The HHS secretary, RFK Jr., doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to, well, probably anything, which is par for the course for Trump's cabinet. But he's really talking out of his ass when it comes to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). That's personal, for obvious reasons. Simon was diagnosed at 3, I was diagnosed in midlife. It has not "destroyed families" or any other such nonsense. Has it made life more challenging? In some respects, yes, but this is less about the condition than it is the world at large.
So here are some truths to share.
I'm sure there are other things, and I don't want to pretend that I'm a spokesperson for ASD. Yes, there are people like those you see in these (borderline exploitive) reality TV shows that can't be very independent. That's why it's weird to lump everyone together in one category. I suspect that if you screened the entire population, the diagnosis rate would be two or three times higher.
With that said, I've kind of had a mental list of things that, in retrospect, make it more obvious to me that I would have been diagnosed as a child if anyone was looking for it.
There are a bunch of other things, but I'm not sure if I can attribute them to ASD or ADHD, or neither. My point is mostly that I'm reasonably self-aware, and that these are things that I'm sure some people, but not all, can relate to. It is materially who I am.
So when RFK says stupid shit like autism ruins families, and that autistic people will never pay taxes, have a job or go on a date, fuck RFK. Fuck him and his ignorant MAGA cult followers.
One of my college classmates unfriended me on Facebook, I imagine because they got tired of me calling out their dissemination of untrue things. It kind of bums me out, because this was a person that I respected in school. I tried to be respectful, though it's hard to reflect intent in text. I used to at least have spirited discussion with them, but I guess they had enough. Could be worse, I suppose. Some years ago one of my high school crushes I unfriended because she was super-crazy-racist. It shocks me to this day.
To be honest with myself, I wasn't going to change their mind on anything. They were already convinced that it was Ukraine's fault for being invaded. But the specific case involved a Fox talking head, talking about tariffs and how we were going to "win," despite nearly every reputable economist in the world explaining why this was bad. Just today, the Fed chair, arguably a top expert on macroeconomics, described the risk we're facing.
Truth is not that hard to find. Observable facts should be obvious enough. Evaluating the credibility of a source of information should also be straight forward. A nihilist with a podcast is not trustworthy the way a trained journalist is. More than anything though, expertise still matters. It's still a real thing. People say things like, "I did my research," but Googling results with your own confirmation bias is not research, it's parroting what you want to hear. Research for most people means gathering information from a number of sources, and leaning into the credibility and experience of experts. With kids dying of measles, in 2025, you can see that so-called "research" by some can have deadly consequences.
Mistrust of experts is bizarre. When I'm sick, I trust my doctor. If I need legal advice, I talk to a lawyer. If I need to fix my car, I take it in. As I've tried to learn new things, like lighting, I have leaned into people who have been doing it for years.
The source of the mistrust is hardly a mystery. The MAGA movement, which is undeniably fascist in nature, runs from the fascist playbook. Putting aside the victimhood and scapegoating for a moment, they do their best to sow mistrust in journalists and experts. If you don't believe them, then you have only the people attempting to consolidate power to trust. Convenient, right? I am amazed every single day that otherwise intelligent people buy into this. History is unambiguous about how that works.
It's possible that I am naive, but I can't imagine that this works out in the long run. Eventually, if you experience enough negative outcomes, how do you not lean back into expertise? Right now people are losing extraordinary amounts of wealth as the stock market craps out, and taxing liquor has never been well received either. Will inflation change minds? Given the volume of people who seem to think Ukraine is at fault for being invaded, I'm not sure. It's like some insane, political variant of Stockholm Syndrome.
If you're reading this and you are a person that rejects expertise, I encourage you to think that through.
I work in a place where our time off is "unlimited." Admittedly, it's kind of dodgy, because it feels good, but obviously there is some line to cross. With that said, I've made it a consistent habit over the last six years that I've had this available to make sure that I'm taking at least a week's worth every quarter. At least, I've tried to be consistent. With the holiday lull, it probably ends up getting closer to five weeks.
