The blog home of Jeff Putz

I've been using medically prescribed THC now for about a year. I won't totally rehash my initial thoughts about it, because they haven't changed much.

The great news is that it definitely helps me sleep. My only delivery mechanism is gummies, as I have no interest in smoking it. For one thing, in Florida at least, every lot of product is tested, and the actual amount of THC and CBD is measured and printed on your label. Our favorite dispensary sells the Wana brand (get it?), and the actual tested amount of THC in the "flavor" that I get tends to be between 8.5 and 9.5 mg. That's kind of annoying, because it's sold as "10 mg," when it isn't. I mostly use the indica strain, or "blueberry," which is apparently well suited for helping with insomnia. I don't entirely understand this when it comes to gummies, because at the end of the day, THC has one chemical definition (C₂₁H₃₀O₂, if you're curious). I'll get back to chemistry in a minute. Whatever. I also keep some of the 1:1 THC:CBD formulation, "strawberry lemonade," as something to use when I have the rare panic attack or serious anxiety. I've used this in place of lorazepam, which is potentially dangerous and addictive, though when prescribed, it has taken in excess of a year to even use 30 doses. I'm pretty paranoid about using it, given the history of addiction in my family.

So my routine is to use half of a gummy, which is less than 5 mg of THC, every night before bed. Generally speaking, it does help unless my brain is so wound up, in which case, if I'm still awake at 1 a.m., I take another 5 mg. The problem, and I'm guessing given the lack of scientific research, is that regardless of dosage, its ability to make me tired is limited to five or six hours. What is clear, in most every case, is that it also seems to address my restless leg problem, which wasn't on my bingo card of possible side effects. This isn't a huge problem for me, except when it is, and it's awful.

I have not attempted to use the stuff in a recreational manner, even though I could (the allowed purchase amounts far exceed what I need for sleep). The reason is that I have rarely been up in the middle of the night, after 10 mg, to go to the bathroom, and I don't like the feeling. It's not like being drunk, and it's hard to even qualify. If I'm sitting, sure, I'm chill, a little hungry, all of the stereotypes. But moving around just feels weird. And that's not even a lot of THC. The super-potent strains that folks might smoke will deliver way more THC, and a lot faster via smoke, too. Maybe I'm missing out on something, but that's where I am.

My issue with weed is political. If it was reclassified, I would know more about whether or not it actually helps with the restless leg. But marijuana is still caught up in the silly Reagan-era "just say no" nonsense. If it was possible to have more widespread research, we would know instead of relying on anecdotes like mine. I'm not suggesting that it should be totally deregulated, because we don't know if that's reasonable. But as folks often point out, we know that alcohol likely has zero health benefit, and we let people get fucked up on it and they kill people driving. Legalizing THC is way overdue.

And yeah, part of it is that I still can't travel with it. I can't take it on a plane, with dogs sniffing my crotch at the airport. Just last week, on the cruise, my legs were in bad shape and I could not sleep. If I had the gummies, problem solved.

Where I'm at is that THC likely has real potential benefits, but I'm uneasy about what those are because we can't do real research. Smoking it I'm sure is more harmful than good, much like smoking tobacco (which we also allow), but we don't know. That needs to change. It's obviously not going to happen with the asshats occupying Washington right now.

We returned from a five-night cruise yesterday, which could not have come at a more opportune time. The prior week included a confluence of things that added up to knock me down in a very hard way. Losing Finn was certainly the hardest part of all, and coming home without him greeting us at the door isn't making it easier.

While I generally write about things in search of a conclusion, or some kind of action to ponder, that isn't this post. In this case, I think it's important to admit something that is hard for everyone to do, to admit that we're not happy. I've written many times that contentment and happiness are often used interchangeably, and not the same thing, but right now I would not describe myself as either one. I'm not weaker for it, or flawed, it's just an observation of fact. If I can't admit it, I certainly can't take any steps toward making it better.

Interestingly, I think the Finn thing inspired other feelings and fears. It happened so fast, and he was so young. All of my previous cats, we knew it was coming. Either they were old or had some kind of old cat illness, so while sad, it was possible to smile and be grateful for the time that we had with them. We didn't get any of that with Finn, so I'm just left sad and angry. If that weren't enough, things about time tend to bleed into everything for a midlife-er. It makes me question everything, which is itself an exhausting way to exist.

I probably won't write about the gaggle of other things that all hit together, or are pending, because some things just aren't very shareable. Obviously some of it is around Simon's school challenges. Rest assured that Diana and I are fine, as we tend to have to tag team each other with shared challenges.

Yesterday I just allowed myself to wallow in the sadness. Today I might still be doing some of that, but writing at least helps desaturate the thought spirals that make it hard to do much of anything. It's also possible that I may write the rare unposted composition.

The last few days were really, really bad. Losing Finn by itself would be hard for anyone, but the circumstances in and around that loss made it far worse.

First off, not that there is such a thing as good timing to lose a pet, but it feels like we've been the stars in a shit show all around us. Simon has some serious problems at school, while work has been extra (and needlessly) stressful. The sudden and huge decline in the stock market has been freaking me out, and the continued assault on human rights is disturbing. So the baseline for life was already a fraught place.

Sunday was like any other day. I remember Finn squirming around on the patio in the sun while watching birds do bird things. Monday he barfed up clear stuff with a weird coughing fit. He and Poe have both done this from the start, and we've always speculated that it was allergies, but Diana was concerned because it wasn't like the usual thing. Tuesday morning she took him in, and after an X-ray, the doctor was surprised to see fluid in his lungs. He believed that he was looking at hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), because he could see some thickening in the walls of his heart. It's a common condition in cats, especially in a handful of breeds. He drained the fluid, but was surprised that he didn't immediately feel better, as he described it being almost like a light switch. The doctor had labs sent out and a cardiologist consult, but he didn't think the HCM was enough to cause him to struggle.

We brought Finn home, and he spent most of the day chilling in his basket, as I would expect given the ordeal with a giant needle. He walked around the house a few times, but didn't eat or drink. We brought him upstairs at bedtime, and he got cozy on the end of the bed. The next morning, Wednesday, he was laying down next to the water fountain in our bathroom. I watched him during my shower to see if he would drink, and I didn't see it. We took him back to the doctor, who found him to be breathing normally, and an X-ray showed his chest was still clear. Finn's lethargy didn't add up. They kept him there to give him fluids and oxygen, and we went back home, honestly not really thinking much of it. They would call later and I would pick him up, after Diana went to work.

