2025 Resolutions

January 1, 2025

Ever since the Mayans invented time and the calendar, it's been the norm for us all to make goals at the turn of a new year. Last year, I'm pretty sure I abstained from this practice. If I didn't abstain, then I know for sure I did a really bad job of keeping to my resolutions.

2025 will be different though. I will make goals and remember them.

Here are my resolutions for 2025:

#1: Be more patient with elderly people in the store

It always astounds me how the parts of the brain responsible for spatial awareness diminish with old age. I can deal with general slowness with the elderly - that's a given. But slowness must grow proportionally with spatial awareness.

If you place me into the body-ridden trenches of the Trader Joe's produce section on a weekend next to a slow elderly person with no spatial awareness, my brain reverts back to chimp anger tendencies. I'd like to get rid of this reaction in the new year, given I'll be turning 22 in April. And in 2026, I'll be 23. And so on and so forth, until it's inevitably 2083 and I'm the slow spatially unaware person on the Mars protorocket, waiting in line for my nutrient cubes.

#2: Go somewhere

I just like bumming around places that aren't home. Whether it's Dublin or the Upper Peninsula, I need to be somewhere else here and there.

Yesterday I saw a guy hanging off the back of a train, like the hobos did back in the Depression. I think that's how I see myself traveling, if all else fails.

#3: Floss

I'm pretty good about flossing, but I don't currently have a flossing schedule. I floss as I feel moved. As the spirit guides me. But I should just do it at the same time every day, I reckon.

Please call my tip line if you have a recommended best time for flossing or a favorite order to floss your teeth in.

#4: Find the best dark chocolate bar in the world

I've been chocolate hopping for a while now. I buy a different dark chocolate bar every week. It's an exciting lifestyle, sure, but I'm feeling like it's about time to settle down. I'd like to find my forever bar. The one I can recommend to others. The best in the game.

#5: Get a bedroom with a window

I won't lie, the lack of sunlight is starting to get to me. I don't feel quite myself this week, and I'm not sure what to attribute it to. The light is feeling like a big part of it though.

#6: Say more words of affirmation to the people I love (and people I like, too)

If you know me, trust that I think loving thoughts about you all the time. I just don't say them because I don't know how or I don't know when a good time is. This one is hard. You have a beautiful smile and you are probably the smartest person I know.

#7: Enter the next phase

Whatever that means. 2024 felt like post-grad, pre-adult limbo. I want to get to a place that feels like a place. This one is loose. Maybe the point of it all is to be a nomad of life. You can settle in the literal things - a house, a job, a relationship - but that doesn't mean everything else should become stagnant.

#8: Read more books

This year, I only read 45 books. This number feels puny in comparison to previous years. I'd like to up my reading game just a tad, given that it's something I genuinely love.

#9: Get better at sewing

Once I learn how to tailor clothes, I think it's over for everyone.

These are all off the top of my head. I'm very tired. I don't have any real plans for 2025 besides being happy and doing stuff I care about. Knowing myself, I think that's usually enough to make some progress.

THE BIT LIVES!

December 31, 2024

Hello. We haven't talked in quite some time! I can only imagine what irreversible damage I've done to your parasocial online perception of me.

Updating this website feels like sending a radio signal out in the apocalypse. Is anyone out there? Was anyone else not raptured when those Revelation horns busted through the atmosphere? How is this impacting Ethereum?

That's right, I haven't updated the bit since December 1 - a full moon cycle ago. I wish people said stuff like "30 moons ago" more often. Maybe I'll be the one to bring such language back.

"Why?" you may ask. Why have you forsaken your reader base? Why have you abandoned bit nation? Have you been out on a conquest, seeking to colonize, culturally eradicate, and overtake other Neocities based blogs? Can we all begin moving westward across the internet? Is it all ours if we follow this trail? Have we colonized Buzzfeed and other millennial pop culture bastions? Is there gold to be mined near the rocky cliffs and coasts of Wikipedia?

To that I respond thus: no.

Instead, I took a brief recess to retreat into a Platonian cave (my windowless bedroom) and look at two-dimensional shadows shift across my thin stucco walls. I nearly forgot life on the surface.