I finally got some long weekends on the books, which are not exactly full weeks, but even then I won't hit that two weeks in two quarters until the weekend of Independence Day. I guess that puts me slightly behind schedule. But I've resolved that I can't not make the time. I've been non-assertive about vacation time for the last nine months, and that's dumb. If you can take time off, you should take time off.
Granted, one of these weekends is a stay-cation, because the rat was offering rooms at our favorite Coronado Springs for $220 a night. That pool, plus Three Bridges... it's something for the whole family! The other is a cruise, and we are still trying to figure out a loop on the new Treasure. That's my brain-off vacation goals. Still, I'm starting to realize now that Europe was already more than a year and a half ago, and that sucks. We are going to look into being in Iceland for next year's eclipse, although it'll mean pulling Simon out of school for three days at the start. It could be seriously crowded in Reykjavik, but what a crazy thing to see in Iceland.
I want to get back to making more international plans like that, although Alaska and/or Hawaii would also be cool.
Make the vacation plans.
Youth has a lot of advantages, not the least of which is a naive sense of indestructibleness, probably ideal health and a sense that you have all of the time in the world. I remember feeling so grown-up at the time, but look back at it as having only a few years of adult experience. What a weird thing.
I don't think that I would take back even most of the dumb decisions I made back then. I absolutely struggled in certain ways, and hurtling toward divorce at 32 was definitely rough, but overall I think I did a lot of learning, as one does. But I can't shake the fact that I ignored the thing that older adults and employers insisted was important, and that was investing for retirement. I didn't. I opened a Roth IRA when I was 35, and barely put anything into it. That was stupid.
In my defense, I didn't expect that social security would be under threat, and I could not have predicted any of the moves in terms of career and family. Still, I'm in a place now where I'm consistently putting away 20% into various vehicles, which is the amount that financial advisors say is the right amount. Last year, it ended up being over 25%, and I was very proud of that. And up until Trump blew up everything, I was on a solid trajectory toward reaching my goals early.
The other advice I always heard was to buy not rent, in terms of housing. This I actually did, fortunately. Despite making nothing on my first house after 13 years, mostly because of the 2009 mortgage crisis, we didn't wait to buy when we moved to Florida. In that respect, I've just been lucky, because I'm up over 150% in a dozen years, to the extent that when it's time to downsize, we should be able to get away with not having a mortgage at all. That at least partially makes up for my lack of savings, but is still contingent on there not being another crash. Supply and demand still vastly favors sellers, for now, and it doesn't look like anyone is doing anything to genuinely move things the other way.
I'm mostly zen about my youthful financial inaction, but I definitely have a little regret. I think I could genuinely be fluid about work now had I paid attention.
The New York Times published a very excellent article about the way that ADHD is perceived and treated, and how it might not be right. It's a long but fascinating read, and the end comes to an interesting place. While the condition is often viewed as primarily biological, there's more evidence that environment plays a role not in causing it, but surfacing the symptoms. More to the point, it explores the idea that hyperfocus is not necessarily a symptom, but the context of the environment and task makes it easier for the brain to engage in the activity. Stuff that is intrinsically motivating is easier to do. Duh, right?
Maybe, but what I get out of it is that every brain is wired a little differently in terms of what it finds stimulating or interesting. Using my own college experience as an example, I went to intro to psych exactly four times, and got a D+ or C-, I think. On the other hand, I got an A in Broadcast Law, the most notoriously difficult class for radio/TV majors (I blew the curve, sorry, classmates). How do you account for this? I didn't know at the time that I had ADHD, but one class I resented having to take at all, the other was fascinating to me. And it wasn't necessarily that way for all of my major classes, because I didn't much care for doing the work in many of those either.