The call wasn't good. The labs showed a high concentration of proteins in that fluid they took out, which tends to be a sure diagnosis that he had feline infectious peritonitis (FIP). It's a cat coronavirus that's often passed from the parent, so it's possible that he always had it. Certain mutations in it can be deadly, and sometimes it can be treated, but not this time. It was killing him quickly. The doctor said that we were out of options. I called Diana at work, and it hit me that we were going to have to say goodbye to him.

Simon just turned 15, and while we eased him into the deaths of our previous cats, frankly with a lot of time to prepare for each (Emma was nearly 18!), Diana correctly decided that we should just be honest with him, and give him a chance to say goodbye. What followed were two of the most difficult hours I've had in a very long time.

I just put it out there... I told him that Finn was very sick, and didn't have much longer to live. We had to go to the animal hospital to give him some love and our last goodbyes. His reaction was awful, and I've never seen him that upset. He was cycling through the first four stages of grief over and over, while sprinkling in concerns about a test he had to take, going to school and showing us some video game stuff. He's not really an ASD stereotypical rocker or flapper, but that day he was. It was really bad, and there was a time pressure to get to the hospital, where we would meet Diana coming back from work. I'm so tired of seeing my child unhappy or upset.

We spent some quality time with him, though it was horrible seeing him so weak and limp. He would kind of sit up in your arms for a minute, making eye contact, and then kind of melt back into the towel. We spent every dollar we could to help, but it wasn't enough.

When the doctor came in to give him the sedative, Simon lost it to another level. In the moment, since Simon wanted to get out of there, I decided that Finn would be in good hands with his mom, and I'd go to the car with Simon. I didn't want him to be alone. It could have been the reverse, but I guess my thinking at the time was that I couldn't do anything else for Finn, but I could for my kid. I gave Finn one more kiss on the head and a quick rub, and said goodbye.

We were in separate cars, so Diana was about 30 minutes behind me (she stopped to get Simon McDonald's). There were a lot of feelings, but I unlocked some stuff on Simon's phone that we were blocking because of grades, and that served as a much needed distraction. Once we got home, I retreated to our room and finally let myself have a good cry. Sometimes being a parent, you don't have time to feel.

I'm stuck in the anger stage of grief. It wasn't fair to Finn to get so little time. It wasn't fair to us. Usually you know it's coming and have time to prepare. And now he isn't all of the places that I expect to see him... on the table behind the couch, flopping at my feet after a shower, at the end of the bed, and there are only two food bowls.

It's hard to know or even understand how an animal thinks and feels, but somehow you can tell when you're with one that is a "gentle soul," for lack of a better term. And I worry about Poe, who doesn't know a life without his spooning and grooming partner. It's gonna take awhile for all of us.

(Photos from March, 2025 and August, 2020)

If you told me last weekend that I'd be writing this today, I'd say that was crazy. We very unexpectedly had to say goodbye to Finn yesterday. Likely the combination of early stages of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and feline infectious peritonitis took him very fast. I'll write about that later, because for now I want to celebrate the time that we did have with him, even though it was less than five years.

The Finnster and his brother Poe, named after the Star Wars characters, came to us during the pandemic, in August, 2020. We had just lost Emma, who lived to be almost 18, and Oliver didn't make it to Christmas. Gideon left us two years earlier, and Cosmo back in 2013 before we moved to Florida. Our blended cat family got pretty old, and it would be just weird not having cats around. Despite working with a foster agency, we really wanted ragdolls, as we grew to appreciate them with our Seattle family. And we were finally going to have cats that were "ours" together from the start.

It was pretty obvious early on that Finn would be very laid-back and floppy, total breed standard personality. He was a lover from the start. He didn't necessary try to cuddle with you all of the time, though Simon often forced the issue, but he was content to be near you as much as possible. He very early on mastered the stretch-and-flop, where he would go to where you were standing, stretch out his front legs, then flop on his side so you could rub his belly. He did it pretty consistently for me when I was getting dressed in the morning, at least once a week, even last week. And he didn't have to be a cuddler, because he was beautiful and glorious and large. When he was younger, he would often "monorail" Diana in bed, which is to say he'd spread his legs out around her and nuzzle his head into her hair.

Finn could be hilariously lazy, too. Sometimes he would lay next to the water bowl, upright just enough to drink. When he'd play with toys, he had no interest in jumping or trying to catch a feather on a stick. But give him something that he could rear-dig while on his back and he was content. Wadded up gift wrap was a very brief interest in the few Christmases he had. Unfortunately he was also kind of lazy about grooming, something that Poe would generally assist with.

But the main thing was that he was skilled at making you feel at ease, just being around. He was never particularly skeptical of strangers. He was happy to hang out near you, and give you a slow blink with those blue eyes. He was a lover, not a fighter, which led to some bullying by Remy (who seems to be looking for him the most now). It's hard to put into words the way he made you feel, other than "better," even in the worst of times.

I'm going to miss him so much.

Mental health seems to be making a little progress as something that is more actively talked about. It has a long way to go. But especially lately, I'm surprised at how much it comes up in conversation, and how many people feel like they're struggling a bit. I am firmly in this camp. Life's obligations and challenges, and sometimes the world, are weighing on me. For context, I haven't really felt like this since probably 2009. That was the year of the recession, the inability to sell houses, oh, and I moved cross-country, started a new job, got married and had a baby on the way.

I don't really want to get deep into it all right now, but I do know that one of the ways to counteract all of that emotional and cognitive load is to balance it out with stuff that appeals to your intrinsic motivation, helps you feel present, and gives you joy. I've had a lot of things over the years that do that for me, but for the last year or so I've noticed that it's been so hard to engage in them. They don't thrill me like they used to. There was a time when I would jump out of bed to do that thing. And of course finishing projects is always hard (rum doc). So these days, I'm looking for that thing, that project, that thing I'm so into that I'll follow it to completion. It's the general malaise that makes it hard to even plug in.

