I know it’s cliche by this point, but 2020 has been, and continues to be the best practical case for evidence of time dilation in terms of relative perception in recent memory. Psychologists and physicists will be writing papers on this for decades.

Remember Four Season Total Landscaping? That was only three weeks ago.

In any case, glancing at my calendar says that it’s 1 Dec, so the end, however far away it may feel, is in sight. I’m rather relieved. In a couple of weeks, I’ll have a nice extended break from bureaucratic nightmares, and at least a symbolic end to a ridiculously long and eventful period in history. I say “symbolic”, of course, because this Whole Business™ is far from over, and even if the vaccine news is as optimistic as everybody wants it to be, it’ll be a good year (at least) until it gets wide distribution. Get used to the masks and the distancing, folks; it’s here to stay, especially if people, like I see everywhere, keep wearing their damned masks wrong and just prolonging this crap.

My friends released a song about it yesterday, in fact:

Okay, that’s just me promoting my friends’ music, which is totally allowed, but yeah; wear your mask, wear it right (over the nose, please), keep your distance. It’s getting worse now that winter’s setting in, and so many people ignored recommendations over Thanksgiving. My state, which isn’t doing all that badly comparatively, is seeing significant increases in infection, and my county schools have rolled back to full-time virtual learning, because schools are a serious vector, especially when my neighbors keep electing idiots like this (yes, satire, but only barely).

But yeah; the end is nigh. Thank $Diety. And yes, I’ve been all over the place with this post, but that’s the way it’s going to be. I’m being pulled in a million different directions by different stressors, lots of my friends are suffering for all kinds of reasons, and it’s hard to blame malicious intent on a virus. I’m trying, today, to laugh about something, even if it’s a dark, sarcastic laugh, because otherwise I’ll just collapse into weeping. Also, my sprained ankle hurts like hell.

If you’re able, go find something to laugh about; hopefully it’ll help.

Thanksgiving weekend was meh; honestly. Given the state of the world, it was just a couple of days off, frankly. We had a decent meal on Thursday; mostly vegetarian stuff (a killer lentil and rice loaf, and some spinach and cheese bread pudding that the family really loved). I didn’t do turkey, but did do a small pork roast, most of which ended up becoming extra fat and flavor (instead of my usual butter) in a batch of halushki using fresh cabbage picked the night before I bought it at the farmer’s market on Saturday morning.

During the couple of days off, I didn’t move much, honestly. Other than assisting in some sound equipment rewiring and relocation at the dance school on Friday morning and the usual Saturday morning grocery errands. Friday after the dance school thing, I hit the park down the road to try and get some hiking in, though I just aggavated the ankle I didn’t realize I sprained when I went down on the bike a few weeks ago. After that, it was mostly an ankle brace, a couple of movies on TV, some reading, and putting some time into Witcher 3, which I really ought to finish one of these days.

The days off were a welcome respite from the bureaucratic garbage at work, where something I thought I’d successfully put to bed got raised again and I had to spend a bunch of time chasing down issues because the idiots in another department can’t nail down their pecking order, and the fallout hits the rest of us. I was fed up Wednesday night, and some of that carried through the week, leaving me a few spoons short to deal with the rest of it.

Yeah, combine the current state of the world, work weirdness, daylight savings-induced SAD, a crowded house, and crappy weather, I’m struggling to maintain a positive outlook; the energy and drive just isn’t there. I slide up and down the spectrum from despondence to frustration and back again. And I’m totally aware of it, but it’s a struggle to get past, because while they say recognizing the problem is the first step, it’s more complicated than that, and leads to self-critical meta-commentary on how unhealthy one’s mental health is because you’re seeing it as well as living it.

So, yeah. One foot. In front. Of the other. Rinse, repeat. That’s all I can do.

If you’re looking for some Thanksgiving Eve enterainment this year, might I humbly suggest you tune in to my friend Madison “Metricula” Roberts’ weekly streaming music show on Wednesday night? Each week, she plays “6 songs at 6pm from 6 categories”:

One song hot off the press by me,
one song by a friend,
one song that’s a pop cover,
one song that’s traditional,
one song via audience pick,
and one song that’s my choice to in the darkness bind them!

It’s always a good time; Madison’s a hell of a performer and songwriter, as well as an awesome human being who does a great job spreading the word about the musical community we’re part of, and using her following to draw attention to and lift up other artists, through her “song by a friend” feature.

I mention it specifically this week because on 11/25, the friend featured is, um…me!

