Thoughts of Thinkymeat

Consumption brain rot

Bloo — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:58:34 GMT

The overwhelm has gotten worse recently. Life is just... So fucking noisy. My autistic brain already struggles to keep up with life, let alone without all the war, fascism and doom scrolling. I wrote about this last year, and I was onto something. Consumption is the core of this brain rot. But so is the stress from everything turning to shit, being unemployed and stuck in life... Which also makes it harder not to doom scroll, thus the cycle spirals out of control. But I've recently found out my patterns have changed.

Whenever I'm online now, I feel like I'm anxiously searching for something to occupy my attention. I don't fully commit myself to anything I'm doing, I'm always tab switching, always peaking at my emails, Signal or WhatsApp. Always peaking for a better dopamine spike than what I'm doing right now. Doing this all day? It exhausts your brain from the inside out. Everything becomes exhausting and overwhelming, which makes focusing even harder and the lack of commitment entrenches.

What annoys me, is that I know what works for me:

NO heavy phone usage after waking up (checking messages is allowed, but NO YouTube or Instagram).
No news for the first 3 hours of my day.
Limiting short form content to 15 minutes at a time, maximum!
Reducing stimulation while doing cognitively demanding tasks (maybe my playlist isn't what my brain needs right now while I'm debugging this hard problem?).
Reducing context switching: if I'm coding, don't listen to a video essay in the background! Splitting my attention will make me feel worse.
Stop watching a video if I'm not really engaging with it or focusing on it.

These rules are hard for me to follow, but I'm trying to get better at them. The video embedded in this post bought the importance of that last one to my attention. I watch so many videos. So many of them I can hardly recall, even those I really enjoyed! This video talks about how we have access to more information than ever, but we seem less able than ever to actually turn that into something. That we get trapped in these hideous loops of consumption for consumption's sake, spending all these precious hours of our lives without anything to show for it.

I've always felt similar about books. I can read loads of books and barely recall them a year later. I want my reading to be impactful, expansive and enriching, to help me grow my understanding of the world and develop ideas. So I've started doing little summary dumps every time I finish reading. Just little key points, ideas and themes that jump out at me. And then? Once I've finished the book, I'll write my own throughs on these points and ideas, maybe even try and relate them to my life.

This video reminded me that doing this for video essays would be a great idea too. Hell, it might even be a good way to help revive my blog a little bit. To get my brain better at engaging with the things I consume, I'm going to start blogging about 1 video in a week (or maybe every 2 weeks) that stands out to me. It'd be really cool to tell everyone about it, and share my own ideas and how they relate to my experiences.

The truth is, big tech and social media giants want us to become passive consumers. They want us dependent on their platforms, their content and brain rot to be nourished and enriched. I can already feel my brain's ability to focus has been destroyed. This stops here.

Happy belated new year, and look forward to yapping about the next video next week...

Developers and technoableism

Bloo — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 23:09:26 GMT

I've been thinking a lot about accessibility. The physical world is so inaccessible: lack of dropped curves, pedestrian hostile towns and cities, and heavy doors to multistory buildings with no lifts. Its built by abled, for abled people, forgetting we will become disabled at some point. The disabled among us? We're often exhausted by this inaccessible world, we lack the energy to leave the house. For myself, my disability isn't as physical, but I still find the outside world incredibly draining: unreliable transport, loud and brightly lit environments, crowded spaces and lack of of seating. Naturally, a lot of us are drawn into the digital world.

However, while I find the digital world a liberating space, one where I can experience the world in a more accessible manner, it's still riddled with accessibility issues: insufficient contrast, lack of alt descriptions on images, websites that are hostile to screen readers... The list goes on. None of these issues affect me, but I worry about the state of the internet for disabled folk. Its tragic how a minority of developers know or even care about accessibility standards in their work. Now obviously, for a lot of us, our bosses probably wont even let us improve accessibility due to rabid profit chasing. But I see lack of accessibility even in personal side projects or work: and I hate to say, I've contributed to this myself. This very blog probably needs restructuring to be fully compliant.

"But who cares? It doesn't affect me!"

What upsets me about this- is how simple a lot of it is. Is it extra work? Yeah. But is it worth it? Absolutely. Sometimes I feel like we're so absorbed in convenience we forget that some struggles are very much worthwhile.

The FOSS library...

