Despite my best efforts, notification culture still permeates through every facet of my life. What we call “asynchronous” communication rarely is, not when the pull to react is immediate and insistent. From work, I’ve trained myself to send an acknowledgment first, a kind of placeholder reply, just so no one is ever left waiting. The toll is quieter but heavier: each ping seizes my attention, breaking the current of thought I had been carrying. A small interruption becomes a fracture, a...| Netigen
Take a glance at a life chock full of second-guesses and the occasional dramatic pause.| netigen.com
Where I think about missing the latest edition of a terrible habit.| netigen.com
Take a glance at a life chock full of second-guesses and the occasional dramatic pause.| netigen.com
The routine and the ritual carried me through, but the week itself was a soft blur—not the kind marked by good times or fond memories, but of unexpected friction and disappointment. Work pressed hard, a tangle of concurrent deadlines looming before month’s end. It meant several late evenings at the office, nothing catastrophic, just the weight of it all. Life The garage renovation is in its eighth week, and while progress has slowed considerably, the work reflects an immense amount of del...| Netigen
Unhealthy relationship with caffeine. An added feature of aging is wondering if a headache is from withdrawal or some kind of cancer. My right leg hurts when I rest the left across the right—am I dying? More quickly than expected, I mean. What’s the expected rate of death anyway? If eighty years is the average lifespan, rounded of course, and time feels like it grows shorter as we age, does that mean we’re accelerating toward death? Ergo, faster than expected. Especially since all of th...| Netigen
A fuzzy horde of bumble flower beetles has taken up residence in our herb garden, to such an extent that Amanda has all but abandoned the area. At least these are beneficial native pollinators and the plants appear unaffected. Still, what are they even doing in there? They’re so easy to spot—dark little shapes against the white enclosure—always tucked into the nooks and crannies near the top, crawling along the shade cloth, never actually on any leaves. I’ve been gently evicting them ...| Netigen
It’s strange to realize my father is turning 80 next month. When I was born, he was 36—making me already eight years older than he was when he became a father of two. Though I’ve come to terms with the reality that I’m unlikely ever to experience being a father, there’s still, admittedly, a faint ember of longing. Eight years might not have seemed such a wide gap once, yet the older I get, the more significant each year feels. The irony is that this significance isn’t proof my lif...| Netigen
I encountered a post from Ning this week that offers a robust look at the organization system she uses to keep track of her life. I don’t mean a mere journal; this is far more comprehensive. Yet she writes, “It’s simply a matter of organizing the information [..].” That choice of words—simply—is utterly astounding to me, given the exceptional detail with which she captures her day. To be clear, this isn’t criticism, just pure awe and perhaps a tinge of disbelief. I’ve been ref...| Netigen
On the screen to my right, I just noticed what amounts to an advertisement for AI. Someone uploads their resumé and submits the following prompt: “Can you make a storybook for my 2- and 4-year-old daughters explaining my career in the style of a coloring book?” I am not a parent, so maybe this is an unfair criticism, but this seems so utterly hollow. Maybe at those ages, children won’t differentiate between something created by their parent or generated by a prompt. Maybe they won’t ...| Netigen
I’m sitting at Kings Avenue Tattoo in Massapequa, working on these notes while Amanda gets her sleeve finished. Her artist, Jasmine Wright, is in town for the week, and honestly, this setup couldn’t be more relaxing: big comfy chair, free Wi-Fi, AirPods in, music playing. I have nothing but praise for this shop, especially Jasmine. Her work speaks for itself, and everyone here is incredibly friendly. After a few rough experiences with shops on the island, it’s a genuine relief to find a...| Netigen
A swell in reactionary shuffling online caught my eye this week. I’m no stranger to the art of tearing things down. Back in college, I’d regularly take this very site offline, replacing it with the deliberately cryptic—an unexplained song lyric, an angsty declaration, a message so encoded even I couldn’t decipher it now. These digital retreats usually followed a moment of overexposure: I’d shared too much, felt too visible, or gotten entangled in some online skirmish. Running away f...| Netigen
It’s peculiar how intention can carry such moral weight in some moments, yet seem almost irrelevant in others. When you accidentally misgender someone, we believe in the importance of our hearts, that it can soften the mistake, offer a path to understanding. Elsewhere, though, the calculus shifts—what matters is consequence, not motive. A kind heart doesn’t erase harm. We like to believe that intent defines us, but often, it’s the outcomes that endure. Intent matters, until it doesn...| Netigen
Content Warning: Suicidal ideation. It’s not all that strange to suffer dark thoughts in passing, those flashes of intrusive narratives we’d best not explore. A few years ago, I used to daydream about getting hit by a car. Not out of fear or anxiety, but with the twisted logic that it might offer a kind of forced vacation. I’d entertain the possibilities while walking down the street on my way to work. “Just a break,” I’d think, while contemplating how people would react and what ...| Netigen
Still itchy and uncomfortable. This time of year is great! Life This week, old shadows stirred as I shared stories with friends that revealed why my sister and I grew up so sheltered. I’ve occasionally thought about writing this down before, but I always hesitate, wondering if it’s too dark or somehow inappropriate. In short, two separate incidents shaped our parents’ overprotectiveness: we were nearly kidnapped in the mid-1980s, and in 1991, a neighbor went on a murderous rampage just ...| Netigen
I’ve been quite drawn to Jedda’s weekly exploration of her past writing. She’s grappled with the desire to share those early pieces, despite a natural embarrassment I’m all too familiar with. But there’s a quiet courage in embracing the words we once put to the page; we contain multitudes, every past self a revision in the ongoing work of who we are today. So, while I understand the cringe or hesitation that comes with revisiting old fears, worries, and mistakes, there’s also a ra...| Netigen
Unexplored highlights include a fake chemical burn from a hydrocolloid bandage and an ongoing skin condition from what I now suspect was poison ivy. Either that, or I’m simply growing allergic to summer. Itchy and uncomfortable. Still, the show must go on. Life This week has been utterly exhausting. I’m so sick of the fireworks. While Finn is defiant and unafraid of most things, loud explosions that sometimes reverberate through our house are not among them. Our veterinarian helps us prep...| Netigen
Take a glance at a life chock-full of second-guesses and the occasional dramatic pause.| netigen.com
Where I stop sharing links to these entries on Mastodon.| netigen.com
