I'm GenX, What Are You Reading?

More than drinking from garden hoses and having parents that needed to be asked if they knew where their kids were at 10pm, we GenX folks created ourselves.

In a recent long New York Times article, the author writes about GenX artists and the arts of our generation, and posits that our generation might be the greatest of them all. (We're not, really)

But this sentence hit me in the gut.

"Hunting down an obscure film, checking out the band your friend told you about, asking the clerk at the used bookstore to recommend a zine: What an algorithm now does used to be an act of creativity and will. You felt like you could go through life on the a la carte menu, taking what you needed, fashioning a self in the process."

This. This is what I miss, and it's some of what I get from friendships in the Fediverse. 

It's how I became who I am--friends told me to read Audre Lorde and Octavia Butler, they told me to listen to the Indigo Girls and Joan Armatrading, they loaned me their copy of Tracy Chapman's album or their beat up copy of Flowers in the Attic. Friends introduced me to indy film like Desert Hearts and Do the Right Thing, and Ethiopian or Vietnamese restaurants.

Friends also offered up things I didn't like: David Lynch's Blue Velvet, guacamole (it was the cilantro, and I didn't know it yet), being Republican. What I took, and what I didn't take, defined me.

I don't miss mixtapes--all the work of waiting for a song to come up on the radio and pushing the record button at just the right time? No thanks. Give me the ability to make playlists. I don't miss Blockbuster--I'm grateful for streaming services. And I don't miss no one caring where I am.

I do miss the cultural influence friends had.

Right now, the algorithms of YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram feel empty. I'm mad at Apple Music for going the way of Spotify.

Today, Erik recommends a concert, Hollie a book, CJ a holiday movie. I can like them or not. But it's my choice to try things out, my choice to like them or not.

Friends, keep suggesting things to me. 

Rock and Cray

Rock can't just go up to a guy and ask him to dance. The thump thump thump of the music he could feel in his hair follicles, like thousands of mini vibrators. Vibrators. Don't think about vibrators, he thought.

He felt his best friend Cray's hair before he saw her next to him.

"Do it," she yelled. "I know you think he's cute."

He rolled his eyes and sighed. "You do it for me," he said.

She laughed with her mouth wide open but because of the club music, he couldn't hear her creaky laugh. "He won't dance with me, baby." She never smoked but her voice sounded like a 40-year-old who always did.

He looked at her toes, painted like rainbow jewels.

"I can't," Rock said.

"Woah, he's coming this way," she said.

Rock turned to the sticky bar, looked left, then right, wanting the bathroom or someplace to hide. The hoppy smell of beer made his stomach flip like Simone Biles on her gold medal floor routine, before a syrupy bile rose into his throat. He really can't do this, he thought. Then he felt that hot guy's hand on his arm.

"Hey, wanna dance?" he said.

He blushed and didn't know what to say. Then he felt Cray behind him, pushing him into the hot guy whose name he didn't know. The last thing he heard before he passed out was the bartender turning on the very loud glass dishwasher.

Writing Again

I’m having fun in these two community ed classes for writing. I haven’t been writing in a long time. I’m back. Here’s yesterday’s fun.

Where I Started 

the leaky house 

the pipes too old to hold water 

the hospital bed the green gown the mask that put me 

to sleep 

the white home with one bathroom 

for four 

and a tree in front I climbed before it was cut down 

for good

the park at the end of the block 

with a burning hot metal slide in the sun

 

and a spinning round metal disc with handles so you could hold on 

for vomiting from 

the pink skateboard I face planted from and never 

rode again 

the elementary school library with a sunken half moon shaped area where the librarian 

read to us 

where the first person 

read to me 

where I fell in love 

with stories and  

fell in love with

the written 

word

Happy Accidents

The coolest mistake happened today.

I got an email from a judge I knew in 2011/2012. With an article that is from 2011. So I emailed him back.

I met him way back in 2005 or 2006. I was a "witness" for a trans friend who wanted to legally change his name. After I testified and the judge approved the name change, he invited us back into his chambers. He wanted to celebrate this change! He said he spent a lot of time in his court dealing with hard and painful family law stuff like divorces and state custody. He gave us candy and said he celebrated my friend's change.

Then he wrote this article he wrote in 2011 for the New York Times about all he went through to get two people married, one of whom was dying. Liz found it, and I was like, I met him! 

She wrote him in 2011 to convince him to work to vote down an amendment in our state constitution to make marriage between one man and one woman. We won that fight in 2012. He retired a couple of years later.

Now it's 2025. I get this email about the 2011 article.

I wrote back: Hi! Long time no hear. I hope your retirement is going well. Why did you send me this article 14 years later?

Oops, he said, he was deleting old emails and must have hit SEND instead. He didn't remember our connection, and I got to tell him all the ways we knew him. He was delighted!

We've exchanged cell phone numbers. 

The lives we touch and those lives that touched ours are always worth revisiting.

A Unicorn in Healthcare

 My oncologist is AMAZING. 

I've known him since 1994 when he was my bone marrow transplant doctor. He introduced himself to my friends when they visited while he shook their hands and said, "Hi. I'm Greg. I work for Jeanne."

He's currently my oncologist and manages my care.