It's a work in progress. I wish there were smaller things that filled the joy need. Sometimes they do surface suddenly though. A week or two ago I thought, I want a better call background. So I blitzed through rebuilding the Lego Eiffel Tower. (Disappointed that no coworker has called it out.) I know that so much of my thing is that I want to do things that potentially benefit others, which is great in principle, but I think I need to do things for me. I give more than I take already.

Few things are more concerning in middle age than the passage of time, and the growth of your child represents that more than anything. It's weird. And yet, having a toddler seems like it was yesterday, and having an adult seems a decade off, when it's really just a few years. I don't mean to reduce my kid to a clock, but I can't think of anything that so clearly represents milestones.

Not a lot has changed in a year for Simon, other than everything seems harder than before. High school has been so hard. A combination of the volume of work, and his frequent unwillingness to do it, has made things hard for all of us. It wears on his self-esteem and negatively affects his mental health. And that's all while trying to navigate ASD and ADHD. We still aren't in the right place on the accountability/accommodation ratio, because it's hard to parse out what is legitimately challenging and what is him being a teenager. It creates a lot of despair in our house.

It's not all bad, mind you. He's been showing a lot of interest in the hospitality business, which of course includes theme parks. College or other post-high school options are still a pretty big question mark, and I'm slowly adjusting to the fact that it will ultimately be up to him to choose that path. He does seem to be open to the idea of being a working adult, and I know I didn't get there until I was 16.

My relationship with him continues to be strained, but I see more and more that he understands I am his advocate, even when I'm the disciplinarian. I hate to see him struggle, but I force myself to allow it, and coach him after about why I let it happen. He's hearing from me about why it's important to me that he becomes more self-reliant. It sucks now, but I do think we'll be friends when he's an adult. He looks up to me in certain ways (I hear him talk about me to friends online), and I take that seriously. I just get so frustrated with him, but I'm getting better at expressing it in a way that he can respond to constructively.

With all of this, I just want him to have some happiness as a kid. I don't want him to have my teen years. Simon can be funny and fun to be around, I just wish he could find peers that see it. Another year has passed where he has not found his tribe. I never found mine in high school (maybe I never truly have), and I don't want that for him. That's why it's so important that at least his adult relationships result in advocacy, support and love.

In March, we took our only "real" vacation that wasn't a cruise, visiting Washington, D.C. We were fortunate enough to get the White House tour in advance, and it was spectacular. I took this photo of Simon in the East Room, looking down the main hall. I explained to him that a number of presidents gave historic speeches standing in the very same spot. I think he was marginally impressed.

We took four cruises this year. We keep taking these cruises because they offer him a chance to be autonomous while we can relax. He's always well taken care of by the crew, and especially the youth counselors, even if some of the kids there can be dicks. As of now, he's "graduated" out of the tween club, so it's all Vibe now. He's not really a Disney nerd, but for now at least, he still thinks it's cool when Spider-Man comes around.

As I said, high school is hard. But it was important to see him get middle school out of the way. His support system in that school was mostly excellent, and led by his amazing principal. In fact, she's still helping him out.

The coolest cruise we did included the inaugural stops at Disney's new island spot, Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point or some awkward name like that. He doesn't really hang out with us much on the beach now, because of the teen activities, but in this case we were sharing a cabana with friends, and he stayed with us. Can you even believe that water is real?

I used to go to a lot of ride openings and media days at amusement parks, but that hobby has faded so much. I'm just not in those loops (see what I did there?) like I used to be. But this year I did get to take him to SeaWorld and ride their new family roller coaster.

Back on the cruise circuit, we took this photo with Kruno from Croatia, who has worked on DCL for more than a decade. We have a photo of Simon with him from 2014, where he very patiently talked to him and helped him get comfortable with the food options. You don't forget that kindness. Simon's a lot taller, and Kruno is a little grayer, but these memories continue to be made. Also, you can see that we still like each other at dinner.

Simon is knocking out his art elective this year by taking tech theater. Here he's helping paint the set for their production of Hadestown. Diana and I found community and belonging in theater when we were younger, and we hoped that the same would be true for him. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out that way. The teacher is... not optimal... and frankly even the theater kids have found ways to be unkind and exclusionary toward him.

For Christmas, our Seattle counterparts came to visit. When Simon was born there, we thought that he and his cousins would grow up together, but because of the house situation and frankly not great short-term decisions, we ended up moving away. We took a picture of the cousins on a cruise when they were little, and this year we recreated it in our kitchen.

Food is still challenging, which I guess isn't that surprising because it is for me too. But we've slowly opened him up a little to at least new places to eat, even if it doesn't involve new items. And it's kind of nice to get him out and just talk to him, away from school stuff and routine.

While things may not be going well in high school theater, the kid does love to go to shows. In this case, we took him and our Estonian/world traveler friend Kairi to see Mama Mia. I wasn't sure that he'd be into it, but there was enough comedy that he enjoyed it.

Also at the theater, we watched Jurassic Park while the Orlando Philharmonic played the music live. This sort of thing is kind of neat for us, as the movie stretches across generations. He responds to music, often in unexpected ways, and never the things that I would expect. He listens to music constantly.

There is so much competing for my attention right now, mostly in negative ways, that I just can't respond. I usually use writing as a coping mechanism for the parts of life that I find difficult, but I wouldn't know where to start. Also, I feel less inclined to be as open about stuff as I'm used to.

I hope to think of something trivial to write about soon.

There is a generalization that people with autism find it difficult to deal with change. Speaking for myself, this can be true for certain things, and I see that in Simon as well. I feel like I've learned to adapt when it comes to professional change, and even where I live, though I'm happy to have that stable because moving is exhausting (we did it six times between 2009 and 2017). But change is one thing... chaos is another.

The universe is pretty chaotic, and small random things can in fact change big things. Everyone who has watched Jurassic Park knows this. Chaos is a lot harder to deal with, for me at least, because of the randomness of it. You can only predict and account for it so much. A little chaos is fine, because it challenges you and keeps your brain active. A lot of chaos is exhausting.

