If you picked up your phone to get one specific thing done, and you’ve done it, put it down. And just let your mind wander. It’s hard at first. The pull to open it back up is strong, to keep scrolling for one more hit, that small comforting feeling of having checked everything there is to check. Let your mind wander instead. There’s nothing more you will learn from picking up that phone or that next scroll.

There's been conversations on Twitter about what it means to "snap out of depression" lately, and the implications of it and how tiring/ableist it can sound has weighed on my mind a lot. Especially in wake of my deep depressive episode that lasted for a good while (a month plus, even) which made me think about my life up until now, living with this for more than 10 years as I had. "You have to snap out of it someday, no one but yourself can save you" is frankly terrible advice, in my…

Duvel's Tripel Hop IPA range is a fun bunch of beers, and I like that the brewery has resisted the urge to fire out new ones every couple of months. No need. The Citra and Cashmere regulars are plenty to enjoy. At the same time, I don't object to them being joined by Tripel Hop Krush, although I notice it is somewhat weaker than its 9.5% ABV siblings, and indeed regular Duvel, as it's only 8.4% ABV.In the glass it's pale and hazy, as Duvel tends to be, and the dry-hopping doesn't leap out in…

High profile bloggers return to X. A new CEO, a different algorithm, and a whining “but it’s where the action is?”. So it’s ok to be in the platform run by a sociopathic Nazi as long as you aren’t SEEING the right wing hatred? Have I got that right? And hey all the interesting stuff is there anyway, so what’s the problem? AND it’s all been De-Musk’d SO THAT MAKES IT ALL OK. But hey, as long as you get interesting things to click on, that’s ok. Question, regardless of what the algorithm shows,…

Burger and David, recovering from the transplant October 15 marks the second anniversary of my spare kidney’s relocation to its new home. Burger, retired surgeon, avid pickleballer, violinist, luthier, and sailing friend, is doing great with his new kidney. And so far, the kidney seems happy with its new neighborhood. View fullsize View fullsize The transplant center has been thorough about follow-up testing. For me, that meant lab work at one week, three months, six months, one year, and…

I just spent hours and hours (and hours, and hours) talking to my Rocker Step writing partner Daniel about, well, everything. And, like all conversations about "everything," it was largely about one thing. That one thing boils down to a question, and that question is only three letters (and one punctuation mark) long. Why? When I was in Grade 6, my homeroom teacher Mr. Whittaker told a room full of 11- and 12-year olds a story. The story was about a university exam. The exam had only one…

For some reason over the last week, Insta has shown me videos of disabled British people having problems with accessibility, flights, railways, coffee shops. Its appalling that in this day and age accessibility isn't simply the default and should something break alternative arrangements not be made immediately to accommodate people. However - there is one form of discrimination that still pervades society and needs to be stamped out. I speak of discrimination against the tall. I'm 2m tall…

Hi there. There’s been a lengthier-than-usual gap between Maurilia Station posts, since by mid-year, my creative activity and much else if my life had been purposefully dialled back. The plan has mostly held, but inevitably I find myself doing things. So, I’m back with an update of what I’ve been up to lately. I thought I’d change up the structure of these posts a little too, so I’ve put the shorter updates at the start, before plunging you – quite literally – into my compost bin. I figured it…

I have a bench overlooking the Hudson River, just a stone’s throw from my apartment in New York City. It’s nothing particularly special, just a bench beside the water. But over the years, it’s become somewhere I go when life feels a little too much. Sometimes I sit there for ten minutes, other times an […] The post Finding Peace When Living With Complex PTSD first appeared on About That Jack.

Well not really. It’s going on fall really so right now Siem Reap has beautiful cool mornings. Went out last night for beers. Met with bill. I had my fill. Done with barangs for a time. Now though let’s talk spring. Spring Coffee that is. Really nice and comfortable place not that far from the house. I can sit and write. Which means you will be able to read more blathering. Like usual the WiFi is stellar here. I have run into only a few places that have issues here. One of them is the house…

I know that this sounds so passe, but I honestly feel that the action of boycotting is never an old news. We boycott certain products/brands in different ways, times, and reasons. Also, since we are now rampant with the news of Indonesia getting burned (not “burning”. “Being/getting burned”. There’s a difference), there have been some discussions among Indonesians themselves on boycotting palm oil-derivatives products. One of them was an IG Reels by Nadya Hutagalung. Nadya was an MTV VJ for MTV…

Thanks to Claude I spent half an hour playing a game from my childhood that I had not seen running in more than 25 years.

We often look back at the good ol' days and miss the good ol' days we are living in.

Don’t you have time to read books? Leave a book in your kitchen table. This way, when you’re done eating, you can steal a few minutes from your routine to pick and read a book. That’s the perfect excuse to reduce your scrolling and pause to ease your digestion. Win-win for your body, mind, and spirit. That’s the strategy I’ve followed to read about 10 books so far. You can leave my books in your kitchen table. Available on paperback and Kindle too.

