read write.as

Welcome to WriteFreely Release Monday! Yep, this is a new thing now — a new major release every Monday. Let's get into this one, which brings a ton of stability improvements and new features like an admin dashboard!

Features

Admin panel

Dashboard

Now you can get a basic overview of your application on the admin dashboard. It shows you the app's resource utilization and provides helpful admin commands.

Currently, the first registered user is always an admin.

Page editing (T533)

Make your instance your own by updating your site's About and Privacy pages — now possible directly from the web. The editor accepts Markdown.

Other Features

• Add --init-db flag to create schema in app (T530)
• Add --reset-pass <username> option for resetting passwords (#25, T534)
• Federate draft when published to a blog (#9, T526)
• Support setting created date on new posts (T532)

Functional Fixes

• Fix “view blog” links on customize page in single-user mode (#21)
• Fix “Scheduled” badge appearing when application and database timezones are different (#23)
• Prevent fatal errors when no ActivityPub response is returned
• Change Accept activity ID to use blog's origin (#16)
• Fix MathJax setting not sticking (#28)
• Fix wrong collection data loaded in RSS feeds on multi-user instances
• Fix feed and outbox post order in RSS feeds and ActivityPub outboxes
• Fix em dashes and some glyphs by upgrading Lora

Others

• Add -v flag for outputting version

Upgrading from v0.2.x

Download the latest release for your operating system. Stop running your writefreely service, replace all files in your installation with the ones in the archive, and then start your writefreely service again.

Important: you'll want to keep config.ini and the files in your keys directory across all upgrades — don't delete or replace these manually.

You'll need to manually migrate your database for now. To upgrade, connect to your database and run:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `appcontent` (
  `id` varchar(36) NOT NULL,
  `content` mediumtext CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin NOT NULL,
  `updated` datetime NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Optionally, run these queries to clean up bad data that might've shown up due to previous bugs, now fixed in this version.

-- Erroneous values inserted if you tried to enable MathJax on your blog (fixed in #28)
DELETE FROM `collectionattributes` WHERE collection_id = 0;

Development

This update contains some style changes. Run make ui to regenerate CSS after pulling in the latest changes.

Some days it’s tough to produce good quality work. When one is exhausted the quality of work will suffer. It is a pity, the societies we have built do not cater for days where individuals, for whatever reason, are not at their best. Days where everyone is better off if you stayed home.

A trusted employee may enjoy a boss who permits such habits, provided they do not affect overall performance, but as with anything pleasant, there will be those who seek to take advantage and in so doing ruin it for everyone else.

How does the saying go? “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

one big giant fucking piece of shit.

Think now if you will about the magnificent size of the biggest technology corporations, or perhaps what the names of these companies are.

Google certainly comes to mind. On the surface, a simple little search engine that can pull in billions of results at once. If you want to be anybody on the vast landscape that is the information superhighway, you will generally employ something called “search engine optimization” to make sure you can be found through this and similar services, which further expands their power. Google is probably the most popular search engine out there, as it is the most popular email service. Gmail has over one billion active users, and it's fairly easy to see why. Having a Gmail inbox (and by extension, a Google account) gives you access to more convenient services that the big ol' G provides. Ever heard of Google Drive? Don't lie to me, yes you have. For no monetary cost (what we call “price” in economics), you have access to fifteen gigabytes of storage and a collaborative office suite all in the comfort of the “cloud” (Google's servers). But that's not all. Ever heard of YouTube? Stop lying to me, you absolutely have. That's Google too. The Android operating system on the very popular Samsung phones? Yea, Google did that too. Those laptop-wannabes that infect government schooling institutions known as Chromebooks? You get the point.

But before I go ahead and make my point, let's talk for a second about Facebook. Whilst declining in popularity with my generation, it is still very relevant in society today. Does the concept “Fear Of Missing Out” sound familiar to you? That would be the greatest argument for adopting Facebook into your browsing habits. “Everyone else is on Facebook, so why aren't you?”. And even if you don't use the titular service itself, Messenger and Instagram are both popular offerings of theirs that many people still use.

