This is from the ninth edition of the Near-Earth Object newsletter, to which you can and should subscribe, right here.
I took some time off last week, which was desperately needed, and it gave me some extra time to do more extracurricular writing. So that’s good!
I know it’s a cliche, but good lord it’s hard to actually relax into vacation time. I don’t think I really nailed it until the last two days. In the first few days, I wasted a lot of energy fretting over what I “ought” to be doing with my free time. But I can report that I did manage to come out the other end of this mini-vacation (entirely at home) feeling just slightly more grounded. Probably because I worked through a lot of my personal angst in public, which you can now enjoy! Lucky you!
I wrote about the idea of aspiring not to be great, but ordinary:
Oddness can be forgiven if it comes with a superpower. You can be weird, sub-ordinary, if you truly excel at something. But not if you’re “just okay” at a few things.
Those of us who are weird and just-okay at things can be envious of the ordinary. Astounding no one, but not disappointing anyone either.
I wrote about the utility of letting go of hope. Not embracing hopelessness, though:
Maybe I can’t get free of the fetters I’ve fitted myself with, nor the ones that the culture has clapped onto me, because I maintain a delusion that meaning, peace, and validation will still be given to me by Someone Else, by some force Out There. Maybe by shedding hope, I empower myself to provide it on my own.
I wrote about how natural selection is kind of an asshole:
I think natural selection and I need to have a talk. I need to thank it for getting us all this far, what with the conscious brains, the opposable thumbs, and whatnot. And then I need to tell it, honestly, that its time with me is over, because it’s holding me back from, well, evolving.
I wrote about how I can’t freaking process the number of people still getting COVID every damn day:
Are people just getting together and hocking mucous-globs into each other’s mouths?
And finally, I came up with a little speculative fiction about what might happen if we just let the Trump cultists believe that Trump is going to be president for however long they want to believe it, in a sort of MAGA-Matrix:
It is 2023. Joe Biden is embroiled in several lawsuits over his attempt to steal the 2020 election. Hunter Biden is in prison in Moscow. Kamala Harris is still out there, working with AOC, Antifa, and George Soros (now 93 and obviously being kept alive with some kind of secret pharmaceuticals or cybernetic implants) to foment a revolution and take over the country.
I won’t always have this much extra time and energy to put out this much Quality Content, but I’m glad I did. I hope you are too!
As always, if you find this stuff valuable, you can toss some currency my way. It’s totally okay if you don’t!
Near-Earth Object 