Category Archives: personal

July Joy : Kids at Priceless

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So as I’ve mentioned before, I help out with this medium-sized anticapitalist campout in the woods with lots of music and art. I love it. It also drives me batty.

As one might imagine, a festival that’s been running for 20 years has some Complex Feelings on a few topics. One of those topics is kids. Way back when the crew of friends who threw the event started having one or two grubs emerging, they sat down and had a (really long) discussion. What they arrived at was: Priceless is a festival for adults that Priceless-friendly kids are welcome at. It is up to the adults in their lives to mediate their experience, and no one is to censure themselves or change their behavior just because there are kids present.

Locke in a gnomish pointed straw hat, tiedye shirt, and shorts kneels in front of a circle made of upright sticks in the sand. There are some leaves and a bottle cap in the center of the circle. Floaties and sandals are in the background.

Over the years, the number of kids increased. And the message was a bit lost. A couple years ago, I was on People Team, and multiple people mentioned choosing art or changing their musical acts because of kiddos being present. Others weren’t in the headspace they wanted to be in while there were kids present. So we sat down again for another long conversation about kids at Priceless. And we realized that we were all on board for the original message. Priceless isn’t kid-friendly, but Priceless-friendly kids are welcome. We wrote some new things — refined the child waiver that sets out expectations, and also put together an expectations doc that all attendees can read to level-set.

Estelle and Yulia put together the area called Kidsville this year; and Reed, JoJo (grandma), and I brought Locke to his first Priceless.

We went camping twice this year in anticipation of Priceless — once for one night, and then a follow-up with birthday buddy Liora for two nights. Camping was a smash hit, but we were still nervous to have him at a festival. So much stimulation, so many people, such a bigger area than our usual campground. But we got set up near 3 other families we know well and ended up with a little living room area in addition to the big Kidsville lounge area a short walk away. And Locke LOVED it. I was mostly preoccupied with helping the whole event run, but the rest of the fam swam in the river, and ate pancakes, and dug in the sand.

Willow, Reed, and Locke cuddle on some grass. Willow sits upright in a bikini top with lots of tattoos and signature blue hair. Reed has a pink mohawk and head in Willow's lap. Locke leans against Willow with one leg held up and a smile.

By the end of the event, our reserved kiddo was going up to strangers to ask them to play with him. The noise levels weren’t too much for him! And he did a great job of playing with the other kids. Being in such a high-trust environment was good for all of us. Looking forward to similar experiences in the future.

The secrets we keep

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I now know that saying you work at Apple is like saying you work at the government. Which part matters a lot.

I worked in Security, Engineering, and ARchitecture (SEAR) for the last 5 years as an Engineering Project Manager (EPM). I had a key role in helping Contact Key Verification, Blastdoor, Advanced Data Protection, Forgotten Passcode, Legacy Contact, Child Safety, and some hardware improvements ship. I was doing infrastructural work to continually improve security across the keychain, certificates, cryptography, authentication, insight and detection, endpoint security, and sandboxing. I made sure we got our certifications. I helped Red Teams and fuzzing to be effective. Not all at the same time. But 2-4 releases in flight at a time, and 3-6 teams on board at a time.

A lot of what I worked on I can’t talk about. And I will continue to not talk about until they ship. That was the problem.

I thrive on talking to a wide variety of people about whatever they’re passionate about. I invest in my network, and my network loves me back. It is deep and powerful. I love getting groups of folks to discover something collectively that is new to each of them. I love making weird connections between groups to help them be better. Apple works on the pushing-a-pimple-out-of-a-circle innovation route, a choose-the-best-from-set-options route, and I work the novel-graph-connection-to-make-something-new route. And it was slowly crushing my spirit.

At first, the company was big enough that I was still able to make graph connections. But that wore out quickly as we ran into disclosures and folks not being able to talk about what they actually knew and were passionate about. I still did senior-level technical project manager work while not in my lane. I tracked projects, I mentored folks. Things shipped. But I struggled. I wasn’t happy. I didn’t have anything to talk about with my husband or son when I got home from work. Reed, at one point, pretended that I worked a miniature golf course experience production company. When I vented about a coworker (the only part of work I felt comfortable talking about with non-disclosed folks), he’d sagely nod while thinking “ah, hole 3 is really coming together.”

I tried this experiment for 3 years of trying to have non-productive hobbies. You know, cross stitch and stuff. And it just didn’t work for me. I applaud the folks who can turn off, I will fight for our rights to have time to do things that are not governed by capitalism. I read sci-fi in bed for sure, but I didn’t like trying to take up spare hours on weekends not organizing people. I’m like a Border Collie or something. And I want to talk to people about it. I want to be able to make sense of the world by connecting what I know to what other people know. It’s hilarious to me that Apple TV is what Severance is on. I get the “surprise and delight” thing, but ends up I do not like surprises or getting them.

