Preparing for Christmas as a Magic Maker (Adult)

It's no revelation that Christmas feels different as an adult. Like, of course it does. You're not the kid the world is making magic for anymore. You're the adult making the magic.

So it takes on a tone of stress; of how am I going to pull this off? of have we got everything we need? of how have we not decorated the tree yet? of let's go to the carols and sing with everyone at the park (and being the one to pack the picnic rug/snacks/essentials and worry about where the best spot to set up is), of which presents are from us parents, and which are from Santa? of what else needs to go on the groceries list? of have we invited everybody? of what else should we add to the Christmas playlist to get the vibes just right for everyone?

But the magic is still there; it's just second-hand. You get a touch of it when the kid's eyes light up at Christmas lights being turned on around the neighbourhood. When the Christmas tree finally goes up. When sitting with Santa for a picture. When standing in a corner drinking something laced with rum while the kids play with their just-unwrapped gifts, still ripe with novelty.

It's also there in that moment on Christmas afternoon when lunch is finished, the couches are occupied for naps, and everything just unwinds a little bit. The whole season exhales. It's done for another year and all that's left is to ride out the afternoon with a cherry and a full belly. Even washing up doesn't feel that bad at that point, once you get exactly the right amount of buzzed.

Anyway, I am having all these thoughts this week as I put the finishing touches on the playlist for my family to come visit this Saturday, so it's all at the forefront. I really should be getting back to studying C# and learning all about how inheritance and the protected access specifier work.

Should I neglect to post again through the season, have a Merry Christmas

Poster's Fervour

It's funny, since opening this tab again yesterday and posting (twice lol), all I've been able to think about is how much of my life I haven't documented here. How much of the story is missing. I'm sure there will be plenty of time to tell those stories and fill in gaps; but there's nothing quite like reading a post written while the memories were fresh and coming back to it years later and discovering those lost moments and thoughts all over again.

I know this is in part poster's fervour. Right now in my brain this is the shiny new (well, definitely not new, but renewed, perhaps?) thing, so naturally my brain has latched on. I know in a week, or even a few days, this will fade, but fuck it. Let's capture what we can while we're here, on this open tab, in this headspace.

Enjoying the Summer Sublime

 

This isn’t my first mango of the season. It is delicious though.

I have been trying to allow myself small indulgences on the weekly grocery shop. Without an income and while stretching my savings out as far as they’ll go, this isn’t always easy to do, but I can afford a single mango every second or third shop. 

I only get them when they’re good. Properly ripe, firm but not too firm. Made the mistake of buying one that was too firm once - never again. 

It is really nice though, to just have something to enjoy for a few minutes, that is only available when the weather is teetering on the edge of too hot. That is symbolic of the best that the season has to offer.

What could be more sublime, after all, than that stray drip of mango nectar dripping off your chin? Than slicing each cheek into cubes and inverting them, for bite-size chunks ready to eat? The messiness, the sweetness, the satisfaction as it settles into the pit of your stomach reassuring you that all is delightfully well?

That mango was really good.

Choosing which void to shout into

Fascinating that this blog, untouched for years, can on its return to active posting still somehow find its way into 35 sets of eyeballs (theoretically*).

When I started this blog in 2009, I didn’t have any such analytics tools at my disposal to manage its performance. I can’t say for sure whether that might have impacted my approach. I have been thinking about that a whole lot lately.

Hasn't blogging changed in that time?

Humour my lament a moment; I miss the days where all my friends had their own blog, where I could go and I was completely in their space. The whole look curated to their tastes, every word exactly where they put it. Maybe an ad here or there if they were lucky enough to monetise, but it was like visiting them in their house. As has been widely documented, the advent of Social Media brought an end to that, and now we can't visit our friends at their own places anymore; we only see each other in online spaces that have been HIGHLY curated for us. Like only being allowed to see your friend at a café, and all the cafés look exactly the same. Also now every time you visit the café the menu has been ever-so-slightly adjusted, or put in a new place, or has disappeared altogether, and the little number placards on the table have become covered in so many ads they're spilling out onto the table top, and randoms from other tables keep coming over to join in your conversation, to the point where the table keeps getting bigger to allow more people to sit down, until the table is SO big you look around and realise you can't see your friends anymore. Even if you post, there's no guarantee that they'll see it, and vice versa. 