A while back, she asked me if I wanted to contribute a video of me perfoming one of my songs, and this is the week it’ll be included in the show; which is cool because it places me in the company of so many other great performers I like and admire; names like The Faithful Sidekicks, Rhiannon’s Lark, and Sunnie Larsen, which is a real honor.

Plus, if you’re overwhelmed with holiday preparations (although I hope you’re not hosting or attending a large gathering, because, well, you know why), the whole show’s only a half hour or so long, and won’t eat into your turkey brining time.

To get to the event itself, click here, or the big picture above!

In plowing through the initial pile of work emails this morning, amongst the wheat (useful test results and signed documents – 20%) and chaff (random garbage, pointless cc:’s, etc – 80%) was a copy of a job announcement to fill the recently-vacated Deputy CxO in my organization. This isn’t particularly abnormal; when something like this comes out, they like to distribute it widely as an opportunity to improve the quality of the applicant pool.

What was weird about this time, is that I qualify.

Now, I’ve been in this general sector of public service for a while now, so I have some seniority and general currency and goodwill in the industry, and tick a lot of the relevant education and certification boxes. That said, it was sort of a revelation that I was on that level on my so-called “career path”, if that was a thing I spent a ton of time worrying about. I recognize in myself that I’m not the career-focused “go-getter” type, and I don’t really define myself by my day job; I do the day job in order to afford to do the cool stuff I get real enjoyment of outside of the office; I don’t crave the spotlight of appearing to work long hours and be the hero. Not that I’m not passably good at my job, I am, though I it’s not the first thing I think of when I try to conceptualize “me” – sometimes, a job is just a job.

It did get me thinking a bit about the position and role I’ve built for myself within this organization since I joined it a few years back. The slot I occupy on the org chart bears very little resemblance to the position I filled when I was hired for it. Sure, there are similarities (I’m still “in charge” of the same program, etc), but the requirements of said job are very different now, to the point that it’s really not the same job anymore, and most of that has to do with choices I’ve made to change the focus a bit, broaden the responsibility, and change some procedures to make things more efficient.

That said, when I consider things, I don’t actually work all that hard to keep the wheels of public service running. In the past, this particular position chewed people up and spit them out; average time in the chair was something like 15 months. Sure, reading my musings here and on social media, you hear my regular venting about organizational dysfunction, bureaucratic fiat, and Microsoft SharePoint, but within my little corner of this universe, things run…pretty smoothly?

We keep the wheels turning, improve efficiencies with the software, and are one of the few cogs in the “modernization” machine that’s actually sort of modernizing. I keep things running, and for the most part, I’m left alone, which, honestly, has been my overarching goal since my days as a student. And, if I’m totally honest, I have some room to slack off a bit.

As I’ve said many times, it take a good bit of work up-front to get to be lazy.

And, my ability to bring things in on schedule, spin impressive levels of bullshit, and pull my boss’s ass out of the fire have earned me slow and steady progress up the pay scale, while maintaining a comfortable distance from being anybody’s boss or spending all day in conference rooms (or calls, lately) briefing senior leadership on who knows what.

And, that’s kind of the way I like it. I get to be (or at least appear*) technically competent, and stay under the radar unless somebody needs an expert, and then, generally, I’m feeding lines to my boss, which isn’t a bad place to be, even with the frustrations inherent in an organization that’s as broken as this one is at the staff level.

So, those frustrations aside, I guess I’ve built a nice reasonable place for myself, and even if I have no desire to ever ascend to the C-suite, it’s an interesting feeling to know that I probably could if I felt it was worth the effort.**

________________________________________________

*-Impostor Syndrome – it’s still a thing.

**-It’s not.

Indeed, a week. As briefly teased in earlier dispatches, I’ve spent a large part of the week dealing with petty bureaucrats and their petty power-trips. It has, for the large part, sucked, though after working with some dare-i-say “allies” within the organization, I unleashed a little bit of bureaucratic jujitsu of my own, and have managed to short-circuit the opposition’s efforts, and in fact, have managed to get my program funding package approved, ahead of the deadline originally denied me beacuse of bureaucratic roadblocks.

Calling it a win, with a side “pffffft!”.

Doesn’t mean I’ve not been struggling with persistent tension headaches due to the stress of the entire affair, and finding myself frustrated and just done with the whole business for several days now.

