Sooo. How’s your weekend going? You uh, you do anything yesterday? Go to a park, maybe, or like, a bbq? A social gathering perhaps? Well whatever you did with your day, I hope you stayed hydrated, and remembered to wear sunscreen. 🚫👑

Inasmuch as I think we each bear some responsibility to stand up and make our voices heard right now (and every day), I’m also inclined to be like, “I have no intention of getting political in this space.” Which, obvs, is a lie, as I’ve already checked in on multiple political happenings in previous emails. My existence as a disabled sex worker is itself political, so avoiding politics is impossible. But gosh, we are all so overwhelmed, aren’t we? Some healthy respite is needed here and there.

I’ve heard so many of my close friends say they don’t know what they can do. We, the little guy, the average citizen, sometimes it feels like all we can do is shout and wonder if anyone who can make a difference is even listening. But I’m here to tell you, there is so much more you can do, right now. The trick is, you have to stop looking at the epicenter as the only place where your presence could be valuable.

Where you are, right now, is where you can make the biggest difference. Is your home clean? You’ll feel more in control if your home is clean; even just 30 minutes of tidying will feel good to your nervous system. How are your neighbors? Does anyone need help picking up groceries, or cleaning their yard, or have a package to take to the post office? You’re already going that way, you can drop it off for them. Do you have a printer? Maybe you could you let your community know you can print forms for them, or shipping labels, or backups of their lease agreement. Or download free educational zines and leave them in your favourite cafe. Donate money to your local food bank, send supplies to your local animal shelter via their Amazon wishlist, buy some art from a local artist. “Action” doesn’t have to be big, or loud, or in a crowd, or on a boat; there is plenty you can do to impact and improve the lives around you in a way that fortifies both your heart and theirs. So when you feel lost, start where you are, and work your way up.

Health-wise I’m feeling a lot better this week, and spending more time at my desk again (complimentary). I realized a lot of what was impacting my health/recovery was a very bad reaction to the antibiotics I was prescribed—if you have EDS, absolutely do not let them prescribe you Moxifloxican. Apparently. Now I know. Thank you to those who checked in on me; small actions that did indeed help me feel supported while I was recovering. 🖤

☑️ Things I did - Went to that estate sale and bought skirt for 2fiddy, did a coworking session with my biz cohort wherein I finally started work on connecting payment processors to my test site (and got frustrated over Big Brother Google), swapped my mouse for a little 7×9” Wacom to use as a trackpad, finally checked in and started posting on my fansites again, took pictures of the strawberry full moon rising, actually posted those pics on my IG feed (first post in months!), had a nice phone call with my mom, started getting into Human Design (omg!), continued resting frequently and without guilt, celebrated my friend’s birthday over margs and mole colorado.

📋 Coming up - I’ve got my bi-weekly group coaching call with my cohort, last week’s drink plans got moved to this week to accommodate my recovery timeline, and there’s a lot of content editing to catch up on and start queuing, splitting my computer time between that and some ongoing work fleshing out a resource library for H2H and continuing work on the test site. It’s also worth noting that Friday is the Summer Solstice!

Ooooh, we are vulnerable posting for the moon this week! It’s true though. I think, at the end of the day, it’s a matter of confidence in my own skills and abilities i.e. imposter syndrome. As if involving someone else would also mean having someone to confirm my thoughts, my intentions, my plans. Sometimes I want someone to say “yes, that’s a good idea!” but more often, what I want is for someone to say “yes, but have you considered…” I’m getting a lot of that kind of feedback working with a business coach now, which is great, and is probably a large part of why I’m able to start questioning why I tend to do this.

The hard thing I’ve learned is that people love to be wanted, they love that you want to involve them in you/your life/your projects. People love to say yes because they love that you think of them. So, because they are happy to be asked, they immediately agree to be involved with no further consideration of what that actually means. All too often, that’s where the excitement ends for them. So here we are thinking someone wants to participate, but that’s not it at all; we end up with zero follow-through, or people who only want to be involved on their own terms or to their own benefit, regardless of what we need. It’s a short road to let down.

I don’t want to experience the isolation of toxic self-reliance and imposter syndrome, but it’s hard to relearn how to trust and believe in others after what feels like a lifetime of holding space for people who are just glad to be invited. I gotta keep moving forward, for myself, and trust others to catch up in their own time (or that I’ll catch up to them).

When I say I’m annoyed about Big Brother Google, it’s not even as a general consumer (though, that too…), but as a web admin. Because like, not only is Analytics incredibly technical and invasive in what it tracks and does with visitor data, but then earlier this year I found out that Google’s Captcha system also has tracking components. Which is just, like, why tho?? (Because they can! Because, who can stop them?)

While H2H is run extremely on the up and up in terms of content/user TOS, I would prefer to not in turn subject every user to tracking in the name of site security. Hell, a large part of me doesn’t even care about traffic analytics. I don’t need to know all that shit! What am I gonna do with it? Analyze it?? No thanks, I’ve got other things to do. Sorry but I don’t believe the hype on optimizing content and user experiences to maximize revenue; I think when we as web stewards shifted to SEO and data analytics is when the joyous whimsy and functional uniqueness of the Internet started to degrade.

My site host has a native analytics plugin included, so I can skip all the GA-4 business. But my site theme integrates Google captcha v2… and my host’s native security plugin integrates v3. So. Not sure what to do there, though I know there are other Captcha options available for a fee. If you’re a webby type and you want to talk about it, please reach out.

🎞️ Movie - Drive Angry (2012) is like someone wanted to remake Ghost Rider but they actually liked Spawn a lot more. Yes, it still stars Nicolas Cage. It’s explosively bloody, the CGI is hilariously terrible, it’s got my second favorite scene of people fucking during a shootout (top honor goes to Shoot ‘Em Up, naturally), and it’s better than it has any right to be.

🎵 Music - So much good music this week! I love a good music week. Also a reminder that you can follow me on Bandcamp or just peep my profile to see my moderately eclectic collection. Let’s do some quick hits:

☕ Drinking - I don’t drink alcohol much at all anymore, let alone frequently, but that first finger of bourbon after an upset is always satisfying. This time it was Burnside’s Goose Hollow Reserve. I love a lot of different spirits but if I only have one bottle of anything at home it’s almost always a bourbon, and this was an entirely reasonable option.

Oh! Thanks to the folks who clicked my sponsored ad inserts last week; by our powers combined we halved the cost of my Beehiiv subscription for the month. Cool! Thank you so much! Things being what they have been, I haven’t had the time to expand any other features or aspects of this newsletter but oooh my brain’s been cooking. I do think I’ve figured out the ad-free subscription thing, and also some other elements of running a Good newsletter here on the Beehiiv platform, so I hope to work on that a bit this week. Which means I should probably amend my list of To Dos for the week? Ah.

I do love the phrase “be like water”, partly because water is so versatile. Placid lakes? Lovely, full of life. Energetic whitewater? Exciting! Daring! That little puddle on the street? What a cute reflection; it makes a lovely photograph. Water is mutable, water is persistent, water takes many forms but none of those forms degrade its necessity. Be like water, in any form that suits you.

No kingsingly,