Category Archives: personal

Celebrations and Death

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I’ve been dealing with a lot of death lately. And while it’s just a part of life, it sure does start to make one think after awhile. So I’m using my birthday as processing time, as I am wont to do. I’m test running my death infrastructure for my birthday this year, and requesting notes from folks.

If you can see this message, it’s because I would want you to be aware of when I die. THIS IS ONLY A TEST — I am fine, everything is good, I’m just an elder goth now and I like to plan everything, even death. 

This is an experiment with bureaucracy and documentation. As you know, I love LARPing Serious Business. I am doing a test run of the systems that would announce my death to the many beautiful communities I’ve had the honor of being a part of. If it was logistically difficult to get this message, when you’d want to get it, let’s improve that process — reach out. If it was emotionally hard for you to get this message, this event is probably not for you, and I’d love to see you in another context some other time soon.

On April 18th at 16:30 PT / 19:30 ET, I’m hosting a time to talk about preparing for death (not dying — they’re different. We’ll talk about ceasing to exist, not how you want to be treated while going through a however-long process of getting there). We’ll take about an hour to talk through digital estate planning (a passion of mine), and then we’ll also have some time to talk about any feelings folks might have had about thinking about death. We’ll be at this link at that time.

Selfishly this year, I’d also love notes about what we mean to each other. One of the things that’s come up time and again at the wakes I’ve been attending is wishing to have said some things before the option was no longer there. Let’s say those things to each other. I’m not looking to be shrouded or to do a mock service, I’m looking for open and honest views of who we are together. Roasting, power points, and poetry all lovingly accepted. Email to me, please, so I can label and revisit.

You do not have to do both, or either, if they’re not your cup of tea.

If you would prefer to learn about my death from an email instead of a social media post, please get me your email address and I’ll add you to the mailing list. That will be posted to before social media posts go up.

Looking forward to being inappropriately morbid with you. 

On not being enough

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The world has been offering ample opportunities to test my newfound comfort with being uncertain about if I’m “enough,” if I’m “adding value,” etc.

There’s this thing my favorite old therapist introduced me to, of “unanswerable questions.” It’s like.. no matter how much data you get about people loving you, you’re still like “guess we’ll never know if I’m lovable or not.” Mine has long been about if I’m bringing value or not, which has put me at risk of abusive relationships as I’m easy to tear down in that way. But I’ve been working hard on therapy and on self-love, and I think I’ve come a pretty long way on this front in recent years.

My first glimpse at doing better at this was getting feedback while at Apple that I was successfully selecting which things to half-ass and which things to full-ass. After all, we can’t get all the things done all the time, and some things only need some of our attention. Sometimes, our full attention can actually be detrimental to a project, and can inhibit others’ ability to grow.

But on Sunday February 15th, I had two things happen, either of which might have previously completely destroyed me, and now I’m just kind of fine with both having happened on the same day.

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So you want your own surveillance…

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Mark wrote up this piece that is relevant to our neighborhood, but didn’t have a good spot to post it, so we’re sticking it here.

Very understandable. I had a random person walk into my backyard a few months ago, uninvited and unwelcome. That made my family want a little more visibility into our home when we were not there or when our kids were home by themselves. So I’m with you. Let’s get cameras. There are so many cameras, and systems, and oh my! What to do?

Considerations

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Coming from a family of alcoholics (4 months in)

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This is the second of three checkins during 6 months of not drinking. The first was written 2 months in, this is being written 4 months in.

Things that have changed since last checkin

I’m pretty happy just not drinking. Sure, there are times and days that it would be really nice to crack open a cold cider, but I’m actually doing pretty well not drinking. The bees mentioned in the first post have subsided in most cases, and been dealt with in other ways for the other times. It’s nice.

Mother in law found a great NA wine that doesn’t just taste like fruit juice. It’s still not good wine, but it is tolerable for a mild wine snob to have a treat.

The data

Overall, I’m getting more of what I want out of not drinking. While this data is skewed because I knew I wasn’t getting everything I wanted out of my relationship to alcohol before this experiment, it’s still wild to see the move from 15 to 40% in a positive experience, and to even see a “strongly positive” experience show up a few times.

Image is described in blog post above
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The value of thoughts

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I have this sweetie who also adores sci-fi books. We were on a bike ride at some point, and he asks if I’ve read There is No Antimemetics Division. I reply that I have not, and he offers to give me his copy (he knows I prefer reading paper copies in bed even though I love a good Creative Commons story even more, and self-published copies are also a way to support the author). I say yes. I read it, it’s delightful, I find the ending a bit flat because it’s antithetical to how the rest of the book went, BUT it’s still very good and I’m glad I read it. I stick it somewhere as a book I like enough to want to share with other folks if they spot it.

I suggest Reed also read it. He picks it up and likes it so much he also gets a copy for his brother for Christmas. The new copy is different, a hardback, and the main character’s name seems to have changed. That’s ok, sometimes there are further editions of things, must meant the author is doing well.

Reed comes to me and says “hey do you still have your copy?” and I reply that yet I do unless I stuck it in the LFL. He tells me it’s now worth $500. Apparently the bitcoin bros have found out about it and want copies of the first self-published run.

Willow's new albatross, a paperback copy of There Is No Antimemetics Division, now somehow kept in a plastic bag.

Now, I have some Feelings on this. Mainly that it’s under Creative Commons and so you can just get the actual words for free, and so wanting this particular printed version is pure status signaling, which is not a thing I think you should be able to be able to come to via money. I’m a goth punk kid from the Midwest where people didn’t even WANT to pretend to be like us, who then moved to bigger cities where having stuck to that background made you “cool” and so there were lots of folks adopting the trappings without the values alignment (history is something you can always build).

