Category Archives: personal

Living honestly

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I’ve got the resources, so here’s how I live as honestly as I can in this late-stage-capitalism hellscape. Not a judgement on whatever setup works for you, just a nudge to see where you can be more in alignment with your goals and ethics.

Side projects – since always

Despite being employed in the private sector for 40+ hours a week, plus having a toddler and robust local organizing life, I have been dedicated to seeing meaningful side projects through. Right now, that’s working on getting a book about sex workers and kinksters fulfilled (do you know anyone who does fulfillment, btw??) shipped out, and working on a disaster response zine. I get a moment here and there to push them forward, and spend my Sunday mornings working on these. They are of and by my community, and I will do my part in logistics and some writing. I have always prided myself of being the person in the group of artists who gets rewards shipped, why would that change now?

No car – since 2008

While facilitated by living in the hearts of cities for most of that time, since 2021, I’ve lived in the suburbs. However, I think cars (and specifically, the lengths we go to for car infrastructure) are a big part of what have destroyed America and our local communities. I refuse to partake. Even having a child, I still refuse. We will take him to the ER in our cargo bike, thank you very much. Reed and I were even downed on my motorcycle when I was 9 weeks pregnant, and I hold to this: the problem is not me being outside the vehicle and prone to damage, it is the person operating a 2+ tonne murder machine while stressed and/or looking at their goddamn phone.

I have the luxury of a shuttle to/from work the 3 days I go in. But also, we picked where we were willing to live and work based on a setup availability like this. And yes, I sometimes take a Lyft or borrow a car from a neighbor. We still live in this (car-centric) world, after all. But I do make a conscious effort to not be in cars.

Eating less meat, and locally sourced food – this year

When Reed was able to go off keto, the first thing I asked was if we could eat less meat. He is now totally invested in researching the best places to get our eggs etc from, and has the space to go to the farmers’ markets. Truly, having extra income for local supplies and a house husband who hyper fixates on feeding the family good food is the absolute best and I’m mostly just along for the ride here. We even got a rice cooker and I can pull off a pretty good tofu stir fry! Pretty good for this protein-shake-consuming food-unit-optimizer!

Buying locally – since 2022

I hate Amazon, and also it’s so convenient. I still order from them sometimes. However, whenever possible, I try to buy locally, even when it’s a pain. I’ve found a local bike shop and a local book shop that I adore and am willing to suffer the inconvenience and slightly higher prices for. Plus, deep discussion whenever I go in about how our neighborhoods are doing and how to support each other! And, not making Bezos richer.

Non-main services – this year

I’ve been off Facebook since 2011, and left Twitter when Elon Musk took over. I’m on Mastodon, but frankly I’ve been getting way more into group chats on Signal, Slack, and Discord grown organically from people meeting each other in person. I miss the heydays of Twitter, but doomscrolling just got to to be too much. Although now I might have to re-join Facebook to deal with local politic stuff. Blah.

So other ground I’m trying to figure out here instead is search (using Kagi to great success) and a recent switch to Proton for mail (and calendar?). This has been some lifting to get things set up, but I have friends who are well acquainted with this setup and have been willing to help me through the process when I get stuck (despite very good documentation). We’ll see how far down this hole I go.

What’s next?

I’ll keep looking for ways to live honestly that I have capacity to support. Again, no judgement in any of this. We all have different constraints and goals. The only pressure here is to live intentionally. 💙

A normal day

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I want to get this down. I want to cherish each of these before things get gnarly again in January. I’ve created a very good routine for myself, and I want to celebrate it. I want to remember what Normal looked like, because I’m willing to fight for it. I’m willing to die on my goddamn porch for this and the neighborhood we’re a part of. I love the East Bay and the life I have here.

This is a boring post, but I lead a beautifully suburban life at this point, and I like that my life is boring.

Monday

I wake up around 6a and make myself some decaf quietly, with doors closed, so as not to wake up Reed. Holiday is under foot, North is cuddling Reed. Locke’s yellow light clock won’t indicate it’s ok to be out of bed until 7, at which point he plays quietly until the light turns green at 7:30. I check in on work to see what the week has in store, and knock out a few tasks to get things in order, and take the cats through their morning routine (play outside, scoop litterbox, feed). Between 7:30 and 8, I see Locke and Reed a bit while they do morning things, and I get myself in order for the work day.

At 8, I ride my bike for 15 minutes to the shuttle, hang out with my shuttle buddies in line, and then do email and Slack and meeting prep for the ~90 minute shuttle ride. I work for 5 hours with 1ish hour for lunch from Apple Park, focused on securing our users’ devices from state sponsored attacks and intimate partner surveillance alike. I take an hour away from my desk to pick up heavy things and set them down again gently. Then I spend 90 on the shuttle debriefing from meetings and doing focus work, ride my bike 15 minutes home, and then have dinner with Locke and Reed.

I read something relatively light in bed and fall asleep by 9p.

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Looking in the mirror after body horror

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I was pregnant as an agender person, and it was hard, but it didn’t destroy me.

The tenses in this one are a doozy. I use “breast” in here a lot as I believe it’s already a gender-neutral term.

Before being pregnant, I was pretty ok with my body shape. My breasts were small enough to bind but also present enough to wear cute dresses in. My hips were present if I chose to accentuate them, but also disappeared in men’s style clothing.

I got misgendered my entire pregnancy by medical professionals. They even had my pronouns in their system! But calling people “mama” all day is a hard habit to break, and it happened all. the. time.