And what about our good buddy Amazon? Absolutely THE name in online shipping... and audio-books via Audible... and a formidable streaming service in the form of Prime... and the proud owner of Whole Foods.

Ok, so enough beating around the silicon bush. Our Internet consumption nowadays is generally consolidated to a few big websites, rather than many smaller ones. That sure is convenient, don't get me wrong. If you could get more done with fewer pages, you are being technologically efficient to some capacity. In fact, if you are using Google, Facebook, and Amazon on a regular basis, you are among millions of people who are, in this sense, technologically efficient. Emphasis on millions. These companies have millions of users' data.

Say what you will about privacy policies and companies' statements with regards to privacy. Most if not all of the software powering how we interact with these organizations are proprietary. We can't say for sure what data is being collected, what third party websites are being connected, and how your information is being used once collected. The more you interact with these and similar websites, the more information about yourself they receive. Your location via the IP address you log on with, your interests based upon posts you like & videos you click, what you buy, who you know and interact with (and the conversations that transpire), et cetera. But these sites are so damn convenient.

Just for the record, I'm not stating anything that isn't common knowledge or proposing any revolutionary solution to what I see as a problem of centralization. But consider the following: All three of the companies mentioned have invested interest in IoT (Internet of Things) technology (in the form of Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Facebook Portal) which is meant to be always on and out in the open. Again, we don't know the inner-workings of their software, and we can't say how much of our conversations are submitted back to these companies.

Also, do note that the US Government, among others, has their own surveillance interests, namely in the form of the NSA (whom could at the very least do us all a favor and change the 'S' in the acronym to surveillance). Surely they know of the data that big-tech has access to, and how it could assist their malicious intentions. Look y'all, I'm not saying, but I'm just saying.

Adding a comment box to any blog is probably a good idea. It lets your readers speak to you directly, discuss whatever you've written. That's fun.

At the moment of writing, Matt, the lead designer – and god of the circuits – for write.as is working on a sub-product called remark.as, an easy plug-and-play comment box, designed specifically for write.as;

However, I'm not one to wait, and reasonable alternatives exist.

For this demonstration, we'll be using commento. Commento is a more privacy-aware and ad-free alternative to Disqus (that shitty comment box you say on almost every half-baked blog) that's backed by funding from the Mozilla foundation.

Simply create an account, and on the dashboard, click “New Domain.”

You'll need to use either a write.as subdomain, or your own custom domain. You can't use a sub-directory, like my blog does.

Next, they'll tell you to stick this code wherever you want the box to show up. This won't work with write.as, since write.as doesn't allow the <script> tag.

Instead, you'll have to take the JavaScript located here, and insert it into the JavaScript box for your site.

Now getting a comment box to appear is as simple as adding <div id="commento"></div> wherever you think it'd look the nicest.

This isn't the nicest, cleanest way to do something like this, but it works, and it's the best solution until remark.as is a finished product.

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#coding #hacking #write.as #javascript

On the night bus, saying goodbye to the boy. Last hug, last kisses, longed-for time brought to an end. Left to stew in the memories. You've come back to this time and again, a different boy at every station. Beauty is impermanence, time is a flat circle, yada yada. Time and experience has numbed the goodbyes.

You'll crave that lapse and reprieve from worry. Him and his world are one and the same. Him and Tehran. Him and Tokyo. Him and Paris. The solace of his company in a foreign land. Interpreter, guide, lover, friend and companion, a shortcut to intimacy forged by that fleeting connection. You know it's a shadow of the real thing, but we make do with what we're given.

You cried for him in Tokyo—over kissing in the middle of Shibuya crossing, hands held in quiet lanes, solidarity with a stranger you'd never met before but feel for unlike anyone else.

You loved him in Tehran—for the road trip into the mountains, standing on the shores of the Caspain Sea, his every tender kiss a question to which your answer is a desperate yes.

And you write for him now on the night bus—over dancing in tiny clubs, the breathtaking views from the Montmarte, the escape from real life into the complete fantasy that is this weekend in Paris.

You know it's a lie. Repetition won't change things. Knowing doesn't alter the outcome—time and experience will never numb the goodbyes.

China’s brightest children are being recruited to develop AI ‘killer bots’

This can't be good.

