Month: October 2024

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It’s a rough month for me. I know I say this every year, but truly. It has every reason to be.

Some of the most harrowing events of my personal life occurred during this month. I try not to ruminate (weak emphasis on try) but I just end up stressing myself out by remembering. I also like to think that things just happen around this time, and I finally have a theory for it: SAD. It’s getting colder, and it’s becoming easier to just go home, curl up in bed, and shut off. Things hit harder. Everyone’s groove is off as we slide into the colder parts of the year.

And every four years, there’s the additional stressor of whether democracy (oligarchy) will continue limping along or this will be The One to finally… something. I don’t know. Something bad, most likely. And this year the dread is at a fever pitch.

I can admit that I am scared. I have to, to be realistic. But no amount of therapy is going to make the reality any easier. I can cope all day but what’d be the point if my rights are stripped away, if I am not safe? I’m grappling with the possibility that I won’t be safe any more. Or, I was just lucky all this time, and that luck is finally bleeding out.

What next, then?

We’ll still have each other.

I will keep going for those that can’t.

If it calls for it, I will despair.

I will feel.

But I’ll put the steel back in my spine.

I will cope the best I can.

Then I will begin.

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GOD save us from Your Followers
I’m still waiting on a god to do this.

That was the very first bumper sticker I ever put on my car… let’s say, almost two decades ago. Out of all the packers, rainbows, wigs, and glitter in that little LGBTQ shop, that was the item I ultimately came away with. It said everything I needed to say: I don’t have a problem with the whole god concept… I have a problem with the people that do horrible things in the name of their god. You don’t need to go far into the recent news cycles– and take note of the context of where I bought said bumper sticker– to see exactly what I mean.

When I slapped that thing on, I was a bit naive (or a bit dim): I didn’t think about any confrontation I may have had to endure. In the Bible Belt. And twice I was walked up to and asked to explain what I meant by that bumper sticker. Fortunately, everyone involved remained civil (the other party didn’t escalate and I kept my composure). I was also fortunate that they seemed satisfied with my response and didn’t get belligerent or even violent– doubly so when it was white folks stepping up to me, a Black stranger.

What was my answer? I simply had to Not All Religious People out those conversations. I specified “only the bad ones, and I assume you’re not one of them since we’re having a rational discussion in a parking lot instead of giving me an asphalt sandwich.”

I did have one more incident, and I promise it’s a funny one: I was dropping someone off and we were stopped at a red light. A car comes up behind me, and in the rearview mirror I see the driver absolutely losing his shit. It was after I stopped panicking that I realized that he was laughing, clapping, and pointing to the back of my car before giving me a thumbs up: turns out, that bumper sticker made his day.

I thought of that guy in my commute to work today, and I hope he’s living his best life.

I also thought of that bumper sticker… and how I’d probably get assaulted over it nowadays. Sigh.

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As the WordPress environment is set aflame by one guy throwing a tantrum and lawyers sending each other strongly worded leaflets, I’m just sitting here glad that I made the switch to ClassicPress months ago. And, not for the first time, I noticed a trend in my social media restructuring: when it isn’t FOSS or decentalised, the sites I’m now most active on is a fork or reconstruction of what I grew up with.

While NekoWeb is admittedly a stretch (free hosting never went out of style), I have listed it because of how nostalgic it has made me. It’s what I keep repeating: the Old Web and how people used to build and decorate their online spaces. However, two services are forked from earlier concepts of their modern-day counterparts:

  • 2018: WordPress 5.0 introduced the Block system
  • Dreamwidth forked from LJ as early as 2009

And SpaceHey is basically resurrected MySpace from the early 2000s or so… I was never on that platform proper pre-botched migration (it got better). It’s been interesting to see how it was, right now… and not as a kid, but an adult that does their own taxes and everything. I would’ve loved MySpace, especially for the hack to inject CSS. And I’m liking it now as an alternative to Facebook.