In all honesty, I was actually pretty busy and just didn't make time to type on a Google doc and update the site's HTML with the text. I tend to be very cyclical in my interests, and the bit was off the rotation of interests for a while. Does that make me unreliable? Maybe. But rest assured I thought of you every day I was gone. I'm sure you were here, refreshing the page on an endless loop, fretting over what had become of me.

Instead of doing maintenance on the site, I was focused on Christmas, watercolors, jewelry making, sourdough, cooking, daydreaming, hitting my Goodreads goal, running, and platonic and romantic pursuits. We're back though! The government shutdown has been lifted and the bit's congress is getting back into motion.

I also had ample time to think. So expect some fresh thoughts and musings and philosophies. If I can rally to write more.

Next up: a list of New Year's Resolutions. Hopefully it will come tomorrow. Be here.

2025 will be my year, just as much as every other year before has been. We'll grab destiny firmly around its slender, curving, goose-like neck and then we'll thrash it around in big figure eights. Because this year is ours! And so is every year to come! Happy New Year's Eve, friends.

My descent into middle-aged madness

December 1, 2024

Happy December kiddos! It's very cold outside, and I'm glad. Fall was far too mild. It was kind and generous, like the Natalie Merchant song, but kindness and generosity should stay condensed in their little boxes. I need to be reminded of my mammal instincts to survive annually - which makes sub 20 degree temperatures a late and welcome necessity. Today's run was delectable. My eyelashes were freezing together and all exposed flesh turned a nice shade of pink. I got back, made hot tea, and listened to Christmas jazz. C'mon now!

To be fair, I think these runs stop being so fun once it's dark out, so timing is really key. I'm still only human at the end of the day. By the way, we're 20 days out from the winter splstice - I just Googled it. That sounds really doable.

Runs are something I do almost every day, and I love it. My life has become a perfectly-tuned timpani, both rhythmic and melodic. In other words, very routine.

It's been a six-month process, this routine building. From graduating from college, to starting new jobs, to moving, to adjusting to new friendships and social structures, things felt entirely debased for a while. I was mentally residing in a bouncy house set up on a bog, which was actually pretty fun. Without a routine, every day truly does feel new and fresh. It's true!

It comes at the cost of efficiency, physical health, sleep, and productivity - but it sure is fun. I did so many random side projects over the summer when I was without routine.

November was a little too routine-based, I would say. The length of the days makes everything a mad rush. 5:45 lift before work. Shower. Breakfast. Commute. Work. Commute. Run after work, hopefully before it gets too dark. Shower. Make dinner. Then free time with my remaining energy. Assuming there aren't any special responsibilities for the day.

Over the course of November, I discovered a little secret to joy: going in without a plan. I love going to the grocery store with just a general list of ideas. No set needs. I have loose categories and criteria, but nothing beyond that. Then, to take it further, I go to a different grocery store every week. It's exploration! The world is my sandbox. The produce section is my shovel. And the chocolate selection? That's my bucket. I create my own little kingdom in the germ-infested sandbox of the Fresh Thyme.

Gosh, this makes me sound really boring. These are the thoughts of a 50 year old who works in insurance. Sorry, everyone.

Yesterday I went to the library to return a book, and I decided to meander the aisles without a plan. I left with three books, one of which I started and finished yesterday. The other two were cookbooks that will be fantastic inspiration points.

Granted, I stood in the library for an hour longer than intended, but I think there's a beauty to building a routine just to gracefully disrupt it. Kind of like how they always say you need to know the rules of writing before you can break them. That goes for the rules of everything else in the world, too.

I feel I'm upending the point of the bit with such uninteresting updates. The intended purpose was my most ghoulish and silly thoughts. But Sarah from the months of November to February is just fundamentally a less interesting person. Purely due to environmental factors. I'm a perennially interesting individual.

Find a time to meander this week. My friends are having me watch Dancing with the Stars highlights with them now. I don't understand it, but I must watch a nod as a supportive friend does. Because this feels real, lively, and important. And I mean that. Goodnight all!

Ford, industrialize and mass produce my happiness

November 27, 2024

I don't feel like I've had any interesting thoughts this week. I'm afraid I'm losing my spark, and I'm afraid that everyone can smell the ousia slowly leaking out of my pores. Maybe it's because daylight savings happened. I get charged by the sun like a little rinky dink yard light that comes on at night. When there's no sun, the cemented backyard patio is never lit up.