My project uses a markdown editor. This editor has "image block" support, which has image resizing? I was confused about this... Markdown has no support for image sizes. How is this accomplished? The answer: it isn't. The image sizing only works in the editor. How? Because it uses the alternative descriptor support in markdown for the image size ratio. Ugh.

Now I won't blame the dev too much here. They may not have been aware of alt's significance. I did some digging in the issues tab... I came across an issue asking about alt support! Perfect, looks like it had a few replies too! To my disappointment, the lead dev was aware of this issue, and the importance of alt, but tagged the issue "not planned" and closed it. The other users moved to another editor.

I asked: "If I implemented alt functionality, would you merge it?", knowing that I'd be doing it anyway for my project. The dev responded: "Sure. But only if you can disable it.". Oof. This really highlighted to me the indifference, lack of care and casual ableism that's pervasive in tech. This is an essential feature for some disabled users, but they'd rather just keep using the alt tag for image size ratios... In the process, excluding blind folk. Its so depressing.

In the end? I took matters into my own hands. I copied the default image block component, and removed the bullshit image size/ratio thing, and in its place I implemented proper alt compatibility. Finally, this editor can generate accessible content for my app! I will also be uploading this component as a package for others to use too.

My portfolio

To remedy the lacking accessibility in my work, I've been learning about digital accessibility: WCAG guidelines, appropriate contrast levels, correct HTML semantics, keyboard navigation, alt image tags, the works. I put all this into practice with my portfolio. I can proudly say I've followed all the WCAG guidelines:

The minimum font size is 16px
All colors have contrast meeting WCAG AA standards.
Every page is keyboard navigable
All images have alt descriptors
I take advantage of good HTML semantics: using <header> , <article> , <main> and <section> tags, along with correct use of headings.

This means that blind folks and those with physical disabilities can navigate, interact with and read my website. I do I need these things? No. But I'm sick of this world being so inaccessible to disabled people and I don't want to contribute to that! I don't want my corner(s) of the internet to be a place that reflects the hostility we encounter in the real world.

With everything I've learnt doing my portfolio, I carried these lessons over to my FOSS project. It has a way to go yet, but images now support alt tags and the whole app is keyboard navigable! I don't want anyone to be left behind.

Technoableism

This all got me thinking about the power dynamics at play in tech. A majority of us developers are abled, likely white and cishet. These privileges seep into our code and products, with all the inaccessibility that comes with it. As a result, a lot of us probably see accessibility as some sort of unimportant afterthought: not worth the time or the effort to learn, thus replicating the inaccessibility that's so pervasive in the real world. The architects of the internet are largely abled folk, and therefore? Most of the internet is built for abled folk. Digital accessibility is a battle to be fought for, not a given. In the same way that we shouldn't tolerate inaccessible spaces in real life, we absolutely shouldn't be tolerating them online either.

It has me thinking about how disabled people often have to use accessibility software that works around our sites, apps and products rather than working with them. As is typical to the disabled experience: we're expected to make up the lacking effort and consideration that society has for us. Yet more forks to outweigh the precious few spoons we have. And for what? So a dev can avoid spending an afternoon learning about WCAG and at least trying to implement some guidelines? We really need to be more hot on developing with accessibility in mind, rather than it being an afterthought.

Ugh. Rant over I guess. But this whole experience has really fucking radicalized me. My FOSS project is going to meet all WCAG AA guidelines, and it will be as accessible as I can possibly make it. So will the rest of my websites when i have enough spoons to update them all!!!

over and out xo

edit: What are some good resources?

Google's PageSpeed insights are a pretty good basic outline of your site's accessibility.
The WCAG standards are outlined here. Though, I much prefer the UK government's instructions on WCAG.
Sam Soffes's MacOS app: Contrast for looking at your contrast ratios
The "WTF is WCAG?" video by Access by Design
The A11y Collective have some great posts

Sustainable code: the antidote to burnout?

Bloo — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 02:50:28 GMT

I've been off work recently. I've had some pretty serious heart issues that my doctors think might be POTS. It'll take a while to get diagnosed. I'm coming out of my flare up now. But in the lead up to and peak of my flare up? I was in the midst of horrific burnout: impossible deadlines lead by a profit rabid CEO, a code base of 50k+ lines with crippling technical debt and no refactoring.

I've taken the last 2.5 weeks off. As a contractor, it's not been PTO. But god its done me good. I also discovered that maybe, I wasn't burnt out by coding. No, I was burnt out by profit driven development.