#link

Welcome to this week's edition of the Monday Kickoff, a collection of what I've found interesting, informative, and insightful on the web over the last seven days.

At the end of each edition of the Monday Kickoff, I ask (beg?) you to support this project (and, by extension, my other online work). In case you're wondering, I don't use what's dropped into my hat to feather my nest. What people send my way helps pay for the services that I use, for domain renewals, and for donations to the organizations I back. This past while, I've sent the micropayments I've received (and quite a bit of my own cash on top of that) to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Wikimedia Foundation. That's on top of the monthly donation I make to the Internet Archive.

So if you're interested in supporting my work and supporting some good causes, you can find out how to do that at the end of this post. Thanks!

With that out of the way, let's get this Monday started with these links:

Ideas

The Uneasy Yoke, wherein Blair Hurley recounts how religion has touched and shaped her, even though she doesn't practice any of the faiths she's explored.

The Miracle of the Mundane, wherein Heather Havrilesky examines the joys of living a simple, ordinary life, and discovers that living such a life isn't as easy as it seems.

Autism from the inside, wherein we discover that the way people look at autism, and what they think they understand about it, is all wrong. As the father of a young woman with autism, this article hit home in ways I didn't expect it to.

Arts and Literature

Imploding with Cool, wherein we join writer Iain Sinclair on his literary perambulations around London and discover how much the city's tone and texture has changed over the decades. Sometimes, not for the better.

Why Literature Loves Lists, wherein Brian Dillon examines how lists are used by both fiction writers and essayists, and explains the structure and comfort that lists offer writers.

What is cyberpunk?, wherein Alex Spencer examines the origins of the SF sub genre, and looks at cyberpunk's descendants and its discontents.

Presenting

How to give an effective presentation, wherein Mark Pollard explains that a presentation is more than a set of slides, and walks us through how to plan, structure, and give a presentation worth sitting through.

How to write a talk, wherein we're given some solid, easy-to-do advice on how to come up with an idea for a presentation, develop it, and get ready to give it.

What I wish I knew when I first started speaking internationally, wherein Amber Case offers some useful tips for people who speak at events overseas (or even in their own countries).

And that's it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.

— Scott Nesbitt

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If you enjoy The Monday Kickoff, please consider supporting it by buying me a coffee or a smoothie, or making a micropayment via Liberapay, Plasso, or PayPal. Even if you don't, I'll keep doing this. Your support (even if you just read this space) is appreciated!

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The Monday Kickoff is licensed under CC0 Public Domain.

I like lists, I often am presented with a list of things to choose from, prioritize, sort elements of it without necessarily the right to reject the inclusion of something in the list I am given.

So here is an unfiltered list of tools and systems you can use to improve your privacy starting by decentralized communications and cryptography.

1) http://sci-hub.tw/

If you are ever stuck with academic research, want to avoid running into plagiarism or read useful material to take your research one step further this website will charm you.

Founded by an academic in search for the right material and became a gold mine for researchers around the globe.

Peer to peer piracy killed the black market, where academic papers used to be sold 30 dollars a piece through shady deals.

Now they are given for free without anyone benefiting from it. A cyber Robin Hood platform redistributing knowledge.

Years ago I handed over an organic chemistry encyclopedia to my doctor friend, to complete his work leading to composing a successful Alzheimer drug.

I found this encyclopedia, solving a catch 22 problem for him.

My friend did not have the time, to travel for several hours to Paris during the libraries opening hours. If he took that time then he could get the wonderful opportunity to pay a fee of a few hundred dollars to borrow any books that were available from that collection for a period of seven days.

Considering he planned to work for another 2 years on his research that would have drained all resources from him as the university he worked for did not have such detailed reference material for him to read.

Through E-Mule a generic peer to peer software somewhat similar to the torrent systems used today I was able found the material in a blink of an eye , as soon as he first described me his problem.

Unfortunately, we also stumbled upon some videos of Syrian beheading leading my friend to outburst of laughter as he happened to be Syrian himself ironically.

My friend then realized how useful, but also how troubled the Internet was having users promoting knowledge, while others promoted hate in the same cyberspace.