Willow about 7 months pregnant in front of a mirror, swollen

And also — my breasts grew 2 cup sizes. My hips expanded. Not as much as they might have if Locke had completed his damn pregnancy, but still. My fairly androgynous figure was gone. I couldn’t bind anymore. After pregnancy, it wasn’t just medical professionals that were seeing me as femme, based on my newly acquired hourglass figure. I was Uncomfortable. I was hiding in bland clothing. I couldn’t look at myself in a mirror. I shied away from sexy times. I was, and I mean this with all the dark humor in the world, “not feeling myself.”

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Pablo

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I was going to have lunch with Pablo and Janot in two weeks.

I met Pablo through John Crowley, as a part of the Boston area humanitarian and disaster response gang. He was instantaneously one of my favorite people – intense, warm, and utterly fixated on making things Better. He had somehow landed a gig with the International Red Cross Red Crescent teaching about climate science and probability through game mechanics.

He taught me that I didn’t need to be so serious in my approaches. He taught me people are willing to be vulnerable if you provide them some scaffolding and simply ask them to dive in, assuring them that uncertainty is a part of all that we do and that not knowing how to play the game couldn’t prevent you from playing it.

He helped me, the anxious, risk-averse, hermit that I am, not only take risks, but ask others to do so as well, and to make the whole thing playful. Of COURSE you strike out sometimes, that’s how probability works. Of COURSE it’s not a reflection on your moral character when you strike out in a game or on a project, that just means you’re trying new things.

He died unexpectedly weekend before last. There are now nearly 500 of us in a wide-ranging international WhatsApp group trading stories of how he touched us and changed the world for the better.

For me, there are four main times that stand out.

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Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) for the scientifically inclined

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As mentioned in this post back in April, I’ve been doing Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy, or KAP. While it started as a way to address birthing parent trauma, it has rapidly turned into a powerful tool for me. My anxiety levels are way lower, I’m having difficult conversations at home and at work with more confidence, and I feel more engaged in life in general. You can even tell my how much more often I’m blogging that I’m feeling myself again. This is so effective for me that I wanted to share my setup as a person mostly invested in science, as the KAP practice tends to be quite woo.

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A subtweet from a small town queer

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So, I help produce an art and music campout that happens in California every summer. I’m on the People team (dealing with conflict, consent violations, etc) and am a general coordinator for the overall event. I’ve done this on and off for about 5 years of the 18 years it’s been running. And after this year, I have to say: are the straights and younguns ok? This entire entry is a subtweet to both straight people and young people who seem to think they can’t be in community with their exes.

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Swim out of the Fishbowl

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This is part of a series on my Santa Perpetua tattoos. You can read the rest in the tattoo category on this blog.

The next one came up about one of my great loves, made manifest in a phase of my life. I have always loved the concept of liminal1 space. I first became aware of it as a concept at the Ann Arbor Film Festival2, spending 3 minutes with the audience watching a minute hand move from just after one marker to just before another on a watch face, the movement so slow it was imperceptible until they showed where it had started. The idea of being between things intrigued me. I cherished it when traveling constantly, always in airports and rarely anywhere at all. It was good to have a name for a space that can be so exhausting when I was between work, before I had realized that work didn’t need to be my identity.

When Reed and I started trying to get pregnant, I realized the roller coaster of waiting, then not knowing, and then of one moment of clarity followed by the same cycle every month might break me. Given how much Santa Perpetua and I had talked about liminal space in previous rounds, I figured it was time to go all-in on that topic.

Willow rides a bike. Towards the top of their left arm is a circle with the numbers 39 40 on it, a city scape above it, and a forest with a ship below it. Blue water color streaks down the arm, with numbers alongside it, down to the wrist. At the wrist is a cute little fish.
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Killing ants

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This is part of a series on my Santa Perpetua tattoos. You can read the rest in the tattoo category on this blog.

Now that Santa Perpetua and I had started our collaboration and set up for future work, it was time to dig in and really explore some existential angst. The next one was about my political ideology, the tension I feel behind nearly every act I take, and was one of the originating conversations behind Jigsaw Renaissance1. And that is – what is the responsibility of the individual, and what is the responsibility of society? When one is out of alignment with the other, which course corrects, how, and how much? If they’re both doing ok, should more attention and intent be paid to further progressing the individual or society? I tend to lean towards societal progress, but I also deeply respect and acknowledge individual autonomy and inclusion in that as necessary but insufficient.

Tilde and Willow's right thighs are nestled together, with Tilde's tattoo of purples and greens with a mirrored person as posable figure on one side and a more realistic human on the other. Behind the realistic person, water color and shapes. Beyond the model, simpler shapes and more contained colors. On Willow's thigh, a circle surrounds two children poking at an ant hill. Outside the circle, a child's sillouette looks at plants in orbit. Another small circle holds an ant. There is blue and black water color around it all.
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My “I 💙 Mom” tattoo

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This is part of a series on my Santa Perpetua tattoos. You can read the rest in the tattoo category on this blog.

I loved my first tattoo from Santa Perpetua so much I knew I wanted to get more, and that we had just started a long journey together1. So the next thing I wanted to do was to find a way to find a cohesive visual story across my existing tattoos, to pull the new style in with. This felt like a mildly bold thing to ask a tattooist to do – connect their work to existing work, without a live collaboration with the other artist(s).

This is my shortest entry in this series because it is the most private one for me.

Looking at Willow's back, reflected in a mirror. We see blue water color tattoos with a bit of purple, plus some black circuit lines going to the ASCII hex code already on their back. There is some blue hardy on their shoulders from run-off during a bike ride.
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