Finally, I've made it to Christmas in one piece. Finished my final work deadline yesterday, so in my mind I can already start to relax. I'm taking two weeks off, which I now do every year around Christmas. It's a great way to bookend a year, as we always try to visit a lot of friends and family during the break. The SO and I made some plans for the future the other day. We've already discussed before that we want to buy our own home sometime, but we decided to actually start searching for real in the new year, instead of some abstract time in the future. Talking about a house meant we talked about registered partnership and/or taking a knee...so that may also be a thing in the next few years. :)
I took a break from my day job to work the side hustle this morning on a video shoot. I'm realizing that most of my gear is out of date, lacking in features, and just... tired. Lots of dead/dying batteries. Lights that don't really cut it any more. It's time for me to stop doing the side hustle or reinvest. I have the luxury of not doing it anymore (and have for a few years - hence the aging gear). And it has me wondering if it's something I enjoy anymore.
Ugh. Yeah. I finally decided to let all my film stuff go - darkroom, camera, lights - and it turns out none of it had any value any more. My Nikon and lenses aren't worth the paper box they are in. Can't even give them away. It's hard leaving a fun hobby/side hustle behind, but if it is technology-based, you gotta keep up with the times. And that takes work. And I don't want my hobby to be work. On the other hand, I saw some quote-over-a-photo on Facebook that said something like, "You don't have to be good to enjoy making art. So just make art that makes you happy. You are not a product in competition with other artists... you are doing it for yourself. If it makes you happy, fuck it. Just do it." Or something like that. It's honestly why I still have all these guitars and synths. Am I ever going to write/finish a song? No. But I love playing with this stuff in my music room. So I'm going to keep it all forever! :-)
on darkroom shit I gave my Nikon F5 to my mother pretty much as punishment. Her piece of shit ME super cacked out and she asked for a camera so I got her one NO ONE could use. Primarily because I had a $2800 Nikon F5 that I couldn't give away for $150 because film sucks. I went to an asset management course in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Five where the guy running it said "let's face it - at this point film is an alternative process." He wasn't wrong. It'd be another few years before all the hipsters and their tedious low-fi bullshit showed up but it was the point where who cares. My phone is higher resolution than my Canon. I'll replace it one of these days because (1) it's fun (2) I'm good at it but right now everyone is debating the death of mirrors and despite both Nikon and Canon swearing they'd never change their lens mounts they've both done it twice since then and I don't need to spend the money now. But I mean... I remember when you had to bathe your film in toxic gas for an hour to get it to respond well enough for astrophotography and now? That thing in your pocket is basically a neutrino detector with a phone number. I bought increasingly better gear because the limiting factor on my enjoyment was the gear. It's why I've never bought a Sony despite the fact that Alphas rip ass from an imaging standpoint - they suck to work with. I bought an Eos 5D because it was the only full-frame you could get for less than $8k but that's no longer true. You can rent. Figure out what you like. Figure out how you want to do it and then decide what it's worth to you. I'm halfway to going back to a Samsung phone 'cuz it was a better camera than my iPhone is."You don't have to be good to enjoy making art. So just make art that makes you happy. You are not a product in competition with other artists... you are doing it for yourself. If it makes you happy, fuck it. Just do it."
I burned out my Pro Tools PC protein folding to try and cure COVID in May 2020. Then my DK Jellyfish died. Then my surround controller died. Then the crossover in my subwoofer died. I hadn't gotten any post work in like a year anyway because nobody's getting any post work because everyone is a cheap prick who would rather overwork their editor into doing a shitty job since Netflix doesn't pay you anyway. So it's like, the obvious thing is to fold it all up and throw it all away because I'm fucking done, the industry is fucking done, what's the fucking point, my pulse ox was like 84 and I was lucky to be alive and we're all doomed who fucking cares. I bought another goddamn Jellyfish. I bought another goddamn motherboard. I bought another goddamn chip. And fuck you I bought seventeen faders' worth. I've got three goddamn Kindle Fires that do nothing but show me more Pro Tools. Prolly spent $8k just to not be goddamn obsolete. I've got a full location sound rig in the garage, too. Like three mixers, four channels of wireless, decent boom pole, 416, Sound Devices, all that shit. And you know what? I'll hang onto it because who knows but if I never use it again I'm not gonna care. Only reason I have it is it's better than anything I can rent. 'cuz things are so shitty up here that my throwaway gear nobody wants is better than you can get within a thousand miles. I guess what I'm saying? Is I made that choice twice in the past eighteen months, and I went two different ways. I don't regret reupping the post shit. I'm using it again, and it's hella more fun.
