give us this day…

The bread machine arrived Monday. I started launching right into preparing the basic white bread recipe in the manual, despite having bought bread flour and it calling for all-purpose unbleached flour… the wet ingredients, sald and sugar were already in the machine when I realized it called for nonfat dry milk and I didn’t have any. This was after my spouse said “are you sure you’ve read the whole recipe first?”

DOUGH!

But after a quick store run, then spilling 1/4 of the nonfat dry milk on the floor (sigh), everything went off without a hitch and the bread was quite good. Success!

My sister-in-law sent photos of her favorite bread machine recipes, and we located a PDF of the book they were from. Looks like we’re going to live deliciously.

The new pillow arrived too. I’m less sure about it so far. The company I bought it from has a 60-day return or exchange window, and recommends trying it for at least three weeks and possibly making adjustments to the height. I feel like it works well enough when lying on my back, and if I put my buckwheat pillow atop it it’s fine for reading as well. On the side is a little more awkward. Sometimes I find a really comfy position, sometimes not so much.

One thing about it is it’s designed with the idea that you roll from your back to your side, changing where you are on the bed. But I am in the habit of trying to rotate in place, so whether I’m facing left, right or up I’m still centered in my half of the bed — not perching on its edge or encroaching on my spouse’s space. That would put my head always in the pillow’s trench, so I have to move the pillow if I do that.

I just had my second therapy session. I talked a bit about the things that triggered anxiety last week, and also in the past. We’ve basically identified it as:

  • Health-related anxiety. Specifically when I’m feeling something like an elevated heart rate and don’t know why; possibly also some fear of sunburn.
  • Getting overstimulated / overwhelmed. Mostly sensory — loud noises, a lot of chaos and things going on, but not necessarily loud music; also heat. Also being presented with a lot of instructions / a lot to do all at once. I need things broken down and listed and prioritized to feel in control over it.
  • Politics / current events, and feeling powerless to fix any of it. I got a lot of obvious sympathy for that one; apparently it’s common and probably affecting my therapist as well.

But she also made it pretty clear that I have some pretty good coping strategies in place for a lot of stressors already, and decent sleep hygiene. After all, I’ve been dealing with anxiety on my own for many years now. She did recommend I get into a morning meditation/stretch/wellness habit of some sort; she mentioned reframing, reminding myself “I’m in control of this moment” and that I’m working on things and am making progress.

The sessions seem really short, especially given they’re only once every week or so. But it’s probably good to take small steps, absorb and reflect.

equanimity

Our driveway is still half-buried in snow and the weather’s remained below freezing for this week (even dipping below 0F a few times). We dug out my spouse’s car but not mine, which meant a lot less work. If we’d been smarter we might have parked at least one of the cars at the back of the driveway so we’d have a lot less to shovel. We’ll see some above-freezing weather this week, hopefully enough to melt a significant amount of snow… but there’s also some chance of thaw/freeze cycles that turn the snow to treacherous ice.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we went out to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended editions with rambling pre-show commentary by Peter Jackson) on the 25th anniversary of Fellowship. The theater Monday was almost empty except for us (no doubt due to the weather) and it was chilly in there. Tuesday, in the exact same theater, there were more people, it felt like 80 degrees and the volume was extremely loud — it was overstimulating and uncomfortable. (I noted that as an anxiety experience; I felt a tightness in the throat and chest.) Wednesday was at a different location, and it was perfectly comfortable and the theater was about half full.

This is the first time we’ve seen the extended, or say rather full-length, versions of the movies in theaters. We’ve seen them many times at home on the small screen, but we picked up more details. It’s an absolutely gorgeous set of films, super detailed… and an enormous effort by hundreds of artists and craftspeople. It makes me like AI even less!

Despite that one not so great moment, the unusually nasty weather, all kinds of gross news about the Chump administration and ICE and the Epstein files and so forth, and facing having to interview some potential new hires at work in the near future, the anxiety has calmed way down. I’ve found some internal peace. I’ve even risked regular coffee a couple of times with no ill effects. I feel like I’m already doing better than I’ve been since before the big panic in late October, or the fear through September that built up to it. But I plan to continue therapy at least for a few sessions to see where it goes.

