To start off the new year, my significant other, EW, and I decided we would have a little screen detox. “But, Z, “you might say, “are you not currently interacting with a screen? How serious a screen detox is this anyway?” And that is a good question. It’s not that I want a blanket banContinue reading “Jigsaw Puzzles and Common Law Marriage”
Category Archives: context
Life-life balance, OR Does this meet my strategic goals?
Though I intermittently engage in New Year’s resolutions, this practice is one that I increasingly follow without holding the outcome too tightly. As an example of this fact, it’s almost March and I am just now talking about New Year’s. What is time anyway, amirite? This year, however, after having formally exited my shitty jobContinue reading “Life-life balance, OR Does this meet my strategic goals?”
Curated: conjuring demand and identity
I love beautiful things. Full stop. When things are not beautiful it hurts a little. I have been known to say to friends, usually when talking about things like interior or fashion design, “if you can make it beautiful, you should.” I live my life in the center of what one would call “refined aesthetics.” Continue reading “Curated: conjuring demand and identity“
Where were you? On memory and collective processing of September 11th, 20 years later
September 11th was about three weeks into my first year of college. I was 18 years old, living on my own for the first time with strangers in an un-airconditioned, 6 story brick oven of fellow underclass students on the southern campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I had a newContinue reading “Where were you? On memory and collective processing of September 11th, 20 years later”
On Writer’s Block, OR Being a solider in the army against the apocalypse
I write every day. I keep a journal which is part “day in the life” and part “holy shit, I was inadvertently really clever back there I should write more about that.” Writing that has not been just a re-cap of my daily life has been a total struggle for the last month and aContinue reading “On Writer’s Block, OR Being a solider in the army against the apocalypse”
Retrospective
My new year begins on my birthday and not so much New Year’s Day the federal holiday. Part of this is because my birthday is very close to the spring equinox [in the Northern Hemisphere] and spring feels more “new” than two weeks after the winter solstice when we’re all exhausted and it’s too darkContinue reading “Retrospective”
Against Performative Productivism
Last Saturday, it was the weekend, ostensibly the time I get to rest from the trials of the week also known as the time of wage labor when I am unable to fully own myself. It becomes 5pm on Friday and I once again own myself. All the time that stretches out before me untilContinue reading “Against Performative Productivism”
A Prayer for Natives of the Internet in a Troubled Time
O Lord,* help me to remember that everyone on the internet is a narcissist, or a hypocrite, or a liar and that we all transparently sit in judgment of the choices of others at all times [perhaps especially myself]. And so, guide my fingers to backspace through the witty and cutting retort that is nearlyContinue reading “A Prayer for Natives of the Internet in a Troubled Time”
Conscious Consumption Update
In December of 2018, I decided that our household was going to spend 2019 watching everything we consumed pretty closely. The intent was to cut single use plastic and palm oil out of our lives to the full extent that was possible while also buying much less overall. When we had to buy things, IContinue reading “Conscious Consumption Update”
Christmas, Consumerism and Custody
Even in a normal year I am a great hater of secular American Christmas and am at best confused about why – as a non-Christian – Christmas always has to be omnipresent. That sounds aggressive, but I think “confused” is the best way to categorize my feelings about a religious holiday that has been cooptedContinue reading “Christmas, Consumerism and Custody”
The Oracle of Z 