This explains why school in general can be a struggle for some people, but the right job can lead to great success. The reverse is also true. The problem is that school, and indeed the world, are made for certain standards for social interaction, work terms, etc. Neurodiverse people, including those with ADHD or autism, operate differently, which is not the same as "worse." In fact, it makes you start to wonder why these are referred to as "disorders" at all. I get it, at some point you can consider these conditions as impairments, that's one of the things that the article explores in terms of where the line is for diagnosis, but if intelligence is otherwise equivalent, is it really a disorder?
Getting my diagnosis in midlife was life-changing because it gave me the grace to realize that some of my self-labeled deficiencies are not in fact personality flaws. Struggling to do school work always made me feel like an asshole, but now I understand why it was difficult. School was not well structured to meet me where my brain goes, and I see that even more so with Simon. More and more, I am realizing that trying to conform my brain to act neurotypical is a pretty broken way to live.
More and more, I find myself including these conditions as a part of my identity. It's what makes me different, and I shouldn't have to apologize for being different. It's not an excuse for certain behaviors, but it is an explanation. Sure, I've developed a hundred different coping mechanisms to better fit in a world not entirely designed for me, but I'm just so tired of my default being labeled a disorder. It's my "normal."
If it sounds like there's an underlying tone of anger, you are correct. Being different somehow pushes you down below where assholes are. There are a great many people like me and Simon who contribute a great deal to the world, and we're good people. When you look around and see people rise to power, despite being cruel, hateful, and frankly stupid, it's not a great feeling.
I have autism and ADHD, and those things contribute to who I am. I am not a disorder.
In my talk to college students last weekend at Orlando Code Camp, it didn't take long for one of them to ask about the impact that AI would have on their careers. If you follow technology news, or really any news, the talk of artificial intelligence can be a little exhausting. I'm not an expert, but I do have some opinions based on my own anecdotes. I could be wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time.
First, my own experience with using AI in coding scenarios is somewhat limited. I don't write code in my day job, so the experience is limited to what I've done in my open source projects. The results are mixed. It has been really good at generating HTML and CSS, which I don't consider "coding" as much as it is fighting the quirks of syntax to make content look a certain way. Even after two decades, I rarely get it right the first time, but the generated stuff does if you're explicit. For example, I might tell it, "Create a layout with three rows, where the top one is 90 pixels high for a banner ad, the middle row can scroll, and the bottom row is fixed for buttons. Also, make it work in a reactive way for desktop and mobile."
It's pretty good, but not perfect, when it comes to writing code for unit tests. In fact, a lot of the time it will work by naming the test method to describe the test. Something like, "NullNameAndCountFiveOrHigherReturnsFalse," where I'm describing the input parameters and return value, works pretty well. Where you get into trouble is when you have really complex methods that you're trying to test, in part because it's hard to even mock out what you need. A lot of my older code is like this.
Writing the actual production code is more of a crap shoot. Especially in a smaller project, or one that lacks a lot of domain context, you have to prompt it and correct it a lot, and even then, you'll have to edit the results. As others have pointed out, the AI's tend to be resolved to give you something, even if it's wrong.
Getting back to the student question, what I told them was that the classic "GIGO" principle, garbage in, garbage out, still applies. These models are trained on a lot of public code bases in open source projects. That, or they're contextually looking at your code base written ten years ago by people who were not at a point in their career where they wrote "good" code. If the machines are learning based on crappy examples, it stands to reason that their output won't be better.
Therein lies the problem with AI overall... It has no concept of right and wrong. That's why people still manage to make it racist for funsies. Humans are sometimes not great at morality, so I don't know how you could synthesize it. "Correct" coding is a somewhat squishy idea too, as it depends on the language, frameworks, etc., and some are "better" than others.
Where I left it was, AI has potential to make you more productive, if you know how to prompt it. Most coding is already about composition, not algorithms, so if you can explain to the AI how you want to compose something, that's positive. I have not, however, seen any evidence that AI vendors know how to solve the quality/moral problem. Thousands of years of philosophy, and we haven't even figured it out among humans. I'm not saying it won't get there, but I don't believe, for now, that we're close.
