I've been coming up empty for a few years when I imagine my future, when I think about goals. People tell me to come up with a bucket list, and I don't know what to put on it. Nor do I know what's getting in my way. But I may have found some tools.

I'm thinking about going on a retreat. I'm not even sure what the questions are yet, but here are some possibilities: What is my purpose in life? What is my passion? What am I good at? What do I want to do next and then after that? What do I want my life to look like in 10 years, 20 years? I have a collection of possible approaches: writing exercises, collage (vision board), meditation practices. I know I need to get out of my home. I know I want to spend about two days, rising and using the day, sleeping, and rising again to reconsider what I found the first day.

Have you done a retreat? Would you be willing to tell me about it? Here are my questions: How did you decide to do a retreat? How did you prepare for the retreat? What did you do during the retreat that worked for you? Are you satisfied with how your retreat went? How about the outcome, did you achieve your goals for the retreat?

Do you have any suggestions for me? If you'd rather not make a public comment, you could email me.

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We've had some reasonably nice days in the last week--mostly sunny, highs in the 60s to low 70s F. It's chilly in the mornings, though, which reminds me that our last frost date is mid-May, and I noticed on the weather forecast that there is, in fact, a frost warning for tonight. On the other hand we're supposed to be up in the 90s F on the weekend (yuck).

I even have a reminder set in my calendar for the last frost date, because that was when I could start putting new plants in the ground, when I lived in the house with the big yard.

I miss my yard. When we sold our house I was glad to be out from under all the worries (roof, furnace, basement), and away from the weird layout of the small square footage indoors, and all the annoyances of an old house, not very well built, and even less well remodeled over the years--with suspicious electrical and plumbing additions, cheap carpet over plywood on some of the floor, a mixture of original wood single-hung windows with 70s-era aluminum sliders, and a strange suspended ceiling. I don't miss any of those things, but I do miss my yard, with all the plants I planted over the 20 years I lived there. I miss my rosemary shrub as big as a couch, the pink and yellow nasturtiums and day lilies in the front. I miss the honeysuckle and jasmine against the back fence, the big Norway Maple we planted that grew so fast to shade the patio, and my herb garden next to the driveway (for the heat) with 5 kinds of mint, 3 kinds of thyme, oregano, and empty spots for the different basil varieties I'd pick, plant, and harvest each year. I miss the golden raspberry vines I planted then sold the house before they fruited.

I miss working outside for an hour or so on the cool, quiet weekend mornings, and pulling the weeds within reach as I walked back into the house at the end of the work day. I miss working hard for hours with a friend to clear overgrown areas and then sitting with her daydreaming about what to plant next. I miss going to my favorite gardening shop, and to the farmer's market to buy interesting plants. And I miss having the shared interest to discuss in conversations with co-workers and friends.

I've discovered that having space to grow things is important to me. Someday I'll move again, and gardening space will be on the list of things I look for in my next home. For now, I have 16 houseplants in my space at work. That will have to do.

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Okay, 3 different people have told me my hair looks great today: it's clearly time for a hair cut. Ironically, this is the morning when I didn't do anything to it. I just washed it, toweled some of the dripping water out, and then let it air dry. Normally I kind of "arrange" it with my fingers so I have a semblance of a part above my left eye, and the curls lay away from my eyes instead pointing the cut ends of the hair into my eyes.

The thing is, this is a thing for me. All my life I've had this experience: on the days I particularly don't like my hair, other people are moved to comment how much they like it. When I like my hair, nobody notices but me--but I'm happy and relaxed and that matters. I have, in the past, used this as a convenient reminder to get a hair cut-when I get enough comments on my hair, better schedule one.

And I'm contrary, so people telling me they like my hair doesn't just make me self-conscious, it makes me want to change it!

But what's really amusing me about this today is that I don't think it's my hair at all. I'm performing femme-ness today, I'm actually wearing makeup (foundation, eye shadow, lipstick, even a little mascara). It's very subtle (on purpose) but I think that's what people are noticing, that I look a little more conventionally feminine. Because they can't tell it's makeup, they may be grasping unwittingly at a hair comment to indicate their notice.

And I suppose the makeup could also be making me actually look "better." I mean, of course I think that, at least a little, or I wouldn't be bothering with it--I've been socialized in this culture, I can't avoid the covers of fashion magazines showing me what society thinks I'm supposed to look like. And I look a little more like that, with makeup on.

It also makes me look more compliant with society's rules. It comforts people, and so they are showing me their appreciation for letting them slot me into a predefined role.

I know why I'm doing this. A friend of mine once said that zie cares what people think when zie wants something from them; there's something I want, and so I'm caring what people think. Only time will tell whether I get it.

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When you read about a police officer shooting somebody, how can you tell what happened and whether the officer made the right decision? Maybe the person on the street can't really tell, but there are investigators and panels of people who make these judgments, and they have developed ways of evaluating the evidence to help them make these decisions.

Here's one of the ways they do it. Excerpt:

1) Know the rules. The basics of self-defense law, going all the way back to English Common Law, can be summed up: “You may use the minimum force you believe is reasonably necessary to safely resolve the situation.”

‘May’—not required, though officers have a duty to act and may be required to go in, no citizen is under a legal obligation to defend self or third party. Moral obligation is another story.
‘Minimum Force’—The least impact on the other person’s life. Kill only if injuring won’t work, injure only if pain won’t work, pain only if pushing or holding won’t work, verbal if that will work, and no force at all is best.
‘Reasonably necessary’—Do you need to do this at all? Can you leave? Would another reasonable person also believe there was no choice?