I am traveling for the holidays. We are hitting two omicron hotspots; DC and London. We are all vaxed up but still, a bit sketch. We will mask up and sanitize and avoid anything indoors. We are staying in Airbnb’s, not hotels. Hopefully we come through without infection. It’s not the illness so much as the inconvenience of quarantine I fear. I’m going to see my siblings and their families. I’m excited for this. My mom and dad are not coming. My mom refuses to get vaccinated which has caused some strife. My father is fully vaxed. My brother and his wife recently had their first daughter. My dad got to meet her. I just can’t believe my mom is choosing conspiracies over meeting her granddaughter. It’s sad. I, like all of you I suppose, am so tired of covid. All things said, it’s been a great year though. I am fortunate beyond belief and Forever Labs is doing quite well. Happy new year to you all. I remain very grateful that Hubski and, more importantly, the Hubski community still exists. Onward!
It's a control play. It's her way of telling herself "He's still my little boy." Not healthy, not desirable, not beneficial, not gonna change." Going through your shit and throwing your stuff away and tweaking your nose about every little thing is her way of reassuring herself that she's still in charge of you, that she still has dominion over your life, and that she doesn't need to focus on her own shit, live her own life, do something for herself. We judge ourselves by our peers and if our peers are doing worse than us, we are doing better. If you can get the friend who moved out of town who's trying to make something of himself take the shitty job you recommended to him, you are demonstrably better than that guy and don't need to feel bad about never going to college. You have reframed your worldview around a more sophisticated set of inputs and outputs. In doing so, you have rejected the dogma they still accept. My father got into a shouting match with me once because I refused to say that Republicans are 100% evil by definition. The observation that traditional Republican ideas are not inherently evil, they have just been applied by opportunists to damage the country at large was utterly unacceptable to him; the original sin of Republicanism is to not be Democratic and any analysis beyond that is a betrayal of the ideas he "raised me on." You are staying in a small town that excuses itself from growing larger by keeping you small. I know it well. There are good people there. You're even related to some. But you are of an age where they can no longer hide their deficiencies from you, nor can they mask their needs. Most of us stop growing at some point. We don't notice until we see others who haven't. You are currently renegotiating your home: your every comment above is you going "what am I, seventeen?" as everyone around you goes "are you still seventeen?" Because if everyone can agree you're seventeen no one has to confront uncomfortable truths such as "I sell auto parts for a living, this is my life now." It would have little effect if you were confident in your life path and future. They would have to acknowledge that you are someone new. They would pull away and become distant because ultimately, you changed and they didn't. Your relationship with your mother would become more polite and less codependent. But you're currently reevaluating your identity AND THEY ARE GOING TO HELP.So you basically have one of two options. Either ignore it, to keep the peace. Or get mad. I've chosen the first option because that's what my brother does. And I've had countless arguments and it's tiring and never goes anywhere and I'll be accused of ruining Christmas.
One of them even had the audacity to message me trying to build up my ego saying "I'm talking to the man that made me the man I am today."
It's a total mess, and part of the reason I seem to have largely retreated from the hippie ideals of my youth. Things are a lot more contingent on money, education, self-discipline, and sheer effort than they are simply believing in the right ideas or telepathically sending love to others. And they called me every name in the book. Sociopath. Narcissist. Yada yada yada.
You'll always be your mother's child in her eyes. Even when you're a full-blown parent and grandparent in your own right. As an adult you just have more autonomy to define the terms of the relationship with your parents, but you won't be able to change who they are.I'd like to believe I'm not the same person I was 5 or 10 years ago
Do I have much motivation to work this week and next week? Nope! Is it going to be cold as shit in the lowlands next week? Yep! Could this mean great ice climbing conditions? Absolutely! I am wondering though, how infrastructure out here holds in a prolonged cold-snap around the Puget Sound...