I feel like I'm enduring a lot of chaos lately. The cognitive cost is rough. I'm "brain tired" all of the time. I'm thinking about this right now, on a Friday, after having "a day," but being able to come up for air for a day or so. It's hard, because some chaos you can influence and reduce, some you can't. The parts that you can't seem to be the things that play an outsized role in your priorities.

Not looking for solutions or conclusions, just ranting.

A retired executive that I follow often talks about the great talent that surrounded him in various stages of his career. He also has a great story about listening to the people that you lead. I think about that a ton. None of the managers that I've ever known or worked for were effective without listening. Yes, leaders are ultimately accountable for making decisions, but they can't do this arbitrarily. There is always nuance and context to consider, and you don't gain that if you don't listen.

In technology, especially when it comes to software engineering, many leaders are former developers, myself included. We start our careers by solving problems. It's our instinct to want to fix things and make decisions. The problem is that this does not scale well. I bet most engineers have stories of leaders who became VP's or CTO's relatively quickly, or maybe not having many jobs prior, that stay in this instinctive problem solving mode. The thing is, they tend to lack the experience or wisdom to have most of the answers, and even if they had that, they're not close enough to the makers to truly understand what's going on. So they hand down decisions because, well, they're the boss. Maybe this is true in most professions or industries.

What I've learned though is that, as a leader, you should always be driving toward outcomes. Whether those outcomes are defined by you and your peers, or a larger strategy given to you, your goal is not to make decisions, it's to move closer to the outcomes. I'm not saying that you won't make decisions, but making them requires taking all of the input from those in your charge, even if you don't like what you're hearing. That's where the real value and power of leaders comes from, in the ability to listen.

To be clear, this is not a sign of weakness. I had a (shitty) manager once tell me that I had to "be assertive" and "show them who is in charge" to be effective. But modeling my behavior after managers that I admired, I knew that this advice would only cause my people to lose respect for me, and not get me closer to the desired outcomes. I left that job a few months later, but sometimes the anti-pattern sticks with you.

It's important that we, as leaders, set the tone for listening. It doesn't matter if you're a line manager or leading a nation. We can't have all of the answers, but we can help steer toward the right outcomes when we listen.

I started my professional life working in city government, before I even graduated from high school, actually. Brunswick, Ohio had a "cable TV" office, which televised city council meetings and produced public affairs programming. It only had one full-time guy at the time, but I worked for him for years on a part-time basis. Eventually, I became his peer working the same job in the next town over (for a lot less money, I should add). That experience, which included working with the local school districts and county, really helped me appreciate what local government could do, how those local tax dollars were used. It always bothered me that people were so hostile toward the local government units when they asked for money to fund necessary things, which was always followed by complaints about not having the things (roads, schools, etc.), as if they did not understand the cause and effect.

While government scrutiny is an absolutely necessary part of the system, mistrust of it is not. Unfortunately, former President Ronald Reagan planted the seeds for mistrust that have had effects that he probably did not intend. He famously said that he was weary of anyone who said, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." Putting aside for a moment the fact that he was the government, the implication that he was making is that government is somehow the bad guy that will take your money and get in your way. That sentiment has persisted to the point where now a bunch of corrupt and morally bankrupt people are trying to gut the government and claiming that it's wasteful, without evidence, and even firing the people who were there to call out the waste.

I'll be the first to tell you that government is not without waste. I generally don't even agree with its priorities. But regardless of tax or debt implications, I understand that it is necessary, and it does deliver value. The amount spent on defense is absurd, relative to the rest of the budget, but we can't not have it. There are a ton of different things that may not deliver obvious value, but if you ask experts about those, you'll learn why they're necessary.

For example, foreign aid, which seems to be a hot topic now, brings stability to other parts of the world. How does that benefit the US? Well, stability means less illegal drug production, less migration forced by famine and climate change, better health outcomes and less disease certainly keep pathogens away, etc. We don't have a great track record on fostering democracy, but stable nations also don't attack allies.

And of course, it should be well understood that investing in ourselves, in education and science, yields a ton of benefit relative to the cost. The Covid pandemic could have been even worse were it not for those government investments. Raising smarter kids and funding research puts us at an advantage relative to nations who are not our allies.

We need to stop pretending that government is the bad guy. That, and if we're going to be skeptical of anything, it should be people who believe that their leadership in government is the answer. It can't be the bad guy and the good guy.

College has seeped into my brain a lot lately, and not really in a way that's connected to my own experience with it. For example, I had a dream the other night that I was dating violinist Lindsey Stirling, and doing her lighting design while in college. We just finished up watching all three seasons thus far of The Sex Lives Of College Girls on Max, and every B-roll shot of the campus, they apparently used Vassar, had me thinking about campus life.

I've written more than once about the dreams, and it's worth noting that they don't involve actual Ashland University, the school I graduated from. My actual college experience was kind of a mixed bag. It was often a lonely experience, and I spent most of my sophomore year being depressed. I had an emotionally abusive instructor, which is weird to say in retrospect, but he was some of the reason that I disengaged a lot from my major activities. A close friend turned out to be a total sociopath, which wasn't great for my already tenuous social life. My senior year, I lived off-campus, totally over working in residence life as an RA, ready to just be graduated to start my career, and dating Stephanie, who would become my first wife. I wouldn't say that college was a bad experience, it just isn't what I would have liked it to be.

But what stands out is the feeling of starting a new year. For a little while, at least, every year I felt confident and hopeful, and I was kind of a super version of myself. I even talked to girls, though these encounters always went poorly, for reasons I better understand now (ASD, among other things). I don't recall rain at all in the fall, just the sun and leaves changing colors. I mean, it had to of rained, but that's not the memory. I even looked forward to those first weeks of classes. Then stopping by the mail box to see what might be there, like Columbia House CD's. Maybe more importantly though, is the things that I don't remember because they weren't things. There was no full-time job, no parenting, no real obligations beyond graduating. It's a weird time, because you are technically an adult, but you are in many ways protected from the world. Making mistakes carries far less risk.

I'm pretty sure that it's some combination of those feelings that cause this obsession. I've had similar feelings since. When I would visit John Carroll University when Stephanie was doing a masters there, I was content to sit and read or something else while she was doing science. There was no wifi, let alone smartphones then. Working at Microsoft in Redmond was very strangely college-like, only instead of forking over six figures over four years, they paid you six figures. (Fact check: Room and board I think peaked at $17k per year at Ashland, though with grants and stuff, only the rich actually paid that much.)

