Do you know what I mean when I say “old-school internet forums”? I’m not talking about, like, 8chan. If your forum has been linked to even one mass shooting, it is not the kind of forum I’m talking about. I’m also not talking about subreddits, though Reddit appropriated and modernized the same basic structure, and I’m not talking about Discords, though Discord appropriated and modernized the same basic approach to community. I’m talking about a message board with its own unique domain name and a specific topical focus. Maybe that domain name is peppermintchat.org. Maybe that topical focus is peppermints. Peppermint Chat will have been founded by a single peppermint enthusiast, possibly called Stuart, in about 1998. It will have undergone precisely one redesign in the intervening 26 years, probably around 2007.

The users of peppermintchat.org will be the biggest group of hardcore freaks you can possibly imagine. They will be passionate. They will be scholarly. They will be deeply opinionated and wildly adventurous. And they will be each of these things exclusively about peppermints—nothing else. Their lives will revolve around the peppermint. (And also possibly their grandchildren, at least one of whom is named Peppermint.) They will use language like, “When I began my peppermint journey.” They will import rare and exotic peppermint cultivars from China. They will have contacts inside Brach’s and report breathlessly on minor tweaks to the candy cane formula ahead of what they call “the high season.” They will say things like, “I’ve probably spent upwards of $70,000 chasing that red-and-white-striped dragon.” Will their site load on mobile? It will not.

Within the larger body of Peppermint Chatters, there will be a smaller subset of elite posters, micro-celebrities of the peppermint kingdom. Their personalities, proclivities, states of residence, and even real names will be known to all who frequent the site. They will sometimes meet up in real life for peppermint-related activities, and in the world of the forum, these meetings will have the gravity and significance of the Yalta Conference. MintMan1 flew to Belarus to see PepperMinsk! The forum will be divided into many subforums, with the biggest fish spending most of their time in General Peppermint Talk and the most deranged individuals in human history congregating in Off-Topic Musings. Many threads, of course, will devolve into arguments, for such is human nature. Depending on how strictly the forum is moderated, these arguments will either end peacefully, with a broad acknowledgement that no type of peppermint is better than any other, because we are all on different peppermint journeys, which is why it’s so wonderful to have variety in the world; or they will end violently, with seven pages of posts in which Peppermint Chatters accuse one another of not “understanding basic logic.”

My childhood was spent on forums like this. I’m now itching to find myself a new one.

Being in a complete state of sadness for perpetuity because there is unhappiness in the world or because you are supposed to be grieving makes for a hopeless existence. And hopeless is not a state that helps you build anything. The act of resistance, true resistance comes from joy. Joy is necessary to keep movements going, the celebration of even the smallest of victories – you cannot build anything from apathy. Joy, compassion, kindness, love and hope all live in the same bright blue sky that is needed after and before storms. During the brutal, painful Partition of India, my grandfather held onto a book he loved and turned to it for fortitude. My grandmother dreamt of the roses she would grow one day. Joy is an act of revolution, it is what keeps us going in times of deep pain.

Still churning my way through a deep Instapaper backlog and came across this article that was posted shortly after the last presidential election. It feels prescient considering what's going down in my home state right now.

I find a lot of inspiration in the Mr. Rogers’ “look for the helpers” quote. I would add that it’s equally essential to look for the joy.

How you care about issues that move you is what counts. Sometimes your lack of peace is a false economy. Recognize that your stress and anger isn’t changing anything around you; it’s only changing things within you. As you get angrier, more worried, more agitated, you become bothered. If you are always bothered, you are always angry, which will lead to you being stressed out and eventually getting sick, exhausted, and overwhelmed. And at that point of total burnout, you can’t make even a little difference anymore.

The reality is that you don’t have to be completely outraged and reactive to make a difference. In some cases, it can take that spark of outrage for you to realize how much you care and move into action. But once you do, put your hands on your heart or take deep breaths, get off social media or go for a walk (or all of the above), and remember the impact you can make without giving up all of your peace. The art of underreacting is to move from outrage to making a real difference while still taking care of ourselves.

Simply becoming aware of how vital our peace is to feeling good makes it easier to prioritize it.. When we aren’t aware, it’s harder to be gentle: We spend all our energy trying to change others or being unwilling to accept something that is happening (even though it’s happening whether we overreact or not).

Underreacting isn’t a sign of support for something you don’t support. It’s not faking your feelings. It’s how you move through something more gently. It’s how you decide how you want to respond. It’s how you protect and nourish yourself.

Generally good advice in here for, I don’t know, :gestures wildly at life:.

When a friend says "oops" after spilling coffee, they're performing a specific social ritual. The diminutive acknowledges fault while signaling that the harm was minor and unintentional. "Oops" calibrates expectations downward: this is small, forgivable, already passing. The word does real work in human relationships. Corporate interfaces borrowed this vocabulary wholesale; and they understood exactly what they were doing. When an app says "Oops!" after failing to process your request, it's attempting to inhabit the friend-who-spilled-coffee role. But the app isn't your friend. The company behind it has a contractual relationship with you, often involving money, and the mismatch creates a specific irritation that's hard to articulate until you notice it.

I worked on an app for a billion dollar corporation. The initial designs called for “Oops!” to be the title of every error message.

I remember feeling uneasy about it, but I haven’t been able to articulate why until reading this article.