The pandemic was a pretty isolating period of time. For whatever reason, maybe as a self-defense mechanism, it ended up being an amazing time for being creative and making stuff. I can't remember any other time in my adult life where I did more creative work. I wrote code every week of 2020, I did a radio show, I built MLocker, I watched Masterclass... so much making. It was deeply satisfying.
In the last year, I'm not making much of anything. I've generally given myself room to be OK with this, because you do have to "feel it" to do creative things. I'll never understand how writers that need to make a living can do it, because if they're not feeling it, they're not making a living. But for me, doing that stuff is deeply satisfying. I mean, to this day, I kind of get giddy to use MLocker, which I use quite literally every single day.
Why am I not feeling inspired or driven to be creative? I don't think that it's any one thing, but certainly the cognitive load of life in general likely has something to do with it. I do feel like I'm getting better with this, if for no other reason that I feel forced to roll with the volume of stuff more effectively. I wonder if something is changing in my brain to make the ADHD worse, too. I am extra aware of my thought spirals, and the never-ending noise in my head. There's an energy cost there. I also wondered if maybe the depression I was feeling three years ago was no longer being treated well by the bupropion, but if anything, feelings good and bad are far more intense, not dull. I'm sure not editing my short doc, and the feelings of regret there, don't help.
I do know that some of my concern is rooted in the fact that I put a lot of my identity in the fact that I can and do make stuff. For the last five years or so, I've been trying to figure out what my identity is, though fortunately this hasn't resulted in me joining any cults and worshiping an orange idol. This isn't performative, and I'm not interested in crafting a persona. This is for me.
My instinct is that the vibes will return, it just feels like a lot of time has passed without them.
I feel very fortunate that, within a few weeks of starting college, I was able to start doing radio as a DJ. I quickly took up the Saturday night shift, from 8 to 2, six glorious hours of playing tunes. No one else wanted it, because the school was unfortunately a suitcase college, which is to say that people often went home for the weekend. Losers. I can't at all relate to the people who wanted to go home, but then again, that's partly because there was nothing to do or look forward to at home.
So I made up this persona, Jeff Jones, and leaning into the Indiana Jones movie that came out just a few years earlier, called my show "Jeff Jones and the Saturday Night Music Crusade." Yes, it's kinda dumb, but 18-year-old me thought it was clever. By the second week, I had settled into a routine that included starting the shift with "Working For The Weekend" by Loverboy, and ending with, "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash. It was kind of a lonely thing, because it was hard to find people who would hang out. On occasion, I could get the local pizza place to send me free pizza by playing a few songs for them. What I know about myself now, with the autism and such, I get why this was an oddly euphoric experience that I continued through my junior year. My senior year, I was working for an actual commercial station on Saturday nights, for money ($4.50 per hour), so whatever I was doing on the college station was pretty limited.
Tonight we watched Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, presumably the last in the series. It starts out quite dark. Bridget's husband, Mark Darcy, apparently died in a terrorist attack while advocating for someone abroad. She's left with two kids, and the suss Daniel acts as a babysitter for her. She is decidedly middle age, with the extra burden of being a widow and single mother. She is not the young single person looking to looking to hookup that she was in the first movie. Everything about her life is vastly different, sometimes complicated, and not what any of us expects at that age. And she chaperones a bus trip with kids, belting out "Should I Stay or Should I Go."
It was kind of emotional to watch, not because of any specific situation that Bridget was enduring, but because everything about her life is so vastly different. My challenges are different, but I too am in a vastly different place relative to my 20's. The challenges of parenthood, career and generally transitioning through life, certainly did not become any easier. I think back to those radio shifts, and I was so optimistic and hopeful, despite being so alone for six hours on a Saturday night. Why was it easier to roll with life back then?
The stakes seem higher now, even though I can intellectually conclude that they're not. I have a stable relationship, but in terms of my role as a parent, there are limitations in terms of what I can do to affect another human being. Work is kind of similar, in that I can contribute in the best way that I know how, but I am ultimately working for other people (and having your own business is still working for other people, by the way, even if you are the "boss").