I don't have a graduate degree, so I couldn't even coach at a college if I wanted to. There's nothing really that I could do professionally in an academic setting. And really, talking to friends who do work in academia, it's not a great spot to be in these days, what with the cost of school and the dumbing down of America. If I really distill down the feels that I am nostalgic for, it's what I call the "summer camp" experience, where people come together to do stuff for some limited time. I imagine that making a movie or a play is like this, too.

Maybe what I really long for is the simplicity of that stage of life. I'm trying to figure out how to get back to that simplicity, while enjoying all of the things that the complexity of life has allowed me to do. Weird obsession, indeed.

If you were a reader of this blog eight years ago, you may recall that I wrote a lot about the fucked up US politics, especially as they related to Trump. You may have noticed that I haven't been doing it this time around, even though frankly it's much worse. The racism and attack on democracy isn't even veiled anymore. It doesn't mean that I don't get involved, especially when it comes to donating to advocacy organizations, but I've largely reframed it all.

To start with, Trump be Trump, and he's an exhausting moron. My concern has largely shifted to the voters who put him there, or worse, didn't vote at all. This nonsense is on them. And confronting them generally goes the same way every time. If you ask them how they could vote for a [insert offense type here], they will either disengage completely, or cite some made up thing that they believe without evidence. You can't really argue with willful stupidity any other way than, "Show me the evidence."

But even then, there are layers to the lunacy. The performative stupidity you just have to ignore. I'm talking about things that aren't real, like "renaming" the gulf or ordering a ban on paper straws. I'm not saying those things don't matter, but that category of things is designed to please the dummies who believe anything they hear. I don't have time in my own life to concern myself with small things, let alone that kind of nonsense.

The next layer is the performative actions that will, without question, be overturned by courts. We've already seen a ton of that. One organization claims he lost 92% of these cases last time around, and the New York Times counts 29 orders blocked already, in just one month, with a ton pending. It's a colossal waste of money and court time for this stuff, but that's what it's there for.

After that, there is the concern of whether or not the clown cabinet follows the courts' orders. Trying to discredit the judiciary is a classic fascist move. That part is admittedly a little scarier. In the event that he were to start blowing off the courts, two things happen. The first is that we see if Congress is willing to act. The Republican majority is thin, and according to some pollsters, only a third of them are known "loyalists," which is to say they used him as a point of reference in campaigning. More than half haven't, and don't talk about him at all. It could go either way, but their constituencies, in most states at least, also did not enjoy large majority wins. Anecdotally, I'm surprised by the number of lifelong Republicans that I know personally who were already done with him in 2020, and now they're outright pissed. Naively then, I think there would be consequences to those working at the Capitol. Ignoring the courts is a "high crime," and if you don't impeach on that, you're complicit.

The second thing that happens is that the protesting gets more intense, and the potential for violence increases. I hope it doesn't come to that, but when you keep backing large groups of people into a corner, they eventually push back.

So at the moment, we're in kind of a wait-and-see season. A lot of people are going to be and already have been hurt by this season, and it's going to get worse. The economy is already showing some signs of weakness, which is crazy that it could happen that fast. There's a domino effect already in play. They fired all of the people trying to contain and trace bird flu, which is going to harm chicken and egg prices, and potentially beef. When you withhold funds already appropriated from projects in process, more people lose their jobs. When you put tariffs on stuff, the price of everything goes up. And why, to satisfy an ego instead of an actual policy goal? These fuckwits are suggesting that programs intended to feed people are instead trying to encourage kids to get transgender reassignment surgery. This obsession against trans people is the worst of humanity, and it's being institutionalized.

That's where I'm at. I'm giving a lot to advocacy orgs right now because my employer matches them all, but only for the next month. I'm monitoring, but redirecting outrage to more useful actions and looking for organization and deliberate positive intent. There are a lot of things to track, and I'm confident that the negative impact will be widespread. Will people still believe that scapegoats are to blame, or the idiot they elected? I guess we'll find out what the durability of the system is that the founding fathers built.

The value of my therapist is pretty extraordinary. She helps lead me to interesting things that are thought provoking and useful for the purpose of better mental health. Today we were talking about the malaise I feel following external validation. Let me see if I can codify what we discussed. It makes sense in my head at least.

For better or worse, people find purpose in work. My earliest career ambition was to work in radio, and when I got there after college, it wasn't what I hoped. It kinda sucked. I did local government TV stuff for three years after that, then left it all for software. I've been doing that ever since. For much of the first half of that career, I kinda let it just happen to me. Then I started to actively manage it. Going to Microsoft was a big deal, and frankly the only time I've really felt any sense of career achievement. I felt this just slightly when I started contracting for SeaWorld, but I think much of that joy was just landing something in Orlando. But as it stands today, I don't know that I'm really reaching for any specific milestones in my career. I like my job and what I get to do, reaching challenging outcomes, but as much of it appeals to my strengths, but I'm not thinking about promotions or salary targets (though I welcome the latter).

Humans seem to struggle, a lot. For many people, especially in poorer nations, a significant portion of their lives are committed to survival. They don't have the luxury of even basic career management. The weird thing is that, even if we are wealthy by comparison, wealth doesn't mean that you're without struggle. I'm not trying to compare looking for food to the kinds of things that I struggle with, because that would be absurd, but it feels like there's always something. Parenting is really, really hard, and I don't feel like I'm doing it right. That's one of my struggles, and there are others I don't really write about.

Still, my struggles do not preclude me from maintaining a sense of curiosity about the world. I'm wondering if that realization explains the overwhelming feeling that I don't feel like I'm moving toward... something (other than the obvious). I know, midlife or whatever. But I keep coming back to the fact that I've hit certain milestones already. I mean that in good and bad ways, in terms of life experience, like I've seen some shit, and experienced a lot of joy. When my therapist asked me, if I could make something happen tomorrow to bring me great joy, what would it be? I didn't have an answer at first. What I did discover is that there are a great many situations that bring joy in the moment, and they are not destinations or milestones.

