Category Archives: tidbits

random blips, thoughts, links, shared items

“4-page guide to surviving an authoritarian regime, in graphic form” #LearnFromEurope 

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from twitter:

The COMPLETE 4-page Guide to Surviving an Authoritarian Regime, in graphic form
-With love, your Eastern European friends✌️ #LearnFromEurope

— 🇪🇺Martin Mycielski (@mycielski) January 25, 2017

being away from Facebook

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even just a little bit, cutting back on the number of times I just check, being “away” from Facebook has changed how I feel about it. I knew I didn’t like the way Facebook has crept into every facet of our lives (so many of us, though I do have friends who “don’t do Facebook,” they do exist!). but now, when I “go back to Facebook,” it feels like noise. mostly that’s because Facebook has forced all kinds of garbage onto what I see, but it’s also a product of our chaotic time.

the lesson here for me is to continue the slow weaning process I’ve started.

I’m going to post more freely here, not worrying about whether or not what I write is “share-worthy.” moving away from Facebook seems almost radical at this point, so I’ll keep inching along the road where it’s easier to breathe.

miscellaneous mundanities

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Thing’s I’d post on social media if I was still posting as much on social media as I was a few weeks ago (I’m seeing if I can use Facebook less (as a political act)):

  • My daughters’ schools are both very supportive of LGBTQ+ people. They are both communities where children and teens are exceptionally kind to each other, relative to my experience of children and teens when I was a nanny and/or child/teen myself. I suspect the two are connected. The more children/teens feel free to be who they really are — accepted just as they really are — the less fear leads the social lives of young people which equals more kindness. Just a theory.
  • The qualities I seek most in friendships are: trust that we can and will say “no” to each other, that we can and will ask for help, and that our actions — say, disappearing (not responding to or initiating contact) for weeks at a time — aren’t personal, we want to cause no harm to each other, we care and appreciate each other and don’t have to do any dances to prove it.
  • My concussion symptoms are decreasing at a faster rate than they have been — I’m able to do a lot more and my tired is more the tired of a single and self-employed mother rather than the tired of someone with post-concussion syndrome. I’m not better all the way, for sure, but I can manage the symptoms and learned so many strategies at Goodwill’s Bayside Neuro-Rehab center, I know I’ll just keep getting better and better. My daughters have noticed it and there’s a general air of joy in our home that hasn’t been there for far too long.
  • Today I bought a drink for someone in the Starbucks drive-through line (I was inside) and I loved how that felt. I’ve had strangers buy my drinks before and it’s always lovely. I hope the person gets a little boost of happy from the surprise today.
  • My last Bangor Daily News column will come out next week. I’m desperately sad that I won’t be writing a monthly column for them anymore, especially now that my symptoms are improving and I would be able to do it more easily. But, it’s not that they think I suck, it’s that the newspaper business is a crazy place these days and I’m just one of many casualties.
  • I’m getting a bad headache typing this (it’s the thinking more than anything) so I should’ve stopped two bullet points ago.

:-)