Category: Uncategorized

So, I bought myself a CD player.

At some point in the last year or so, I started to feel that streaming wasn’t giving me everything I wanted from music. Don’t get me wrong; there’s a lot to be said for the availability of having the world at your fingertips, especially and particularly new music that you wouldn’t otherwise have been able to find, and I’m continuing to build out my playlist of such things as I have done for the last few years. But there’s also something… lacking from that, as well.

I’m not just talking about the instability of streaming media, where you own nothing and favorite songs can disappear off a service without any notice, although that’s not a great thing. And I’m not specifically talking about a physical media vs. streaming/cloud media thing, either, although that too plays into it. It’s something that’s harder to put into words.

It’s the fact that so much isn’t available to stream, for any number of reasons — the band was too small and too old to matter to the platforms today; there are rights issues or fights between labels; songs were b-sides and utterly forgotten by anyone besides fans like me, whatever. It’s the fact that, because you can skip around so much and make your own playlists, I’d stopped listening to things as proper albums anymore for the most part. (I don’t know why that makes me sad, but it does; I feel like I’ve accidentally started ignoring the intent of the artists, maybe?) It’s the fact that it makes the act of listening somehow more passive, and less intentional and important, somehow…?

These thoughts were wandering around my head one morning as I was waking up, and then joined by this odd nostalgia that can only be described as I used to listen to music on these big machines that combined record players and tape players and radios and CD players and now I listen on a phone and how can I honestly say that’s progress? And so I decided to buy a CD player again, my first for… realistically two decades, if not longer…?

It’s tiny and surprisingly cheap — it was less expensive to buy this tiny box than it would have been to re-buy just one of the albums on vinyl, to give you an idea of how cheap — and maybe it’s not going to last that long, either in terms of the actual technology or my desire to revisit the bulging folder of CDs I’ve carried with me since I moved to the U.S back in 2002, but right now, I don’t really care. It simply feels nice, and more than that, feels right, to be listening to CDs on a CD player again.

Nostalgia, but make it tangible, perhaps.

No matter where I went in Seattle, it seemed, I was walking uphill.

It’s not as if I’d previously failed to notice that the city is essentially built on a series of occasionally ridiculously steep hills, but when I was there for the recent Emerald City Comic Con this year, I was staying in a different hotel than usual, further from the convention center and requiring more of a walk there and back every day. I’m not complaining, because (A) it was a really, really nice hotel and I was surprised by how nice my suite was — including the fact that it was a suite, not just a room — and (B) I could do with the exercise, let’s be honest. Also, I like walking; it’s good for my brain as well as my body.

Or, at least, that’s what I thought until I walked down the hill towards what I thought was the closest coffee shop on the first morning. (It was not the closest; there was one inside the hotel that I wouldn’t discover for another couple of days.) You see, there are hills and there are hills, and this was the latter: a hill that I worried about walking down because it was so steep that I feared that gravity might take over and I’d careen down in a cartoonish circle of energy and disaster. Of course, down was the easy part — walking back up with tea and bagel in hand, I had to take to stop midway through because I was out of breath having forgotten to pace myself when climbing this particular paved mountain.

From that point on, I felt painfully aware that, no matter where I was going, I would somehow have an uphill climb ahead of me. Walking to the convention center? After a three block downhill stretch, all uphill. (And then walking back, that downhill stretch was, of course, uphill.) Going to breakfast with friends? Uphill. Headed out for a work dinner? Okay, that one was all downhill, actually — until, of course, I went back to the hotel after.

All of this came to a head on the last night of the trip, when I walked back to the hotel with a work colleague and we were complaining about the hills. At least we won’t have all these uphill walks, we joked, before getting to the hotel and discovering the elevators weren’t working. How did I get back to my room? Walking up eleven floors in the stairwell, puffing and panting the entire way.