OK, sometimes they're literal destinations, but not milestones, because I like to travel. Wandering down a random street in London or seeing steam vents in Iceland certainly brought a lot of joy. Meeting people in that context, and even making new friends for life, is also joyful. Making stuff, virtual or otherwise, is great. I really love to see someone succeed in some small part because I enabled them. The thing is, I'm not a box checker, but my cultural indoctrination suggests that I should be, as if that's your purpose.

So the indifference that I regretfully feel toward receiving deserved validation is mostly a function of me not being intrinsically motivated by milestones. They're nice, and I want to be recognized for what I do, but I don't really place the weight on it that I thought I did. In some ways, maybe this is good, because to seek joy means to seek smaller, present situations. It's not that I've achieved all of the things, it's that the achievement isn't what's important to me. Deep down, I knew this, but I couldn't sort it out.

I've stated that I begrudgingly would like to feel some validation now and then. I used to crave it in certain ways, but in adulthood I mostly just expect to never get it. I've had a lot of therapy to understand where validation should fit in my life, where it should reasonably come from, and how to move on when I haven't had it. I weirdly believe that I don't need it, but I kind of deserve it. A well-adjusted adult who is not a sociopath, and exercises humility, does not generally seek or feel entitled to validation, but maybe my damage is that I need it anyway.

Today I got it, and I don't know what to do with it. In leadership roles, I'm quick to defer recognition to others, because I know that's what the best leaders that I've known do. But doing that, it seems like it should be a cascading thing, and I'm in the middle. I'm just so used to shitty situations where I wonder if it's my personality or something else that keeps me from that loop.

Like a lot of things, I'm overthinking it. Still, it's a little upsetting that I'm so not used to it that my natural reaction is to wonder why I don't hear it more.

Last year I discovered that there were some gems to revisit on GOG, or Good Old Games, starting with Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2. It turns out that an Amazon Prime perk is a bunch of free games via their own gaming thing, though many of the titles they have are actually acquired via GOG or one of the other services. One of those recently was Tomb Raider: Anniversary, the cleaned up and remastered original game. She still has the absurd proportions.

Video games were exciting when that game came out, in 1996, on Playstation, Sega Saturn and the PC. I think it was the game that I bought with the Playstation, which for its time was a really big deal. Nintendo had the 64, and Sega had the Dreamcast a year or two later. PC's were for the first time coming out with dedicated 3D GPU's. They were expensive, though there were some reasonable models out in the coming years. At some point, I did have a PC remake of the original Tomb Raider that was made to run on my Rendition card, I think, though I think I had an S3 and ATi at some point. I couldn't afford a 3Dfx card, the state of the art at the time. Rendition had a compelling price-performance ratio, and they were relentless at improving drivers. They didn't make it, financially.

It is wholly absurd playing even an enhanced version of a game like Tomb Raider, which is closing in on 30 years, on a modern computer. I'm playing with a wireless controller (they weren't a thing back then) at 4K resolution and 60 fps locked in. The fans don't even get loud. But it's surprising that it still looks pretty good with the improved textures and such. It was made to run without 3D hardware, so that original version was not pretty, with blocky and pixelated everything. I do think it's fair to say that this game invented the third-person adventure game.

This one hasn't completely aged well though. The controls are kind of janky compared to newer games, and the game is littered with what I call dumb physical challenges that you may have to repeat over and over until you get it right. It's annoying, but not intolerable on a modern computer that reloads the scene almost instantly, but it was just brutal on Playstation. Remember, they had very little memory and had to load stuff off of CD-ROM's. You lost so much of your life to loading. I'm not sure if I actually finished any of the original versions, but I did this time. The game says it took me 14 hours, and yes, I had to look up some walkthrough videos because some of it was absurdly hard to find anything to do.

I really like the reboot trilogy that was released in the last decade. They all look great, and are playable on all kinds of hardware. They're cheap now, too. The control is excellent and you're not likely to get stuck. There's more stealth than combat, but all of the puzzles. Lara is even appropriately modeled as an athlete, which makes more sense with all of the climbing and running. The 2018 movie covers some of the ground in the reboot games, and you'd think that Alicia Vikander as Lara inspired the game, but the movie came years later.

This has been a fun diversion, and I hope that I'll find more. With Xbox Game Pass, it's pretty low risk to try new-to-me games, but I feel like it's such an investment to even get through tutorials. I'm lazy doing lazy things.

I was reading an opinion piece about evolving attitudes toward sexuality among women, especially Gen-X women, and then an accounting of the many recent movies where the bad guy is literally a bad guy who is controlling or violent toward women. And of course there's a bit of a, let's call it a wave, of thinly veiled racism posing as a combination of grievance and victimhood. One of the underlying themes of all this is a shared sense of white, straight American males who feel like they're not heard, displaced or otherwise threatened by cultural and societal changes. That's a useful thing to think about, if only to better understand where the sentiment comes from.

To be clear, white hetero males are not actually disadvantaged in any way in American society. Even if they were suddenly, it seems to me like that would be a valid course correction. Objectively, meaning it's measurable in data, white hetero males make more money and have outsized influence on the world compared to other cohorts of races, genders and sexuality. I'm not going to debate that with anyone, because any other view is just a an uninformed opinion. Math is not a belief system.

I was reading an account by an actor and writer who traced his lineage not only to slaves in Virginia, but was also able to identity the names of the slave owners. That got me to thinking, that significant parts of the population are born with a certain identity. The identities are rooted in being different, being oppressed, being treated not as equals. This does include some white Americans, certainly, if they are born within a generation or two of immigrants. That identity also comes to those who are any flavor of queer, even if they don't really know of that identity until later in life. Many variations on those groups don't necessarily choose the identity, or want to be defined by it, but even if they don't embrace it, it may be forced on them.

Which brings me back to the straight white guy. I'm one of those. I've honestly never had any specific identity that I, uh, identify with. There was a very brief moment where I identified as a college graduate, until I realized that nothing was special about it. I placed some identity in my work in the earlier parts of my careers, too. But I had no default identity, born with or chosen, that I can really think of. I only know that I'm about a quarter of Polish descent, but I've never leaned into it. For most of my life, I haven't been able to tell you who I am, only things that I've done.