That song is about deciding whether or not to be with someone, I guess, but I suppose it could also be about figuring out whether or not you should be in a particular situation. But realistically, unless you're a hyperfocused Type-A freak obsessed with box-checking, few of us ever really end up in a place that we expect in life. I think that's totally OK, as long as we exercise the agency to change things when we believe that we should.
I've been speaking at Orlando Code Camp every year since 2014, minus the pandemic years. Put on every year by the Orlando .Net User Group (ONETUG), it is, without question, professionally my favorite weekend of the year. It has been a little less robust the last few years, because a good friend that I made moved out of state and doesn't get to participate. On the other hand, my first boss in Orlando, who to this day considers me a peer, is a professor at the college where we have the event.
I inevitably get caught up in conversations about how things go in our job, and that always leads to conversations about how things should really be based on our collective experiences. Then we wonder, "Wait, why are things not the way we think they should be?" Often the answer is that we're not proud enough to force the issue.
Mostly I just think about how to do this for another five or six years in a way that is satisfying without compromise or shitty feelings.
I've been a huge fan of Mark Rober's Crunch Labs kits from the time that they launched. Unfortunately, due in part to some shitty parenting, I also have like five of the kids kits not yet built. I have two more of the adult ones from the six-kit yearly Hack Pack subscription that I haven't built yet. The problem is that you build them, and they make what is essentially a toy or display piece in the case of the grown up version, but then what do you do with it?
The Hack Pack bits include Arduino computers and servos and sensors and stuff, so I can see how throwing away the parts around them is useful, even if I'm not sure how I might ever use them. The kids' Build Box stuff is not as obvious. They kind of just take up space. I'm sure that if I disappeared them that Simon wouldn't notice, but still.
Regardless, the science learning is pretty great. That's why I haven't just handed the Build Boxes to Simon. I want to sit with him and watch the accompanying video, and talk about the physics or engineering, and he tends to get it, because I ask him questions. The Hack Packs, I now have a better understanding of the intersection between code and physical parts, even if the electronics aren't entirely obvious. It's really great stuff.
I think that one of the most useful outcomes for me personally would be to get deep into 3D printing, because I can think of fun things to do with the electronics. I subscribed to Vectorworks, a CAD app that is in part used for lighting design, around Thanksgiving, but I haven't been able to commit to really learning it. It would be valuable because it would translate well into 3D printing. I could design anything in my head and make it a real object. That would be awesome.
The Big Lebowski is pretty much one of my favorite movies ever. It's very nearly perfect. It's also very quotable. When I call Diana, "My special lady," she responds with, "You mean your fucking lady friend." If you know, you know. The cast is legend.
But one of the primary characteristics is the laid-back (well, lazy slob) quality of The Dude, the "other Lebowski." He's not super motivated unless it involves going bowling or making a white Russian. Regardless of the weird stuff that happens to him, he tends to roll with stuff. It's an admirable quality.
Me, on the other hand, I seem to treat more and more things as important to an inapplicable extent. I mean, doing right by my child and wife, yes, those are important, and I do my best to fulfill that important obligation. Those don't feel burdensome (though the parenting is definitely difficult). But everything else... is it really that important?
I know all of the stories about what people recall as important on their deathbed, and of course most of the things I stress over are none of those things. Why is it so hard to keep that frame of mind?
The Dude abides.
Do you ever feel like some of the most incompetent people end up in jobs that they shouldn't have? Maybe it's not even just jobs, but even in social structures. We all knew people in high school who were kind of assholes, but still managed to be "popular" by high school standards. They weren't the smartest kids, they were definitely not the kindest kids, but they still enjoyed the benefits of being part of the in crowd.
At least with that age range, the stature doesn't last. I remember my college roommate, before our senior year, worked on some production line with a high school classmate of mine, who pissed away full athletic scholarships and couldn't hack it in college. When my roomie asked him if he knew me, he told her that I was a loser. Of course she quipped, "Well, at least he is graduating college this year." That was satisfying.