Securing a billion people without them having to care or notice is a pretty compelling argument, so I stuck with it for 5 years. I worked with many incredible, driven people. But for me, the same reason I struggle with role playing tabletop games is the same reason I struggled at Apple — I am my whole self, with all of its facets, all of the time. I can keep a secret (snitches get stitches!), but I can’t keep a whole part of my life secret.

So, I’m looking for work. Here’s my portfolio of things I’ve done. Here’s my resume. And I’m dipping my toe back in with the disaster zine, digital estate planning, security consulting implementation with Myeong at Tiny Gigantic, and facilitation gigs in the meantime. Let me know if you have a me-shaped hole, because trying to do not-me-shaped things sure didn’t work. I’m a work horse, and I’m good, and I also really like sharing.

Content warning: suicide

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I met a woman once, who was constantly in and out of prison and jail. She was smart, and kind, but also knew that she didn’t know how to exist in the world the way society wanted her to. She didn’t like being in prison or jail, but she knew that was where she would keep ending up. She had brought suit in Indiana to ask to be allowed to die. She was a drain on the system, she wasn’t happy, and there was no way out that she could see. The judge didn’t allow her to die with dignity.

I’m a big fan of Death With Dignity. I think there are all sorts of times that it makes sense for a person to opt out of living intentionally. I don’t think deep depression is one of those times, but there are other circumstances. We all die eventually, and I sure would like to be of sound mind and body when I decide when my time will be.

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May Joy : Pedal Bike!

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I sold my last car in 2008. While I’ve had motorcycles since then, it’s been important to me to be car free. Reed and I are deeply aligned on that, and have structured the entirety of our lives around this.

I got into bicycles in 2016 when Reed, Tilde, and Rubin built me up a city bike. This was before Reed and I had met, mind you. I loved that bike. I didn’t understand why I’d ever want anything more than 7 speeds. Now bikes are by far my preferred mode of transit, including biking the 50 miles into the office some mornings when I’m going in.

A spreadsheet of bicycles with columns for years starting in 2016 and rows for each bicycle I've owned. Each bike also gets a rating and a status.

I love bicycles. And my life is built around that love at this point. So we were reasonably anxious about how Locke would feel about bicycles. He was in an infant car seat in the front of our Load 75 before his due date. We also had both the Yepp Mini for the front of the bike (way more fun) and the Yepp Maxi for the back of the bike (when he got too big for the Mini and for when we have a full cargo load in the Load 75). We have to ride to preschool even when it’s raining or the traffic is bad. There are lots of opportunities for him to decide that bikes aren’t for him. And we have friends who love bikes whose kiddos just never really got into it.

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Riding my own coat tails

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Pregnancy was hard on me for gender and pregnancy reasons. Then Locke came 2 months early, and then Reed suffered from something like Postpartum Depression for 18 months. Life was really hard for a long time. But I did the hard therapy work and thought I was past all of it. Locke was consistently sleeping through the night and so was I. But I wasn’t coming out of the brain fog. I worried it was because of substance love affairs I’ve had in the past. Every doctor I talked to told me that wouldn’t have lasting, increasing effects. Was it because I had long covid? The timeline of symptoms starting didn’t match up. But work and home were both being impacted to significant degrees (once the subject was finally broached), and things seemed to be getting worse.

It took a long time for any of this to even come up. I’ve been performing at a high enough level in nearly all parts of my life that most people don’t monitor what I’m doing, and if I do mess up they usually think I have deep thinking behind it at most, and that it’s a small glitch if it is a mistake. But my new manager at work was paying enough attention to notice, and when I brought it up with Reed he was eventually (after being super supportive) like “just so you have all the data.. it’s not just at work.” He had been concerned about early onset dementia, I was being so forgetful and unobservant!

During all that time, I was mostly masking by having good practices in place that were documented and that I could follow even in my reduced state. I have excellent people in my life who were willing and able to support me even through a hard time because I had invested in our relationships when I did have capacity. And so while it took awhile for all this to come to light, and months to diagnose what was happening, I was able to maintain good practices in the meantime. I’ve been riding Past Willow’s coat tails to recover enough for Future Willow to be well again. Thanks, Past Willow!

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Time is the only thing we don’t get more of

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I’m obsessed with time. I think it’s the only thing we don’t get more of, our most precious resource. It’s the currency of caring. I live my life by my calendar to the point friends have had interventions with me. I had gcal pins made both to celebrate this love and also to subtly flag for polyamory. One of my favorite books is Latitude, about the race between astronomers and horologists to help people sail the sea. So at some point, I realized I wanted to get a tattoo about time.