I remember when the Gulf War started, and I was 16, I think, watching news reports endlessly with a sense of confusion and anxiety: what was happening? Why was it happening? Was this the start of another world war? Would it ever end? Although I was years away from being 18, I imagined a world where National Service — the British version of the draft — was reinstated and I went to war, entirely unprepared and unwilling, unable to avoid it. It was a nihilistic time, not least because I was 15 and didn’t know any better, but the war war war of the media at the time felt like it was projected directly into my brain, and I didn’t know what to do about any of that. (What I did was start reading Kurt Vonnegut; so it goes.)

I thought of that this past weekend, waking up on Saturday and finding out that the US had launched a war with Iran while I was asleep. Relaunched a war with Iran? Rebooted it? Whatever you want to call it; it feels like the US has been at war with Iran for years and this is just the latest episode. It was at once unthinkable and entirely unsurprising, and left the same pit of confusion and anxiety in my stomach that I felt more than three decades ago.

I spent much of Saturday looking at the news, checking back in over and over as if doing so would somehow uncover a layer of common sense and morality I knew wasn’t really there. It wasn’t as if anyone in the US Government was going to suddenly realize they were breaking international law and care about it, after all, and even if they did, what could be done about what was already happening? It’s not as if an apology and promise not to do it again was possible. There’s no use crying over split milk, or hundreds of dead kids because you bombed a school, as they saying famously goes.

There’s an element of political watchers who look at what’s going on and say, the cruelty is the point, or he’s only doing this to distract from the Epstein files, and both of those things are almost certainly true and I understand that, but also — there’s a point where you have to ask yourself how much that matters, in the practical sense. Whatever the motives, however bad and inhuman and cynical they certainly are, people are dying and it’s 1991 again, 2003 again, and on, and on, and on.

Occasionally, I think about my relationship with death, and how unusual it seems to be compared with almost everyone else I know. I talk to friends, to peers, and it strikes me that I became aware of mortality younger than they did, or at least personally acquainted with it in a way that most people are lucky enough to wait decades for. (This is neither a boast, nor a humblebrag; I’m not sure it’s anything good in any way, really.)

All of my grandparents were dead by the time I left high school, for example; half of them were dead by the time I entered high school — maybe three-quarters of them? The timeline of my life feels moveable and shifty before I hit, say, 15 or 16; I remember that things happened here, but they actually took place a year earlier, or two years before that. I had a head start, though; my father’s father had died, back when my father was a kid himself. The Second World War was cruel, that way.

I remember my mother’s mother dying when I was a kid, not because of the event itself but because my oldest sister’s reaction was so big and dramatic that I felt at sea; I couldn’t really comprehend what had happened, but I looked at her and thought, is that what it’s meant to be? Should I act like that? In reality, I didn’t feel that depth of loss, that shock and numbness until the last of our grandparents died years later, with me in my final year of high school and her tripping outside our house, falling and splitting her head open on the pavement. Her being taken to hospital and all of us waiting to hear the bad news in a room from a doctor who told us as if it was weightless and meaningless, just a minor update that pulled the floor out from under us.

But at that point, I’d known someone far closer to my age — a friend of that same sister — who got cancer and died, so I already knew that death wasn’t something that stayed close to older people. Within a handful of years, one of my own friends was dead after surgery failed to save her; the friend who passed on that news was dead himself not too long after.

Both of my parents were dead before I was in my 40s. (Before I was even in my mid-30s, shockingly.) I think about that sometimes and feel this strange sense of sadness towards the me I was then, because even then I’m not sure I knew how to navigate any of that, the decimation of the upper echelons of my entire family. I wish they’d lived to see what happened to me, to my sisters, to everyone. I wish they could see me now.

And somewhere in the middle of all of this, there was the time when I was in art school and a doctor accidentally told me I had leukemia and it was likely fatal, even though it wasn’t true. (A botched test was to blame; I found out the truth before too long, but we’re talking weeks rather than hours.) Having that weight on me, suddenly aware of how short all of the time was, all of the time.

