/now
Summer Solstice, 2025
Perhaps it's my biological clock, or because I spent so many years in school, but my body and mind tend to slow down in the summer. I go dormant in a certain sense through the summer and then begin to perk up physically and mentally in late September. I often spend fall, winter, and spring in a creative and productive state, and then start winding down again in late May. So now that we're nearing the end of June, it's not a surprise to me that I've gone a couple of months without updating this website. I used to try to fight this cycle, but now I am just letting it be what it is.
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Another thing that has affected my productivity was bringing a new cat into our home. After our elderly cat Fanny passed away last August, it became apparent that our younger cat MacGuffin wasn't very happy being an only cat. We hemmed and hawed about getting a second cat for a while, but then in mid-April decided to go for it. We brought home our angel baby/hellion, Huxley, from the shelter. And unfortunately as I write this, we're preparing to re-home him. On his own, we love him, but he has been displaying such relentless play aggression toward MacGuffin that we can't leave them unsupervised at all without MacGuffin getting attacked. These are not real cat fights (which involve blood, fur flying, ears flattened, hissing and screaming, etc.); it's all just play. However, it's not play that MacGuffin likes and Huxley can't get the hint. It's like if your new roommate wanted to wrestle with you, pin you down, and give you a noogie every single time he saw you and wouldn't take no for an answer. We've consumed so many books, videos, and articles about cat behavior and tried so many interventions. At the end of the day, there's no life-or-death reason why these guys need to live together. The pet adoption rate in our area is very robust, and I'm sure Huxley will find a home that's a better fit for him. I have never re-homed a cat before and getting to this point was very difficult. But I would rather do what's better for the cats than have one of my cats live in fear all the time just so I can avoid feeling like a failure at cat adoption.
I'd like to try again with another cat, but I want to wait until the new year. I think MacGuffin needs some time to get back to baseline, otherwise I'm afraid he'll have a strongly negative reaction to another new cat.
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One goal I did finally accomplish in the past few weeks was to stop using Spotify for listening to music. I canceled my premium account although I still use the app for listening to podcasts. This transition had been on my mind for a while, but felt a little overwhelming. If you have no library of digital music at all and want to legally own it, moving away from streaming services is definitely going to be time-consuming and expensive. I did, however, have 8GB of music on my old computer that I moved over to my phone. I then made a list of albums and songs that I didn't already own that I wanted to buy. I use 7Digital if I can't find a place to buy digital downloads direct from the artist. Then I downloaded Poweramp onto my phone. I have a dim memory of using Poweramp on my computer many years ago and I've been happy with it so far. It's a pay-only app, but muuuuch cheaper than a Spotify subscription.
Aside from the ethical reasons for moving away from Spotify, this move was precipitated by the realization that I just don't listen to music the way Spotify wants me to. It encourages you to always be listening to playlists of new-to-you songs. I get overwhelmed by new media very easily; when I find a song or album that I like, I tend to listen to it over and over again. Stuff gets added to my rotation at a glacial pace; the overlap between my Spotify Wrapped playlist from year to year is probably 70%. You can only listen to things on repeat this way if you pay for Spotify and it seemed kind of absurd to pay to use a service in the way it doesn't want you to use it.
I also think that--and this is likely a generational thing--I am much happier as an album listener than a single listener. I grew up with albums on cassettes and CDs and appreciate listening to a good album from beginning to end on repeat, even if every album is imperfect and has its dead spots. Listening to a bunch of disjointed songs just isn't as satisfying to me. In a rare act of media sharing, here's a list of some albums I have been enjoying recently, in no order:
Cousin (2023), Wilco
Titanic Rising (2019), Weyes Blood
Heaven or Las Vegas (1987), Cocteau Twins
In Rainbows (2007), Radiohead
Dance Fever (2022), Florence and the Machine
Let's Get Out of This Country (2006), Camera Obscura
I have listened to all of these 1 million times.
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This summer I am also spending more time in the garden than I have in years. We decided to go all in with gardening in our 14'x14' vegetable plot. While I'm not sure if I'm going to get yields from everything we've planted, right now we've got lettuce, spinach, green beans, peas, tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, eggplant, and collards growing in the garden. That's in addition to the herbs: cilantro, chives, thyme, Thai basil, Genovese basil, sage, and parsley. Where I live, we've had a ton of rain this spring and summer. Not enough to flood or cause problems, but I wouldn't be surprised if we've broken some records this year. Everything is green and lush and the bugs and ticks are out. My one worry with the garden is that it's too shaded. The folks who lived in our house before us did not think through where they wanted to put the vegetable garden and put it too close to tree canopies. If I don't get yields from the tomatoes, peppers, or eggplants this year, I think we'll rearrange the yard to put the garden in a sunnier spot.
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I also turned 40. Here's a picture of me at an art museum the day before my birthday. I'm truly grateful to have reached this age alive, healthy, and mostly unscathed.
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Of course, all of this fluffy stuff is happening against the background of hellishness and uncertainty in the world. Will I have something meaningful to say about it? Hopefully soon. Will that make much of a difference? Probably not to anybody but me. Please stay as safe as you can out there, keep close those you love, and keep love in your heart for those far away.
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I got the idea of the /now page from Derek Sivers, which I found through 32-Bit Cafe.