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

Conceptual drawing of Willow's chest piece. Includes a skull in a heart, a person growing up, a heart beat, ASCII hex code that says "the second best time is now", a clock before a sunburst, and paint splatters.
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Testosterone

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I’m agender, which means I don’t really care a whole lot about gender. But that also means I don’t particularly like getting bucketed with women based on body shape, clothing, voice, or other things related to presentation.

Although my body got back into a shape I was more comfortable with, another thing I really wanted was to have a less femme voice. While some folks tell me I have a nice alto voice, it still sounds too femme in my head to align with my gender identity. Testosterone thickens the vocal cords, so will often drop your voice. I want that! But it ends up testosterone does a BUNCH of stuff. So it’s been a journey. Here’s mine so far.

Disclaimer: hormones have a different effect of different people, and my experience is not to say what I think the standard experience is for men and/or trans folk. I just found it FASCINATING to have such a different experience, and want to explore it here.

Not great

Mood

I have been far more impatient, and prone to anger. So much so, that the first time I went on testosterone in 2022, I had to go back off of it in early 2023 because I simply couldn’t afford the tumult of a second puberty while navigating Locke’s infancy and also my return to work. Going back on testosterone has been steadier the second time — I knew what to anticipate and be self aware about, and I think the injectable actually helped me out here. I’m still less patient than I used to be, but I don’t think this is necessarily always a bad thing — more on that in the “Mixed” section below.

This has given me even more respect and compassion for the testosterone-laden humans in my life who are compassionate, collaborative, and considered. I see what a challenge hormones can make this approach, which I still think of as table stakes.

Hair

My head hair, already thin, began thinning even more. I started growing (very pale, very scraggly) facial hair. I’m not into either of these things, so I went on Finasteride, a drug that limits how testosterone impacts the skin. It’s caused my hair to stop falling out so quickly, and I have no idea if it’s actually stopping facial hair growth. I may need to start shaving instead of just plucking soon, which is not my favorite idea.

Sex drive

My sex drive, already persistently higher than most anyone I’ve ever dated, has gotten egregious. I don’t know how teenage boys get anything at all done. I’m having inappropriate crushes. I am still treating everyone with respect, and am grateful to the decades of managing this already to help manage this new volume.

Mixed bag

How I take up space

Because of both my abusive relationship and also Gunner persuading me to take up less space, the way I inhabit group situations has changed. I’m less certain of myself, less assertive about things I do know. I over compensate by seeing assertive when I’m less certain of things. It’s a mess that I talk with a therapist regularly about. But now I’m feeling more confident in myself again, like what I have to contribute matters, not just uplifting other voices. I don’t know if this is the testosterone itself or the gender confirmation, but either way, it’s generally been good.

However, I lack grace around this and am starting to trample other people more, especially given the miscalibration of when to be assertive and when to be more humble. More work to be done here, for sure.

Amazing

Voice

My main goal of my voice dropping has finally started to happen, about a year back on T and 6 months on an injectable. I went to pick up Locke from preschool the other day and one of our parent friends was there at the same time and asked if I was sick. “NO! My voice is finally dropping!” I was so excited I squeaked. But it’s been SUCH gender euphoria. Hooray. I’ll never be super base-y, but I won’t be so far on the femme side of things. Hopefully I get a bit more here, but even if this is it, it’ll be enough.

Strength

This has been an unexpected boon. If I was deconditioned, I would need to start with a 10 mile bike ride, and then add 10 miles each week. Now I can hop on the bike for 30 miles with hills or 50 without, and add 15-20 a week afterwards. I’m already benching more than I did before I stopped lifting for a year. It’s BANANAS and it feels SO GOOD to be strong. I like being muscley.

Perimenopause

Because I have ovaries, I was going to go through perimenopause and menopause at some point. Technically, I now have because it’s been so long since I’ve menstruated, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t also have to go through associated hormone changes. Because I didn’t want to deal with the discomforts of those hormone changes, I would have had to go on HRT at some point anyway, and I certainly wasn’t going to double down on femme ones.

In short

Hell yeah, I love being on T, I hope it doesn’t get taken away by this administration.

Bonus Joy : Little Free Library!

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I love stories. I love that someone distilled “enough” of an idea into a concrete, knowable object that can be indefinitely shared. I love the documentation, the legacy. I love that others will build on that object in their own ways.

I love libraries. I love a collection of knowledge, well sorted and cared for, to share with others for free. I love how meta a card catalog is, I love information science, I love the smell of so many books in one place.

And I love Little Free Libraries. I love a small curation of “here are books we loved and want to pass on to others” in an accessible way smattered through a neighborhood. They make my little robot heart sing.

