annie's microblog

Finished reading: The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham 📚

Took my second oldest child to get his permit last week… so, now have two teenage drivers in the family.

My heart rate is almost as high as my insurance rate.

Working at a cafe. A man sat right next to me, across, so we’re facing each other. Fine… but he keeps talking out loud and glancing over, clearly wanting me to engage/respond. Um, Sir. No thanks. I have headphones in, laptop open, am not making eye contact. Please stop.

Finished reading: The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung 📚

Fell of the intermittent fasting wagon for a while, needed some inspiration to get back at it. This book definitely did the trick.

I tend to have two different styles for reading and research.

I was going to say for online reading, but it’s not limited to that. I’ll often find myself with a stack of nonfiction books on a particular topic, and I’m not properly “reading” a single one (i.e., start at the beginning, continue to the end).

Instead, I’m in what I think of as exploratory mode. For online reading, this means lots of open tabs, skimming, link hopping, . With books, it means multiple books on the same topics, scanning the TOC, flipping to relevant chapters, scanning a glossary, looking up summaries.

The other is diving in: highlighting, making notes, absorbing slowly, thinking.

The exploratory style is helpful when I want to quickly build a mental layer of context, grasp a basic topical vocabulary, and get a sense of the main issues and patterns involved in a topic.

It’s often an essential process, one that allows me to dive into – and glean something – from writing that is realistically over my head.

Exploring also helps me filter (the options, which I may or may not know about before exploring) and decide (of these options, which will I dive into?).

Diving is where the magic happens. The learning, the broadening of perspective, the shifting of mindset, the opening. Diving is required to reap the harvest of curiosity.

The trick is shifting from exploring to diving. Not letting myself live in shallow waters, which are fun to splash around in. But diving deep is how I find the treasure.

Finished reading: Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse Book 1) by James S. A. Corey 📚

Enjoyed this space opera. Poignant, hopeful, and a little gruesome. Great characters. Wish the women could be more than sidekicks or love interests. Maybe we’ll get that further in the series.

Finished reading: I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali 📚

A friendly reminder of how the US feels about women:

Authoritarian Regimes Have More Progressive Abortion Policies Than Some U.S. States

Why US women are deleting their period tracking apps

Secret Service report details growing incel terrorism threat

The ‘rogue’ Trump-appointed judge with abortion pill’s future in his hands

Tracking the States Where Abortion Is Now Banned

State abortion bans prevent women from getting essential medication

The pain gap: Women (still) aren’t taken seriously by doctors

America’s deadly epidemic: violence against women

Women, especially women of color, in the United States are more likely to live in poverty than men

There are healthy ways to deal with difficult things. Sometimes those are the routes I take. Sometimes I am not taking any routes, I am just sitting in my chair being a glazed donut of a human.

It feels good to remember that’s okay. I don’t have to feel bad about everything.

Being perfect is never a prerequisite to peace or self-acceptance.

There are small cycles and big cycles. I know myself well enough to know what I come back to, most of the time. I’m okay with my equilibrium. It tilts this way and that, but it never tilts all the way over. The center can hold.

Or maybe it can’t. Maybe things fall apart, and the center cannot hold, and it’s tumultuous but not apocalyptic.

There’s this option I like to call forming a new center.

It does create vast periods of feeling lost, unmoored, ungrounded. Mood swings, behavior swings. Generally, lots of swinging and flailing. When you’re in the middle it seems chaotic, and mostly it is, but there’s something else going on too.

Disorientation is just the feeling you have before you get oriented.