With everything going on lately, Easter 100% snuck up on me. I’m usually so aware, so planned in advance, that no major holiday gets the drop on me. Until someone said “yeah it’s Easter this weekend” and I was like, what the fuck. You win this time, giant rabbit.

Not that I’m a big Easter person, mind you. I don’t even like Peeps (not the biggest fan of marshmallows over here, save a camping-exclusive s’more or five). It’s moreso that I hadn’t realized how out of touch with my calendar I was. I never got around to setting up a monthly spread for March in my bullet journal, and only just did so for April. I haven’t been planning content in advance; just doing what I can to stay active for my current subscribers. I know I’m lucky to be able to step back from being heavily invested in work and to redirect that energy into managing all this Life stuff that’s been happening, but there’s still some guilt about “failing” and “underperforming” that comes with that.

But, I also don’t have time for any wallowing or self-pitying. Shit’s gotta get done, and no one is gonna help me do it, so we make it work. The consultation call with a lawyer about [redacted] went well, I learned a lot (too much?) and got a much better idea of what the next few months/year could (will?) look like. And to be honest… all this stuff is pretty scary. Dealing with a lawyer for any reason related to one’s personal security and stability can be scary. So now I’m facing down the “yeah, so do it scared” reality of being an adult. Oof. When all of this is said and done… I need a vacation. Somewhere warm. With water.

Fortunately, the weather at home is beautiful right now too, borderline summery. I’m not sure I’m ready to say goodbye to the gloom just yet, but I am thankful to have lots of opportunity to get outside with Irma before her overnight at the specialistic clinic this coming week. The irony of my rainy-inclined ass ending up with a dog that is a total sun worshipper has not escaped me. But there’s some value in having a pet with some opposite traits to your own; it forces you to break up your routine, form new healthy habits, push your boundaries a little bit. I never would have considered myself the least bit interested in running but even at 10 pounds Irma in 75% legs and whenever we get outside she has a need for speed, so now I have to train to keep up with her. Maybe she’s solar powered?

I’m glad it’s April now, glad to see some forward momentum on all these things that have felt so stifling through the first few months of the year. I haven’t had the creative capacity I expect of myself, nor much energy to perform, but maybe it’s starting to sneak back in as some of these open loops get closed or rescheduled. Lord knows that ham ain’t getting any cheaper.

It’s the first Sunday of the month so in addition to Vibe Check and the other usual bits and bytes we’ve got a bunch of fun Sticky Notes of links I collected through March. Go forth, have fun, be free!

☑️ Done and Done - Tbh I was real moody last week. Been toeing the line of burnout and have had to really pull back to keep from fully impacting that wall (but it’s working). Spent two prepping for the big appointment. Gym stuff with some PT mixed in on a couple slower days. Some claw (manicure) maintenance. Made time to get out for tacos and being social. Lots of contemplation about work stuff, and planning work stuff, and catching up on work stuff. Paid off one credit card… not my biggest $ but still a nice W. Wrapped up the week with an unexpected ticket to see Carpenter Brut and Health—a crazy good double feature and I absolutely needed to have the stress rattled out of my nervous system by very heavy bass in a sweaty crowd.

📋 Coming up - The core pillar of the week is dropping Irma off at the internal specialist vet on Wednesday morning, then picking her up Thursday morning. First half of the week is going to be spent either getting out for walkies or doing lots of cleaning and work stuff so that I can spend the latter half of the week being super mellow with Irma while she recovers from the injustices suffered in our ongoing pursuit of health (a.k.a. minor surgery to collect liver and intestine biopsies to aid in further diagnosis). I plan to move my big armchair over as my computer desk chair for a few days for extra snug time while I watch movies and do light computer tasks hehe.

Okay so, lots going on these days. Looots going on. And as exhausting as it is, as much as it’s overpowering a lot of the normal operations and flow I’d established for myself in the last quarter of 2025… I’m trying to remain present in the awareness that all of these “distractions” and “interruptions” serve a greater purpose.