But it does feel like the corporate world seems to elevate an awful lot of people who shouldn't be leaders. Like, a lot. There's a different recipe for failure, and it tends to be pretty lucrative. I can't figure that out, and it's a constant source of ire among people who are not fans of capitalism. CEO's that fail massively but depart with massive payouts are not exactly on anyone's favorite list.
I have some theories about why this is, not the least of which is that the people best equipped to lead often don't want to. I've been kind of intentional about my own level in that respect, because more responsibility isn't necessarily better, it's just more. Admittedly, that's also contextual, because a title like "vice president" doesn't mean the same thing in a company of a thousand people as it does in a company of five. But being a leader requires some amount of hubris and ego in many cases. I'm not saying all leaders are sociopaths, but a non-trivial portion I suspect doesn't have non-selfish motivations.
A part of it is that a lot of people advancing through the ranks are able to do so by way of personality. This problem is less about them, and more about the ecosystems that they work in. Some places just aren't good at recognizing that the loudest people are not the best people. Especially for on-site workers, not missing a day of work doesn't make you awesome, that's just attendance.
I'm concerned that this will only get worse. I mean, almost every department in the federal government is led by someone with zero experience in the field, and you've got a bunch of dumbasses discussing state secrets on public messaging apps. I don't understand this intentional dumbing down of the world, that punishes expertise. The attack on diversity, equity and inclusion, three things that I find hard to imagine people don't want, is also problematic. These movements are not affirmative action, they're intended to prevent discriminatory biases from skipping over people who are in fact most qualified. If you're for a true meritocracy, you can't be against DEI. It's not logical.
I believe in the ideal of a meritocracy, but we've never had one, and it seems we're going further from it. All at the behest of non-experts who say they want it. Weird times.
In chatting with my excellent therapist, we talked about some of the negatives of remote work. These are not insurmountable issues, mind you, but even for as long as I've worked remotely, I often forget about them.
The first is that the place that you work is the place that you live. Sure, you do your best to carve out a proper office, with a door, but it is still your home. You're a few dozen feet at most from where you make dinner and binge watch The Last Of Us. I think this makes it harder to unplug and disengage when it's time to be with your family. For me, it has always been harder to stick to a schedule. When you commute, there's a natural buffer between stopping work and getting into home life. That doesn't exist when remote.
I think this is why I am so adamant about always having a trip of some sorts on the calendar. Travel isn't just seeing other places, it's not seeing your workplace, which is otherwise always there, at home.
Being present is hard enough, but for me at least it works best when I'm not at home. That's why I go out for lunch so much. It's hard not to think about work when work is at home. Doing that can come at the expense of family and other priorities. We have to make space for this, and that requires a little creativity.
I've noticed, in the online social arena at least, a lot of folks claiming victory in sobriety for various periods of time. I am definitely sensitive to this, given the amount of addiction and alcoholism in my family history. What I find surprising about it is the extent to which people previously engaged. For example, one "personality" I follow, who is a licensed therapist, talked recently about their journey over the last two years. They realized at some point that they were having at least two drinks a day (which also, according to many studies, constitutes as "moderate" usage), which seems to me like a ton. The narrative is almost always followed with the indications of feeling better and what not. Given that these are all anecdotes, it's never clear to me what constitutes "normal" or "acceptable" use of alcohol. I mean, from a scientific standpoint, it is essentially poison. There aren't really any benefits to consuming it.
Naturally, this makes me think about how I should respond, if at all. I've really enjoyed learning the craft of making a good beverage over the years, and I think I'm moderately OK at it. Since treating my hypothyroidism with levothyroxine, I am way more alcohol tolerant than I used to be, so it's pretty rare that I get genuinely drunk. I do get buzzed sometimes, but I feel like even that is rare relative to where I was five years ago.