The very essence of my being is an unlit slab of backyard patio. Tough.

I think I'm failing at all my hobbies. And maybe some of my friendships. I want an online punch card that tracks my recreational and enriching and social activities, that way I know when I'm hitting the weekly quotient needed to optimize contentment.

Microsoft, if you're reading this, you should add software for tracking fun into your Office suite. I would use it, then I'd wait for the cosmic performance review to be added to my Outlook calendar by the intergalactic HR assembly.

When you get to the point of trying to optimize every fun part of your life, it can become pretty draining to do the things that should be enjoyable. It starts to feel like a game of Rollercoaster Tycoon, where fun and happiness becomes a commodity that's measured on a meter, and the goal of maxing it out becomes an ironic stressor.

Gosh, scratch that critique. I do love Rollercoaster Tycoon. It's a great game. I love maxing out the meter.

I want to max out every single meter in life. I wish I was a little more EVERYTHING. I want to be smarter, mostly. I won a game of Trivial Pursuit on Sunday. I want every single day of my life to feel like that. I want to be more empathetic, too. I wish I could look at people and know exactly what they need to hear and know exactly how I need to say it. And I wouldn't mind being more generous with my time and resources, even with my puny little post-grad earnings. I want to be the best friend possible to every person in my life. I want to be the easiest to love and the hardest to speak ill of. I want to be as physically healthy as possible. I want to be the best at baking and the most patient with reading and the most engaging socially. I wouldn't mind maxing out my looks, either. I've found that's mostly left to genetics at a certain point though.

I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting self-improvement. It's way worse to not want for any forward momentum in your life. However, the tough part of self-improvement comes in when the pursuit of our goals becomes a practice of optimization. What I'm learning is that life can't be optimized, because optimization hinges on predictability.

Henry Ford was able to do his funny little assembly line because the construction of a Model T is an inherently predictable, step-by-step process that shouldn't be deviated from. This combination of predictability and repetition BEGS to be made more efficient.

To make matters even sillier, Ford didn't even invent the assembly line. He improved upon the process, first used by Ransom Olds (of Oldsmobile fame), and made it more efficient. That's right! He optimized the process of optimization! Layers. Wow.

What did the assembly line do for Ford? Suddenly everyone could afford a car. Which is why America is so infrastructurally messed up and having a car is no longer optional. For the sake of your perception of me, I'd like to reiterate how early it's getting dark out. We're all just a daylight savings away from expressing Unabomber ideas.

Anywho, the assembly made cars super affordable. And it meant Ford could sell more of its product. Yippee, win-win for America! Customer-supplier relations give me such warm fuzzies.

That's until you think about all the factory workers, clocking in day in and day out, doing the same physically exhausting, monotonous tasks over and over until they eventually decided $5 a day for the sake of optimization wasn't psychologically worth it.

If you're still reading this, you may be wondering what my point is. Well, I feel like my body is a collection of neurons and epidermal cells and platelets that are clocking in at a Ford-like factory, pursuing soul-sucking optimization. Except, unlike the Ford factory, it's not even working! There's no consumer nor supplier to reap the benefits. Just me. A living, breathing human, whose life is unpredictable and emotional - two things that do not support the practice of optimization.

I'm going to start giving some vacation time to the neurons, a recess break to the epidermal cells, and an extra long lunch to the platelets. I think they'll be better for it.

The pang and vestigial memories

November 22, 2024

I don't have a lot of time to write today, given I'm leaving for a weekend in Bemidji in half an hour and I haven't packed. I haven't even mentally packed, which is 90% of the work. I will inevitably forget something whether I mentally pack or not, so I suppose I will just take this loss in stride.

The Bit needs updating, people!

This morning it was hazy and gray as I drove my Mazda out of the apartment parking lot. "I'm This" by Peter Cat Recording Co came on over my car's speakers as soon as my bluetooth connected. Usually, I skip this song. Not because I don't like it - quite the opposite, actually.

It's one of the many songs in my digital library that has a strong memory associated with it. These are songs I can rarely bear to listen to. All the knobs and dials in my brain and body need to be in just the right place, perfectly calibrated, for me to listen. And each song has its own unique physical and emotional knob and dial setting.

