It's official. I found one christmas thing I enjoy. The only one.
Neo Yokio: Pink Christmas.
Some part of me still thinks all my problems are going to go away when I make it to an island but intellectually I know that's only going to happen if I leave my fucking computer on the mainland.
Still, I live in hope. The ferry sails tomorrow evening!
In reply to: https://rhiaro.co.uk/2018/12/madness
Madness also involves talking to yourself right, because I just said "oh haha that's fucking hilarious" out loud to this docker container in a restaurant* in like a regular conversational voice.
* The same restaurant in which I was cry-laughing at tumblr (RIP) screenshots earlier, but fortunately there has been a complete staff and customer turnover since then.
Me: Okay I should find something intelligent to read while I eat lunch.
Also me: *opens twitter, immediately finds a 100-post long thread of tumblr (RIP) screenshots.* okay I'm set
I finished the third of NK Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy last week. For me it was just so much about love, the diversity of love, how there are so many possible ways and reasons to feel and express and perform love (or not). We see familial love as a core theme of course, and reluctant love, unrequited love, love for and within a community, chosen family, forbidden, painful, passionate and physical, between different genders and the same, polyamorous, challenging, accepting, unconditional, unexpected.
Sure it's about magic and rock-people and apocalypse. But it's the most thorough and detailed and diverse exploration of love I've ever read.
In reply to: https://www.intomore.com/impact/femme-trans-men-on-what-you-should-know-about-gender-expression
"Society must learn that every combination of gender and gender expression is possible."
It would be hard to say goodbye to Sarajevo again, but I can't see it for the smog and I think the walk to the bus station is going to take another year off my life, along with those this place took last winter.
(Air quality index currently 229: "Health warnings of emergency conditions", and visibility is about a block.)
I finally made it to the vegan cafe though.
Cold, but would have been a beautiful day for a walk by the river in Sarajevo today. BUT THE SMOG.
I walked an hour by the river anyway, to go to the new vegan cafe. It was closed.
*splutters and dies*
I put twitter in night mode and now I keep thinking I'm looking at Mastodon (via pinafore) and getting excited that someone I knew from twitter now has Mastodon and then being disappointed when I realise it's actually twitter.
Winter is come, it's pissing freezing, and I'm still in Poland. It's not that things aren't going according to plan, more that my plan wasn't very good.
Gonna be AFK until about the 18th of November. I won't necessarily read any emails sent during that time. You'll figure it out.
As the weather is getting colder and wetter, I've started to miss having boots. Lace up or zip up mid-calf or almost knee-high waterproof boots. Boots that look nice over tights or jeans and are also practical. I can't have boots because I just don't have space to pack them, and I don't always want to wear them while on the road. If I'm on a bus, I want shoes I can kick off or slip back on quickly. It's very not practical to attach them to the outside of my backpack. And I would never wear them in hot weather and I'm really trying to keep the contents of my backpack to all-weather clothes. Sigh.
Love github emoji reactions for enabling passive agressiveness in issue comments. Makes the world a better place.
I just passed 30k words and I am ON TRACK for the FIRST TIME EVER.
Even the year I passed 50k by month end only happened because of a huge push in the last couple of days, rather than keeping a consistent pace throughout.
I've definitely had low days, and high ones to compensate, but nothing extreme. It just sort of feels much more doable this year. Not sure what's different. Well, lots of things are different; not sure which is the cause.
I'm writing a totally different genre to what I'm used to: Earth, presentish day (near future, perhaps), humans and parrots (and a dog); familiar setting, regular people, no aliens, no epic journeys. I was very worried about this actually, but things are flowing well, and I don't feel like I have written any absolute garbage purely for wordcount yet.
I've travelled, socialised and worked probably about the same amount as I did last year, though at different velocities. Not any less busy, particularly. I was free of all PhD concerns before last year's. Maybe my head is just in a better place. Maybe I'm becoming better at writing. Maybe October is better for writing than November. Who knows.
I picked up my e-residency from the Estonian Embassy this morning, and now I'm in a proper hipster cafe to work and eat vegan cake and drink flat white with quinoa milk surrounded by other cool lookin' laptop people, I'm at peak digital nomad today.
Also posting about it to social media.
"You look good for having just come off a two day bus ride!"
This is just my look now. The multiple consecutive night bus look. I own it. I look like this all the time. I have no other look.