this is the last thing i’m letting myself write about twitter

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Every tweet is deleted, DMs in the process of, switches turned to off, one by one: every success and failure and hope and disappointment and opportunity and clusterfuck and useless ephemeralilty from 14 years of my life, from 27 through 41.

Were those 14 worth it? Not really, no.

While I've made some wonderful connections with now-lifelong friends and creative collaborators and had a few good opportunities, it wasn't worth what I let it do with my brain: I got sucked into its promise - which was very real - when I was at my most vulnerable, having lost my job, then my house – and I bought into the fantasy that it could give me a road forward.

The only road it gave me was a roundabout back into the feeding trough, dangling the hope that maybe I could be mentioned in the same breath as those writers with the 200k followers (a need for validation for which I’ve nothing but shame), that maybe I could have some impact on the world, that my hopes and creations were more than poker chips for a rigged game.

In the slot machine of Twitter, at least, they weren’t.

Anyhow, I'm not letting myself repeat those mistakes in this new social era (if I make the same mistakes at 41 as I did at 27, I won't be angry, just disappointed): I've happily moved on to Mastodon and here and the newsletter, doing whatever I feel like doing creatively and sharing it with whoever finds their way to it because at this point, honestly, fuck it.

“Fuck it”: was a more apposite summation of Twitter ever written? Probably. But fuck it: I'm free. And so are you.

/20221128

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38ºF, clouds: Despite what the Attendance Card below would have you believe, I am not a bear: it was meant to be representative of me figuring out how to work the Dexcom 6 CGM and my vision of the future with the insulin pump... the left side of my head was supposed to be a snake but I guess it does look like a chewed bear's ear so what the hell, call me a bear... wrote the same thing twice in my journaling practice this morning so I already have a feeling that it's going to be one of those days... but I am not a bear.

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (Wolfman/Pérez, 1985)

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Long on my to-read list (decades, at this point), I finally finished CRISIS last night and remain perplexed – not necessarily by the story, but by my feelings towards it. Initial reaction: a gorgeously illustrated (what a talent, what a loss) historical document with too many one-note action figures (as was DC's wont back then; they were, if nothing else, devoted to the archetypal/mythological portrayal of their stable) whose impact is still being felt, for better or for worse – and will continue to be felt with every uni/multiversal company-wide crossover in any medium from now until the end of time – and was, judging by my complete sense of indifference to the fate of numerous (hundreds, according to the annotations / backmatter) characters and heroes, required to breathe new life into the DC Universe. It was – and remains – DC's only reboot of necessity.

My reading of CRISIS also demonstrated not only its likely narrative impact on the readers of its time but the seismic shift heralded by the arrival, not even a year later, of Moore's WATCHMEN and Miller's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and YEAR ONE – come to think of it, I'd recommend anyone wanting to get a good grasp of '85-'86 in comics to read all three of these. Would prove illuminating.

Still, though, I wish I could read it as more than a historical document. Maybe next time.

newsletter sunday 0092

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43°F, rain: Turkey surgery performed yesterday turned out fine, entrails duly removed, Mr Bean watch/turkey episode avoided, narrowly. Suppose it was comforting that I was handed a knife as soon as I entered my in-laws' home. Holidaze, such and such... also comforting: brief reunion with my mother's cat, Pumpkin, who remembered me and proceeded to purr and do all sorts of cat-affection things. We also engaged in our regular boxing match; he won. I wish he wasn't the only aspect of my mother that I miss but such is life... MacroParentheticals0092 arrives in t-minus two hours, give or take. NASA I am not.