Otherwise, I get that physical feeling in my chest, I don't know if you know the one. The pang. The pang in your chest. They always write about it in books, and it feels like a thing that should be purely figurative. Like a character's eyes darkening (I hate when authors say that) or their blood going cold. The pang isn't figurative in that same way, though. I feel a physical mass in my chest, bearing down inside my ribs.

I need to Google the science behind memories causing physical responses in my chest cavity. It really just doesn't seem like a trait that should exist from an evolutionary standpoint. We were monkeys gathering bananas and whatnot. There was never a need for a pang.

All that said, "I'm This" gives me that pang. I was a brave little soldier this morning, and I didn't skip the song. I drove through green lights in the gray haziness, and I let my heart pang for precisely 4 minutes and 38 seconds. The dreariness of the day brought me back to the half-memory of when I first heard the song. I was in the backseat of a Suzuki in Kaithal, India. I don't remember what we had been doing that day, nor what time it was. I remember people walking along the sidewalks, mostly men. I remember driving over a bridge. I remember looking at fruit stands out the window. I remember mentally counting how many days I had left before my flight home, yet not believing that time would pass. I remember thinking "I'm going to force myself to remember this moment. Because right now I can't quite convince myself it's going to end."

For as many memories as I've formed in my life, you'd be shocked by how often I tell myself a moment will last forever. If I used my non-chimp-brain for 10 seconds, I'd realize the entire 21 years of memories I've stored in my hippocampus directly counter this idea. But what can I say? I'm a dreamer at heart. When dreamers are in pure contentment, they have a hard time believing time won't bend its rules just this once - even for lil ol Sarah.

So the 4 minutes and 38 seconds ended, and "Floated By" by Peter Cat Recording Co came on next, and I skipped it. I can't remember the last time I listened to that song in full. The pangy-ness that song brings on would require a quadruple bypass and horse tranquilizers, and, like I said, I need to pack for Bemidji in 20 minutes now.

I switched the music to my general winter playlist and started thinking about all my half-memories. I like to call them vestigial memories. My "I'm This" Kaithal recollection is a prime example of a vestigial memory. It's a little scene my brain holds onto despite the details being sketchy and nothing particularly important happening. You'd think these sorts of things would be the first things to get cut when the brain filters and weakens neurons during REM. Instead, my brain trims out things I actually want to remember: how many letters are in the alphabet, how many weeks are in a year, how many days are in each month, how to spell "rhythm" with confidence, my friend's boyfriend's name, how to address an envelope, the passcode to my Webkinz account from elementary school, and on and on. Those all go out the window the second my circadian rhythm kicks in.

I have plenty more vestigial memories like the Kaithal one. When the temperature outside is a very specific degree of coolness and the landscape is browned in just the right way and the air is just leaf-rotted enough, I remember exactly how I felt walking through a wolf sanctuary during a fourth-grade field trip. Not even what the sanctuary looked like or who was in my class. I just remember the feeling of that day. I couldn't even tell you what feeling that is. I'd have to be under the right conditions to relay it to you.

This week, walking to my car to go to work in the morning reminded me of a particularly miserable morning of waiting for the bus in middle school. My freshly-washed hair was frozen to my scalp in a hard, stringy mass and my bus driver was 20 minutes late. All I did was stand there, looking at the streetlamp across the street. Nothing of note happened. But I remember it in that hazy gray way.

Another one I remembered this week was that itchy feeling I got in my palms after holding my hands on the reading carpet in my elementary school classroom for too long. Or the scared feeling I got while trying to sleep on my grandma's couch while the house made noises and talk radio played at a barely perceivable volume. Or the feeling of the curb against my butt bones as I sat and cried on a street corner in middle school.

All of these bring a certain degree of heart pang, but I think the vestigial memories that pair with song are the most brutal for me. Being able to play a perfectly-the-same recording despite being in entirely new circumstances is an overpowered thing to do. I don't even know if that makes sense, but I need to pack now. Sorry for the lack of editing.

Cheers!

Analysis Requested!

November 18, 2024

I want professional analysts to determine what all of my earthly and subconscious urges mean. Looking to Reddit for answers is no longer enough.

Like, for the past four months, I've had the neverending urge to hold a cat. To cherish it. To call it my own. For context: I didn't grow up in a cat household, I'm allergic to their dander, and I had a phobia of cats until I was about 14 years old. There's no logical explanation for my desire to have a little kitty cat who enjoys yarn and tuna. Even if I enjoy those things, too.