Most people on a sobriety journey are not particularly judgmental about it, but I still feel abstractly judged. The truth is that alcohol definitely works as a social "lubricant" for me. Social interaction is difficult for me, presumably because of the autism, so I welcome that lubricant. In the last twelve months, I can think of three instances where it was helpful, and I think they were four out of the five times that I was genuinely "feeling it." Is this good? Is it bad? I don't know. I don't even know who decides.
Often the discussion of sobriety revolves around the social situations, though most of it seems to be about drinking alone. I do make beverages by myself sometimes, but generally only on the weekend when Diana is working. I'll make two, maybe three drinks, over the course of four hour or more, which is not enough to really feel anything. I don't really want more because it just feels like empty calories in a diet that's already pretty poor.
My history often comes into play here. It's also interesting because it has vastly influenced my use of medical marijuana. I'm very cautious. I have family members that drink daily, which I don't feel like I could ever do.
So for those who find strength in sobriety, I tip my hat to you. I hope that my own periodic consumption isn't something that you view as negative.
Last week's spring break cruise could not have come at a more ideal time. I've written about how much I'm struggling at the moment, in terms of mental health. I'm surprised at how often the loss of Finn is affecting me. I'm not quite moving through the stages of grief, in no small part because one day he was "making bread" on a blanket next to me, and three days later he was dead. I know that everything else is piled on top of it, and that doesn't help.
But for five nights, I was able to leave much of that sadness on the shore as we sailed away. Within two hours we reconnected with the bartender that got us into mixology, after not seeing him for seven or eight years. Simon was able to consume ice cream and do his thing. The surroundings were deeply familiar and comfortable, associated with so many great times. The air was quite literally better, free of the pollen that has been wrecking my sinuses. I felt like I was exhaling after holding my breath for who knows how long.
The rest of the cruise was similarly relaxed. We did trivia (and lost). We had several beverage tastings. We ate so much good food. We made new friends (and avoided one asshole, but whatever). We got to return to the beautiful Lookout Cay and its crystal blue waters, even if they were cold. We visited Castaway Cay for the 32nd time. And while warmer water would have been nice, the air was just perfect. Jacket weather every night, relatively low humidity and high 70's during the day.
It wasn't without some quirks. We had to get our dinner time changed first thing, and Simon struggled a bit with aging out of the Edge tween club, but it wasn't insurmountable.
There was an unexpected standout moment, too. We were calling it a night a little after 11, and crossing the upper deck when we noticed that the entertainment folks were rehearsing their pirate night show. Quite a few shoreside folks were there, too, identifiable because of their blue ID badges. It was cool to see the show without a thousand other people on deck. Even better, I loved seeing the joy on the faces of the crew and shoreside folks watching. What a thing to be a grownup who gets to play pretend for a living, and giving that joy to others.
I am so grateful to have these opportunities, especially having a chance to let other people look after me.
It has been a slow year so far for my annual playlist effort. As you know, music is kind of the thing that helps me maintain positive mental health. And for whatever reason, I'm not getting more sentimental about tunes as I get older. I'm always after new things. Most years there are one, maybe two albums that are amazing and just what I needed.
So far, I'm still hanging on to Lauren Mayberry's Vicious Creature. It's so good, and we're still not tired of it. She's the lead singer from CHVRCHES, and while I'm a fan, her solo stuff is so much better. Lady Gaga dropped a new album, MAYHEM, and it's pretty good. Weird flow though, as it starts crazy good and kind of gets weaker (relative to her strength, anyway) as you go. Still a welcome add.
In the near future, we've got Wet Leg releasing a new album. The pressure has gotta suck, because their debut was so good, and so everywhere. Simple but catchy indie rock is like candy for me. More importantly, Garbage has a new album coming out at the end of May. They're also touring!
With a couple of high potential albums, and the usual mix of one-hit-wonders and recurring players that make the list, it could be a great year. My only hope is that there's a lot of volume. Some previous years were awesome in part because the playlists were more than two hours long. Fingers crossed.
They don't.
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.