All of this comes to mind as I read a book where the author talks about having to deal with loss for the first time in their early 40s, and it feels impossible to consider, to me. How could you get to that point in your life before knowing just how fragile we all are, when it comes down to it?

I am not an Olympics person, for the most part. I’m not even a sports person, beyond a vague oh, is that happening, I hope the team I feel the slightest allegiance to do well I guess feeling during something like the World Cup (soccer edition); I’m lacking the DNA that makes me able to pay attention for entire competitions and remain engaged for that entire time. They’re doing their thing and they’re doing it well and I’m impressed by that but I’m afraid I’m not going to be watching it, sorry.

That said, I am a sucker for a good story, so after Alysia Liu won gold for figure skating and it prompted all manner of discourse about the fact that she’d previously retired from figure skating (at 16!) and then un-retired after she realized that she actually enjoyed the skating and just didn’t like all the pressure that surrounded it, only to come back and win on her own terms, I thought, huh. I want to go see her performance now.

Here’s the thing: I don’t get figure skating, per se. I mean, I understand the mechanics of the sport and that skaters get graded on specific moves and such, but I don’t understand why one thing that looks impressive and graceful and beautiful to me is marked lower than someone else’s performance because of some nuance I can’t see… so I kind of went into the video thinking, I hope it’s fun. And then I realized she was dancing to Donna Summer’s disco version of “MacArthur Park,” and I thought, fun achieved.

More than that, though, there’s a genuine infectious joy in her performance — she seems to be enjoying herself and playing on the ice, to the point where I found myself laughing along with her as I watched. Who doesn’t want to see someone loving what they do, and doing it so well, after all?

A day after I saw the performance, someone linked to this post-win interview with Liu, where she says the following: “The thing is, what I like to share about myself is, my story, my art and my creative process… And I guess messing up doesn’t take away from that. It’s still something. It’s still a story. You know, a bad story is still a story. And I think that’s beautiful. So there’s no way to lose.”

There’s something in “a bad story is still a story” that’s going to echo around in my head for awhile, I think. If it’s an attitude that can make you win Olympic medals, what else can it do?

For someone who loves love as much as I do — as much as I, ironically, hates the “Oh, I love love!” declaration that seems to have become popular in pop culture in recent years; I am a walking contradiction — I’m struggling to think of a Valentine’s Day that’s ever felt particularly special to me in all of my years.

That’s not to say that I haven’t tried throughout the years, or that I’ve not had nice Valentine’s Day or even good ones; I’m not claiming that I’ve never had a good date on one, or anything like that. (I’m lucky enough to have had many, in all my years, something that I think would have surprised the teenage me who always felt a little abandoned and alone on the day itself, getting no cards and feeling unloved by the world at large. Oh, to be able to go back in time and tell him that wouldn’t always be the case…!) It’s just that they’ve been just that, nice and good, and never these big romantic overwhelming events that pop culture stores show on the regular basis that overwhelm and redefine our lives.

For a long time, that bothered me. Well, perhaps bothered is putting it far too strongly, but it left me wanting and feeling as if I was missing out: What was I missing, what was I doing wrong, that Valentine’s Day would come and go and there would be a good date but no massive emotional revelation? Never mind the fact that I couldn’t actually imagine what that would look like — something that, all things being equal, should have made me think, oh, am I falling for a sales pitch for something that doesn’t really exist — I felt as if I was missing out on something that would make me supernaturally happy and fulfilled emotionally like in all the movies, and throughout my teens and my 20s, I’d end the day just that little bit let down.

I can’t remember at what point I realized that the nice and the good was the point, that those were the Valentine’s Days (and dates) that I’d remember and were meaningful, but I do remember talking to Chloe at one point early in our relationship when we couldn’t get a reservation at a specific restaurant on February 14th and her gently suggesting that I was still putting too much effort into a random day and date when any other day would be just as good to show and celebrate love. And probably with more success with restaurant reservations. Old habits die hard, no matter what we tell ourselves.