The deep web is more or less associated with dark web, but the separation of concerns allowed for true gems of websites offering the right kind of information to the community.

Sci-hub is a brilliant example of the power that the Internet enables people to have.

The power of knowledge, The knowledge that is not indexed by Google, where only brave navigators can find their way.

2) Asymmetric email encryption is known as S/MIME

Your cloud email including Office 365 cloud email allows for a personal cachet, a wax seal you can add on top of your message.

For your Google system or local good old desktop email client Acquiring a digital certificate is easy and free, launching Certbot can be done in many ways. The easiest is in a container on your laptop (assuming you installed docker which is a cross-platform container system) go to your command shell and type:

docker run -it —rm —name certbot \ -v “/etc/letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt” \ -v “/var/lib/letsencrypt:/var/lib/letsencrypt” \ certbot/certbot certonly

If you want more control and need to generate millions of them for your IoT network, the kit is very extensive.

https://letsencrypt.org/docs/client-options/

Now you can always purchase a ready-made one, but the principle remains the same.

I would not be surprised if there is not already a smartphone app on the Apple store that does it for you.

Long story short, you create a file and load into your email system. Pretty straightforward, and all your emails are now encrypted with your own additional encryption key.

3) Anonymity hardware such as the Anonabox

https://www.anonabox.com/

In today's world, software is not strong enough to safeguard information, hardware offers additional compute power, ease of use and little need for configuration.

In the previous post I pointed out how using Linux software one can have a personal cloud platform with secure data.

The plug and play box is a simpler way to access sensitive information Like the one, I shared in my very first post around the NSA leaked documents published by the Washington Post and filtered by the European Union.

With thousands of accidental interceptions, no matter how diligent can anyone be for you to simply give up your right to anonymity.

With this solution, you can protect your loved ones so that years in the future no government will have a record of the books you browsed on Amazon, or where did you last fly for a vacation.

Oh and you can pay and use the latest “Who is America” show on ShowTime which is also mysteriously filtered out.

In Europe lot of digital TV, content is filtered seemingly favoring the good old cable and local taxes applied despite the decrease of the audience hooked on the airwaves watching the local public TV service.

In Ireland the tax man taxes your TV screens, not the content displayed on them so why would the content be filtered?

This brings me to the last link,

4) Be crazy but get paid for doing so. https://www.yours.org/

Claim back the Internet, focus on the content, not distractions.

Own your content.

You can run it on your own infrastructure like mentioned with Freedom boxes in hardware or software mode.

With yours.org or similar services, you can simply hook up on the existing network allowing to monetize your own data getting directly paid based on its quality.

No need to make the 0.01% even richer thanks to your data stored in their data-centers feeding in their advertising partners.

Don't simply give out the dollar worth photograph of your breakfast to a social advertising platform for free.

A few years ago people still believed that protesting on Facebook about Facebook selling or owning their data would prevent that from happening. Ignorance can be amusing to observe.

The market of personal data is very aggressive.

So aggressive it gave space to personal information poachers like Zuckerberg to monetize your life. Reconsider your understanding of the “Terms and conditions” that applied with sharing your data, knowing that 3rd party apps would read your data bypassing those agreements.

Zuckerberg never lost any money, not even after the scandal, his net value actually grew.

It is the people who trusted and invested in Facebook that started losing money following this scandal.

For the general public, you and me, Mary Sue and Bobby Lee there is only one simple economic model.

Online presence on traditional social networks makes any individual a de facto product for sale.

Don't be a target for advertisement, or a cash cow for Facebook.

Move on to new networks, discover the real value of your online activity by taking control of it.

The ethics behind scientific experimentation are purely good whenever the motivation is either academic, or aiming at revealing something unethical and evil.

I'll aim to stand by this statement by demonstrating a known experiment that enables you to claim back your privacy on the Internet.

Quoting Linux Torvalds , collaboration as a community in today's digital age makes all of us modern artists. So let's allow ourselves to adopt new ways of using software, software designed for you to use privately.

Zuckerberg grabbed all this free software, like Linux to build a multi-million new industry by monetizing social advertisement.

That may sound like oxymoron, someone building a financial empire over a ton of free software...