Men through most of history have held a certain societal advantage, and their position was not based on merit at all. White hetero males were on top of the food chain without really earning it. As civil rights have evolved over the last century, this default position has left a lot of these guys wondering where that leaves them. I speculate (I leave it to the anthropologists to explain it) that this is part of the root of the whole MAGA nonsense, because they're lead by an unapologetic misogynist and racist. If a powerful person can be hostile toward women, and be racist, and embrace a silly stereotype of "masculinity," it makes it OK to be the same way, like the old days.

I can't pretend to explain why you would wrap up your identity in a "masculine" definition that's so terrible toward others. But again, if you don't have another identity to lean into, maybe this is all that makes sense to you. Losing it causes fear. That's a choice, and I don't think that it's a good one. A non-trivial portion of American has subscribed to this idea that being "manly" means ignoring consequences, controlling women, rejecting people who look different from you, and having a rigid definition of love that must be declared as the only way. Those are not admirable things to wrap up your identity in.

For me, being a dude hasn't really figured into things. In fact, my journey has been more about rejecting any expectations about who I'm supposed to be, and gender is just the tip of that. But there's no question that I'm freer to enjoy that lack of expectations because I'm a white hetero male. In just the last few years, and in watching my son grow up, I've come to understand what it means to be neurodiverse (read: have ASD), and that has further changed my outlook. I'm not sure that I make it about my identity, even though I'm open, maybe even anxious, to talk about it. The psychologist who diagnosed me suggested that much of my empathy for marginalized people may be connected to a lifetime of being different and not fitting in. I think that's probably true. But even with that being understood, I have never had to worry about driving while black or whether or not I could get certain healthcare.

The bottom line is that I'm oddly free to choose my identity, and connect to it in any way that I see fit. Any random person who meets me does not start with any biases. If I were a woman, or a person of color, or not shy about queerness, the same random people would already have connected me to an identity. That's the tricky thing, because being born any particular way need not dictate your identity unless you want it too, or find value in it. But this also includes being born a white hetero male. In fact, if you have that latitude and freedom, maybe don't pick the identity that's wrapped in hate and fear. It's not a good look.

I used to marvel at the fact that my eyesight was so good, because my mom wore glasses since she was young, and as my dad put it, he's "legally blind" without glasses. Then my child started on glasses pretty early. Genetically, I'm predisposed for shitty sight, I would think. But I've never required glasses.

I still don't, technically, but my eyes are not where they were even a year or two ago. My near-sight is not as good as it used to be, to the extent that I'm holding my phone further away just to see it, and tiny text is now unreadable... but not always. I'm not an eye doctor, but it seems like this is more of a function of fatigue than it is some kind of change in my eye. Maybe it's both, I don't know. But especially after being sick last week and backing away from near things (including my phone) more often than not, my phone is sharper than ever. Well, unless it's late at night. During the daylight hours, I've literally been surprised at the sharpness of text on the little screen.

I'm not naive enough to think that it isn't going to get worse over time. I'm spending less time looking at my phone though, so that's a positive. I'm also glad that it's the near stuff that I'm having an issue with, and not things beyond 18 inches. There's no issue driving, or even looking at computer monitors. The robust detail and texture of things outside of that near range is as good as it has ever been. I really hope I'm able to retain that as long as possible.

Meh, this is what aging is. Seeing a bit of vulnerability in my wellness in this sense may be good for me. I need motivation to be more active to fend off other physical issues. Addressing that is so difficult for me, I guess because it's accepting a reality I'm not ready for, and admitting that I'm "wrong" about my activity choices otherwise. I think it would be neat to live to 100, which feels like an eternity, because, relatively speaking, it is. The odds of that increase with physical activity.

Meanwhile, I'm writing this at 6:30 at night on my laptop, which is right around that 18" range, and the screen is lovely (though not as lovely it would be if it were OLED, Apple).

There's a lot of backlash, doubt, frustration and anger over what social media is today. Well, unless it's your source of self-validation for things you believe that are morally questionable. In that case, the socials are awesome for you. For years there were a lot of algorithmic tactics intended to keep you engaged longer, but the intent is simpler than that. The intent is to get as many ads in front of you as possible. What it doesn't do is anything even remotely social, or at least, not in a way that is analogous to any real-life behavior.

If we go back far enough on the Internets, message boards, or even the ancient Usenet stuff, are in many ways one of the earliest forms of what we might call social media. The intent here was to gather people who care about some niche thing a place to talk about it. It was shocking at the time how terrible some people would act in these communities, especially where they weren't moderated, but the upside far outweighed the noise. Much of my social foundation exists because of these boards, and it's part of the reason I maintain them today. I think that value potential still exists.

Also around the turn of the century, blogs started to become a thing. I still love that format (seeing as how you're reading one), because it's more than drive-by food porn or photos of your cat. There's room for nuance and more complex thoughts. There was also a ping-back mechanism that most of the major blogs implemented back in those days, where if you linked to another blog, there was a link back to yours. It facilitated some interesting conversations, and while spam was a problem, it was an amazing, decentralized thing that did not involve a single platform.

Then MySpace came around, and while it had a concept of "friends," it mostly was for self-promotion, especially in music circles. I went to a party once at a conference thrown by MySpace, where they were recruiting, and heavily convinced they were gonna take over the world. Hilarious. Friendster was a thing too, which is apparently being resurrected. This was before mobile was really a thing, so keep in mind that this was all desktop computer activity, with photos uploaded from dedicated digital cameras.

When Facebook started to get some traction, it was college-only, but the intent of it was mostly to find out who was single, and who was having an awesome time at a party doing awesome shooters. When it went to general release, it was still that, but for a good decade thereafter, I think it did a good job connecting people, or keeping them connected. From there on, it became about the algorithms, engagement and ads. Instagram seems to be headed that way now too.