Like most autistic people, I’m really not a big fan of change; transitions in general can be difficult. And these first few months have had a lot of change, a lot of interruptions (literal and figurative) that I had no control over. That kind of disruption can drive you crazy when “stability” is literally one of the core driving factors of your life. No stability = no function.

The trick of it is that I’m not going to choose the disruption of Change without first having stability in place. So if life is full of chaos, my nervous system doesn’t feel like it has the capacity to moderate any amount of change. The chaos itself is disruptive enough and it maxes out my capacity to be in control of the change I’d like to be experiencing.

Yet at the same time, I do see the value in change. When you have the opportunity to engage in change that you choose for yourself… that can be a powerful thing. A change foisted upon you is a setback, something to be managed and mitigated. It takes time away from the direction you were moving in, that you thought you were moving in. But change chosen… that’s recognition. Not just recognition of your desire or your capacity, but of what you need. From yourself, your life, from the world.

So now here I am, the ink on April’s calendar page still fresh. And I am faced with… choices. Big changes, little changes, redirections and adjustments. The buffet of potential outcomes is overwhelming at best. How do I know? Which is best, which is the priority, which is most needed, which is most likely to land well? I don’t. There’s no way to know what the outcome of any of this will be.

If the first three months of the year were a runaway carriage, then I’d like to think April is when I’m finally managing to climb up into the box seat and grab the reins. I’m still barreling forward at the whim of beasts who don’t listen to reason alone, but the reins are a tether to that power. There’s no way to stop, but if I can steer… that may be enough. If I can steer, then I’m still in control of where I’m going.

Change is inevitable. All I want is the world to slow down long enough that I have a say in which direction that change is taking me.

📺 Watching - It may surprise you to know that I’m not the biggest Bruce Campbell fan; I like his stuff just fine, but I don’t actually go for a lot of the camp that he’s known for (but I respect that it’s iconic). So when a friend said he wanted to watch Maniac Cop (1988) I was dubious, but I gave it a shot. But it was fun, staunchly placed in the late-80s action/horror genre with not much camp at all. Some great camera work for the chase scene towards the end, and overall made me miss the pre-drone era of shaky helicopter-shot arial views of a bustling city.

👾 Gaming - I played a few hours of that game I mentioned recently, The Long Dark, on Steam. It’s basically Don’t Starve but Realistic instead of whimsically cartoonish. I.e. you feel much more personally invested because everything is designed to look real, vs. the oopsie I got eaten by a yeti vibes of Don’t Starve. Which tbh just makes it… bleak. Very bleak. But I feel there’s some good potential for having a lot of fun with the slow burn of this game if I can get past the first few weeks without running out of food or freezing to death… (It’s still on sale for $3.49 if you too want to test your mettle)

☕ Drinking - Been drinking a lot of chai lately. No particular kind; I’ve got three in my tea cabinet right now. Gotta be one of my favourite warm beverages. I know I’ve said this before, but chai is literally a hug in a mug. And oof do I need a lot of hugs lately.

👕 Wearing - After my sensory processing went haywire at last year’s Nine Inch Nails show due to ~lighting~ (though in my defense it was literally all the lighting one could fit on a stage), I ordered myself a pair of “concert” glasses. They’re completely normal glasses prescription wise, but instead of a fully tinted lens (like sunglasses) they have a gradient red tint. Dark red at the top of the lens, clear at the bottom. I figured this would help with looking down at my phone or, you know, the floor of a dark concert venue, with the red portion of the lens covering most of the stage area and just taking the edge off the bright lights. And guess what? It works! The lighting at the show I went to Friday night was intense, and even the strobes didn’t make me quite so anxious as they usually would. Yay! Now I want to pick up a pair with a solid light red tint to try out in potentially overstimulating daytime environments.

