Permission

This is from an article by Dr. Nancy Doyle, an organizational psychologist I follow. It’s about the cognitive costs of covid, something that remains uncertain. What does all this trauma do to us? What does the virus do to our brains if we get it?

Navigating being a student while recovering from my assorted injuries in 2018 was really hard in part because I didn’t know how or whether to talk about what was going on. The process was hard to navigate and during a time of uncertainty I felt like I couldn’t ask for things I needed, and that if I did (since I was awaiting a diagnosis) there was a good chance I wouldn’t get them. Making an opening for that to be okay to say I don’t know exactly what’s happening but I feel off, or I’m tired, or I’m having a hard time is key. Humans get sick, we are fragile. Having a culture that makes space for that and welcomes it without judgment or consequences would be really valuable.

Ebb + flow: Lessons from the Routines + Ruts podcast

I’ve been meaning to listen to Ruts + Routines, a podcast about the creative process and life as a creative, for a while. I generally binge through podcasts in one go. Basically the only one I’ve managed to routinely follow is Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. Current event ones I just can’t do very easily.

I am really enjoying hearing about other creatives and how they deal with this weird uncertain lifestyle, with the process of making things, of learning new skills. It’s nice to be able to find people who you have something in common with.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to manage my time, what there is and isn’t space for in my life and how to make the lists I have into things I’ve made. I’m learning some valuable lessons from this show

• Listen to your body: It has ebbs and flows. You’re not always on. Rest is important. I’m not a morning person so trying not to force

• Gather: In her interview Ingrid Fetell Lee talks about gathering information and how the research she did made her book a lot richer. I’m in the gathering phase of a couple of different projects and it’s reassuring to hear that this is actually helpful and a good idea

• Tiers: Samuel Leighton-Dore talked about using three tiers for his work and I like this system. Though I’m using it in a more long term way that makes my to do lists feel more manageable

• The good old days of blogging: I’ve been missing the days when WordPress was my jam, when I had my Google RSS feed (RIP), when there was more nuance and community than you can build in 280 words. I want to blog more. I want to spend more time making stuff and less time bickering/debating on Twitter. One episode talks about how to visit a blog you have to intentionally decide to do so. With social media there is a serious lack of intention. There’s just scrolling and scrolling and more scrolling. There’s a few sites I really get a lot of value out of and people who are really useful. I want to have these in my life. I want to engage with just that. I want to type in urls. I want to decide that I have a moment for something and make it work. I want to have less time spend scrolling through the trauma that greets me each time I open Twitter. There is valuing in checking out and these days I want to spend far more of my time in long form, depth and going for walks. I want to read a book about how crows share a common ancestor with humans and have a fairly similar sensory system. I want to listen to the sound of waves while salt tickles my nose and I can feel the wind on my face. I want to blog more

I've been writing a book

Several years ago I did the Trans Siberian Railway from Beijing to Moscow with my dad and sister. At the time I said I wanted to write a book about it. I’d always wanted to be a travel writer and this seemed like an excellent opportunity to write about a big trip along a famous route. It started with a name: Set Your Watch to Moscow Time. Then a bunch of notes during the trip.

I’ve been “writing” that book ever since. I did write out a first draft by hand and then typed it up. I printed it out and marked up various notes that I carried around with me.

Mostly I’ve been thinking about it and trying to get it together enough to work on it. To actually set aside time, to begin.

One of the things I find myself doing a lot since getting diagnosed with ADHD is revisiting things I started and then never quite got around to finishing, I spend a lot of time digging through what old versions of myself got done on projects and trying to figure out how to actually finish them. I have two essays and a book all based off of stuff I started and never finished that are on my mind, that make it to the top tier of to write stuff.

The essays won’t be ready to work on until I find some photos so they aren’t my focus currently. Set Your Watch is. It feels good to finally be working on it, to be finding a pace and routine that allows me to get it done. Right now the goal is an hour a week. So far I’ve made more progress in the last three weeks than I have in the last three years.

It feels dauting and impossible. Ridiculous even. Why keep going with this project? Why commit to this effort?

The answer goes back to who I was as a teenager, the decision that I wanted to write a book. I have other stuff I could work on but it’s all in the gathering/research phase. It’s not in the edit the thing you already spent ages writing phase.

I want to start this thing that I finished. I want to learn how to write a book and this seems like as good a chance as any. Whatever I pick I have to say no to a lot of other things I could be doing.

It feels strange to be working on this project because I am convening with so many different versions of myself. The one that planned the trip, went on it, wrote the draft out by hand, typed it, edited it. It’s been almost a decade since I started. It will be longer than that if it ever gets published. It’s weird.

I don’t re-read books but I’m placing holds on the ones I read back in those days. I wonder how they’ll feel now on the other side of all these years?

fore + shadow

The book I’m reading atm -- Fish do not Exist by Lulu Miller -- has some excellent foreshadowing in it. Things come back around and I’m like yes you did mention that briefly

Do I do this as I minimize things, as I slowly let details unfold about myself, about what’s on my mind?

Do we do this as we test the water for bigger things? Things that we’re afraid to say?

As we ease into phase 2, as we go back into the world what is being foreshadowed? What is being planned?

