No More Fucks to Give
A while back, I posted that I had finished my first class in many, many years. I’m now enrolled in the second course of my certification program. Going back to school at 48 is, in many ways, easier than it was when I was in my 20s.
I’m part of a three-person study group. We get together every Friday to discuss the course and role-play different scenarios. One of our group members is in her 20s, while the rest of us are in our 40s. In our last session, she brought up the intense feeling of imposter syndrome she experiences in our class. She was shocked to find out we shared her feelings.
The older I get, the fewer fucks I have to give. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel the same insecurities and worries that younger people do. You just get better at managing them.
Stuff I Found While Procrastinating
💻For The Love of God, Make Your Own Website
Unfortunately, this is what all of the internet is right now: social media, owned by large corporations that make changes to them to limit or suppress your speech, in order to make themselves more attractive to advertisers or just pursue their owners’ ends. Even the best Twitter alternatives, like Bluesky, aren’t immune to any of this—the more you centralize onto one single website, the more power that website has over you and what you post there. More than just moving to another website, we need more websites.
I've almost always had my own website somewhere. Back in the late 90's I taught myself HTML and stated posting stuff. If you don't have a place you own online, get one.
🔥 There is a big chunk of my being that did not think it would get this bad this fast.
Just when we think we’ve arrived at something sturdy, the floor drops out from under us and we tumble to another terrifying layer. It is indeed like how poet David Whyte describes grief. He says grief is a falling toward something (much like we “fall” in love). We’re falling toward the thing we lost - a loved one who died, a broken dream, a friendship that ended. We fall and fall, the ground dropping out from under us over and over, until we finally land at what must take the place of the thing we lost. We land, invariably, at ourselves.
Sarah Wilson has a fantastic newsletter where she mainly focuses on the topic of "collapse". This is something I'm only just starting to become familiar with. Trump being elected into his second term has only heightened my fear/interest.
🌎In Search of Effective Activism Part 2
This is one of the best articles I've read about climate change in a long time.
No local community would elect, year after year, to poison their own water and air. If you accept that to be true, you must conclude that local people do not control their fate, which is clearly the result of something less than democratic.
The above quote is so good. When it comes to making real, lasting adjustments to policy around climate change we do not control our own destiny. Real control resides at the top with the richest and most powerful.
If we want to make material change we have to get at the root of our problem which is the unfathomably severe and unjust concentration of wealth into the hands of the few.
This right here. Tax...the...rich.