Yesterday, I woke up with a very bad sore throat and worried about COVID. We'd gone to the state fair to an outdoor concert, masked. We rode public transit to and from, masked. But I heard that bad sore throats can be a signal for the current COVID variant.

The home test was negative but they're nose swabs. And unreliable. I wanted a PCR COVID test. They're pretty easy for me to get during the day, during the week. I call my oncologist's nurse and they get me in the same day. 

But yesterday was a Saturday. The beginning of Labor Day weekend. So I called my favorite clinic system and yes, one of their urgent care clinics has PCR tests, but they take 8 days to get results. 

My oncologist clinic takes 24-48 hours. WTF.

So out of desperation I emailed Greg in the off chance he was in the office on a holiday weekend. I had NO hope he'd respond.

I called another clinic system to see if *their* urgent care clinics had a PCR test. Yes, yes they did. So I made my way there.

On the way, my oncologist responded. From his phone. He was going to order one, at the clinic I was going to. When he returned home from wherever he was on this lovely day.

He responded. Away from his home. On a holiday weekend.

He understands how much COVID would be a threat to my life.

Yeah, Greg *still* works for me.

I am so lucky.

The Impact of Nature*

I'm reading the book Nature and the Mind by Marc G. Berman. And it is blowing my mind.

He's a scientist who has studied nature on our minds. He talks about his own story integrated into his research and he gives exercises to try, so I've been trying things.

So many findings make a lot of sense. I love being by the water, especially if it's moving in some way like waves or burbling creeks or waterfalls. I love being around trees--they feel especially powerful to me. I feel my breath easing, I feel my heart rate slowing down, and I feel my muscles relaxing when I'm around nature. 

Science is affirming my experience as someone who has ADHD. I know about my problematic executive function and my issues with focus. He says nature can restore executive function and focus. He says directed focus like watching films or using social media can use up executive function. I didn't believe him until I started journaling about my experiences.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time quietly focusing on the lush trees outside our house and on our street. There are a lot of different heights, colors, and forms. The wind was moving gently moving the branches around. 

And last night, I found a return of my executive function and I got a bunch of things done that I don't usually do at night.

Let me be clear, I thought having good executive function at night was not attainable because of how my brain is.

I'm blown away.

Today I had hard conflict with my spouse so I went out into nature. I was just sitting in our car, looking at the trees right in front of me. I was situated in a way so that other things wouldn't take away my attention.

I started journaling and got so clear, so quickly, about where my part of the conflict came from, and what I was going to ask of her. 

On top of that, I'm writing this at 9:21pm. I'm clear headed, even though I'm very tired. A loud thunderstorm woke me up shortly after 7am this morning.

I need nature in my life every day.

*I'm aware that all of this could be the placebo effect. He tells me it's going to work, so it does. One thing he says over and over again is that you don't have to like the nature or enjoy it to get its benefits. I really really do not like the rock formations in the southwest. In our May trip I got very tired of the same rock formations over and over. Yet my resting heart rate went down ten points. 

How Star Trek Saved Me

I had a rough childhood. Recently, I've been doing some *more* healing about that and I am exploring helplessness.

My therapist used somatic methods to find where the trauma felt like in my body and focusing on that as I journaled brought me here.

As a child in the 1970s, my brother and I watched the original three seasons of Star Trek first on UHF and then in the early 1980s on cable. Many times.

The world of Star Trek is filled with people who face their fears, who try to find solutions to their problems, who fail and move on, who succeed and move on. They:

"Seek out new worlds and new civilizations and boldly go where no one has gone before."

I so wanted the Enterprise to come back in time to rescue me from my home. I didn't understand this then, but I know now, I had the power to rescue myself.

I stopped something bad happening in my childhood home. I ran away from home four times. I left when I had enough money to do so. I moved to a new state. I cut off ties from the abuser. 

More than that, I sought therapy almost from the moment I left home. And I've been in and out of therapy my whole life and am currently in therapy. 

For sure no one in my family has gone there before.

I connect with others about mental health and trauma. I have been in support groups. I've read books about healing.

All new metaphorical worlds and civilizations.

Currently, I'm diving into when I feel helpless. Recently, it was about access to food at an event. I asked for gluten free food but there was only one thing on the menu I could eat. I had to work hard to advocate for myself and I was successful.

Last week it was the helplessness I feel about the poor air quality due to climate change wildfire smoke. We had days and days of it. Because of my physical health issues, I can't go outside without a mask, and can't stay outside long without injuring my lungs and heart. 

I felt so helpless and sunk into depression for a couple of days.

What I know about things I can't have any control over is that if I focus on them, I go right there, to anxiety and depression. I changed my focus last week to knit something complicated. It engages my brain and it releases the depression.

But I want to do something different the next time the helplessness shows up. I want to feel it in my body. I want to recognize it before depression sets in. I want to remember that I'm not helpless at all, that I can feel it. I want to trust that I can find a way through it, even if I don't know the way.

I've watched and loved most of the Star Trek franchise. I especially loved Star Trek: Discovery and am currently really loving the reset of history with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

I want to be in Starfleet. I want to understand that even when the navigation panel is offline, and there are always new things to try to get where I'm going, people around me who can help me, and strange new worlds and civilizations to explore. To live long, and prosper.