Welp. Christmas is canceled. It was going to be small anyway - just my immediate family, my wife, and my brother-from-another-mother's small family of him, wife, and son; seven people, total. But now, with Omicron wrecking havoc on my county, it's all off. Dad is 85 and frail. Sister works in senior care. Mom is 75 and dealing with recovery and additional surgeries due to breast cancer, and her next surgery is VERY important and scheduled for Jan 4. ANY glimpse of any sickness before then, and her surgery gets rescheduled out several MONTHS (assuming there are even any beds left after Omicron spikes after Xmas), and she can't sleep at night due to the current phase she is in her healing journey. The sooner the surgery, the sooner she can sleep at night. Plus, she is effectively my Dad's full-time caregiver, since he is frail and often his brain is not firing on all cylinders. She's tired and vulnerable and afraid and finally had to make the Hard Call yesterday. (Two days after a car accident - not her fault - that totaled her car.) Wife and I are fully vaxxed and boosted, and have fresh negative COVID tests from yesterday. But we will go over to Mom/Dad/Sister's house on Friday for a quick, masked-up visit, then go home. Christmas morning we will visit again, do presents (masked), and leave again. This way we get a small amount of Christmas, at least. None of us are the least part religious. It has never been a part of our life. But our family is known for its parties. We do get-togethers REALLY well. So the holiday season has always been very festive, full of love and generosity, and bringing in all our "orphaned" friends who can't be with their families for various reasons. This year, we will have none of that. And it is hard to let go of it. Both my sister and mom are bereft. After doing the math, I suspect May 2024 is when my wife and I will come fully out of hibernation. The hyper-infectivity of the Omicron variant will spawn at least two new - and worse - variants. That's just simple virus statistics, since Omicron doesn't care if the host dies, because it does all its work spreading in the first 2-3 days, and people don't die from it for weeks. So the question is not IF a more deadly variant comes out, but WHEN. And the timing of Omicron over Christmas is the perfect storm to spawn the truly yucky variant. Hopefully they will be able to re-engineer the monoclonal antibodies to recognize the new spike protein of the omicron variant, so more people will recover from Omicron. But that research and work will be made moot by the more deadly variant that has yet to raise its ugly head. That cycle will follow the same cycles the previous variants have, with six months of chaos before three months of relative calm once the science catches up... and the loosening of restrictions will instantly spawn the next variant. However, from there I think we finally will have the upper hand. Vaccines and treatments will have a range of spike protein variants to target, and some clever dick will find another characteristic to target in ALL covid variants, so vaccines and treatments can be way more effective. Around mid-2023 covid will become another flu, because we will have a full panel of preventatives and treatments to deal with it, and the dumbest 6.2m people will have died, eliminating their genes from the collective pool. By late 2023, the adventurous (not me) will venture out into the light again. By spring 2024, I figure, me and mine will be comfortable returning to some sort of normalcy... although that won't be like life was in the past. That time is gone. A new normal will be found and tacitly agreed upon by the masses, and we will emerge, blinking, into the bright sunlight of a new day. Heh. One can hope. But hope is not a thing I place a lot of value on right now.
I've been optimistic at every turn in the pandemic, and basically been proven wrong at every turn, but the news out of South Africa today is that Omicron cases are falling. It hasn't even been a month since identification and they're on the other side of it. Maybe it's a blip, but hopefully it's a harbinger. My wife and I got in an argument about what to do for Christmas last night. I basically said, "Life isn't risk free." And she basically said, "Fuck you I don't want to accidentally kill our parents." Good points, all! One of these days by pure chance my rosy prediction is going to come true.
I've been getting back to my morning swim routine again. It can be so hard to drag myself to the pool at 5:30 am, but I always leave the pool feeling like a million dollars. I'm starting to feel revived after my summer of events, finally. Swimming is feeling better, and running is feeling better. Who has suggestions for improving sleep? I've been cutting caffeine, and I'm taking a supplement that seems to help that has a little melatonin (3 mg I think) and some other stuff like valerian root, and it seems to help me get to sleep faster. I still often wake up an hour or two early, though. Partly that's my cat wanting to start the day to play and eat, but it isn't all him. I'm trying to be better about using my phone in bed with some success. Should I be setting an alarm 30-60 minutes before bed and turning off all screens?
Matthew Walkers' (seriously flawed, I have to confess) book hammered home the point to me that almost any form of light at night can have a measurable impact on your ability to fall asleep and on your sleep cycle. I dim the lights at home 1-3 hours before I go to bed, if they're not dimmed already (which most are). I turn off lights up to an hour before I go to bed which triggers my brain to become sleepy. And minimal brightness just before bed of any screen I still interact with. We've also adopted the habit of never allowing our phone in the bedroom. Bed is the place to sleep, not another place to scroll on your phone. Another thing that helps me go to sleep, is to make sure I don't spend all day/evening distracted or focused on things. It helps me sleep faster when I allow my brain to meander and think a bunch of thoughts during the day, instead of putting on stuff to listen to or watch or do all day long.
Pick three songs. Not fight songs, not workout songs, but not lullabies. Just listen to 'em. Stare at a visualizer if you want? But no browsing, no reading. Just listen and wander. Brush your teeth and go to bed. No screens, no books. Just go to bed. Trust the reset process.
Probably. It won't hurt. I find it helpful to have an attractive substitute like a paper book that replaces the usual bedtime phone scrolling. I'd also suggest trying to adjust your lighting at different times of day. Bright, cool light is better for productivity, but you should switch to warmer (2700K) lighting at about 5 PM to help your circadian rhythm. Especially if you're getting up to swim that early!Should I be setting an alarm 30-60 minutes before bed and turning off all screens?
It's clearly the cats fault! I notice a difference when I turn screens and electronics off before bed. Doing a bit of mild exercise or stretching about an hour before bed helps too, even if it's just 5 minutes worth.
It definitely is the cat's fault sometimes. I've been trying to make a point of kind of ignoring him at least for two minutes when I get up in the morning. Every day is like Christmas to him because he gets to play and have breakfast which are his two favorite things! So when he's up he wants me up, like a kid ready to open presents. I'm hoping I can disassociate getting up with immediate play. I'll try the screens thing. I'd heard that, and it would be good for me to read a bit more, too.