Perhaps it was megalomania or abuse of the devops principles that lead Facebook to fail not only fast and early but also repetitively.

There are public records of motivational speeches, probably taken out of some early hackathons, where Zuckerberg orients the team in delivery, rather than

Agreeing to implement backdoor was one.

Internal systems allowing anyone in Facebook to read anyone's profile while inventing such a thing as the “Sauron” alert to cover them from internal litigation.

The “Sauron” alert is designed to warn a Facebook employee when his profile is accessed.

Too bad I can't buy this “Sauron” alert feature as a service as a member of the general public accessing that network.

Taken from popular culture, the Eye of Sauron is part of a greater evil taking many forms over time and is of such gargantuan dimensions that it can theoretically see everything by hanging out in the sky.

Well, it's fiction so whatever works for entertainment. In reality that's pretty sickening of a reference for an organization acting as a news platform, and indirect surveillance tool.

Technical people in our industry describe a back door, as a vulnerability voluntarily designed for data access purposes.

Keep in mind that unmasking people's data on Facebook can be done to a small extent using proxies and exploiting vulnerabilities that may not have been understood by the designers of Facebook.

That's due to the customized version of HTML Facebook uses, called surprise surprise FBML to match their almost imperialistic approach to being the supreme social network...

During the Facebook hearings, questions where finally answered The type of backdoor that existed, and where such all-seeing eyes existed in the organization.

Some of the backdoors were designed for PRISM Facebook being a small subset of data under a greater all seeing eye such as government agencies.

The NSA hearings a few years ago, no public answers were given claiming some conversations were deemed as classified consequently not revealing public how the surveillance model was used.

Zuckerberg was unable to play this card claiming confidentiality

He turned various shades of pink before his cheeks became totally red when asked how cookies serve marketing purposes potentially collecting the Internet activity and oriented the senator to his technical team.

Similarly when 3rd party applications running on Facebook violated the terms of privacy, and no control or shutdown was enforced on those applications Baffling excuses sounding something like

“My dog ate all the data, not me”

The rhetoric began to sound different as the interrogation was circling him

“It is not really my dog, I found it on the Internet and fed it data.”

And the answers keep getting weirder and weirder.

When questioned around sanctioned for anyone involved in releasing those 3rd party application to the public via Facebook, with an a la carte “all-you-can-eat” data buffet of information, Zuckerberg's voice broke down and froze.

Not being able to produce sounds, after a few seconds of silence the senators got directed to his technical teams for details only to plunge again in comfortable silence.

It's a free market,

Selling data to political campaigns surfaced as an unhealthy ethical issue in Facebook's noble mission to “bring the world together” ...by running the advertisement bots.

Even when Facebook had the gained knowledge of the Cambridge Analytica breach, via the 3rd party applications they failed to alert the public of that concern.

More important than participating in mass surveillance programs anti-terrorism programs.

Truly the 50.000 people employed as content reviewers by Facebook, have been proven inefficient, as they fail to stop censorship from political bias resulting in pages being taken down for no good reason.

Stopping Internet trolls is not a task for men, considering a lot of them are automated scripts.

New pressure came to light as in the summer of 2018 the FBI asked Facebook also received requests to implement a backdoor in their messaging app.

The root cause of this problem is the centralized nature of the data and information exchange model of social networks, as well as their unscrupulous economic models.

https://sociall.io/ is a new type of social media where data is theoretically not for sale considering most of it is based on a peer to peer architecture. It also provides encrypted data.

Which brings me back to my original post , calling out for more encryption.

The decentralized Internet is close to the pure idea of the cyber communication in its early days.

Older efforts like Diaspora https://diasporafoundation.org/ were launched in the past, with the suicide of one of the main developers and founders Ilya Zhitomirskiy causing a major set back in the operations.

He died at the age of 22 from helium asphyxiation, during the inception and growth period of what would become the anti-facebook platform in terms of business model and technical transparency.

His surrounding confirmed he was under a great amount of pressure.

Last but not least, for your own experimentation with a cleaner Internet I would prompt you to try out the Freedom box.

https://freedomboxfoundation.org/

It is a simple tool, design to secure data, communications and search strings you may use , host personal blogs bypassing censorship capable of enabling political change.