👩‍🦰 The Health show the other night opened with the Neon Genesis Evangelion theme, and it’s consistently impressive that NGE is still a fan favourite, even with younger viewers. To be fair, it’s truly an iconic franchise. I watched the original series in my early 20s—the correct (but also worst) time to engage in explorations of existential dread—and I think I caught up on the newer stuff maybe a decade ago. But I’m insanely curious to revisit the ever-expanding series as a (slightly) more mature, more experienced adult… because I think I’ll have a lot more understanding of and sympathy for Asuka Langley. The newest bit of NGE released for the 30th anniversary explored the character from her own perspective, with Asuka herself leading us through a range of what-ifs. Screw the fanships; what does Asuka want for herself? (further reading: If you’ve never explored NGE and you’re feeling brave (or nihilistic) a watch guide might help.)

🧬 In a no-spoilers segway… scientists are still playing around with cloning. Which seems, idk, bad maybe? But I get it. And they’ve learned something that I think is not very surprising at all but hey I’m not a scientist: you can’t clone clones indefinitely and still get a viable product. Which honestly just makes me think of the song considered the Mother of MP3s: Tom’s Diner by Suzanne Vega, which was the first song used to develop the file format, and the subsequent Ghost in the MP3 project analyzing what is lost through repeated duplication and refinement.

🍇 Something that you can’t clone is good taste. Or can you? Apparently a grape seed recovered from an ancient French toilet revealed that ancient winegrowers were even then employing plant cloning (taking a trimming of a live plant and getting it to root to create a new “copy” of the plant) as a form of propagation. Either way, I like the line about how we may be eating the same grapes that Joan of Arc would have eaten.

⚔️ Speaking of girl bosses, a recent study published the first known visual documentation of women fighting animals in the gladiatorial arenas of ancient Rome. Topless, of course, because it would… distract her opponent? No wait I think it’s just men that are that easily caught off guard by the power of the titty. But it would certainly add to the entertainment factor.

📜 I really enjoyed this thoughtful essay on why sci-fi and fantasy writers are also historians. Quote below, as that is a more accurate summary of the context of the piece than I could refine on my own. (source: author of the essay Ada Palmer, via Bluesky)

🧵 Amazing and brief Bluesky thread on the insane amount of big Internet sea-changes that took place in the year 2006, starting with the birth of Twitter. It all happened so quickly! We were all so young! So naive. So… hopeful.

🕹️ Back into the realm of science (but unfortunately not fiction), and how just because you can doesn’t mean you should… but uh that’s actually still pretty sick bro: A computer run on human brain cells learned to play ‘Doom’, demonstrating “adaptive, goal-oriented learning”. Okay but like… whyyy? Also, a term new to me: biological computing. Every day we get closer to SkyNet or like, that one short from the Animatrix. What are we doing here.

🕵️ 5-Minute Crafts. You love to hate them. Who are these even for?? Well apparently the answer is “Russian dark money networks”. Uhhh what? 5-Minute Crafts Has A Cybercrime Problem. As others have said, my favourite part of this excellent and thorough bit of YouTube journalism is how the host and researchers are absolutely not at all suicidal… oof. You’ll want to focus in on this one because it is wild.

👉 Another stupid but less nefarious waste of 5 minutes: this website points at your mouse pointer.

While I may be toeing the line of burnout in recent weeks, I at least feel like my footing is solid in a day-to-day sense. Progress is being made, even if it’s not necessarily in the realms I’d like to be focused. While I remain annoyed that I am being pulled away from the things I want to be working on, I at least know that these are foundational things that, once secured, will be a more stable base for future growth. It’s taken a lot of admin work to ensure that amount of mental stability; the trick is just making sure I hold to my own boundaries/limits without overextending myself physically/emotionally.

Also, knowing I have at minimum two full days off planned this week, which will be 100% focused on rest and various forms of entertainment—and puppy snugs—doesn’t hurt.

Be well, rest up, eat your weight in ham if your doctor isn’t going to yell at you about your cholesterol, and I’ll see you again next week.

xox,