I have succeeded when I have allowed myself a period of judgment free observation. My motivation for working on relationships is specifically instigated by the changes I have already seen in my friends’ lives since the election. I may not be able to realistically change the world for the better but I can change my friends’ lives for the better by being there for them. In order to best do this, I need to care for myself and make sure that the energy I’m spending on helping others isn’t ruining my own ability to enjoy my life. I feel like this is something that’s been a very difficult balance for me, in the course of my life.

I will certainly also continue to write my blog as I have received a lot of positive feedback that folks who regularly read my blog enjoy feeling connected via this medium. Y’all might be getting some new characters to read about!

New Year’s Eve, the Party

W00t. What a great adventure. New Years being on a weekend this year meant party central! PartnerPenguin and I were invited to at least five parties, which made me feel super popular. Also a little sad that I had to turn down an opportunity to party. 

The party we chose was well attended and had a hot tub. And best of all, The Outdoorsy Sage and her new Beau attended!! It felt really wonderful, albeit anxiety producing, to introduce one of the non-assholes I met at TLoTH to my broader friend group. She talked hydrology with one of my incidental geonerd friends. [I have intentional geonerd friends, those whom I went to college and worked with. Then there are my incidental geonerd friends because I attract geologists, surveyors and civic engineers. Must be my cologne. Which is odd because that cologne comes from Cologne, Germany. And I’ve only had it for ten months. Yet the incidental geonerds I’ve had for much longer…]

The Outdoorsy Sage, her Beau and I all went hot tubbing. PartnerPenguin joined for a bit but left most of his clothes on so he looked ridiculous. I like being in hot, preferably ionically saturated water. The party got a bit raucous and I re-discovered that when those around me are drunk I could just dial back my filter and just be myself. I don’t mind being sober around dunk people in that way. I have worked hard on building my filter and it’s continues to be a lot of work. It feels nice to be able to take it off for a bit.

The next morning we all went out to Dim Sum. Two years running, we might have to solidify this into an actual tradition. 0_0. Dim Sum turns out to be excellent hangover food that was good because the other friends were all hungover.  I like the part where you get endless tea and the texture of the BBQ Pork buns. So fluffy!!

We all parted ways and presumably went to take naps and good poops.

However, New Years day was that day that PartnerPenguin and I got:

The Haul of History!

Anyone who has ever visited our home or gone on walks with PartnerPenguin knows that he likes to…find things. (We are both such Hufflepuffs.) We used to have a great many milk crates that I joked were very expensive furniture, due to the fines we could potentially pay on them. We have a bunch of hipster weird stuff like a cold-brew coffee system and a toaster with “a bit more” button (did not pay list price) that we’ve found or bought along our street or in the neighborhood. One of PartnerPenguin’s favorite pastimes is to go “Sale-ing” which is what he calls going around neighborhoods on a Sunday morning and hitting garage and estate sales.

So this week, when we hit the Haul of History, it made him ecstatic. What happened was that this guy posted on Twitter that he was selling all of his stuff. First, we checked to make sure he wasn’t planning on committing suicide. When he assured us he wasn’t, we circled in. All in all, we figure we probably got about $1500 worth of stuff for $300.

Inventory of what we got:

·      Very nice bicycle, aluminum frame ($600ish) Has brakes! And gears!

·      iPhone 6s plus w/cracked screen ($300 used, $500 new)

·      Magic Bullet blender with 10 cups and cup lids

·      Bag of cables, ranging from mini extension cords, microphone, stickers (necessary), those weird non-velcro thingies that are imminently useful, charging cables, a dsl modem,

·      Swiffer with 2 boxes of Swiffer pads

·      6 qt crock pot ($60)

·      hooks for walls and pads for feet of furniture

·      a towel

·      a giant transit map of The Golden State

·      goose neck kettle

·      3 cookie drying sheets

·      ceramic pour over thing for hipster coffee

·      Towel rack for bathroom

·      Unused $25 Apple Gift card

DUUUUDES. Eating blended food is the smuggest way to consume food! I have using the blender and drinking out of all the fun cups for 4 days and I already feel at least 30% morally superior to everyone I meet. ^___^ The hipter-ization is setting in!

But seriously, the best thing about this haul is that PartnerPenguin and I can now go for bike rides together. His previous bicycle didn’t have gears or brakes. Gears are kinda take it or leave it, but no brakes + literal sawed off handlebars=Murderbike. New bike comes with 70% less murder! Always wear a helmet, children because even if your bike doesn’t kill you, some driver mindlessly opening their door can.

Career Check In

I haven’t posted about my unemployment as much because it’s not interesting to me and stresses me the fuck out. But I wanted to just do a check in on where I’m at in case people reading this blog know someone.

My current career goals are to work in a environmental consulting firm for 3-5 years and obtain my PG license. I would like to pair this with a Masters in Public Policy (probably going to apply next year for grad school) done in my off time: bye bye social life for a while. Hence part of why I want to strengthen relationships now so some of my friendships will hopefully survive that. From there, I would like to work in environmental policy making or possibly enforcing. Please keep in mind (and stay gentle) that these are new-ish goals and I am sharing so that friends can support me. I’m not sure if I’m ready for real accountability quite yet, but I’m working towards that.

Another goal is that I am seriously committing to writing my novel. I feel like even uttering that sentence makes me come across as someone whom I want to detest. So I still gotta do a bunch of work on that internal attitude. But have set aside time and space to do the research. This will be a work of historical fiction about geology.  

With this goal in mind: are there any scientists, former or current academics who would like to be interviewed for source material? I would like to use this book as a voice for those who have not fared well in a man dominated world of science. The book is going to be from the point of view of a woman who gets her research stolen and is written out of history. I have some personal experience but I would really love more source material. I know this is an incredibly delicate and painful subject so please contact me privately and we can talk about how to talk about this matter.

Well that about wraps up this tardy post. Here is Duane Allman’s “Little Martha” as a quiet and chill close to the day, close to the week and opening into the year.