So when you look back at that history, I'm not sure that we ever reached an ideal of what social networks could or should be. I tend to project my own ideals as those that everyone wants, but they probably don't. Still, what I think is the right intent includes:

• Keeping in touch with friends and what they're doing. This means they announce that they've changed jobs, or taking a vacation, and yes, sharing food porn and cats.
• Not seeing ads. That's a negative intent, but an important one. I understand that this means something that isn't free, but I don't see how else you get away from the ads.
• Chronological posts. I don't see any reason why you'd want to know more about things that happened days ago. And if you miss things, you miss things.
• Get in and out, no doomscrolling. If I have even a hundred "friends," I don't imagine that they're all posting a million things a day. If I need a time waster, I can do crosswords or Two Dots or literally anything that doesn't involve ads.
• No behavioral tracking, taxonomies or algorithms. The network doesn't need "insight" into me, it just needs to show me stuff from my friends.
• Privacy. Nothing is public, nor is it possible to make public. Either you're an accepted friend and can see what I post, or you're not.

That's a pretty short, straight forward list. Nothing has ever existed that I think purely can do all of this. I'd be willing to pay for something that did, even if it's of limited utility because not a lot of people I know are on it. I don't know what the appetite for people paying is, but it's probably not high.

For better or worse, my life tends to revolve around food. That's tricky though, given how picky I am and texture averse, not to mention I only eat chicken (and turkey), as far as protein goes. I would say that makes me high maintenance if it weren't for the fact that what I tend to like is pretty simple. Sure, I'm a chicken and potato guy, but I do like a lot of Asian fusion faire, and moving west and south from there, I do enjoy a number of Indian dishes (the hotter the better). And it's worth noting that going out for lunch is one of the few things that I consistently do to balance out my day as a work-from-home person. It doesn't have to be fantastic, but it helps if I can eat outside.

What I don't enjoy, also atypical given my taste and desire for familiarity, is chain restaurants. Back when I was a beef-eating burger addict, and it wasn't all microwaved crap, I would find myself at a Friday's frequently. But when I think back to first meeting Diana, we may have gone there a few times, and some Cheesecake Factory stops, but mostly we went to local joints. In fact, when we moved to Seattle, honestly we didn't have a lot of choice, because chains were surprisingly hard to come by there.

Just before we moved back east, we did a road trip across Washington and into Idaho, staying overnight in Spokane. There we had few choices, and ended up at an Applebees as a last resort. It was bad in epic ways, and my trashing of the place is to this day my most popular blog post. In the years since, we have leaned into a few chains on an infrequent basis, like Red Robin because it was Simon-compatible. They've since gone out of business just about everywhere.

Fortunately, the food scene is pretty robust here in Orange County. Obviously there are the theme park places that are unique and interesting, especially on the Disney property, but there are so many local places. We even have a few local chains, like 4 Rivers BBQ and Tijuana Flats. The latter varies in quality, but it'll do in a pinch. Our new favorite is a place called The Hangry Bison. Not only is the food fantastic, but their bar service is great, the atmosphere is great, and the hospitality in general has been great. It happens to sit on a street with a number of places that we've visited over the years, including a Thai restaurant that makes a solid red curry.

I bring this up because, recently on PointBuzz, there was a thread about restaurants, and people go on and on about the chains. I don't get it. Even Sandusky, Ohio, has to have some local places that are better. I've been to a few over the years. In general, I'd rather give money to a local business owner than some corporation owned elsewhere. The world is Walmarted enough, I think it's justifiable to spend a little more to keep it local.

This has been one of the hardest parenting weeks we've had in awhile. Actually, several weeks. Simon ended up failing a class last quarter. Then we recently got the warning that he was failing several classes. While certainly there are challenges to the way that he learns, this came about because he simply wasn't doing the work. When we had been asking about it the last few weeks, he would always insist that he was caught up. Well, now we know he wasn't.

The hardest thing is that there is a confluence of issues, and we're trying to solve or address them all at once. It's still not clear what the path forward is, but I think I can catalog it all like this:

• Processing speed. Last fall he went through a diagnostic to qualify various functions. For processing speed, he was in the lowest percentile. That particular block of tests tells a weird story, because his visual-spatial intelligence is in the highest bracket, while working memory and fluid reasoning were high average. What I've read about processing speed deficiencies is that it's like a hydraulic lift. The lift doesn't move fast, but it can lift many tons. What this means in the classroom is that he doesn't roll well at a fast pace.
• Panic. Emotional regulation is, in general, difficult for neurodiverse kids (and frankly, adults at times). So when he gets behind, his instinct is to freak out and get overwhelmed.
• Social stigma. Various school folk have suggested all kinds of mitigation and adaptation strategies, but the problem with all of them is that it makes him different. So for example, if he were to use speech to text technology, that's ripe for shitty kids making fun of him or calling him stupid.
• Discomfort. All of the above create uncomfortable situations. I can't blame him for wanting to avoid that, but I also want him to try to adapt and challenge himself when faced with discomfort. My expectation is probably not reasonable.

That's all difficult, but the getting behind and saying he was caught up was a poor choice, and so there are consequences. We literally took the computer off of his desk. I hate it. He really enjoys working with theme park simulations and games, and it's also his social outlet. Taking that away is taking away his happiness, and I know it. (I also have the damage that wanting to use computers as a child, I was treated like that was a burden or a bad thing.) The volume of tears and generally terrible feelings around here is high.

It doesn't help that his psychiatrist basically said that public schools suck at accommodating neurodiverse kids. While I'm definitely seeing that now, in high school, I think it's a bit of an overgeneralization. They did OK in elementary, and even middle. I didn't worry that he would fall between the cracks in the lower levels. But now, does a school with 3,000 kids really have the ability to be effective? And sure, I know that the law requires certain things, but that doesn't make it so. And with the dipshits in Washington trying to make us even dumber, who even knows what to expect.

I don't know how to teach him to be more self-reliant. We're in a time when you have the world's knowledge (and misinformation) at your finger tips. But he always has a reason that he can't learn on his own. Tonight it's that he was worried about the district looking at his browser history, which I don't even have words for.

As I said, I don't think that general intelligence is the problem, but rather how he is wired to learn. Last weekend, Diana was helping him with evolution, and he understands it in a non-trivial way. But he can't have someone holding his hand at every step, and that's what he seems to want. I'm not convinced that it's what he needs.

Let me just put this out here... I'm not soliciting solutions. I'm ranting to get it out, and the only thing I really need is empathy. More neurotypical adults suggesting things without context is not helpful.