I mentioned the tVNS device. I didn’t mention I ordered a barely-used bread machine, inspired by the bread my sister-in-law served us on our New Year visit. I used to have a cheap simple bread machine back in the day and kind of enjoyed it, though I had a few spectacular failures with it. (Like… completely forgetting the yeast when I wanted to make jalapeño cheese bread for a Christmas party at work.) Machines have improved since then, and there’s advice online for getting perfect loaves, as well as more interesting recipes.

I also have an unusual pillow on the way. I’m a combination sleeper, picky about pillows, prone to doing things to my neck, back, and arms if I don’t find the right position. My buckwheat hull pillow is okay but there’s probably something better, and it tends to hold heat. PillowCube, which makes side-sleeper pillows with a rectangular profile, recently introduced one with a channel in the middle for combination sleepers, and it’s cooling too, and you can open it up and adjust the thickness. So I’m eager to try that.

All these things have had their shipping delayed by the weather. I’m crossing my fingers they’ll show up soon.

a win

I know I’ve said “I feel like the Lexapro is starting to help” before, but at this point I’m willing to upgrade it to “it is helping a lot.”

It’s also giving me extra-vivid dreams as well as hypnopompic hallucianations (while transitioning from sleep to wakefulness). Nothing disturbing, mostly just weird and amusing. This morning it was a red and green flickering LED clock that very clearly read 2:47… in the opposite corner of the room than our actual clock, which is blue and which I can barely read even with my glasses on, when it was more like 5:20.

But I’ll take the weirdness, given that I’m not panicking or even dwelling on worries so much now.

The most common anxiety experience I’ve had for the past few weeks has been noticing that my heart rate was pounding/racing without me exerting myself. I’d assume that was either panic already in progress with an unknown trigger, or that I have some kind of heart issue to worry about. So I’d dwell on it, which would sustain the worry and/or elevate it. I had some guesses about a possible trigger but they didn’t really pan out. I finally realized, it happens within a few minutes to a couple of hours after eating, especially if I stand up or move around a bit. And it’s a fairly normal, harmless physiological thing which can be increased if you take insulin (and various other things, including stress levels). Heh.

Saturday when I noticed it happening, I still dwelled on it a little, but less. Today? No problemo, cool as a cucumber.

I’ve also been considering various devices that might be able to give me insights (like health tracking rings/watches) or help in relaxation or meditation. I read a lot of reviews and arguments, marketing stuff, etc. and weighed various pros and cons.

Oura Ring: seems to be the best of the health trackers for the job. But it requires a subscription for full analysis of your data. I thought maybe comparing objective measurements to my feelings might give me more perspective, but some folks with anxiety are actually triggered by the additional data and AI-powered analysis, so that’s a gamble. I think this will depend on how things progress with therapy, and how I feel about it at a later time.

Reflect Orb: a squishy ball that you hold while meditating or relaxing, which measures heart rate variability and rates your stress/calm with a simple 4-color light ring. Then you can sync to an app and get a timeline and overall trends. Reviewers tend to be positive on it, but it doesn’t do anything else. It’s unclear what you lose out if you don’t have a subscription (otherwise I’d have considered buying a used one). And the company is Israeli, founded by a former intelligence agent, and there were some kind of squicky interviews talking about the need for stress relief after the Hamas attack.

Mendi: a headband that links to a smartphone, and a focus training game. Concentrate on the ball and it rises, lose focus and it starts to fall, keep up a streak as long as possible. Then it tracks your stats. This is supposed to help in general with focus, clarity, and maintaining calm. But for what it is, it’s expensive, and there are some doubts about the accuracy of the sensing method. I also feel like direct feedback on calm vs. stress would be more helpful to me than focus in particular.

Pulsetto: a tVNS (transdermal vagus nerve stimulator) device that you wear around your neck. There are some mostly good reviews of the product, a concerning number of negative reviews about the customer service, and some really questionable marketing.

Truvaga Plus: a handheld tVNS device that you hold up to your neck for 2-minute sessions. It generally has excellent reviews and is the consumer version of an FDA-approved, by-prescription-only device the same company makes. It’s quite pricey, apparently has trouble connecting to the app at times, and their somewhat cheaper (but still not cheap by any means) standalone versionhas a non-rechargeable battery and is only good for 350 2-minute sessions before it becomes landfill. I wonder whether the Plus version reports usage data since I can’t think of many other reasons why it’d use an app.