I have been through winters before and I have always, eventually, found my way back to spring. The springs didn't come because I forced them or fixed myself or followed a twelve-step program. They came because seasons end. They came because the resting period did its hidden work. They came because, whether I knew it or not, I was gathering in the dark.

I've got two Bandcamp habits that I've adopted this past year which bring me so much joy that I wanted to share them here.

First, whenever I come across a pre-order for a band I love, I buy it right away. What happens is that I inevitably forget about it until I get the "your purchase is ready for download" email. It's like giving a gift to myself.

Second, whenever I come across an album I want to buy, I leave a reminder for it in a separate list on my reminders app. Once Bandcamp Friday comes along, I go through that list and buy them all.

It's an easy way to make sure these artists that I dig end up with a more reasonable share of the money they deserve.

Anyway, here's the gems I picked up yesterday:

Work Wife – Parade

RIYL: alvvays, smart melodic indie pop

Samiam – Astray

RIYL: early 2000s melodic punk, emo

Sessa – Pequena Vertigem de Amor

RIYL: modern tropicália, samba-jazz, cosmic soul, brazilian indie (you probably haven't heard anything quite like this, it's dope)

Kupla – Dragonfly

RIYL: emapea, lo-fi hip-hop, chillhop, downtempo, mellow beats

Lofi Girl – Christmas 2025

RIYL: lo-fi hip-hop, ambient, chillhop, holiday-themed mellow beats

And so I remain at an unresolvable juncture: the intersection of the very strong belief that we must experiment with new modes and systems of communication, and the certain knowledge that every time I so much as glance at anything shaped like a social feed, my brain smoothes out, the web of connections and ideas I’m weaving is washed away, and I tumble downstream, only to have to pick myself up and trudge heavily through the mud back to where I belong.

It’s exhausting. It is, at this point in my life, unsustainable. I cannot dip into the stream, even briefly, and also maintain the awareness and focus needed to do my own work, the work that is uniquely mine. I cannot wade through the water and still protect this fragile thing in my hands. And perhaps I owe to my continued senescence the knowledge that I do not have time for this anymore. Perhaps it’s age that grants the wisdom to know where my attention belongs and the discipline to be able to direct it. The great power of a middle-aged woman is that she knows where to give her fucks.

This is such a beautiful article, a great example of what it means to have a vision for your own life’s work and to go for it.

This website is a container that fit my needs around the COVID era, but now? I’m ready to start fresh. Dream big. Figure out what it is I want out of this site and start making it that way.

The same dreaming is also taking place in meat space. My wife gave me permission this week to build a new shed and a new mini office in our backyard. I get to spend all winter dreaming of what I want to see, and then I get to spend all spring / summer / fall making it a reality.

Perhaps related: I haven’t had a nightmare in months now. I’ve had a few bad dreams, but nothing close to the paralyzing terrors that met me nightly for around a decade straight.

Life’s good right now.

I remember finding a ton of inspiration (and incredible music, of course) from this collection last year. The artistry on display is exquisite.

I had a plan to publish these photos today for my weekly post, but I had found myself wondering what is the point of it all. What is the point of taking a camera to the streets to snap these photos, and what is the point of publishing them? And recently, I cannot help but wonder what is the point of sharing my thoughts online in a world where the internet is no longer a safe space.

When I was younger I desired to publish my thoughts online because I couldn’t do it offline. It was an outlet. These days I have started wondering if it is better to keep my thoughts to myself, and I find myself less and less interested in online connections. Actually, I just find myself less interested in human connections overall. I think the pandemic has changed me. If I was cynical before, I am worse now.

I don’t think I’m as cynical as Winnie here, but I do find myself wondering “why” a lot lately.

This past year, I’ve found myself drawn to the gym. Beating the sunrise over the horizon and watching the colors of the sky shift from darkness to a deep purple to suddenly orange.

Lifting heavy weights, squeezing my muscles as I reach the apex of the movement, feeling the tissue subtly break apart, doing hard things.

Sweat. So much sweat. How does it get all over the treadmill?

I can’t explain what really motivated me to finally get back into shape, and I still often find myself wondering “what is it all for?”

I guess if I’m being honest with myself, I work out because it feels good. Every aspect of it, from walking into the gym and saying hi to Alan at the front desk, to pushing a 40 pound sled 275 yards in four minutes, to drinking my vegan PB&B smoothie after taking a shower. It never fails to make me happy.

It’s okay to do things because they make you happy. It’s a lesson I learned from watching my kids, embarrassed that I forgot that (to paraphrase John Gruber) having fun is one of the best parts of being alive.

The gym isn’t the only area in which I question the point of it all. This blog has been prime on my mind lately for “what am I even doing here?”

I have never had a strong vision for this site. Sometimes it’s a portfolio. Sometimes it’s my todo list, a place to dump interesting links, my workout tracker, my beer tracker.

Like Winnie, I’ve never particularly felt safe having a blog like this, with my real name tied to it. There’s nothing to hide behind. I don’t track my visitors but I can only imagine this site is now soaked up and memorialized deep within several LLM training sets, only further making the things I say online matter.

But lately, I’ve wanted to have an alter ego. A persona who allows me to truly express myself without any professional baggage attached to it. A clean slate without reputation.

I turn 38 in five days. And I still don’t know what I wanna be when I grow up.

I didn't quite make it to the top, but I got way closer than last year!