That’s not enough, of course. You need to know the particular statutes of the relevant state, the exact wording of the stand-your-ground law or castle doctrine, if that is relevant. If you are trying to evaluate an officer’s use of force, you must also know the policy and procedure the officer was working under.

Worth reading all of it.

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The Stand Your Ground doctrine arose in large part from cases of abused women defending themselves in their own homes, and then being charged because they didn't leave their own homes rather than use deadly force.

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davidlevine is a worthy substitution in the SFWA reading series at Kennedy School in Portland, OR on Tuesday, January 31 at 7:00 pm. I've really liked what I've read of his and I encourage you to read more about this at his entry and attend if you can!

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My friends need it, and this post explains it.

Basically my friend (some of you may have known her as Dawn of the Dead) and her husband have had a few rough years, and this one iced the cake: Pat (the husband) went into total renal failure, then suffered a dissected aorta resulting in emergency open heart surgery. Of course he's completely disabled from working, but they need help getting through the waiting period until government benefits get to them.

If you can help out, please do.

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Judging people is a normal human thing--it's really hard not to do, and it would be stupid not to do it at least some of the time. Say when a person is running toward you with a gun, judging whether it's a law enforcement officer chasing the other person who ran that-a-way or a predator threatening you with injury or death is a very valuable judgment to make.

Some people have very clear rules for judging people in a way that's dismissive: are you a good person or a bad person? If you're a bad person, then I am allowed to other you, to treat you with disrespect and contempt, to feel entitled to abuse you. I get to feel a little better because surely I am not as bad as you. Lots of people used to use religion, because most religions have clearly stated rules you can use to judge, and designated punishments for being bad, and often also a rule about avoiding bad company or even shunning people judged to be bad. Then there was the gentleman's code; basic manners have sometimes been perverted into a test, a straightjacket for behavior and a way to exclude.

Because that's what all of this is about: excluding some people from our tribe, from the rights of an equal, from the respect and consideration we'd want ourselves. These are almost never rules people apply only to themselves, or even to themselves at all. They only use them against others. They only use them to pick somebody, a person or a group of people, who they can then target for unfair treatment, ridicule, bullying. And they can do all that, they can act evilly toward those people, without any guilt or sadness or other negative consequences, because they first qualified them into the "other" category and out of the "just like me" category. They judge the othered people not worthy of the treatment given to acceptable people like themselves.

Right now politics is a popular topic for this test, but I don't believe anything crosses traditional boundaries of politics, religion, or identity the way people's body weight does. It's being masked as health, and justified by concern trolls through a claim that fat people's medical issues cost them money (in increased insurance premiums and other ways), but it's still fat hatred. You can tell because there's no similar concern about people who are unheathily thin, or have treatable high blood pressure, or asthma, or any other health concern that requires routine medical treatment or might lead to an expensive medical intervention later in their lives.

Meloukhia points out some of the effects of this pretended concern about health. One is nosiness.

[T]hey feel quite comfortable quizzing other people about personal medical issues, and offering unsolicited advice on treatments or lifestyle. They also feel entitled to judge the activities of the people around them, even when those activities have no actual impact on their lives. And even when people are unhealthy, aware of it, and perfectly okay with that fact, with no personal diminished quality of life. A fat person eating a doughnut in Cleveland and deeply enjoying it has absolutely no material effect on my existence, just as an asthmatic who doesn’t adhere to a care plan in Miami doesn’t influence my life in any way.

What about choice and agency? Don't you get to make choices about your own life even if others don't like them? I had children and a lot of people think adding to the population is wrong, but there's no law against it yet. Apparently the health concern trolls feel free to judge every decision you make, because you're supposed to be choosing only based on health. Not pleasure, or expense, or lack of time, but only health. And not reality, not individual decisions based on your doctor's advice and your personal circumstances, but the received wisdom about what's best for others.

It’s less about how people feel—Are they happy? Are they stressed? Are they unhappy? Do they want to be healthier?—and more about how other people perceive them, as ‘unhealthy.’

Meloukhia makes other good points about backfiring and stigma; worth reading it all.

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A recent xkcd comic explores popular Christmas music and blames the Baby Boomers (we're a common target). But you can't really blame this on us.

Our parents picked this music. Sure, it's the music of our childhood and therefore familiar; it's the soundtrack behind our memories, good and bad. But our parents chose the popular songs of the day because they liked them, they enforced cultural standards and created memes that our parents identified with at the time. They danced to it, they decorated the tree to it, they smooched under mistletoe while these songs were playing, and they watched us, their children, tear into our presents to the sound of this music--because they'd bought the 45s (analog single-song MP3s).

You can blame Boomers for the 1960s (although I object that personally because I was only 8 years old when the 1960s ended--just how much did I affect society at age 8?) and for disco in the 1970s and for the greed-is-good ethos of the 1980s, because Boomers made choices and took actions that had results, intended and un-intended consequences. But you can't really blame Boomers for traditional popular Christmas music, just because it's what we remember--we didn't pick it.

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I am thankful that sinanju/sinanju came through surgery well, that he was up walking around some today, and that he is on track to be home from the hospital by the end of this weekend.

I am thankful that we knew about this in advance and planned for it.

I am thankful that I had something to read, something to eat, and something to knit while waiting for the surgery to be over and then for him to get out of recovery and into his hotel room.

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