Emchap's Shit from the Internet 02/3/21 🍠
I’ve been trying a little bit, over the last week, to see what my life might be like if I divorced myself from my phone. I haven’t descended into heavy drinking in quarantine, I’ve managed to maintain a mostly regular yoga habit, I’m playing on easy mode generally.
But, I am very online at the best of times, and I’d realized that the confluence of All Of This was causing me to spend hours and hours and hours on Twitter, on my phone, while half-watching bad TV. I was watching things where I retained no information about them, and there was a slightly frightening moment of wondering whether my weed consumption had buffed all the ridges of my brain smooth before I realized I hadn’t actually watched TV that I was fully paying attention to for two months.
Plus, as has been noted here and elsewhere, I was really beginning to reassess my relationship with Twitter. Twitter’s always been a weird place anyway, but during the pandemic it has maxed out into 100% Discourse hot takes while everyone chews on each other like unfed wolves, and the replies I was getting were annoying enough that I was always frustrated, and I figured that piping that into my brain for 16 hours a day was probably bad, and has almost certainly made me a worse person. Starting to read it literally 30 seconds after I woke up was not good for me.
So, I bought a real alarm clock (one of the ones with the sunrise setting) so that I can charge the phone away from my bedroom. (Not outside of it, because my house is small, but you know. Not two feet away from my head.) I’ve been trying to spend evenings with my phone in a different room than me. I read a whole-ass book over the weekend. I disabled all of the push notifications except for messaging apps.
Obviously I’m still on my phone a ton, and my day job is just staring at slightly larger screens, none of this is like a Wholesome Life. But it’s been nice to try to find ways to focus on one thing at a time, at least. That feels like it’s probably better for me.
Shit to read
A charming Catherine Cohen interview.
Every single piece on women of color and employment during the pandemic is grim, but this one particularly struck me.
I loved this apartment tour.
Just for those playing along at home, things are bad in LA.
Not news to anyone but a reminder of the narrow slice of mental illness that mental illness campaigns encompass.
It was an avalanche.
Just absolutely deranged use of regexes + Google Sheets, I love it.
I want a different life. My sister and I were talking about this, that obviously there’s no good time to lose 2 years of your life to a pandemic, but that it feels so particularly unfair for those 16-35, which encompasses us both. I turn 30 in six weeks as I have probably mentioned 800 times here and I am still so completely furious about it.
This series of dumb posts makes me laugh every time.
Shit to eat
Remember halfway through winter that you like oatmeal.
It’s one of those weird adulthood hormone changes; as a kid you could not stand it and as an adult it’s fine.
During a very long meeting where your participation is not required, take yourself and your wireless headphones into the kitchen.
Look up the ratios on the oat can like you haven’t made oatmeal 100 times, as if they might have changed.
Put a half cup of oats and a cup of water or milk or a mix and a pinch of salt into a pot. Heat it over medium until it is oatmeal.
Pour it into a bowl, and top with brown sugar, and coconut, and frozen blueberries.
Take a photo before returning to your desk to stir it all up and eat your nourishing gruel.
Shit to listen to
The cat in heat outside your house who will not for a single possible moment shut the fuck up no matter how much you wish she would.
Shit to buy
This ring, which is pretty.
Non-CMBYN candle For Men that smells like coffee and has a crackly wick.