Beyond that, the week’s been relatively uneventful, apart from a few unique tasks, like replacing the battery in the van and watching a rather huge house fire two doors down on Wednesday night that brought out nearly every damned fire/emergency truck in the county, which was novel (it doesn’t appear anyone was hurt, thankfully). Otherwise, I work, I continue to eat most meals from the huge pot of vegetable soup I made on Sunday night, go outside for hikes (still haven’t taken the bike to the shop; I’m dreading it, frankly) in the nice seasonably cool weather, and trying to banish Rosey Grier’s “It’s Alright to Cry” from my mental soundtrack since somebody posted some selections from Free to Be…You and Me to a GenX social media group I happen to look at now and again.

I am actually writing this Thursday, as I have taken Friday off, partially to burn through some of the leave I haven’t used (because there just isn’t much of anywhere to actually go) this year and would forfeit at the end of the year if it was over the arbitrary limit. Also, partially, because the accelerated semester is over and sombody has to go get the kid, her stuff, and her pet fish from college.

Otherwise, not a whole lot to speak of otherwise. Nothing on the agenda for the weekend really, apart from some vague plans to track down a favored food truck (which is apparently the only thing we do for fun anymore), and my sort-of-intention to finish off The Order on Netflix and see what sort of cliffhanger *this* series ended on before it got cancelled earlier this week.

And, tunes. All over the place from Spotify this week; Japanese Noise Rock, High Concept Indie, Alt-Country, and some good, old-fashioned Prog Rock. Also, a bonus here supporting the title of this post, The Replacements’ tune, which while technically about buying sub-standard pot, still applies in literal language about the cranial pain I obtained through activities I seem to have signed up for voluntarily. Ugh.

1. “Don’t Light My Fire” – Otoboke Beaver
2. “Time We Had” – The Mother Hips
3. “Turn to Hate” – Orville Peck
4. “They Are The Night Zombies!!They Are The Neighbors!!They Have Come Back From The Dead!!Ahhhh!” – Sufjan Stevens
5. “Ice of Boston” – Dismemberment Plan
6. “Milwaukee” – The Both
7. “Club Zero” – The Go-Go’s
8. “Your Dog” – Soccer Mommy
9. “Around Your Room” – Kississippi
10. “The Trees” – Rush
11. “The Cult of Dionysis” – The Orion Experience
12. “Handle With Care” – Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins
13. “The President” – WiT
14. “Outside” – Kero Kero Bonito

…which is shameful.

If you won’t listen to science or the case for public welfare, maybe you’ll listen to Baby Yoda:

Although, in the end, while it may be Dolly who saves us, it’s going to be a while. And as winter comes, holidays happen, and people get even more lax about taking precautions than they already are, it’s definitely going to get worse before it gets better. Do the right thing for your fellow humans; wear your mask, and wear it correctly.

Happy Life Day.

I’m not particularly superstitious, but maybe don’t go camping on Friday the 13th.

My mind-clearing getaway trip didn’t quite offer the solace I hoped it would, due to numerous complications. Not saying it was all bad, but all told, very few things went according to plan or as I’d have liked.

The first piece, of course, was that the weather leading up to my expedition wasn’t particularly cooperative. In the larger mid-Atlantic region, we’d gotten several inches of rain early last week. The rain was finally letting up when I arrived at my destination, Prince William Forest Park, though that much rain takes nature a while to deal with. Campsites, trails, roads, and pretty much everything else was soaked, if not flooded when I arrived. I was able to find some not-completely-sodden ground on my allotted campsite, though several adjacent ones were completely flooded, as was the access road to reach the area.

I did, however, get my tent set up and gear stowed, except for the stuff I forgot, and had to run to the nearby big box store to aquire (my sleeping bag, for example, didn’t make it into the car, and I grabbed an extra tarp because my ancient tent’s rain fly wasn’t particularly functional). After sorting through all of that, I had a pretty decent, if damp, five mile hike along one of the trails near the campground area, seeing evidence of beavers, but not the beavers themselves. My dinner on the campfire, in spite of all the damp wood, went pretty well. I slept fitfully, but enough to rise early and get myself ready to ride some trails.

It was not to be.

I geared up and attempted a bit of a shakedown ride on a nearby old forest service road, which, sadly, was sodden, covered in slick wet leaves. I hit a particularly slick spot and took a pretty heavy spill about a quarter-mile in. I hit the ground hard, and the bike’s momentum carried it further, down a deep gully bouncing off of the landscape all the way down and hitting a pile of rock about 20 feet below the road.

I was fine, apart from some scratches on my right hand where I braced myself. The bike, however, was a write-off, at least for the trip in question:

What you see in the image above is one of the cranks and the front chainrings bent all to hell, preventing even the most basic rotation of the pedals/drivetrain. Dammit. As I write this, I haven’t actually taken the bike to the shop yet, but a quick bit of research shows me I’m likely out at least $200 in parts alone. Not looking forward to that estimate.

