Myths & Sagas

Myths & Sagas

I didn't feel like writing a weeknotes last week. Not much happened, and I wasn't feeling all that great, so meh these things happen.

I've done some thinking about Inktober coming up. I'm planning to tie the prompts for each day together into a single story, told comic-style with a panel a day, which I've outlined this weekend. It's a challenge.

I have some medical stuff still going on, which is going to add to the challenge. It's already made me miss a family event and reschedule various work things. Dealing with health stuff means experiencing a different world entirely, the timescales change from appointment to appointment, from whether you wait minutes or months for your next appointment down to whether your appointment happens on time or not. Some things are take-a-ticket-and-wait-your-turn, others you feel like a concierge is waiting on your every need.

The machines are different too, there's nothing familiar about the UIs you see, they're running on unknown operating systems, storing data in unknown ways and alarming beeps and flashing lights for seemingly unknowable reasons. I very much would like to get some of the images they're going to make at my next appointment though, at least to even see them, they're going to image the blood flowing in my heart and that feels pretty damn amazing to me. The kind of self-knowledge that only clever application of nuclear physics can provide.

Whenever I write a weeknotes thing I look back at the photos I've taken during the week. I take hundreds a week, of everything - food, notes to myself, flowers, clouds, reflections, whatever, just so I can remember what happened or where I was. I remember when phones first came out that had cameras in and a friend at the time said, "Who the hell needs to take pictures with a phone?" It seemed a reasonable question at the time. Now, it's such a vital piece of assistive technology for me (and I guess a lot of people) that it feels sad I have so few photos from earlier in my life.

What I'm getting at here is of course I bought Apple's new thing. It has a better camera, so yes. I guess I don't need to justify myself but thinking of it this is my only real vice. I have never driven a car, or any motor vehicle. I have taken two flights (meaning, there and back) for personal reasons in my whole life, and the total including work flights I can still count on two hands. Most of my working life I've walked to work, and now I work from home. We judge the food we buy whether it's best produced locally or whether the food miles are the least damaging thing about it. I don't even fucking drink anymore. I think I can forgive myself a techno gizmo, but still, there's the guilt, so I feel I need to justify something about it. Modern living is such a blast.