What was foreshadowed and ignored in reports many moons ago? How do ideas and threads and thoughts echo through time and culture? Through lives?

What is being foreshadowed by this moment now? What choices do we make about the future? In a few chapters where will we find ourselves?

It adds up

I started jotting down word combinations with a + sign when I was doing the graphic design certificate course at SAIT. I made lists and lists and lists on scraps of paper and in notebooks.

Then I tried to sit down to make those lists into a document that I could keep track of. This was the beginning of my discovery that Excel is good for things other than math. Somewhere along the way I became someone who uses excel daily, though mostly to track ideas and lists.

I’ve been slowly trying to get my stuff in order all these years. I think I finally have the tools I need to make some real progress on these ideas and projects.

I’m also trying to be flexible and to not put too much pressure on myself. I had a regimented idea of what + should be. I still think that in a world where I had way more followers some of it could make cool t-shirts and sweatshirts, but I’m not in that world.

Instead, I’m having fun using it as a way to explore type and colour on Instagram.

I’m having fun and playing around.

Thinking less about the endless lists I made and how I’ll never get through it and just posting whatever I post today if I get to that part of my menu of tasks and projects.

Whether anyone else gets + or not it’s been in my brain for a long time. It’s nice to finally see that impulse to play with words become something.

The end of the semester, especially of second year, brings a chance to reflect on how much I’ve learned and how far I’ve come. It’s really satisfying to feel those stumbles and fumbles and inklings become something that is working.

Shorelines and tides

I love this lyric from “Even the Darkness has Arms” by the Barr Brothers. So poetic and beautiful

slowly + surely

Thinking about habits I want to build up and all the skills I want to work on over the summer. Reminding myself that the little things add up and that slowly + surely I am getting much better at this design thing.

Record of loss

This quote pulled me today. It’s about loss and change. I don’t know where I got it from. I wasn’t keeping track then apparently.

It makes me think of “God of Loss” by Darlingside, a song that comes up a lot these days. Partially because it’s topical. Partially because it’s in my forest fires playlist.

I think about what we’ve lost, all collectively at once. I think about grief, a personal and ongoing process as I recover from injuries, as I mourn the future I’d had planned and no longer have. We are all in different ways grieving the future we’d had planned and that we’d lost.

We also live in an era of broader loss and precariousness, something that we must all reckon with.

But there is also the fact that the only thing we can be certain of is change, that being alive means loss to some extent. With that loss comes new things.

Stead + fast

A word I like deconstructed

Residential air quality impacts

When I was in Edinburgh I attended an event related to electrification of cab fleets. I discovered that aggressive UK air quality standards were one of the core reasons for the shift and have since started to notice that air quality concerns are one of the chief motivators of shifts towards active mobility, transit and pedestrianization in cities like Oslo and Paris. I read article after article that includes at least an offhand reference to this, if not giving it priority billing.

We’ve been hearing about how air quality is better as people drive less during covid — whether the data supports this is not something I know. It’s bringing this issue to the attention of many for the first time.

In our day to day lives we inhale a lot of toxins from car exhaust and I think our places would be better if we didn’t let that happen. Knowing just what all those fine particles are doing to you isn’t great.

A recent Sierra Club report looks at gas stoves and indoor air quality in California and finds that pollutants including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and formaldehyde are present in many homes, especially apartment with gas appliances. Many of these are also present in outdoor air pollution. For example

Inhaling NO2 is extremely dangerous, especially for the elderly, who are more susceptible to lung disease, and children. Children exposed to elevated levels of NO2 are more susceptible to lung infections and allergies, and are at increased risk of lowered IQ, learning deficits, and asthma. In fact, a 2013 study found that children who grow up in a home with a gas stove are 42 percent more likely to develop asthma than those who don’t. But it’s not just kids who are at risk -- across all age groups, breathing in elevated levels of NO2 inflames the lining of the lungs and can cause wheezing, coughing, colds, flu, and bronchitis

Indoor and outdoor air quality issues also make us less resilient

Air pollution from gas-fired furnaces, water heaters, and stoves increases rates of respiratory illness, cardiovascular diseases, and premature death. Pollution from gas appliances also makes us more vulnerable to novel viruses like the one we’re now facing

In this moment where we are really concerned about health and willing to make disruptive changes to prevent death and illness maybe we need to extend that to more everyday things we ignore like the threat of tiny toxic molecules in the air we breathe.

Ice screaming Japanese import edition

I was in Japan a year ago, which is so weird to think about. I have been thinking about it and indulging in some Japanese (or Korean?) ice cream from a place near me.

Flexible workspaces are more productive

As much as I miss studio I also enjoy spending more time working from home. Everything is set up just as I like, and having my stuff in one place instead of two is really nice. It’s also quiet here so it’s so much easier to concentrate. Open plan offices are unawesome and I am getting way more done now. My final submission was my best work of the semester despite being sick in part because I was doing something I have a knack for and in part because my energy just went towards working, not ignoring all the stuff going on around me.

Haircuts

I have general thoughts on hair — I’m working on a book about hair and Harry Potter — and in this season of quarantine haircuts this seemed like a fun one.

Transit is rad cursive

I thought it’d be cool to try as a cursive too. Looks like it could be embroidered.

Ghost

I enjoy these ghosts. One is up on Redbubble