Just Start.

january 25th, 2020

Some personal news:

i have been ill every day of 2020 thus far. Currently i'm beating back a cough so persistent and violent that about once a day i am nauseous, sometimes to the point of vomiting. That's unusual for me! Historically i have a very strong stomach and an ace constitution.

The coronavirus has arrived in Chicago. Narratively this paragraph now suggests that i think i have the coronavirus, or that i compare my ongoing sickness to the coronavirus. i don't think i have the coronavirus; i don't get out enough to have gotten the coronavirus. i don't think i have a deadly upper respiratory infection; i'm just not prepared for my body to change (age).

. . .

Wikipedia articles that i read on a regular basis:

• List of common misconceptions
• Alien (1979 film)
• East Coast-West Coast hip hop rivalry as the page existed in 2010 when i first read it

. . .

i've made contact with three of my grandmother's half-siblings and one of her nieces. i sent all of them letters in my enthusiastic but unpracticed French. A few weeks later they each sent letters back to me: three in French, and one from my great-aunt in enthusiastic but unpracticed English. Two letters noted that my great-grandfather was also a poet.

It is unnerving to me that i know something of my grandparents' personalities and histories, but almost nothing about my great-grandparents. If i met my great-grandfather as a young man, would we become friends?

. . .

i am grateful every day this year to not be logged in to Tw/tter. This will be a rough year to be tuned in to political discourse.

i'm currently preparing for a near future in which the 100 companes responsible for 75% of climate-changing emissions are left free to destroy the ecosystem as we know it, and that twenty years from now the survivors are vegan subsistence farmers. Vlad and i talk sincerely about teaching our roommate how to build his own plow and dig a 600 foot well.

Speaking of, it's a very good time to become vegan. You're not gonna want to wait until news hits that the newly self-regulated meat and dairy industries produce beef that's regularly contaminated with strychnine and milk that's 10% pus by volume.

2019 in Review.

january 1st, 2020

Ok here's what i did last year:

made 45 calls to my representatives in government
won a lawsuit
read 10 books
launched 3 websites

performed at The Skewer 6 times
played a set at Bread + Butter Cafe in my hometown

celebrated seven years of sobriety

maintained a daily diary
outlined Draft Two of SMOTHER

got good enough at Romanian that native speakers now think i'm joking when i say (in Romanian), “i'm sorry, i speak very well but i understand only a little”

hung out a lot with my husband and new roommate

cleared out our CD and DVD collections

cleaned and organized my parents' kitchen drawers without consent*
* i don't have “BEFORE” pictures which might help clarify why the cleaning was necessary and why i had reason to believe consent would not be granted. But here are “AFTER” pictures:

goals for 2020

quit Twitter
celebrate eight years of sobriety
visit Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage
drastically reduce the amount of plastic we send to landfill
write Draft Two of SMOTHER
learn more jiu jitsu
draw the world map freehand from memory

participate in at least one voter registration effort in a neighboring swing state (Michigan, Wisconsin)

hang out a lot with my husband and roommate