I need a feline relations analyst to tell me what the sudden desire for a cat means. Is it my psyche settling and accepting the possibility of dying alone? Once the female brain reaches 18 years old and still isn't with child, do the neural pathways rewire to accept the other possibility? An eternity of cleaning a litter box in a husbandless house?

On that note - why do single cat ladies get trolled by men? In place of cohabitating with a human male, the woman is choosing to clean up poop, dust up hair, and dish out meals all for a small animal that has no opposable thumbs or subconscious thinking. This reflects very poorly on men. What makes cats a more suitable companion? Does this not inspire some introspection from the male side of things?

I guess men could make the same argument about them choosing anime body pillows over real-life female companionship. Touche.

OR my sudden urge for a cat could sprout from the same place as the Egyptian reverence for felines. Perhaps I stumbled upon some hieroglyphs during my weekend leisure reading and decided they made a pretty good point. The Mau is a magical creature who brings good luck to whichever household it determines worthy of blessing!

OR it could just be that cats do silly things like purr and scratch, and I find it cute.

Whatever the answer is, I'd love for a feline analyst to help me attribute a cause to my wish.

I'd also like a different analyst to explain all the micro-quirks with my body. Their dedicated role would be to deal with all those abnormalities that aren't worth bringing up with a primary care physician, but they still make me wonder in the dead of night. Right now, it's the way my heel nerves tingle whenever I stretch my hamstrings. Or the way my hips pop when I lower my legs. Or the way I double wrap my legs when I cross them. Or the varicose veins that are expanding across my right calf. Or how my siblings and I all stand with our legs crossed when we're expected to be on our feet for more than 15 seconds. Or how my feet develop hardened calluses at a rate that requires upkeep on a biweekly to monthly basis. Or how I pop my ears when the ear canal feels itchy. Or how brain freeze always feels like I'm being stabbed in the eye with a fork - my brain itself feels no chill whatsoever. Or how I experience debilitating ticklishness. Or how I sweat less than the average US adult.

If anyone knows a doctor who specializes in those fields, don't be shy. Let me know! I will pay them handsomely in my leftover NFTs from the year 2019.

I'd also like a social analyst. I want a seasoned, hall-of-fame, now-retired socializer to commentate on my social interactions like it's ESPN. Headset, suit and all. I'm talking instant replays, references to my personal social playbook, and post-game interviews. I want the social highs and lows recapped on morning news the day after.

This individual would have quippy one liners to say after I mess up the eye-contact-to-looking-away ratio as I say good morning to my coworkers. They'd cheer me on as I seamlessly adapt to a cashier deviating from the typical "Hi, how are you?" script. They'd even dump a Gatorade bucket over my head after perfectly timing my "on your left" warning as I overtake someone on the sidewalk.

Please connect me with your people! Send me leads! I need analysts! Stat!

Menstruation Celebration

November 16, 2024

Today's post will be TMI - be warned before reading on.

I feel like half of my posts are about sleep because I tend to write before bed. I'm sleepy at night, sue me. And sleepiness makes me write about sleep and sleep-related concepts. Today I'm having midday, not-sleepy Sarah pick up a writing shift for the sake of creativity. There's only so much sleepy content to explore, and I'm saving the rest of it for a rainy day.

Okay, I'm reinforcing my TMI warning one more time. Read on with full knowledge. :0

This morning, I woke up with my period. Announcing this to you all begs the following questions: Who cares? Why are you telling me this? Why am I here? Who do you think you are?

I'm not saying I have the answers to such questions. I'm also not asking for a sturdy pat on the back or a freshly-baked molasses cookie for achieving this feat of bleeding out of an orifice. Even men get bloody noses! Women don't even have orifice bleeding for themselves, dang it.

This morning's period was my most anticipated one ever - only rivaled by the first one I ever had. After you first learn about periods from a fraying-edged health textbook published in the '90s, your childhood transforms into a doomed purgatory in which you wait for Revelation and bloodshed.

My first cycle arrived during second-period English class in 7th grade. I had four more self-managed, secret cycles after that. Eventually I clogged the toilet with a pad and had to gather the courage to tell my mom. This is besides the point. Those four off-the-record period months were my first taste of true womanly independence - I was a lawless drifter in an unforgiving landscape.