So for our anniversary in November 2023, Reed got me a LFL kit. I got SO excited! I immediately made a list of books to stock it with and got as many as possible from Marcus Books in Oakland. Would they all fit? They did not, I had to trim down the list. I matched the neutral tone to the house and the accent color to some flowers in our front yard. Jenbot even made a book plate design for it so I could include why I thought each book was worth reading.

And then it mostly sat for over a year. I would make headway on it every once in awhile (thanks in large part to the same stand up group we’ve had going on and off for like 10-15 years), but I’m not particularly handy with physical things and so it sort of became an albatross sitting in my office. Something that could bring me joy but I just couldn’t get over the finish line.

But I’ve been taking a short term leave from work to figure out some brain fog things, and I made it through my backlog of easier tasks. Reed and I suddenly had an entire afternoon off together with Locke in preschool. After starting to wax some bike chains, we turned our attention to the LFL and managed to finish it up! We borrowed a post hole digger from a neighbor and put it in the ground in our front garden. And the local lab/golden mix Mango came by to say hi while we were doing it!

Willow grins broadly in front of the empty little free library. Their purple shirt matches the purple accent on the library. The library has a tilted roof and one shelf, and is placed in the front yard that has a recently greening Japanese Maple and lots of native plans, along with a bench.
Exceedingly proud we finally got it in the ground

Some books have already been picked up! Reed and I have been having a long conversation about my desire to keep the LFL stocked with the same set of books no matter how many times they get picked up — I want to send a consistent message, he wants to provide variety to the neighborhood as it’ll be a lot of the same people walking by regularly. We’ve settled on about half the books being consistent and the other half being ones we’re going through in the house + neighbors leaving books.

Another angle of the library, this time with books on the shelves. You can see the steps going up to the Idlewild yard and some flowers through a gate int eh background.

March Joy : Goats!

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Uncle Tilde took us on an adventure to Goatlandia in the North Bay to feed some baby goats and meet some older goats. So cute! So soft! So invested in being high up! And their wagging tails while they drank milk! Oh my goodness.

Reed in a green jacket and pink hat has a goat under one arm while another puts its front legs on Reed's leg to smell his hand. The back legs are on a hay bale that Willow sits on, petting another goat. Locke watches on from the fence.
Image by Uncle Tilde

Goatlandia is a goat and other animal rescue. We met some ducks, an alpaca, and many many goats. We even scared up a wild hare! The tour guide was delightful — invested in animal well being without being preachy about veganism. The baby goats get fed about 5 times a day at their current ages. While many of the kids (lol) will get adopted out, the adult goats we met are there as their forever home.

Image from Reed

It was so nice to just be out in a rural area with animals. The requests were simple and easy to fill with our trusty guide. I felt like I was in my body.

Then we all went for delicious bread at Wildflour. I’ve only been there once before – on the Freestone Bread Run 200k I failed out of a few years ago. It’s worth going out of your way a fair amount for, and we were in the neighborhood! Each thing we got there was amazing.

Tilde wearing a THICCC hat gets chewed on by a baby goat.
Selfie from Uncle Tilde, trusty adventure-inducer and driver

While Tilde’s car charged on the way home, we spent about an hour playing with LEGOs and exploring toys at Fundemonium. Locke fell asleep on the car ride home and we all got some quiet time to recover from an intense and fun day.

February Joy : A Day with Family

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Reed and my family haven’t been getting on particularly well, so for the family meetup in NYC in February, Locke and I went on our own. This is both stressful and not — Locke is a champ at traveling at this point, but also my family and I have been in a non-child groove of hanging out for 25 years and introducing a 3 year old into the mix has proven difficult. My family really likes winging things and having epic meals together, neither of which work particularly well for a kid who wants to play with LEGOs and has a strict sleep schedule. So I was nervous.

The first two days were a mess. Folks wanted to wander around Manhattan (Locke wants to play in the snow while everyone else wants to walk somewhere; Locke wants to touch everything in stores or gets tremendously bored and destructive while folks are shopping) and have late lunches (beginning right after he should be down for his nap). We did get to go see the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image! We were jet lagged. No one else knows his routine and I had to be along for the ride even when folks did want to help. A (mostly) bad scene. Because of that and other stressors in my life, I actually cried to my mom and brother at the end of the second night, telling them I wasn’t sure I could do a trip like this again. We are not a crying family.

A build-your-own muppet with many eyes, a green nose, grey hair, and purple shirt.

Apparently everyone had a meeting after we left to put Locke down to sleep, and rallied. The following days accounted for Locke needing to sleep at certain points, doing adventures that were kid compatible, and people taking Locke for adventures without my needing to be there. I felt loved and supported by my family.

So on our last night together, we put Locke down for his sleep and he fell asleep quickly. I then went to play cards and drink cider with my family nearby, without feeling any anger about how the day had gone. And that was nice.