Hello Livejournal friends! I joke all the time about how this is a simulation but since I started to seriously test the limits, I’m beginning to think I may not be wrong. For one: I’m no longer allowed to visit Livejournal on my computer, so here I am tapping this out on my PHONE. The new dimension is real ( Read more... )

1. What did you do in 2023 that you'd never done before?
I was an "artist"-in-residence. Never thought I'd do that one!

2. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Nope.

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And so it was on my mother's birthday in May while I was pretending to be a game show judge in Las Vegas that the global pandemic -- the plague years -- were announced as being over. No more free government COVID tests. No more people wearing masks in public transit. Amazon sent its employees back to work in the office. Hazard pay has been removed ( Read more... )

1. What did you do in 2022 that you'd never done before?
Finished a book draft! (Not the book I ever thought I'd write, and certainly not the quality I hoped it would be, but still a milestone)

2. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Not this year.

3. Did anyone close to you die?Yes. A friend from college was shot on the NYC subway on his way to ( Read more... )

The lockdown began in March 2020, almost three years ago. In September of 2022, after all these months of watching other people get sick and wondering if maybe I was immune... I finally got Covid ( Read more... )

It is now officially the twilight of the pandemic. According to the Oxford dictionary, that means "a period or state of obscurity, ambiguity, or gradual decline."The COVID dashboards that a million state agencies created using my product have now been retired. Nobody is looking at them anymore. The vaccines for kids under 5 have been approved. The ( Read more... )

The news informs me that people on airplanes cheered when it was announced that the federal mask mandate on planes was lifted. They tore their masks off and whooped for joy, hugging strangers. I remember visiting Iran once during the World Cup when the Iranian soccer team won and everyone mobbed out into the streets to celebrate and all the women ( Read more... )

Two years ago, the pandemic started for me in Hawaii. Like Joan Didion's essay about staying at the Royal Hawaiian to repair her marriage right before a tsunami grounded in the 1970s, fifty years later, I was staying at the same pink hotel in the shadow of a disaster--except this time listening to news reports about the virus on the mainland, ( Read more... )

1. What did you do in 2021 that you'd never done before?
Finally. Got. A. Cat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2. Did anyone close to you give birth?
God, I can't even keep track anymore. Plus, I don't remember if those babies were born in 2020 or 2021 (it all sort of melds together). Oh wait! How could I forget: MY EX. The fucking Ex had a baby. He knocked ( Read more... )

Seattle's gray season is in full effect and, along with the isolation of working remotely, it's taking its toll on me. Every day is like being Tom Hanks on Castaway. Even seeing people in person takes so much effort now because it requires energy to be up-beat and "normal" enough to be social and pretend like everything is alright. I feel very ( Read more... )