Category: Me Myself&I

My audio machine has been restored and back to 100% working.

Now the bill for the fix is looking at me like

(Venmo me if you want/can)

When it’s “I just need to go through this week” but it’s only the second week of the first month of a new pandemic year.

So no Twitter half a year.

Not using Twitter made me realize how small Twitter is. In most of the world, Twitter is irrelevant. There are so many networks and platforms and communities out there. Twitter is just another one.

After about three months, I had forgotten everything about Twitter. It would only pop up in online articles, sometimes, like “so there was this Twitter thread and people fought over that tweet bla bla bla”. This is when I realized what Twitter actually is:

Twitter is 2D Roblox for exhausted adults.

From the outside it really looks like its own metaverse: cliques and their own etiquette, own reality, avatars, power trips and so forth. It is wild to see people well into their 50s or 60s troll like little bitches in high school. But it is happening!

Screenshots are so ubiquitous I always end up seeing the “best” or more accurately, most viral tweets without spending a second logged in on Twitter anyway.

Technology doesn’t care about your business model.

Over six months completely off Twitter, after over a decade being on it every single day.

There’s a lot to unpack.

Am I less anxious and depressed? Yes. No doubt. It feels almost weird that despite whatever happening around, I’ll take it, and move on.

Seeing the same bad news a few dozen times a day is an absolute mind killer that I’m glad is gone from my life right now.

Am I missing Twitter? No and yes. Twitter is the closest thing to a digital cigarette.

It’s really wild: the first time you connect after being addicted is like the first puff. You get a buzz –hilarious comment, smart tip-, you smile, you feel good. Then you almost feel more focused, just like the first 2mn of a cigarette break.

And then it’s over. It goes inexorably downhill after that.

You scroll down, see a murder, read some inane comment about something mildly interesting, someone is trying too hard next, then a funny gif but is it really the time to smile? Some terrible national news, here’s a puppy and some obscure challenge hashtag etc. After those first good minutes you hate yourself more and more. Your heart rate goes up and your chest feels compressed.

And just like a cigarette in the hands of a veteran smoker, you are hurrying to end the smoke session. More than half the cigarette is making you feel bad about yourself. The after taste makes you feel guilty.

Twitter is the same, in about the same time frame of a small smoke break. You scroll faster to make it stop.

I do miss the friends I was having a Twitter smoke break with. Not necessarily friends, but people you overhear and giggle at what they say or agree with heavily without needing to interact much. After thousands of days with them, and now a couple hundreds without them, I still miss them a bit.

Dear future,

The weirdest and most exhausting part of this pandemic is the illusion that everything is normal while nothing is.

Right now at the start of ‘22, watching people everywhere being more and more careless while the virus numbers are absolutely insane, is so much cognitive dissonance.

The same way, when I think that something is slow and that I start mapping the effect of people being on sick leaves, the supply chain issues, etc. I realize, oh my god, of course it is slow.

Appearances feel like it shouldn’t be the case.

It’s exhausting to constantly readjust thoughts when the outside world looks just the same; trucks around, folks. Life with a bunch of people wearing masks, nothing much.

Uh. Well.

And so deaths are picking up. Please tell me temporarily, universe. Please.

Uh, yes you can. It might take a minute, and demand some isolation though.

(note how the title of the article, “You Can’t Simply Decide to Be a Different Person” super clickbaity, but the url (self-control-habit-new-years-resolutions) is dry as hell while the recent url blurb is somewhat the most accurate description “One Thing People Misunderstand About Forming New Habits – The Atlantic”)

“The key distinction here, Inzlicht told me, is that a person who appears highly self-controlled to others—who is displaying a high level of trait self-control—probably isn’t exercising their behavioral self-control as much as you do. “People who have high trait self-control, they don’t actually engage in more restraint of their behavior and thoughts and emotions in the moment,” he said. Instead, they just aren’t tempted or distracted or diverted from their purpose as often or as effectively as the rest of us.”

Right. But! The they just aren’t tempted though uh excuse ME! I am tempted, every day, to not wake up to go out and run with a basketball in the sunrise. Like, the temptation is the hardest part by far. It sucks. Tug of war in my brain. But my will goes beyond my feelings. I tell myself “fuck yo feelings, get up, you know how it is” sometimes. Because I know the benefits of that workout are huge, in our covid time. Disappointing myself in this disappointing world? Nah. I have to show up for myself. Then it becomes a game and you try to do a combo. “Three straight days!”

"Fuuuck it’s cold why am I doing this” is a sentence that pops up in my mind every single time in winter but I know that within five minutes of workout, this amazing thing called human body will actually generate heat by itself and in five minutes, I won’t feel cold at all. I will feel good. Five more minutes and I will feel great. Twenty minutes later and I will feel fantastic, warm or hot, ready to take on ANYTHING.

But right now, I’m almost shivering walking to my car.

The key is to understand, acknowledge and truly embrace the benefits of forming (good) habits. And to stay locked in on them. To abandon yourself to them.

Next thing you know you have 10,000 hours of whatever habit you chose. And people will notice.

Shout out to my girl Ariane 5 and Europe for its perfect launch!

Webb! It’s incredible. I mean, have you read the story of this deployment? Basically 30 years of constant issues across teams all over the world. I’ve read comments on Reddit/HN of folks who worked on this project in one way or another and they. are. crying. of joy. Because this device is finally going to tell us that yes, we live in a simulation, look at the pixels over there *zooms in*.

No but for real, it will change our understanding of the universe forever. That’s much more interesting than trying to go walk on red rocks while trying to not die immediately, in my opinion.

And now, the telescope is fully deployed and I feel a bit emotional.

The absurd capacity for humanity to produce, despite EVERYTHING this monumental future source of information for basic stuff like the origins of life and the big bang —I mean HELLO??? that’s pretty tight— while being unable to stay at home and to wear a goddamn mask outside.

Dear future, it hurts so much to witness this in real time.

Anyway, this is so wonderful.

Well Omicron is insanely fast but it looks like it’s *truly* less lethal (with vaccine)? We might want to wait for all the hospitals to clear out, probably late February, to know for sure.

But that could really be great news. IF the next variant is even weaker, that is.

Oh boy. I jinxed it didn’t I.