Flipping back - I know you're kicking your feet and asking why this morning's period was so special. Well, I'll tell you. Here it is: I haven't had one since July. It's been a loooooong time.

When I woke, I greeted the shed uterine wall tissue like it was my high school sweetheart returning home after draft-mandated service in Vietnam. I'd give it a kiss on the cheek, if possible.

Eh. I'm not a fan of that string of thoughts. But I wrote it nonetheless.

In case you didn't read your fraying-edged, ‘90s-era health textbook very thoroughly: missing four periods is not a good thing. It's concerning. It warrants a doctor visit.

I kept my missing period a secret from everyone, much like I kept my original 7th-grade period hush-hush. There was no pad clogging incident to incriminate me this time around, and I had no intention of seeking professional help. Mostly because I know what the professionals would say, and I know they'd chew me out for my lifestyle.

This health condition - called amenorrhea - can be chalked up to multiple causes, which are entirely my own doing and entirely a work in progress. For me, it's a result of the push and pull between my mind and body. The two don't always want the same thing.

It's complicated. It's exhausting. It's overall subpar.

Im now an independent adult who makes thousands of health decisions in a day, and I guess I've made some bad ones! Oops! All berries!

My period tracking app has been wagging its finger at me since July. The app's interface is all gray instead of its usual pink, and it displays in bold letters how many days late my period is. Sidenote: We almost hit triple digits! If only my body had held out for another week or so, I would've hit a more landmark scolding screen.

The Flo app would then prompt me to investigate the cause of my period's tardiness, and I would take the bait and click. Alas, I was met with a paywall, asking me to upgrade to a premium account to access such chronicled menstrual wisdom. So I clutched my credit card information close to my chest and remained in the dark about my body's functions. I can't blame the people at Flo corporate for wanting to keep the lights on, I guess.

I instead turned to the wisdom of articles and forums during panicked nighttime Google searches. I promise you my anxiety-induced bedtime searches don't define me. It's just when I do the most ruminating. I'd lay down on the right side of my full bed, thinking about the day's health decisions. Then I'd picture myself with brittle bones at the age of 33, unable to have kids. Then I'd roll over and start Googling.

These forums told me the same truth every time I sought them: I was headed towards osteoporosis and infertility and heart disorders and identity issues and depression and anxiety and everything else that comes with amenorrhea. It sounds like a no-brainer to seek recovery, especially when the long-term effects are listed out on flamingly bright pixels.

To make matters worse, the recovery steps are excruciatingly simple. Eat more food - especially the high fat kind. Hit a calorie surplus everyday. Stop exercising. Rest.

In essence, the recovery is to take it easy. Like the Eagles song.

The recovery looks like sloth and gluttony and boredom.

It's hard to exist in a state where long-term wishes don't match with everyday, short-term decisions. I know in the long run I want some nice, dense bones, thick fingernails, a little hair on my head, and eventually children. But, today, if I eat the salted Virginia peanuts in the cupboard and cut my running route in half, I'm losing the mental game I set up for myself. Everyday is a Presidential-style debate between these two interests, except Anderson Cooper isn't in my head to moderate. Evolution hasn't added the Anderson Cooper brain moderation feature yet. Rumors say the beta version will be released in 2026.

Okay, the gist of it all is my brain has not been a fun place to be in the past six-ish months. This is just about scratching the surface of all the ways I have stretched myself thinner and pushed myself further and put myself down. I think the worst part of having no period was feeling functionally no different than a 12-year-old boy. I felt completely devalued as a woman. My biological functions were mocking me, reinforcing the fact that I'm already built like a middle schooler who wears Nike Elite socks and jukes people out in the hallways.

The good news: I upped the fat content in my food intake over the past two weeks. Intentionally! I want to say a special thanks to peanuts and whole milk. As a society, where would we be without legumes and cow teats? Feasibly nowhere.

There's still a lot of personal growth I need to do in regards to how I take care of myself. Nonetheless, today I am happy and this period is a wonderful sign. In the past six months, I've toggled a mental switch that I'm not sure can be undone, but I'm learning to live and hopefully thrive under these new lighting conditions.

At the end of the day, I'm just happy I'm not a man. Because men have to worry about male pattern baldness and being drafted. The crippling pressure brought on by womanhood seems a lot easier to stomach in the shadow of such misery.