So here I am, back on my blogspot bullshit. It's nice and quiet here. Come in, have a cuppa.

*theoretically because there's no way to know if those 'eyeballs' were just scrapers or bots. Honestly, how can we even know?

Visiting the past (now with edits)

I recently found this blog again (and my login for it) so I thought it about time to reemerge. 

Hello! Welcome (back) to my blog.

This thing has existed since one night when I was nineteen and bored and saw a bunch of online friends doing it. I’ve been going back through some of those early posts, and my word, I truly thought I was saying something. Besides the cringey late-00s internet nomenclature, there was just nothing to it. 

The posting cadences, and style, fascinate me the most. I think maybe I was using it kind of like Instagram (without the classic filters) and kind of like a diary (not dissimilar to how I used to post on my Windows Live Space). I think it would have been another year or two before I got Instagram (that was 2009 or 2010, I think?). I do remember in that early period, in a desperate attempt to force productivity from myself, I set a posting schedule of once every three days, come hell or high water. What resulted was a lot of  "I have to post so here is a post of me saying I have to post" and little else. 

There was also slew of posts featuring a photo, with the title serving as caption. The images are so old they no longer load, but the captions persist as a mystical clue to the graphic they pertain to.

Don't go searching for these posts, I am in the process of archiving them. I’ll keep them for posterity, but the world needn’t see. There's plenty of nonsensical slop on the internet (thank you AI). I needn't make the problem worse.

———

I return to this post with edits and additions, in the form of further observations.

I just read through, not all, but a good handful of my existing posts. What stuck out to me, besides the above, was:

• I was always so hard on myself. Such pressure to post to a schedule and 'punish' myself when I failed. Why did we do that to ourselves back then; why was that the prevailing culture?
• I posted a lot for the sake of posting. The still-very-fresh thrill of publishing myself to the internet was my driving force. For the dopamine, probably. Sure is a fun way to post, and a terrible way to read.
• (Though at 36 I am still not diagnosed,) This blog could go a long way to convincing medical assessors of my neurodivergence. My prevailing theory is AuDHD, but until ratified by a professional I remain an enigma lol.
• The internet slang of 2007-10 aged TERRIBLY, and my use of it was also terrible.
• The 'bit' of me talking to my 'audience' must have been fun to write (otherwise why stick with it with such commitment?) but wow it is grating to read. To any readers who ever read those posts and felt condescended to, I'm sorry. I had insufficient social skills to guide my communication or writing, as a result of the insufficient guidance that defined my upbringing.
• I think the part I am saddest for, is the girl I was. I remember feeling so trapped by a lack of direction. In retrospect, I needed a lot more support than I had access to, and a lot less judgement than I was subjected to.
• The religion shit pops up every now and then. As a writer’s note, I spent the majority of my upbringing trying to be a good girl, and my parents defined that as a good ‘Christian’ girl. My twenties were largely comprised of my deprogramming from this way of thinking. This had a simplifying effect on my life - religion, and all its inherent contradictions, had a complicating effect on everything. I may expand further on this another time.
• I truly thought graphic design would be my thing. Maybe I was just excited to have a career direction for the first time in my life.
• I wrote many posts before developing the capability to self-edit. I am pleased to report I have since acquired this skill.

I will likely continue to ruminate on my output here. In fairness to my younger self, I did the best I could with what I was given. I will try to treat her with the compassion I needed back then, instead of the reflexive judgement I was subjected to.

Here's to growth 🥂

(Is that the first emoji to feature on this blog? Certainly an upgrade from all the ':)' faces. Times sure do change.)