1. Revamping the website
A tech person is helping shape the website into what I want it to be! It’s quite complicated and I have no clue how people are expected to figure all this out on their own. But, I’m excited. I have many ideas. There has been much brainstorming and drafting and reference-compiling happening behind the scenes. I expect to be more prolific soon.
2. Helping
I had tried to put my time toward “official” volunteering but I was repeatedly thwarted. There was the legal org that acted like a volunteer writer requires the same vetting as a paid hire. And the local garden labourers who said they could use my help and then ghosted me. And the union that has repeatedly ignored me and either let the file go dormant or stopped updating their website. It’s been very frustrating. So, I’m doing casual helping work instead, for friends and neighbours, and strangers both local and remote. Whatever I can do where skills align and spoons allow. It might not impress on a résumé, but it makes an actual difference.
3. Learning
My current areas of focus include psychology, discrimination, current events and governance, technology, and cooking. I’m trying to balance the doomed and depressing with the hopeful and useful. There are some excellent resources out there I will probably be referencing in future posts, by which I generally mean materials produced by experts, whistleblowers, and those with lived experience, not artificially generated garbage and vacuous government talking points.
4. Healing
This takes a lot of dedicated time. Harmful beliefs and practices do not spontaneously resolve, particularly when so many are antagonistic to healing (including governments and employers and judgmental strangers). I’m lucky to have time to dedicate to this, and access to non-traditional coaches. I wish more people did.
5. Living
I put living on pause while I was at my most “productive.” It’s depressing how hard it is to really start living now. Spending time outdoors between thunderstorms and heat waves and tornado warnings, before the wildfire smoke blows this way. Timing what I need to do around grid failures, staff shortages and supply chain interruptions. Calculating which activities are worth the risk of temporary covid and long covid. I had really hoped for less dystopia. But, the world is what it is, and I plan to spend my time on things that matter, say no to things that cause harm, and speak my mind all over the place.
But yeah, not so many published posts this particular month.