Here's to another cycle next month! And another after that!

No, I won't take melatonin

November 12, 2024

I've had two sleepless nights in the past week. How horrifying is that?

For context, I'm a self-identified very talented sleeper. That 60-second method for falling asleep they teach in the military came as a factory preset in my brain when I was born - no drill sergeant needed. The nurses had never seen anything like it. A newborn hitting a REM cycle before the umbilical cord was cut and the social secutiry number assigned.

Whatever you do, don't use this as evidence that I should be drafted into the US Army. Trust, I'm incompetent and unfit to serve this great nation in every other discernible way. Unless the military forms and deploys a very literal sleeper cell.

Get me on a plane. A park bench. A cat-hair-infested carpet. A movie theater seat with a Mission Impossible movie blasting over the surround sound. I can certainly fall asleep there - I've done it in the past. And, up until this week, I would've told you I could do it again, in record time at that. My robust sleep resume even includes countless instances of sleepwalking and sleeptalking. I've climbed ladders, discussed my deepest philosophies, and, in a more embarrassing instance, stripped off my pants - all while unconscious.

But now, in light of this recent and grim development, I'm totally doubting my sleep skills. I've got the sleep yips! My career is over! I'll never make it onto the sleepwalk of fame!

I'm not sure what to attribute this new issue to. Maybe the first sleepless night was a real, traditional sleepless night. It happens to the best of us. I was willing to write it off. I tossed and I turned and I tumbled and felt restless under my white quilt. I rolled over to check the time constantly and was discouraged when those glowing green digits ticked up.

But the second sleepless night? That's new to me. It's statistically significant, and I can't yet conclude causation. Is it a new lack of confidence in my sleep skills that's making me sleep shy? Is it an unresolved stressor in my life that will wreak havoc until resolved? Is it a poltergeist terrorizing me? Is it too much blue light before bedtime? Is it a sign to stop sleeping on my stomach?

I told my mom about my sleeplessness, and she was certain it meant something. She has a tendency to draw some cosmic, spiritual meaning out of everything. There's no such thing as a meaningless dream or a fluke encounter. Don't even use the word coincidence around her. I think it's an endearing trait, actually. To think God and the universe take such care in every micro-level detail of your life.

Regardless, I'll view it as character development. The greatest sleepers in history weren't great until they met adversity during bedtime. At least that's what the history books tell me. Maybe this is just a road bump to make me stronger than ever before. Once my sleep is back on track, I'll go to the movie theater and go unconscious during the newest Mission Impossible movie, this time wearing 3D glasses and holding a slushie. I'll even make a special request for the volume to be five times louder. And for Tom Cruise to have scary Hollywood fillers and botox while being blown up on a Texas-sized screen.

I've learned some lessons, for what it's worth. For one, I now have empathy for people who experience these types of nights multiple times a week. I'm left wondering how you guys aren't smarter than the rest of us. You have so much more time to think in a day. I got about 10 more hours of active thinking than usual this week alone! That's gotta put me on some sort of thinking leaderboard. Granted, most of the thoughts centered around everything in life that scares me, with bonus thoughts like "I need to fall asleep right now or I'm going to be miserable tomorrow. Okay, fall asleep... NOW... NOW... NOW."

I also learned that my walls are thin enough to hear Andrew coughing in the adjacent room. He must've had a sleepless night too. Unless he's a sleep cougher - a skill I haven't yet added to my resume. Impressive!

Let's hope for a better night of sleep tonight. I should probably devise a strategy if things don't go to plan. What should I think about in the wee hours of the night? My top contenders right now: sheep jumping over a fence, Brexit, Sal Vulcano, sheep standing behind a fence in an orderly fashion, the song "Egg Man" by the Beastie Boys, and the ominous upward ticking of my green-glowing digital clock. All sound pretty good to me.

What soothes you to sleep? What do you think about? Consider that.

Okay, it is now time for bed. Wish me luck. Sweet dreams, all.

Almost-sleep thoughts

November 10, 2024

My whimsy-to-worry ratio has been off kilter all week.

I'm talking only one whimsical thought for every eight worried thoughts! This is a total imbalance of my usually semi-fun brainscape.