Still, good luck tomorrow to everyone, anyway.

And then I ground to a halt, reluctantly.

The way I put it in a message to my boss was, “I’ve been fighting a cold all week, and the cold’s winning.” That’s maybe a little too cute, but it wasn’t untrue; by the time I called out sick last week, I’d been feeling sluggish and tired and dealing with a persistent headache for four days, and my traditional approach of What if I just ignore it and then it’ll go away, because that’s certainly how you’re supposed to deal with illness wasn’t paying off this time.

The problem — well, the problem that wasn’t the fact that I had a cold and I didn’t want to have a cold, which was also the problem — was that it was one of those weeks that just felt as if it didn’t end; everything kept happening, and almost all of it demanded my attention in one way or another. I felt as if I was constantly “on” from waking up to falling asleep, and then sleeping badly because of the cold, just to make matters worse. Every evening, I’d find myself thinking some variation on the thought of, “I wish I could just hit pause, just for a little bit, to regain some strength.”

To any regular person, that sounds like the ideal time to call out sick from work and give yourself a day to recover, but friends: I am a workaholic and that’s not how my brain works. I knew it was the right idea and something I should do, yet I kept finding reasons not to call out — there’s stuff that needs to be done, I’ve had a couple of four-day work weeks in a row and I should work a full week, it’s not that bad when it comes down to it — all the way up until actually calling out at 7 in the morning.

What pushed me to finally do the obvious thing was receiving a text from my sister at 5:30 that morning — to be fair, she’s in the UK and time zone math is hard — telling me about a family thing that just made me think, Oh, there’s another thing, of course, before realizing I really should just be kinder to myself and take the damn day off.

The day was spent, instead, on a couch and in a bed, relaxing and suggesting to the animals that maybe they too should calm down and let me rest. All things considered, it was the day I needed: the temporary stop that let me keep going. Maybe next time I’ll get there without being sick and/or trying to convince myself that pausing is a luxury on the way.

I mentioned the other day in passing to a friend about my increasing awareness of a need to spend time by myself. I didn’t mean that in a generic sense — there are plenty of times every week where I’m “by myself” as I work, for example, or moments when I’m the only one watching a TV show or whatever as other people are elsewhere in the house, but that’s not the kind of thing that I mean. Instead, I’m talking about… finding time to intentionally alone, for want of a better way to put it.

For me, it’s going for walks and listening to music. I’ve written before, I’m sure, about my love of the Situationist dérive, the act of wandering with no intent or destination in mind and seeing where you go, and that’s become something akin to a weekly act of self-care to me as I plug myself into my phone and listen to whatever I’ve been obsessing over lately. Occasionally, I tell myself that there’s something about it that’s an exercise routine of sorts, and sure enough I’m getting some exercise, but the true appeal is the space it gives my brain to just… free associate and work through whatever has been lying there ill-considered and needing some time to marinate.

There is always something, somewhere, to take your time and attention if you let it, I’ve come to realize; there’s always a deadline or an obligation or reason to pay attention to something that someone else wants. (I’m speaking not just of work obligations, of which I have so many, you understand, but also family and just, you know, making sure you’re paying the bills and have food and everything else.) Sometimes it feels as if there’s no space to just… be selfish enough to let your mind wander, for want of a better way to put it.

Something I’ve heard a bunch of different people talk about in the last month or so, in a bunch of different circumstances and a bunch of different situations is their desire for “whimsy,” and when I’ve asked them about it, it’s translated into variations on the idea of “I wish I had time and space to be silly and joyful but I don’t.” That’s what these walks are for me; finding that time and space, surrounded by people but still very much for myself and by myself.