The primary purpose of my trip unavailable to me, I cleaned up a bit, decided to cook a little breakfast (but couldn’t get a fire to take) and tried to salvage things with some hiking. As with the biking routes, the foot trails were largely flooded and unuseable, at times blocked by large fallen trees where the waterlogged soil couldn’t hold the root system securely.

I eventually found some decent ground, and put about ten miles under my feet before returning to the campsite around lunchtime, to find that *another* pole on my ancient dome tent had snapped (I’d been improvising repairs on one broken piece of linkage for years). At that point, I was done.

I was set to camp another night (figuring I’d be riding all day Friday), but after all the setbacks I’d encountered, I couldn’t summon up the energy to either fix the tent or blow some more money to go buy a new one. I took the broken tent down, pitched the corpse in the dumpster on my way to the shower house, cleaned myself up, policed the camp site, and gave up. Sure, I forfeited the $26 campsite fee, but if there’s any public agency I don’t mind giving a little extra budget to, it’s the National Park Service.

I stopped by the visitors’ center on the way out, only to find it had just closed (ugh), and I had the ultra rare bouffalant run away from me in Pokemon Go in the parking lot (double ugh). I was also starting to feel the painful results of my fall and my ten miles of trekking earlier in the day as I limped back to the car (ouch).

So, I made the slow drive home, hitting some Friday afternoon NoVA traffic (damn again), though I found a nice place to stop for a late lunch and a couple of beers in Spencer Devon Brewing in Fredericksburg.

And then, pretty much completely dejected, spent most of the rest of the weekend licking my wounds, enduring the stiffness and soreness, reading and watching mindless television, then returning to work on Monday morning to discover even more of the usual bureaucratic garbage than usual.

So, yay?

So, my trip to clear my head and maybe find some mental solace didn’t work out. It happens. I’ll survive, I think, though I really had invested a lot of hope and energy into this adventure. I still actually do look forward to returning to the site in better conditions, though that won’t be for a while, given the fact that conditions on the ground indicate that things are going to be locking down tightly (and rightly) again soon.

It really was kind of the perfect storm of suck, though, as we are all aware, that’s 2020.

It’s going to be a little quiet around these parts for a few days. As I’d mentioned a couple of weeks back, I’m going on a bit of an adventure. I’m going just a little bit mad under the current conditions, and really need a change of scenery, and I’ve found a way to do it in a socially responsible and safe manner.

I’m going off into a new-to-me bit of forest to ride some new trails, as I’ve memorized every dip, gully, and exposed root on all of them around here. I found a place with miles and miles of old CCC/Forest Service roads that I can disappear into for a while, and just see something new.

I really hope it brings some relief, because I’m struggling a bit right now. I’m hoping some quiet time with just me, my bike, some camping gear, and some nature will help me find some relief.

For the back half of this week, anyway, I’ll largely be radio silent. Though I expect I’ll have some nice pictures to show when I get back.

So, indeed, as the evidence has suggested over the previous days, Joe Biden has been elected the 46th President of the United States. This is, in my opinion, and the opinions of many other people, very good news. President Biden and VP Kamala Harris will be, at the very least, stable, straightforward, literate, and empathetic leaders, which is definitely an improvement over the previous occupant.

That said, this election was most emphatically not the landslide that many predicted. Biden won the clear majority of votes (the most votes cast for a President ever, in fact), though still, somewhere around 47% voted for the other guy, even after he showed us exactly who he is over the last four years. That fact there is not encouraging; his level of support relative to 2016 actually went up this time by many measures. While I am wholeheartedly glad that we’ll have new management come January 20, The fact that almost half this country thought the last four years were a good thing is not something I care to contemplate, and is keeping me from truly being excited and joyful at what I should consider a very good thing.

I worry that half this country is happy with an intellectually incurious, impulsively dishonest, poorly spoken man-child, bereft of subtlety and posessing racist and fascist tendencies at the helm of the ship of state. Those folks are not going away. I really do appreciate all the calls for unity from the President-Elect all the way down, though unifying is a difficult thing when one side considers the other side subhuman; I have watched the legimate fear of my friends in marginalized groups -LGBTQ+, POC, Immigrants, etc – especially over the last four years increase, and I worry for them.