But also, I’m doing a bunch of stuff in my neighborhood out of my own pocket and I don’t like asking my neighbors to throw in to help cover the costs, and this book could now cover nearly all of the radios I just got for all of us. And that would be nice, and it’s ridiculous to throw money at something that’s literally freely available.

So I’ve offered to give the copy back to the sweetie who gave it to me. Philosophy is not my favorite place to be trapped.

2025 in review

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I’ve been doing these a long time, you can read about the years since 2015 if so desired. These are inspired by Tilde, who has taught me that it can be a Good Thing to remember what the last year has been like. Many of the headers in this post are based on my goals for 2025.

I’ve been tracking general activity via LifeCycle for quite a few years now, but beginning during medical leave this year I also started tracking my time just to not feel like it was slipping away into the ether. Some of that time this year (particularly at home as well as at work and coffee shops) can be further broken down as follows. I did not track activities outside of the house (mostly covered by LifeCycle) nor relaxing time in the house because that way lies madness for me.

A donut chart with kiddo time at 37%; then work and side projects each in the teens and socializing at 9%, then the rest trailing below.

You’ll also notice a new chart style this year — I moved my life data out of Google Sheets and into Airtable. It’s given me a bunch of fun insights, including this tidbit.

The phrase for this year was empathy without responsibility. This has really been front and center for me, resulting in more effective local organizing within the context of The World On Fire, dealing with memory and cognition issues effectively, having a more balanced approach to job hunting, and to generally being more grounded in impact rather than anxiety. More in this blog post.

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Coming from a family of alcoholics (2 months in)

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I am full of bees, and have long been as productive and engaged as I am in order to help quell those bees. Over the years, I’ve tried having nonproductive hobbies, meditation, medication, and all sorts of other things to quell the bees.

Reed and I had a conversation in October of 2025 about my drinking. I had gotten it to what I thought was a good homeostasis — 1-3 ciders 5x/week or so. Not more than most Europeans drink. But Reed was still interested in if I was getting what I wanted out of it for three reasons, which I reflect on below during my period of not drinking (for however long that is). I have decided to start with 6 months off, at which point we’ll check back in on if we’re getting what we want out of it. I’ve decided to blog about it at the 2, 4, and 6 month markers at least.

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December Joy : Snow storm!

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You may remember from back in February, Locke and I went to NYC to meet up with my family to spend some time with them. Things have been tender since a falling out a year or three ago, but we’re rebuilding confidence with each other. We have weekly calls again, and have been trying to meet up. I asked my parents if they’d like a wintertime visit, and we arranged just after Thanksgiving. I was nervous, but knew it would be worth the investment.

Not only was time with grandma and grandpa much easier, but we also got a snow storm!

Snow map showing 1-6 inches across my area of Indiana.

As the storm kicked off, Locke and I made our way to a Rural King (yes, really) to try to get him some snow clothes. Queue my being dressed as “clearly not from here” in a subtly rainbow long wool coat, subtly rainbow jeans, plus black stompy boots waiting patiently while my child has a meltdown on the floor screaming about how “boring” all the boots and clothing there are. The looks. Admittedly we were underslept and jet lagged from the travel, but they don’t know that. We finally picked out some too-big boots that were at least purple and a black jacket. We had to go to the nearby Carhart dealer to get snow bibs in his size. Yes, there’s a Carhart dealer. So now my child, he looks like a farmer. But at least he can go into the snow!

Locke looking pleased with himself in camo snow bibs and magenta sweater.
Locke making a snow angel
Grandpa dragging Locke around the flat yard on an orange plastic sled. Everything is covered in snow.

But Northern Indiana, you see, is very flat. So grandpa and I took turns dragging Locke around the yard on a sled so he could get some of the experience. The next door neighbors have a tiinnnny hill in their yard that’s about 3 feet tall and 10 feet long. They invited us over! So Locke got to have a tiny sledding experience.

So that was pretty dang joyful. Then we went inside and sat by the fire and read books, which is The Main Thing My Family Does, so I was glad to share that with Locke as well.

November Joy : a very funny ring

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When Reed and I were talking about combining our lives, he made it clear that if we were going to have a kid, he wanted to get married. I wanted to have some complex legal arrangement we could welcome more people into over time as equals if it made sense, but he said that was Too Much and could we please just do this one thing normally. Fine.

We got married back in 2019, and I started off with a family heirloom ring his grandfather had. Which I lost about 4 months later because I was climbing all the time and taking rings on and off (mostly off). Whoops and yikes. Reed bought me a simple gold band from Costco and told me I could lose as many of those as I wanted, within reason.

It’s been about 6 years since then, and I’ve kept track of the same ring the whole time. I think I’m ready for a Big Boy ring again! But this time, I want it to fit my aesthetic more closely. I also wanted to celebrate getting a new job, and this seemed like a nice way to do that.

So Reed starts Doing His Research Thing, and finds that there is indeed an entire market dedicated to simple black or grey rings with blue highlights. Do you want to guess where these bad boys come from?

A dark grey ring with a cobalt blue inside that very slightly shows around the edge.
Not the ring I ended up with, but similar

They’re masculine rings for cop spouses. They’re thin blue line rings. So now I’m very joyfully wearing this thing that is blatantly flagging for absolutely the wrong thing, and I am delighted that if I ever get booked for my activism I might cause a lot of extra confusion. And, it’s spot on for my style!

But then, I didn’t want to give a cop ring website money, so Reed kept doing research and found enough water marks on enough photos like the one above to figure out all of these come from one manufacturer in China. So it also only cost like $40! So now I get to have backups, too.