Emchap's Shit from the Internet 10/21/20 š
I remember the first year after my mom died, where my thought for every major event was that it was my first birthday/friendās wedding/Christmas/New Year/etc. without her. Iāve not been any less sad on subsequent ones, but the first round of the calendar seemed particularly significant for the same reason the first time you do any new thing is significant.
(It was a bad year.)
I was thinking about this becauseādue to my history of working for mostly-remote tech companies since I was 24āone of the major shaping touchpoints for my years is retreats. Theyāre common at remote companies, and basically consist of the company taking the money it saves on office space, flying everyone to a single location, and letting them wander about and talk to their coworkers face to face and generally form the social bonds and insulation that prevents everyone from wanting to murder everyone else over Jira the rest of the year. Retreats are where you learn your employer has been purchased by Australians and where you learn which people you donāt have any reason to talk to are cool and where you get to discover how tall everyone is or isnāt.
Because of cosmic misfortune, I was in Ireland for a pre-retreat trip right as the pandemic became clearly a Thing for Europe and the US. I had to fly back in a hurry; the trip Iād planned to take with my then-boyfriend was canceled; a heroic last minute virtual option was planned. And of course in March, it seemed like this would be a one-time thing in weird but temporary circumstances.
My current employer does the retreats twice a year, which means that weāre in the middle of our second one of 2020, this time planned from the jump as an all-remote event once we saw the writing on that particular fucked-up pandemic responseās wall. Itās been an okay event so farāour design team sent care packages, which are super cute and contain little individual coffee sachetsābut the fact that Iām still dealing with timezones on top of four teamsā meetings and that Iām still in my house and that I miss travel and my coworkers and hugging another living soul means that itās impossible not to be a little melancholic. Back in March it seemed like surely we would be done by now, surely there would only be one of these that we had to do this way.
But at this point, it seems likely that this will become normal enough that there will be at least a second pair of remote retreats next year, and really considering that just makes me so tired and sad.
Shit to read
Everything is bad in a way that you cannot self care your way away from in the way that term is now used and it is worth reminding myself today that rage and anxiety are reasonable responses to injustice.
I liked this calm little film about being alone.
A good OME interview.
A good response to a letter about a terrible man.
I was someone who worked from home before All This and I so enjoyed this AHP piece about how what weāre doing now isnāt working from home, not even a little bit.
Today in the middle of a workshop for our retreat, I was reminded of this comic about Rat Park, which I have been thinking about every so often for probably a decade at this point.
Shit to eat
In a moment of team spirit, agree to cook cake with your teammates over Zoom at 8 in the morning.
As you make breakfast, put a pot of water on to boil and turn your oven to 375. Grab your laptop. Log into Zoom.
Restart your laptop once you realize that itās not recognizing your internal camera for some reason.
Log back into Zoom.
Into a glass bowl, dump 7 oz dark chocolate and 7 oz butter, cubed up.
Pop it over the now-boiling water, and stir every so often until it becomes liquid. Discover which of your coworkers own microwaves and which donāt.
Take the bowl off the heat and add 250 grams of sugar. Stir until itās dissolved, and then wait a few minutes or (if youāre impatient) put the bowl in the fridge.
Once the bowl is no longer hot enough to cook eggs, crack five into the bowl, one at a time, stirring after each. The batter will look slimy.
Learn from your coworker the slightly startling fact that guinea pigs have 340 degree vision.
Add a tablespoon of flour, which will transform the cake into something much less slimy looking.
Pop it into a well-greased cake pan. I used a 9ā, the recipe called for an 8ā, do what you will.
Cook it for 25 minutes, until the center is only a little unset; leave it to cool on a rack for 15 before inverting on to a plate and re-inverting onto a second one.
You can eat it hot, but itās much better cool.
Enjoy.
(Adapted from this Orangette cake recipe.)
Shit to listen to
Queer people singing hymns about how much Jackie Lacey sucks.
Shit to buy
In a one-woman attempt to bring on fall, Iāve been shopping Poshmark for the pieces I need to make my fall vision board complete. So far: skirts purchased, some re-ups of t-shirts, black joggers, and a sweater coat outstanding.