Ponderings and Musings

I don’t like the word “triggered”, as in, “he was triggered by something she said”. It has a strong Millennial connotation to me, and as a solid Gen-Xer with a weird need to belong to something, it’s strange to me to identify with something I consider to be “Millennial”.

Someday I’m going to share more detail around how my brain works. In the meanwhile, I’ll try to stick to topic.

Whether or not I enjoy the word and any connontation around it is irrelevant, the truth of the matter is, as an impressionable type of person I can be triggered into a mood rather easily.

Whether it’s the never ending litany and monotony of this never-ending presidential election, some other assfoolery going on in the news, or even blog entries highlighting the latest fad in “optimal productivity”, my mind wants to go along with that crowd and my attitude usually adjusts accordingly.

Upon returning home from vacation I decided that I would need to scale back from Mastodon and Instagram a bit so that I could let the good vibes from my vacation marinate and simmer into something that would hopefully echo some permanence in my psyche. Instagram has figured out that I enjoy animals and, as all corporately controlled algorithms are designed to do, the outrage machine is cranked up to 11 with ads that would make Sarah McLachlan weep. I know there are many animals out there in the world that don’t have it as good as Truman and Lucky and Jinx have it here in the house, and my heart aches a lot for these poor little souls. My heart also can’t take the constant barrage of these images without tears constantly being in the back of my throat, so I’ve stepped away from Instagram until it settles down.

Mastodon, and the Fediverse in general, triggers me a bit in a different way. I’ve been pretty deep in the Apple ecosystem for a while and every time I go on Mastodon and see some of my Linux friends doing their thing, I feel bad because I haven’t abandoned the evil fruit and corporate America in general. Then I feel triggered even further because I’m just too tired for the amount of outrage required to be what I guess is a responsible American citizen in this day and age by clutching my pearls, my husband’s pearls, and the pearl’s of a random stranger on the street every time Trump belches, J.D. Maybelline farts, or someone says Kamala Harris’ name incorrectly (even though they’re solidly on her side of this election turned football game turned WWE fake wrestling match).

This country is one news story away from a complete Idiocracy.

Yes, Your Honor, I object to the word “triggered” but I there’s a lot of things triggering me in a bad way on this Internet thingee, and by taking a step back I’ve gained a slight bit of sanity. 

Not much, mind you, but a bit.

There’s a part of me that feels like this Election nonsense is the appetizer to the sheer chaos that’s coming after the election, no matter who wins what where, and for that?

I’m looking at the wine list.

The moon is very impressive this morning.

I have a love-hate relationship with WordPress, the engine that is running this blog. Love-hate is actually a strong term, it’s more of a like-dislike relationship. I’ve never been in love with the WordPress software, but it does what it needs to do for the most part and I’m fine with that. I like the “plug and play” aspect of the experience, versus building something from scratch that would need constant fiddling. There’s a lot of drama going on in the WordPress community and I’m trying to avoid that as much as I can. I don’t have the bandwidth to follow another train of outrage.

Tuesday is my least favorite day of the week. I seem to be the most out of sorts on Tuesday. On Monday I stumble (usually after a most excellent weekend), on Tuesdays I’m out of sorts, but by Wednesday I’m starting to get on my game for the week.

That doesn’t sound terribly productive.

Even when Tuesday is more like a Monday because we were traveling on the actual Monday, it’s still Tuesday and my brain apparently knows it’s Tuesday.

Catching up with work after being off for six workdays is always a hoot and a half.

I’m looking forward to our next vacation. That frivolity is yet to be determined.

I watched a British Airways A380 land in San Francisco from a cramped seat on a United Boeing 737 today.

Flying an A380 as a passenger is on the bucket list. Tell my husband.

I snapped this photo during my morning walk. I’ve been trying to get out and go for a morning walk each day of this portion of our trip and thus far I have been successful. It’s a good feeling and a great way to get the day started.

My husband and I have been walking an average of 25-27K steps while here in San Francisco. I’m hoping it’ll help balance the wonderful meals we’ve been enjoying when I jump on the scale when I get back home.

On this Coming Out Day, this is my Coming Out story. At least the beginning of it. I shared this on Facebook earlier, and it took 10 years of courage to get to the point to share this story as detailed below.

I’ve shared bits and such of this story on the blog before. Here’s the whole thing.

There wasn’t a National Coming Out Day back when I was a teenager. After years of knowing I was different, I realized in the Spring 1985, specifically during a 4th period Ethics class in Room 113 during my junior year to be exact, that I was fooling no one, including myself.

The desks were arranged in a circle. Somehow the class discussion has circled around to homosexuality. A classmate said, “Well let’s face it, John will have a hard time being gainfully employed…His mannerisms and way of speaking are going to prevent serious employers from hiring him”. As others agreed, friends and other classmates joined the discussion. I sat there as stoic as possible. I realized it was time to admit to myself that the gay was very much fact. The class conversation continued around how hard my life would be, AIDS, and whatever other fear based dialog was being bandied about during the Reagan era. The air around me was suffocating.

After a timespan that lasted forever, the PA speaker in the ceiling chimed an A-flat after the square clock clicked to 11:04, signaling the end of fourth period. Everyone went to lunch. I didn’t move. “Do you want to go into my office for a few minutes?”, asked the teacher, a man I admired. I did and I wasn’t in his office before the tears flowed. My mind was moving at an outrageous RPM, I didn’t know what to do, and all of a sudden another teacher was in the office with me. My head was down; she looked me in the eyes, grabbed my hand and at that moment she talked me off the edge. All the conversation around disease and being destined to a life on the streets had completely derailed me. I don’t know if my thoughts in those moments ravaging my head would have come to fruition, but if they had, I would not be typing this today. That teacher, Karen O’Brien, saved my life that day. I will never forget her words. “You are an asset to this world”, “You are important”, “You need to be you” were among many things she said in those moments. She had compassion.

It would be a year before I told anyone else that I knew I was gay. But someone had just said the right things at the right time when I needed to hear it most and I started to feel the beginnings of accepting myself for me.

When it seems the world is upside down and inside out with so much hate directed at people for just being themselves, someone today is going to allow themselves to “know they’re gay” for the first time in their life. This is why we have National Coming Out day.

Be who you are, because you’re beautiful. And to quote a wise woman, “People – I find them fascinating. I haven’t found one yet that didn’t impress me.”

We went on a wine tour in Napa and Sonoma today. The tour started at Fisherman’s Wharf here in San Francisco, stopped at the Golden Gate Bridge, and then took us up into wine country.

It was a lovely day and we met some lovely people during this excursion. We went with “Dylan’s Famous Wine Country Tour” from Dylan’s Tours. Our driver was Jeffrey. He was very knowledgeable about the Bay Area and of wine in general.

Here’s a bunch of photos from our excursion.