A thing that I always promise myself that I’ll do during the holiday break is “tidy up.” Not in terms of the house, because I do that on a regular basis anyway — I get amusingly upset if the kitchen or living room in particular are left in too much of a state for too long; it’s amusing to me, at least, albeit in retrospect — but tidy up my workspace and my laptop, which by the end of each year tends to be crying out in desperation for attention and a little care.

The problem isn’t that I use it basically every day for hours on end; that’s what laptops are kind of meant for, after all, and I’m happy to report that Apple hasn’t let me down on that front yet. No, the problem is that I don’t empty my digital trash can. This is, in part, by design — more than once in my life, I’ve accidentally deleted a file that I wasn’t actually finished with because I like to try to free up my desktop at the end of each day, and sometimes get a little overzealous in doing so, only to then empty trash and discover the next morning that I’ve deleted something I was 90% done with and needed to complete in the shortest possible time that day. (Yes, I’ve done this more than once. You don’t need to judge me that harshly.)

My solution, I decided the last time I found myself gesturing silently in frustration to the heavens, wasn’t to simply be more careful in what I put into the trash bin. Instead, I decided, what I really needed to do was not empty trash until I could feel confident that I didn’t need anything in there. In theory, this means that I’d check the bin at the end of a week, say, and then empty it after saving anything that had been placed there by accident.

Note that I said, “in theory.” In practice, I went through my trash bin the Monday between Christmas and New Year and realized with no small amount of horror that I hadn’t actually emptied my digital trash since June. The past six-and-a-bit-months of my digital life were remaindered there, from old work stories and images to PDF review copies of things, screenshots of any number of random things I’d sent to friends or family and hundreds of other files. I’m being literal when I say that; there were more than a thousand files in the trash, waiting patiently for me to do something, anything, with them.

When I hit “empty trash,” you could almost hear my laptop breathe a sigh of relief; the available space on my machine went from something like 8GB to 131GB immediately. Maybe I need to get a little better about paying attention to this stuff in the future.

The first couple of weeks of 2026 have followed a similar rhythm that, I can only hope, will not be repeated throughout the rest of the year.

If I had to define this rhythm, it’s be that Monday is a day of low dread — a day where what needs to be done for the rest of the week slowly becomes clear and it’s more than I expected, with at least one surprise waiting for me that comes entirely out of left field and leaves me trying to work out what I need to do with it. Tuesday is then a day of feeling of feeling overwhelmed by the weight of expectation and/or deadlines and/or things that simply need to be done, and then Wednesday is that but more so, and with a side order of resentment that it’s quite so much. As I’ve said for the past two weeks, Tuesday evening feels like a Thursday, and Wednesday feels like a Friday is never going to arrive.

Then, on both weeks, Thursday proved to be surprisingly easy — a through line in whatever is lying ahead of me appears, or I figure out a solution to whatever the biggest problem facing me, or something similar. Thursday turned out to be a respite, this odd moment where everything feels better than the last three days and I have a moment at one point of thinking to myself, wow, I can’t believe tomorrow’s Friday, that’s so great, I’m so close to the weekend with no small sense of relief.

Where the two weeks did differ was the Friday. The first week, the Friday followed through on the easy feeling of the day before, and I just slid into the weekend was gratitude and relief. And last week, it was just the opposite: Friday was a fight, and I struggled through the entire day like it was quicksand, wondering if there was something worse waiting for me that I couldn’t see just yet. All things being equal, I preferred the week before.

And yet, the two weeks felt the same, by the time the weekend arrived. The shape of them, the to-and-fro of it all. It felt like something, somewhere, had decided this was the calendar of events and I was just learning about my new schedule. The second week had a surreal Groundhog Day feel to it that made me nervous. Surely, I thought, this isn’t what it’s going to be like the entire time. This can’t be right.

I said something similar at this time last year, that I hoped January didn’t set the tone of the year to follow; in the year’s defense, it didn’t. It was arguably far worse. Here’s hoping that doesn’t repeat itself, either. We’ll see. 50 weeks to go.