In our world, everyone has accepted or chose to pretend they don't understand that social networks store data of shadow profiles along with real profiles often giving a skewed perspective of who we are.

Following the new European regulations such as GDPR salty fines hitting Google with 5 billion dollars fine.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal was scrubbed with a 600k fine Under recent regulations that would have cost them about 2 billion dollars instead.

So next time you share data on such traditional centralized social platform, ask yourself is there a good reason to do it? For your information, your intellectual property to end in a sea of data lakes

Data lakes are the jargon for king size data-center and yottabytes of Instagram holiday snaps stored in raw format.

Raw data of people posing as some famous Renaissance paintings surrounded by advertising A.I maggots mining information.

Once those maggots are ready to breed they infest your cookies, and keep coming like spam egg bacon spam and oh you know the drill by now.

Your computers and smartphone micro-probe your life moments in the name of marketing. Originally cookies were designed to solve a problem, such as remembering data within a website to make navigation easier.

3rd party cookies typically can act across sites, when operated by advertising networks, that track habits.

Deleting cookies will never be enough, so why not make the problem disappear and surf the internet differently without being monetized on your every click.

Think before you post.

Will you provide information useful to the community, or will you become information for sale yourself?

The lack of purity and integrity that governs social media, cost a second dive in terms of IPO and stock market value With no control over Myanmar's hate speech outbreak on Facebook where the Buddhists were made life threats to the Muslim community, as well as citing Hitler as a solution to their problems.

Facebook, a global corporation had only one Burmese speaker working for them back in 2014, at some stage none, then two.

They now employ 60 but the situation is way out of hands in terms of hate speech in Myanmar and a lot of them work in the Dublin HQ.

For 18 million active users in Myanmar, it is a meager effort put together by a multi-million dollar marketing business offering to “connect the world”.

Accenture got hired as a subcontractor in Kuala Lumpur to keep the costs low enough to fight hate speech based simply on reports as there is are not enough resources to control such hate speech.

Why? Simply because Facebook is the only form of the Internet known to the local population and it's lack of filters perhaps the only solution for the local Muslim community of Myanmar is to use the deep web and onion routers to keep their anonymity and subsequently their lives.

In Myanmar Facebook further facilitated the unrest and rising tensions in leading to loss of life of the Rohingya people.

The targets of hate groups could be spotted on Facebook with their pictures shared, and eventually, their locations revealed.

Stalked to death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PtvIr2oiaE

Human are intelligent animals They transform wolf to dog They transform eagle to poultry They are good at manipulating

Now some of them, are transforming some of them, to tools Some of the human, are manipulated by some of the human Without sensing it

Human, they are transforming themselves, to puppets Almost all of them cannot sense it

There are some simple signals, to find out if you are being transformed to puppet one, you find it's hard to get up in the morning two, your effort is consumed to accomplish other's goals

There are too many puppets in this world Their lives have no purpose They work for other's goals They are manipulated as tools Too many puppets in my country If you tell them the truth, they will bite you like dogs, defending their masters for no reason

I just want to keep my free will existing And work for my own goal People around me, told me, I am breaking the moral They think my personality is broken They insult me, just because I am not one of them

I told them, moral is just something used to maintain the human society A group of human will not share moral to another group of human Human, this pathetic group animal species Invented something called law, religious, or moral They use these imagination to manipulate other people Transforming them to slaves, to puppets

Now, I find the truth. I am free, free from those illusions If you are keeping reading this Then there are some suggestions for you to discovery the truth Just think about what moral really is Think about those moments you are manipulated Think about those moments people use your personality defect to manipulate you Then you shall find the truth Then you shall find who you really are And notice those insults you haven't noticed before Then you shall be free

The 7 Rules For Life:

1. Make peace with your past. (So that it doesn’t disturb you present.)
2. Don’t care about what others think of you. (It’s none of your business, and it shouldn’t matter.)
3. Give it time. (Time heals almost everything.)
4. You decide. (No one is in charge of your happiness except for you.)
5. Don’t compare your life to others. (And don’t judge them.)
6. Stop over thinking. (It’s okay to not know the answers.)
7. Let loose. (You don’t own every problem/responsibility in the world.)

