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Half Your Hay
Feb. 1st, 2024 08:11 pmSo. I've been incubating or festering, I'm not sure which. Not writing, not reading, not engaging in my life any more than I have to. Bah. Actually, my disengagement has been mostly emotionless, just "there it is" without any comment or interest, so the "bah" is a bit histrionic in comparison.
Health for the most part is fine enough - I am not in imminent danger of dying. My knees make me very unhappy. My thumbs are now on team ouch. Winter is not my season. I live in a little town which doesn't even qualify as a metaphorical armpit - more a sweaty little follicle. Truly, if I didn't need to feed the girls, I wouldn't get up some days.
So during the last month I have been wrestling with (feebly courting/resisting) social media. In general, even on a good brain day, I only have enough enough to deal with four different social mediasiums (can't decide on whether plural of singular, or singular of plural, so I am going for ALL THE PLURALS). Whenever I add a new one, an old one falls off.
I have added Bluesky, which is trying to be an old rosy version of Twitter. I never liked old Twitter very much, and it never displaced anything else I was using, but new Bluesky lets me have news. Since FB has gone all MY BAT MY BALL and won't share any news of any kind with Canadians, FB has become less that useful. Truly, I would drop FB now because some of the latest since-New-Years shenanigans are over the line into absolutely nope territory[1], but this is the family telegraph now. This is how we find out about births and deaths, and how we Seasons' Greetings each other. So eschewing it entirely is not gonna happen.
The other wall I have run into is my writing. I last posted a story on Medium at the beginning of September. My pail of things that need to be said has not refilled. Granted the piece was basically: It's All Over, We're Doomed, but that doesn't seem to stop others from continuing to write about the doom or the funny things that happened on the way to the doom. I feel that more will eventually drop into the bucket, but it is taking its sweet time, let me tell you.
So. While I am enjoying the news on Bluesky, I'm not finding engaging on Bluesky to be much easier that on old Twitter. It's not really a place for conversation. I am really peeved with FB, but I discovered on Bluesky that there is flooding in Pemberton, so I need FB to ask family members about a cousin who lives there - safe or not safe? I still like Dream Width, because long form writing is way more interesting than short pithy shots, and it gives me a place for my ME ME ME writing. Medium and my two email accounts forming the fourth lumpy partner of my social media quartet (sort of three kids in a trench coat trying to get into the movies vibe).
So. Not everything that goes into an incubator comes out renewed, but I am beginning to have hope. Friday is Ground Hog Day, which is also Imbolc, and Candlemas, which is basically the day we start noticing that there is more light in the evenings. It's not much yet, but it is starting, so that's good.
I learned something new about Groundhog Day last year. One of the old sayings about Groundhog Day is "Ground Hog Day, Half Your Hay." The point is that if you still have at least half of the hay you put up in the fall, then you and your animals will make it to spring and new grass. If not, then you and your animals are at risk of starving.
This day has always been presented to me as a somewhat lighthearted welcoming of the returning sunlight, and yet it turns out that at its core is a careful reckoning between life and death, or at least between comfort and misery. It's about being aware of limits, and keeping track of resources.
Limits and resources.
[1] - if I pause in my scrolling for any purpose - answer the phone, follow a clickbait link, whatever - when I return the page auto refreshes so that whatever I was reading, and whatever was next are now gone. Since usually only the first scrolling of the day has links to people and things I have liked/added/followed, and all the remaining scrolling sessions are more and more plugged with ads and not-me related stuff, I am incensed at this deliberate shortening of my first useful scroll.
Health for the most part is fine enough - I am not in imminent danger of dying. My knees make me very unhappy. My thumbs are now on team ouch. Winter is not my season. I live in a little town which doesn't even qualify as a metaphorical armpit - more a sweaty little follicle. Truly, if I didn't need to feed the girls, I wouldn't get up some days.
So during the last month I have been wrestling with (feebly courting/resisting) social media. In general, even on a good brain day, I only have enough enough to deal with four different social mediasiums (can't decide on whether plural of singular, or singular of plural, so I am going for ALL THE PLURALS). Whenever I add a new one, an old one falls off.
I have added Bluesky, which is trying to be an old rosy version of Twitter. I never liked old Twitter very much, and it never displaced anything else I was using, but new Bluesky lets me have news. Since FB has gone all MY BAT MY BALL and won't share any news of any kind with Canadians, FB has become less that useful. Truly, I would drop FB now because some of the latest since-New-Years shenanigans are over the line into absolutely nope territory[1], but this is the family telegraph now. This is how we find out about births and deaths, and how we Seasons' Greetings each other. So eschewing it entirely is not gonna happen.
The other wall I have run into is my writing. I last posted a story on Medium at the beginning of September. My pail of things that need to be said has not refilled. Granted the piece was basically: It's All Over, We're Doomed, but that doesn't seem to stop others from continuing to write about the doom or the funny things that happened on the way to the doom. I feel that more will eventually drop into the bucket, but it is taking its sweet time, let me tell you.
So. While I am enjoying the news on Bluesky, I'm not finding engaging on Bluesky to be much easier that on old Twitter. It's not really a place for conversation. I am really peeved with FB, but I discovered on Bluesky that there is flooding in Pemberton, so I need FB to ask family members about a cousin who lives there - safe or not safe? I still like Dream Width, because long form writing is way more interesting than short pithy shots, and it gives me a place for my ME ME ME writing. Medium and my two email accounts forming the fourth lumpy partner of my social media quartet (sort of three kids in a trench coat trying to get into the movies vibe).
So. Not everything that goes into an incubator comes out renewed, but I am beginning to have hope. Friday is Ground Hog Day, which is also Imbolc, and Candlemas, which is basically the day we start noticing that there is more light in the evenings. It's not much yet, but it is starting, so that's good.
I learned something new about Groundhog Day last year. One of the old sayings about Groundhog Day is "Ground Hog Day, Half Your Hay." The point is that if you still have at least half of the hay you put up in the fall, then you and your animals will make it to spring and new grass. If not, then you and your animals are at risk of starving.
This day has always been presented to me as a somewhat lighthearted welcoming of the returning sunlight, and yet it turns out that at its core is a careful reckoning between life and death, or at least between comfort and misery. It's about being aware of limits, and keeping track of resources.
Limits and resources.
[1] - if I pause in my scrolling for any purpose - answer the phone, follow a clickbait link, whatever - when I return the page auto refreshes so that whatever I was reading, and whatever was next are now gone. Since usually only the first scrolling of the day has links to people and things I have liked/added/followed, and all the remaining scrolling sessions are more and more plugged with ads and not-me related stuff, I am incensed at this deliberate shortening of my first useful scroll.