Zenowell Luna: a tVNS device that’s like a 2005-era MP3 player with a single earbud (except electrodes rather than audio). Also excellent reviews, aside from a few people with the wrong ear canal shape. (I’ve had no trouble with any kind of earbuds I’ve tried, so I don’t think I’ll have this issue.) There’s an older and a little cheaper version, but this one has twice the battery life and an additional program mode designed for headache relief, which since I get migraines sometimes might be useful. The other modes are Sleep, Relax and Meditate — there’s no app or Bluetooth connection required. I decided to go ahead and give this one a try.

The German company that owns Native Instruments, Izotope, Plugin Alliance and Brainworx has filed for insolvency. The blame can no doubt be placed on venture capitalism. This represents a signficant chunk of the industry and a lot of customers who might not be able to use a lot of plugins critical to their workflow in the future. Hopefully there will be some kind of solution that prevents everyone from getting screwed over.

let it go…

I’m writing this more for posterity, but this weekend there’s a massive winter storm affecting a lot of the US. Right here, the current temperature is 2°F (-17°C) and -9°F wind chill (-23°C). Light snow began a couple of hours ago — we’re expecting 1-3 inches today, 5-8 more tonight and another 3-5 tomorrow morning. It’s going to be 10 days before the temperature goes above freezing, with a low of -4°F tomorrow night.

Sunday night is our usual grocery run, but we’ll be all right if that gets delayed a few days. Monday my spouse has a doctor appointment but they called yesterday to say it’s been switched to telehealth. Monday’s also my usual day to go to the office, but I can work from home with no problems. We were hoping to catch the 25th anniversay Fellowship of the Ring rerelease Monday night (and the second and third movies the following nights), but that still gives us a bit more time to dig out.

I had my first therapy session yesterday, on a Zoom call during my lunch break. As the “intake appointment” it was mostly general questions about my mental and physical health, living situation, history, social stuff etc. as well as asking what my goals for therapy are.

(At one point she asked if I’m indecisive, and… I had to think about it. 😉 I wound up saying “here I am being indecisive about how to answer, so I guess that’s a yes!”)

My “homework” is to make note of when I experience panic / anxiety and what was happening that might have triggered it. Since this is a very busy therapist, we weren’t quite able to schedule weekly, but the next three appointments are booked at least.

I feel like the increased dosage of Lexapro is helping. While I was feeling a bit nervous before the appointment I think it was probably a normal level of nervousness, and I haven’t had any reason to take notes yet. Fingers crossed! This is one piece of homework I hope to fail at 🙂 If I end up ending therapy because the meds are enough, that’s actually great.

NAMM is here, and (thankfully) I just don’t find myself tempted by any of the new music gear announcements. Korg Phase-8 is now an actual product, but it seems so much less interesting (especially for the price) than the electro-magnetic-acoustic experiments Korg Berlin first started showing off about 3 years ago. I’m not interested in picking up a hardware polysynth, so I can ignore ASM’s big deal. Noise Engineering has a new trigger sequencer that’s definitely cool, but for my needs I have plenty of tools for the purpose. OBNE has a new pedal collaboration with Emily Hopkins, which can sound pretty good at times but I’m not excited for the random glitching or yet another reverb-into-bitcrusher (it does make me want to play more with tremolo though). Make Noise announced an announcement, but (unless there is more to it) Thomann has already leaked the surprise and it’s not something I need.

Pretty good article from Cory Doctorow on the AI industry here. I like the “centaurs” vs. “reverse centaurs” metaphor for whether machines serve humanity or vice versa. Of course the concept of bullshit jobs fits the latter as well. As a worker, nobody wants to be the person who babysits a machine that’s usually right but sometimes catastrophically wrong in a way that looks at first glance like it’s not. As a customer, nobody wants to get wrong answers and badly designed products from that process. As a wise or decent businessperson who actually cares about their people and their reputation, nobody wants to sell those wrong answers… but as an investor who wants maximum ROI, they definitely want to replace expensive labor with cheap machines and (if they must) a couple of low-wage interchangeable humans whose job is to be responsible for the errors.

released: Questions

Enjoy 🙂

I’m happy with how the various sequencing techniques/disruptions worked out. MD2, Marbles, Nibbler, 0-Ctrl and Clep Diaz all work together nicely and Bitwig Grid, Harmony Bloom and Entonal Studio contributed as well, to the point where even I can’t necessarily tell what I used without referring to my notes. Each tool is wielded a little differently and contributes something different, but it’s still just an extension of me.