Follow these rules to life the fullest and happiest life possible.

S T O P ~ how to deal with anger/anxiety/depression. Follow these steps when you: * Have and anxiety attack * Get angry/upset * Have a fight with anyone

S ~ Stop, physically stop, step back and take a breath. If someone or something is making you stressed, anxious, sad, or upset, etc. in any way just walk away.

T ~ Take a breath/break. If you aren’t feeling okay or if you can’t deal with something or someone just take a break from them/it and revisit the topic when you are feeling more comfortable.

O ~ Observe, pay attention to any clues that your body gives you. Look at the way that other people are acting. If you are feeling uncomfortable of unsafe then get to a safe place or be with someone that makes you feel safe.

P ~ Proceed with purpose, what do YOU need. Is it rest? Is it a bath? Is it to be around friends or family? And what is manageable to your circumstances. And once you have done whatever you need to feel safe and happy, confront the situation and locate what the problem is.

• Just don’t worry about anything until you feel safe and happy worrying about work, homework, friends, of family will just make the situation worse so put everything aside and focus on yourself

a write to be wrong

a write to be wrong

Today, I am humbling throwing in the towel in another “failed” attempt to gain a sense of accomplishment trough #NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writers Month.

To be honest, I am actually proud to be bowing out. It is a sign of success for me. It is a symbol that I willing to admit that I need to say “no”. It is a symbol that I am aware of other points that need higher focus. It is realization of that, although I know in my heart that I am a writer, there is no passion in this project for me. To carry on would only mean languishing in the feigned existence of intention and to judge myself harshly once more by how well I measured up in the lie.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright; the band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light, and somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; but there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out. Casey At the Bat, Ernest Thayer 1888

Lines I have known well through my life and always seemed to coexisted in. In parallel, by measure of the living game, I never had my winning runs and every time I stepped up to the plate, I just seemed to always swing and miss. The invisible pitcher seemed to be a cruel master of destiny whose single purpose was to take his opponent's glory out. As the years pass on, the stadium grew colder and the chill gnashed at the ever shrinking hope in the hollowing shell of the man stepping up to the plate.

It has taken me nearly forty years to recognize the pitcher. It took may falls and pains to cry the right tears to wash off the cover of that very real opaque figure. Nearly forty years he lived under that invisible cloak woven by denial and a warped perception of judgement. It was the #ADHD Me who stared me down and hurled those pitches and taunts. For all these years, I took his message to be “You are never going to win” and every time I took that message to be true. It became as self-fulfilling prophecy.

We met once again today and I heard his voice whisper out with a sneer, “Welcome back”. I stared back across the plate at the empty space between us. I picked up the bat, he wound up and pitched, and I just stood there. The ball, like time itself, whizzed by and I just lowered the bat. I expected a gleeful, sadistic question “Give up?” amidst a stream of a shaming laugh; instead, the tone changed completely. I detected a smirk on that face. “'Bout damn time you figured it out.” His smiled widened as he relaxed his posture and began strolling towards me. “This is not your game.”

There we were standing eye-to-eye and those last five words that haunted me all those years with anger, sadness, and envy. They sounded so different in the replay. The words tumbled through my mind through every scene that I could remember in my life and as if there was some magical remastering of the film, the sound had changed. What once was overpowering, demoralizing, and subjugating became matter-of-fact. He had faced me for a lifetime, not as an enemy, but as a mentor. “This is not my game,” I repeated back. The sentence began as if someone else had my voice and ended with a breath of fresh air filling the lung with understanding.

He was right. We walked out of the stadium together, each with a beer in hand, open ears, and open mouths. As the midnight had well passed, yawns made and the quest for rest had taken over, he turned to me to say, “This doesn't change a thing.” It was foreboding. “I am still going to be there, at all of them. Every part where you strive for glory and satisfaction. You are going to hate me and you are going to love me, my friend; but don't worry, you will find it. We will find it together. See you tomorrow.” He inserted a maniacal laugh just before his final words, “Good night”.