I am pretty much the epitome of privilege in this country; white, male, educated, and relatively well-off financially; I’m on the cusp of actually benefiting from Republican “tax cuts at the top, all the time” policies in play for the last 40 years. I don’t agree with those policies, obviously, and genuinely believe in Keynesian economic theory, a strong social safety net, and expansion of policies supporting the public good, like universal access to health care, education, and all kinds of other things that those on the right label as “socialist” evils, even if they themselves would benefit from them.

That half the country is opposed to those things, oppose rights for others besides themselves, and generally scoff at the concept of a citizen’s responsiblity to their community, and would rather rally around a bloviating fascist who tells them that at least they’re better than <insert minority boogieman here>, still really scares me, and I worry about what that says for the future of this country, as historical evidence of this kind of thinking hasn’t gone particularly well.

But, as several friends from my beloved community of misfits have said in the last 24 hours, we have to try to savor the victories we win in order to find the energy to keep working to make things better. And indeed I am trying; and it’s almost working.

While I was engaged doing volunteer parental duty to ensure that an international dance competition in the age of COVID went off with minimal issues, I missed a lot of the big news of the day. But today, as I rest after a good night’s sleep (the first in a while), I got a chance to check out Biden’s and Harris’s “acceptance” speeches (as results won’t be certified for a while yet, but it’s as mathematically certain as to not matter).

Joe Biden showed his empathy, literacy, and genuine tendencies toward the public good, and calling for unity and promising to do his best to make life better for all of us. He used complete sentences, literary and historical allusions, and even quoted my grandmother’s favorite Catholic hymn. He showed he’s a decent and honorable man, which, frankly, is exactly what we need right now.

Harris, as well, showed empathy, dedication, and humility, recognizing the pioneers of past who made it possible for her to ascend to this office, which, we cannot forget, is a huge (and overdue) milestone in history. First woman, first Black person, first Asian-American, and first child of immigrants to hold the office. This is, as President-Elect Biden once said, a “Big F**king Deal,” and VP-Elect Harris recognizes the historical significance, but most of all, the others who will take inspiration from her example:

But while I may be the first woman in this office, I won’t be the last.

Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.

And to the children of our country, regardless of your gender, our country has sent you a clear message:

Dream with ambition, lead with conviction, and see yourself in a way that others might not see you, simply because they’ve never seen it before.

And we will applaud you every step of the way.

The importance of that statement, the image of a woman like her in that position cannot be underestimated; I’m glad I am here in this world to witness it.

So yes, I am trying to enjoy the victory here, and take inspiration to continue to work to keep our new national leaders honest and accountable, and to help them realize the image Biden closed his speech with last night:

A nation united.

A nation strengthened.

A nation healed.

Let’s do this.

Like I said yesterday, we’re going to be waiting a little bit for this one, but from where I’m sitting, things looks to be breaking our way. All it’s going to take is time.

It’s the same way we get through any week, really, and this week’s been a long one for other reasons as well. It took all week and dodging petty bureaucratic tyrants on my level in order to get a necessary program funded and approved at work. Shifting weather conditions have my sinuses blocked up like a Texas highway the weekend before election day. My regularly scheduled car service cost a bit more than I’d like.

But, I blew past 900 miles for the year on my bike yesterday, and met this little lady along the trail, also out enjoying a warm November afternoon:

This weekend will be a bit busier than usual, as I’ll be taking on dance dad duty and running sound for the curtailed “live” competition for the WIDA US Open on Saturday. Most of the competition is virtual, as is responsible, but there’ll be a small number of live competitors who need music to dance to, and I have the PA. Given the limited number of live dancers, we might wrap this earlier than usual, which is nice, because the gourmet macaroni and cheese food truck is at the brewery near the venue, so we’ll be able to celebrate a job well done with drinks and a hearty meal afterwards.

As for tunes this week, I’m breaking protocol a bit and starting things off with a song that’s been stuck in my head all week. After that, the mysterious algorithms of Spotify chose the music. This led, not surprisingly, to a bunch of 70s and 80s British rock, a bit more Queen, and a plethora of other tunes I actually kind of dig with a similar rhythmic structure. Not bad, really:

1. “Don’t Stop Me Now” – Queen
2. “Hammer to Fall” – Queen
3. “It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) – REM
4. “One Vision” – Queen
5. “Ballroom Blitz” – Sweet
6. “My Generation” – The Who
7. “One Way or Another” – Blondie
8. “Mr. Blue Sky” – Electric Light Orchestra
9. “Fat Bottomed Girls” – Queen
10. “Starman” – David Bowie
11. “C Moon” – Wings
12. “Go Your Own Way” – Fleetwood Mac
13. “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)” – Elton John