🌳 I have been spending more time offline this month... ...And part of that was a trip to Parc Montagne du Diable in Quebec. This park has all sorts of different options for camping, and me and partner rented a tiny house to spend a long weekend. It was very nice, we just needed to bring drinkable water, food and blanket. The house was equipped with fridge, an induction cooktop, microwave, towels, pillows and all basic kitchen utensils. It is very nice! I loved the minimalist vibe. There was no…

In computing, honeypots attract bad actors into interacting with a system. As usual, this principle can be reversed. You can deliberately put out some kind of intellectual honey that will attract good actors instead, and lead to joyful serendipity. If you wear a shirt that says, “Dyslexics are teople poo”, that attracts one kind of conversation; a CERN standard model tee attracts another (in my case: “what’s it mean?”, “dunno”, the end.). The examples are endless – trail race swag attracts…

After yesterday’s post, I expected a note or two full of hate in lowercase, but instead I got an email from a burner account calling me a “larping incel”. I wanted to send my compliments for the creativity, for taking the time to message little old me, but alas, they’re a coward. I told my wife I’m an incel now. She acted confused, but her eyes said, “Oh, thank god.”

Another spontaneous excursion, this time north to Huntsville. I took the back roads through the Sam Houston National Forest. In the shadows of thick pines, windows down to enjoy the sap-scented air. I wondered at the unusual urgency, this need to maximize our time together. Where was it before? Perhaps it was the recent VA decision coupled with the increasingly frequent aches and pains of a fifth decade. No reason to mourn the time wasted, and no reason to anticipate the end, but every reason…

I swear it feels like this life is scripted sometimes. A paint-by-numbers midlife crisis. A slowly decaying Rube Goldberg machine. I turn 41 in two months, and I’ve suddenly developed an interest in photography. It’s a thing, apparently. Nostalgia, a creeping awareness of mortality, and a desire to preserve ordinary moments. The tangible aspect of 35mm film. So, here I am in the dark, a belly full of Cafe Bustelo, looking up where to buy an Olympus 35 RC. I haven’t the slightest clue how to…

My body and mind conspire to keep me unhappy. I’ve always dealt with health anxiety, but it seems to peak when things are going right. My brain says, No, slow down, big guy. Too much serotonin floating around up here. That ache in your side? It’s probably cancer. And thus the twitch in my lip becomes a sign of undiagnosed MS. The headache is an aneurysm, and my poor memory is probably early-onset Alzheimer’s. Reflux after a big meal? No, it’s a widowmaker. Now you’ve gone and left them all in…

R&R: Rest and Repairs.After a 63-day hiatus, we're trying out camping again on a short trip beginning with camping at the Mueller State Park campground. After almost getting rid of the RV due to repair estimates, now that we have decided to keep her, might as well get some more use out of her. At least that's the plan for now, I'm not sure when and if I will head south and west into Arizona if at all this year. Mueller SP is a nice park, with 132 spaces for camping in high season. The weather…

It’s been another good recovery day, and I’m feeling better than I have in a very long time. It does mean keeping to restrictions is not easy! Still, I did manage to get a few useful things done. I’ve been able to make my own meals, even if it’s just reheating leftovers or making a … Continue reading A quiet day, saving seeds and garden progress

I've seen on youtube for a while these videos about reducing screen time. The thumbnail always has some ludicrously low screen time count sub-30 minutes. Which I feel already sets people with a certain expectation of how they themselves should have screen time. It seems to lead some to micromanaging their screen time data like a middle manager with nothing better to do. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't guilty of this. I would try my damnedest to get even below an hour. Then something dawned on…

I need to publish 26 more blog posts before November 11th to reach my goal of 100 posts in one year. This is my second time doing the 100 Days To Offload challenge. I've had some long dry spells in writing over the past year, but it the challenge has definitely helped motivate me to write more than I probably would have. A few people have even reached out to me via email about various posts and I've had some good conversations. I'll do a full recap in November. Here's hoping I can be consistent…

serve a sentence, asks the weary pointer and i just think: "save our souls?" "like that's not the natural condition?" "like how many rocks do you need for a typeface you'd see?" i asked you before: how do you grieve? and i still don't know - and to be honest, for once, i don't think i've ever really let anything go now, i'm asking: when were you last reduced to a desperate prayer? i will give you my answer, now oh, whoever, whichever, whatever, the name: take me, take me, and viva travesti, you…

Today was probably the first day in five years that I’ve done a proper day’s work. During COVID, they forgot about me in Scotland. The US office assumed I was reporting there, and the Scottish office decided I was America’s problem. That led to years of collecting a paycheck while I took long walks around Edinburgh and had brunch. The gravy train is over, it seems. I’m in the thick of it again, LARPing as a project manager. Dealing with consultants and corporate employees seconded to this…

⌾ : Fujifilm XT5.⚲ : Sydney Harbour. Nodding thoughtfully, I bluffed my way. I met these two young men on the ferry into the city today. They were carrying a couple of fishing rods, an overstuffed Transformers backpack and a large white plastic bucket of expectations. Although we stood next to each other on the back deck for the entire trip, I didn’t much speak to them. On my trip back, there were there again. This time I asked them if they had an luck. One of the boys pulled out his iPhone and…

I live in Ireland, and avoiding rain is a national pastime. Sadly the best data we have, which comes from Met Eireann the national meteorological service, is delivered in a pretty low quality app that makes it hard to use and understand. To fix this I built the app Rainy.ie It’s a simple but powerful web app that let’s you easily see where rain has recently been and the forecasts ahead, all by just moving the button at the bottom. That’s all it does, and it does it really well! The code is all…

Last week I was in the Public Records of Victoria (PROV) looking at records of the Melbourne mint. My substack about the Sydney mint by rights should come first, but I’m fresh-ish off the plane so I’m doing this one first. It was a bit extravagant building two mints in Australia. As I flicked through the massive file of equipment to order and repair I wondered why they built another one. I’d assumed it was just that Melbourne was much closer to where most of the gold turned out to be. Image…