I resumed working on my FOSS side project. I can never leave coding for long! While doing so? I felt friction in all sorts of places. Outdated variable names, barely any separation of concern, poor file structure to name a few issues.

In this moment it hit me: this is MY project on MY time! It's a FOSS project, I don't give a shit about profit driven deadlines, there are none!

😍 The joy of refactoring

I got to work with refactoring. Starting off with a new abstraction layer. Electron has a renderer, which is your browser part, and a "main", which is where your "Node JS" type functions live. They have much more access to your system than what you can do in the renderer alone. Between your "main" and renderer, you have the preload. Preload is what exposes your functions in main to the renderer.

So you'd write your functions in main, give them a "channel" name. Then, you'd go over to preload, and you'd need to remember the channel name, and the functions arguments to expose it to the renderer. This lead to frequent fuck ups, annoying bugs and just... So much friction and context switching.

I basically designed a system that allowed me to create files with their functions as channels. As long as I pass on the file import to my new system, it will automatically register the channel, along with the function with the correct order of arguments (while excluding the event argument which kept throwing things off!). Preload is able to look at this system and register the functions under their respective channels automatically.

This was a HUGE deal. Suddenly, instead of fighting with the code base I could craft with it. Instead of all my energy, time and will power being poured into channel names and function arguments across 3 files... I was able to actually think about the problems at hand.

As a result, this gave me the energy and motivation to switch the React portion of my app from vanilla useState to Zustand. Another GAME CHANGER. It made my app easier to understand and work with.

It forced me to refactor several other things that needed changing, and my god... The React part of the app is SUPERIOR to work with now. Before, it was confusing to understand and work with. Now? It's difficult to believe that my app that does all of this actually just boils down to this very simple code.

By reducing the technical debt? It's made development so much easier, less energy intensive and faster. The code base works with me instead of against me.

🐢 Developing slowly

This has me thinking... How many developers out there are being robbed of improving their skills because of profit driven development?

This side project taught me better state management, cleaner code writing and much more. Not only have I become a better developer for it, but my project has grown massively. All because I wasn't chasing some profit driven deadline.

Ironically, taking the time to develop slower and focus on refactoring the code has made it easier, faster and less energy intensive to develop new features.

Whenever I work on it? I'm so happy. Everything works in harmony. The codebase keeps me coming back for more. I can't say this about any commercial product I've been contracted to work on.

I'm so fucking sold on the idea that we should be working on codebases that are so elegant they're addictive. That's my project! It nourishes my capacity, and gives me more thinking power to dedicate to the more complex problems. Developing in a why that reduces context switching, that makes things as obvious as possible...

Just imagine the possibilities. Just imagine if more companies in tech worked like this. Imagine how many devastating security bugs would be avoided. Just think... The reduction in burnout would be huge. Better yet? The end product would be of superior quality too. And yet? Because the CEOs are so rabid about their profits, they'd rather get a 2 second sugar rush than a sustainable, devoted client base who care about the quality of product.

Honestly, if there was a unicorn job out there that was interested in cultivating this environment, I'd apply yesterday. But tragically, those sorts of companies/orgs are far and few between. One in a million!

Conclusion

Quite honestly, all of this is why I'm starting to give up with finding a job. It's why I'm researching going back into healthcare via nursing (more on that in another post). I'm going to keep applying, just incase... But it sure isn't looking good right now. However, this is also why I'm investing so much more time and energy into my main FOSS project (can't name it here, I want this blog to remain separate from my IRL identity), because I have a business idea I can make from it. Maybe, just maybe... If I'm lucky and can craft a dedicated enough user base, they'll either donate on a regular enough basis, or they'll subscribe to the service I'll make as a side hustle. That would help get me through nursing school a bunch.

Over and out xo

Coding burnout: AI code, capitalism & relentless CEOs

Bloo — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 01:24:54 GMT

I'm SO burnt out. I've been working on my boss's massive project, we keep getting crunches by his boss. As a result? He can't keep up, neither can I, and he resorts to using LLMs to do some of his coding for him. This grows the technical debt, because the code it outputs is terrible and doesn't make much sense. It causes problems, and then I'm tasked with fixing it.

Whenever I try to tell my boss that we need to dedicate more time and resources to refactoring? He agrees, but ultimately is resigned to the fact that the CEO has all these other big, unrealistic plans. Then? We get dragged into these big, unrealistic plans and shoe horn them into the code base, growing the technical debt further.