It sucks when my brain doesn't feel like a good place to be. Mostly because it's my only place to be. I can't just shift my consciousness to an untethered vessel and take brain PTO. My soul, as far as I'm aware, has to stay in this meat carriage I call a body for the long haul. So here I remain.

My roommates were all gone this weekend and I forgot my laptop charger at work when I finished for the week. So that takes away two large pillars of distraction: friendship and contract productivity. I was left to either ruminate or make up some tasks for myself. Luckily, I'm really good at making up tasks for myself. Unluckily, I'm really good at ruminating while I do said tasks.

So, essentially, I physically deep cleaned my car seats, did laundry, baked bread, cleaned my kitchen, went to coffee shops, and read my book while my brain became R.L. Stine's wonderland.

I won't go into details about the worries. What is this, some sort of blog? Some sort of online diary? Pssh. No way. All you need to know is my team and I are working through every concern in the next few business days, and I'll have my people talk to your people when things are resolved. Which should be by end of week.

I don't have a well-constructed end point for this. I'm just typing because I figured I should get something up before the clock strikes midnight and it becomes Monday. I spent some time today updating the "About" and "Archives" tabs, so take a look at those if you please. I stared at them for a good couple of hours and I don't know what looks acceptable anymore.

I guess I'll share some one-off thoughts I had today. I thought about the five senses and how they indicate levels of intimacy with the people in our lives. I think my favorite sense for others is smell. My roommate told me the apartment always smells like me when she gets home, and she finds it comforting. To be honest, I was just chilled to know I have a recognizable smell. It made me think of that show Mantracker that used to play on the Discovery Channel when I was a kid. The Mantracker could probably hunt me down and take me out with a bow and arrow from horseback, considering how easy my scent is to track. Nevertheless, it was a nice thought my roommate shared.

Most of my friends have distinct scents. My mom does, too. And my brother. The scent receptors in the brain are located nearby to where memories are made, according to the psychology class I took six years ago. This is why smells trigger memories so vividly. I love knowing people's smells, then being able to remember them nearer because of it. I just wish I could ground each and every one of my friends into an essential oil in a tiny brown bottle with a dropper top. Then I'd take it off the shelf whenever I wanted to think about our memories.

That seems like a normal and well-adjusted thing to type out, but maybe it isn't. Don't quote me on anything said here.

Regardless, I was reflecting on which senses I use to interact with different people in life. There are some friends I only see and hear. That's not as intimate as a friend you see, hear, touch, and smell. Those are the deeper friends, at least in my case. Also a weird thing to say. But it's true.

And no, I haven't addressed taste yet. Taste is for special friends. Sorry. Strange. Weird. I'm just typing my thoughts. You can't blame me. Sometimes I type even faster than my thoughts. It's why I go to typingtest.com sometimes when I'm bored.

I challenge you! Next time you're bored, rank every person in your contact book by what level of the five senses they've achieved. Sight? Touch? TASTE? I haven't done it myself because I'm not a pervert, so let me know how it goes for you.

What else did I think about today? I thought about how my best, most genius, most life-changing thoughts come to me when I'm falling asleep. I always want to write them down, but the pull of REM is too tempting. I promise to myself that I will remember the thought for sure this time - so I fall asleep instead of writing anything down. By the time I wake up, the thought is gone forever.

Maybe my dreams swallow up these thoughts as fuel for their storylines and colors and characters. Or maybe they get saved to some deep hard drive in my brain, and I'll be able to access them when the government starts putting chips in all of us. There's no way to know for certain, but I hope to one day be reunited with my almost-sleep thoughts.

What else? I had a bad cappuccino today. Not one I made, of course. Please. But it was nearly enough to put me off from my three-week cappuccino fixation. Nearly. We'll see what the next week has in store. I'm known to be resilient. That puts the current food fixation roll call to the following: sweet potatoes, peanuts, cappuccinos, brussel sprouts, and 80% dark chocolate. Milk chocolate people are odd.

Alright, I suppose I should go have some almost-sleep thoughts. I'm tired.

Do something you care about today. A hobby! I think hobbyists are the best people around. If you don't have a hobby, find one. There's a serious lack of hobbies in today's world. In fact, I think the simple act of having a hobby can be an act of rebellion. Not sure. Still working on that thesis.

I'm tired. Goodnight from my freshly-washed sheets. Peace. Love. Ringo Starr.