I’m looking forward to finding out how Walk 4 contributes as well. Will I use it more at audio rates or for modulation or both; more as a source or a processor? Its release was delayed a bit, so work on the next album isn’t likely to be launched by exploring it. I think there’s a lot of potential there though. I kind of hope that it and the K-Accumulator don’t arrive too close together, although I am excited for both of them, just so I dedicate an initial learning period to each one.

so much to read

I did buy a couple of things from Amazon recently — the needle clippers, a replacement desk fan, a magnetic water conditioner that’s supposed to help prevent buildup of calcium gunk in pipes. But I’ve fully transferred my book wishlist to Bookshop.org and deleted everything else off my wishlists except one pair of linen pants, which might also go depending on how the ones I’m getting from Etsy are.

That desk fan replaces a dead Vornado Zippi, which didn’t start again after I turned it off for the New Year road trip. That was my second one and I’m just not all that convinced by Vornado anymore. The air circulator we have in the upstairs bedroom is that brand, but I don’t like it because unless you’re very specifically positioned you can’t feel it. I also had one of the standard Vornado fans die on me, though the other is still running on the upstairs landing (trying to equalize temps a bit both in winter and summer).

The replacement is an Arctic Summair 2Go. It’s a German-made DC computer case fan — very efficient, meant to be reliable for a long period, and stepless speed control — in a handheld/desktop repackage. It does have a battery and USB charging but I trust them a little more than a random Temu fan. And so far it’s been great. At low to moderate speeds it’s quiet; at high speeds it’s noisy but also impressively strong for its tiny size. If I wanted to run it on batteries it’s supposed to last anywhere from 4 to 77 hours on a charge, depending on speed. And it was fairly cheap too… I may get more of these in the future.

My brother and his wife almost always send their Christmas gifts late. Yesterday I got a gift certificate for Left Bank Books from them. Between that, Alibris, Bookshop.org, and Open Library I have the rest of Martha Wells’ Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy plus 4 more fiction and 6 non-fiction books. I’m making good on the goal of reading more stuff on science, ancient history and wonder in general.

I had my follow-up appointment with the PHMNP this morning. She’s increasing my Lexapro dose to 15mg. Unfortunately since they come in 10 and 20mg doses, that means splitting pills.

it must be solid, liquid or plasma

I’ve joined the No New Gear Year group on Discord, and one of the things someone posted was a link to this excellent Manifesto for Critical Thinking in Synthesizer Culture and related essay Synthesizers, Engagement, and the Myth of GAS.

There’s a lot to chew on here, and I agree with much of it. The synth community does tend to argue repetitvely about certain things which are really a matter of subjective personal taste (and in many cases are actually irrelevant). It also tends to encourage consumption while simultaneously judging it with a sort of moral lens, and to some extent, tends to focus on gear choices over creative choices, technique etc.

(I’m actually wondering whether I should change how I engage with online forums, partly for that reason. But it’s also acting as sort of a substitute for socializing, so… it’s complicated.)

Depending on the segment of the community, there’s also a tendency to assign a sort of moral value to: hardware vs. software; analog vs. digital; working with different sample rates and bit depths; the use of presets, samples and loops; the use of computers; basic building block modules vs. modules that combine functions for musical utility; different genres of music… it can get ridiculous.

One point in the manifesto that I take a little issue with is the weighing of technical specifications. They might be objective but in a lot of cases, numbers don’t tell the most important parts of the story, and are sometimes used as marketing tools. You can’t compare the “quality” of digital synths merely by looking at sample rates or bit depth, and in fact there is no objective “quality” that determines whether a synth sounds good, is inspiring, etc. Nor does more filter models, more built-in LFOs, more wavetables, more presets etc. predict anything useful. “More” isn’t better, “less” isn’t better. Better is usually better… but “better” is context-dependent and subjective!

I should have known

I retract my reservations about The Wizard Hunters. One of the early chapters may have seemed a bit awkward at the time, but in retrospect I’m not sure I was giving it my full attention in a decent mood. The other main character as well as the adversaries are fascinating and things started really building up a little further along. Now I’m thoroughly hooked and definitely want to read the rest of that series. Also, it ties in more than I thought with other books from earlier in that setting. I should have known Martha Wells wouldn’t fail me! 🙂

I have 55 minutes of material for the next album already… so I think I’m done. Time for some test listening to make sure, then mastering and art and release and on to something else. There’s just a one-month span between the file timestamps on the first and last track, and that was during the holidays and still dealing with anxiety. I tended to do the tracks in bursts when I felt up for it, and that’s worked out well.