Each time the debt grows, the context switching increases. You have a task to do, but first you have to reverse engineer this LLM generated bullshit so you can figure out what it actually does to fix this weird bug that no one understands. You try to follow the chain of logic for this code. None of it makes any sense. Its verbose, needlessly complicated and deeply confusing. Worse yet? They don't want to dedicate time or money to refactoring it, so you're forced to work with it.

You spend maybe 5 hours on this, hitting wall after wall before finally getting it working... Until next time, when you have to fix the next bug or add another feature on top of that LLM coded monstrosity. The CEO complained about how slow you were fixing it, but at least its fixed.

😪 And so the burnout begins...

The code base grows further. You keep hitting targets, you keep pulling off miracles. Hell, you even meet those ridiculous deadlines that the CEO has given you, like a good little cog in the self destructing machine. Each time, ever more aware that the foundations that this house is built on is due to implode on itself. It begins to dawn on you: does this ever end? The CEO has fuck all of an idea how to code. The product doesn't matter to him, all that matters is the money, increasing the revenue year on year. He's always out there chasing new ideas before the ones he gave you last week are even complete. Worse yet... He's the one who gets pissed at you when the servers go down because there's a bug caused by vibe coding.

You ask yourself: "does the growth ever end?". The answer is simply: No. No it doesn't. Because for these people, no amount of growth is enough. Their product could be earning 1bn a year, and they'd want to 10x it. It's never enough to be self sustaining, making a healthy profit with healthy workers and happy customers. Much better to have a vibe coded app littered with bugs that will collapse in on itself by next year, than to spend time sustainably and mindfully developing the product.

This sinking feeling grows inside you. This vicious cycle you're trapped in has you writing awful code. It's code you know for a fact will worsen the technical debt. You're not being given the room to write it well. All you have time for is to get it out the door, and once its out? You slam that door shut, lock it and throw away the key. Then you have to hope that the beast behind it never bursts through that door.

Eventually, even the most simple of tasks feels exhausting. You've spent every last cell in your brain reverse engineering and working with all these weird little quirks and details caused by LLMs or by lack of refactoring. To the extent where the most simple of tasks feels like climbing a mountain. It feels like you don't know how to code anymore, anddddd queue the imposters syndrome to boot! You get overwhelmed, frustrated and upset with yourself that you can't do something as simple as getting this graph to work in a certain way. You kick yourself for not being able to do better... When the reality is? The environment you're working in is inhuman by design: it's designed exclusively around profit, not the product and certainly not the developers making the product.

This relentless drive for profit is destroying not only the product, but your soul too. It's making you a part of the problem, whether you want to be or not. Worse yet? It's also taking away opportunities for you to learn how you manage and maintain good code bases. How can you ever hope to write agile and elegant code if the environment you're working in has no regard for your craft?

💼 The job market...

So you look for other jobs... Only to find that there's barely anything out there. And what is out there is heavily laden with AI usage, asking you to go above and beyond with more skills than they can reasonably ask anyone to have. All for their bullshit product to "help boost business revenue". Exhausting. You persevere and keep searching. You begin to realise that a vast majority of the jobs out there are for products that contribute no real value to humanity (though this isn't a unique problem to programming).

You need to work from home, but a majority of the roles are 4 days a week in office... Listing themselves as "hybrid". Perfect.

With each application you send a cover letter detailing all the reasons you're a good fit: how perfectly exploitable you are, how you'll mask yourself perfectly into "company culture" and ruin your health for their "fast paced environment". Backing all this up with evidence of previous work and its business outcomes to demonstrate your value. And yet? Crickets. By now it's been over 2 months and still nothing. You begin to question whether or not you can actually build a stable life or livelihood on the back of software engineering. Obviously, applying for more jobs would help, but all the other jobs out there are fully in person or mostly in person.

The job hunt becomes a job in and of itself. Relentlessly polishing your CV, dutifully writing these cover letters for jobs that you know will eventually burn you out. It's so tiring in the midst of your job and burnout, you're exhausted and you've not even got an interview yet. 14 years of experience, 5 of it with multiple multi-national corporations, and a wide range of soft skills, dev ops skills and sys admin skills... Despite all the FOSS contributions and projects... Nothing to show for any of it, feeling nothing but unemployable.