It didn’t turn out to be purely a “soothing ambient” thing, and in fact it’s not at all stereotypically soothing music but I think it works as a mood lift for me. In reading that book on the history of Zen, I accidentally found a theme along the way: the idea of breaking out of conscious and rational thought (or at least expectations) and all the filters and illusions they bring, and being more intuitive and perceptive. I’m not going to claim that the songs are koans, but I was thinking of the surprising things Zen masters do to jolt their students into sudden enlightenment… combined with similar ideas from Chaos Magic, surrealism and just general trickster stuff. That said, I didn’t just want to be totally random and pointless with it; there’s a flow.

Some time back I posted about pen needle clipper woes. I’m happy to say that, when the ugly, Dremel-hacked Medi-Clip wore out recently, I found at least two alternatives online. One seems to be a fairly direct clone of the sorely missed BD SafeClip, but the generically named Needle Clipper got higher reviews so I decided to try that. It’s a bit bulkier, which is a factor when carrying it in a pocket, but so far so good. These are all more expensive than the original SafeClip, but not excessively so and it’s worth it to not have to carry a clunky, and frankly unreliable and dangerous sharps container around.

Order your cookies online from trans/nonbinary kids in Girl Scouts! You can also donate cookies (and not pay shipping) if you don’t eat them yourself. I’m happy to say I bought enough from one to get her to her goal, and if we manage to finish them all off I’ll gladly help another — let’s face it, Tagalongs and Samoas and Thin Mints don’t last long around here.

not cute

Pushing Daisy was a decent sequel to Daisy’s Run, but honestly I enjoyed the first book more and I don’t feel inclined to read the rest of the series.

Song of the Dryads was recommended to me but… sorry, absolutely not. My first DNF of 2026. I don’t like the writing style at all, it’s badly in need of an editor, better characterization, and it gives me the feeling of maybe being partially AI generated. It’s just not a well-told story. At approximately halfway through the short book, there is just no sense of what the main character wants, any sort of conflict or plot, nor much differentiation between the other characters. Nobody seems to have any agency and things just happen at random. It’s a fever dream.

I started Martha Wells’ The Wizard Hunters and I’m not into it yet either. I really liked her Murderbot books, and the couple of fantasy stories of hers were pretty well done, but this is supposed to be the first book of its series but it reads like a book 3 without any sort of catch-up. But I’ll keep going for a while and give it a chance, I guess.

The New Gender Synthesis: To be only masculine or only feminine is to be half a human being

This is actually not as much about being nonbinary or trans, as it is the toxic performative hypermasculine/hyperfeminine “reactionary camp” of the right wing in recent years. It’s quite a read.

as 2026 gets started

We had a good New Year visit with my in-laws. The drives there and back weren’t bad at all; we listened to the “We Fix Space Junk” audio drama, which is hilarious, kept me alert and made the time pass quickly, and the available episodes were almost the perfect length for the trip. I slept fine, and in fact slept in later than usual most mornings and took naps as well. Their dog Benny is super friendly, about the same size and somewhat similar looks to Lady. It’s always fun hanging out with the young nephew, who’s quite smart. There was no super uncomfortable political discussion (although I mostly avoided being in the room with national TV news going). And I ate way too many sweets.

By whatever coincidence, none of the gifts I got this Christmas were books or bookstore gift certificates — but I don’t lack for either nice gifts or reading material regardless. I expanded my book wishlists quite a lot by looking for stuff on science, nature, the ancient world, wonder in general, of course more fantasy and SF and a few more bits of LGBTQ+ fiction. Most of that now lives in my bookshop.org wishlist, with the Amazon one nearly emptied — of course in most cases I’m going to check libraries first. Once I finish Pushing Daisy (the sequel to Daisy’s Run), I’ve got a couple other books downloaded and a couple on my Open Library list.

I’m… aware of the thing that this administration did in Venezuela. I’m not following the news closely but the announcement was being televised while we stopped for lunch on our way back yesterday. Shame on the belligerent yet cowardly criminals behind it, and all the other politicians and pundits willing to swallow the flimsy justifications and give their support, their tacit approval, or their useless “strongly worded letters” of no consequence.

Mental health has been… okay, considering. If asked today whether the meds are helping I’d say yes, but I do want to try a higher dose.