The interview

So after 12 weeks of applying you finally get somewhere. Its a decent enough job, but the pay is awful, though at this point you're just happy to have even the potential of work. At least its for a good cause, unlike the others. So you start the interview process. You have a 1 to 1 interview with the hiring manager for an hour, putting all that interview prep and notes you wrote in the days prior to good use. As luck would have it? You make it to the second round of interviews. Finally getting somewhere!

The second round gives you 2 technical tasks to perform over the period of a week. One that involves doing a hypothetical redesign of their frontend, another demonstrating your Javascript skills with their API. Every single day of that week, while burning yourself out at your current job, you drag yourself into the technical tasks after work with your rotting brain and you get to work: 996 style. You put every last drop of your battered soul into it. The week comes to a close and you collapse past the finish line, submitting the tasks the night before the deadline hoping and praying you'll get somewhere.

After all that work? You find that someone else was just a tiny bit better than you and got the job. They wanted to hire you both, but they couldn't. You're thrown back into the fire that is recruiting hell, hopes crushed and morale destroyed. How many coding jobs are out there for a good cause? A vast majority of them are for making CEOs richer, boiling the planet, abetting genocide or creating brain rotting algorithms.

🙏 Is there hope?

I know that I have value to offer somewhere. The problem is finding these places. Its also an issue finding places that are fully remote, ones that won't burn me out and ones that aren't completely morally bankrupt. These jobs are so far and few between, its so frustrating and disheartening. It makes the stakes SO high. I will keep applying, I will keep trying. But I'd be lying if I said that my reasons for leaving programming 10 years ago haven't been vindicated. This is exactly what I was trying to escape.

It's for this reason that I'm planning my escape route once again. I'm thinking of entering nursing school next year. The money is worse, so are the work place conditions. But it's at least something I'm passionate about. Something I can build a stable-ish life off the back of. Even if I'm "lucky" enough to get the chance to have yet another burnout job, how can I build a life on the back of it if I'm staring down the barrel at unemployment for months on end if I lose my job?

At least in nursing there's no shortage of jobs or demand. And there's so many different areas I can work in that don't involve making the world a worse place. The only issue is? I'm not ready yet. I'm still really sick. I've likely got POTS and it feels like jumping straight into nursing before I'm ready is a terrible idea. But then, so is working a job that I hate which is actively burning me out and making me ill anyway. If I'm going to get more disabled either way, I'd rather be making myself sicker doing something I love. Gotta love the barbarity of capitalism!

I'm also working on my FOSS projects, honing new coding skills and crafting a portfolio. But I don't have a lot of hope for it. Either way, I have got a business idea with the FOSS project I'm working on, so maybe that'll help things somewhat.

Lots to think about.

A chronic illness ramble

Bloo — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 17:28:56 GMT

Being chronically ill is so hard. It feels like very few people around you actually recognise that you're even disabled. Worse yet? Your doctor is also likely to think you're a hypochondriac while you try to figure out what's going on. The underlying message a lot of spoonies recieve about our experiences and bodies is that: "Your experiences of your body cannot be trusted". The sad thing is? You probably spend the first few years of your chronic illness convinced that you're just being overly paranoid. There's nothing wrong with you! They're right, you're just overthinking it.

For the last 2 weeks, I've been experiencing POTS symptoms. My resting heart rate (HR) is 80 when sitting down, but when standing up, it shoots to about 110-125ish. It sustains this raise for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever interval I record it for. But when I return to sitting? It goes back to normal. I can feel my body working hard at standing. It sucks. I want it diagnosed, but I know I've got a fight on my hands.

🧑‍⚕️ Medical ableism

I'm AuDHD. As any neurodivergent person will know well: our experiences with medical professionals is... Poor at best. We often get patronised by our care providers, ignored when serious symptoms occur and dismissed. This often means our threshold for getting medical attention becomes dangerously high, because we know we won't be believed unless its overwhelmingly obvious. The sad thing is? When we finally do reach our care providers in this state? We get told off for not coming in sooner. Its all so horribly ironic, because for the autistic among us, we have really good pattern recognition skills and can often spot things going wrong in the very early stages... Not that we're ever believed!

Whenever I get symptoms for a condition that is notoriously hard to get diagnose- my heart sinks: I know I'm going to go to my doctor for the 7th time this year. They're gonna think: "oh god, not her again". I'm gonna have yet another complaint that is actually linked to all the other complaints I've been going for (the gastrointestinal issues), that have also coincided with my POTS symptoms (appropriate because POTS causes gastrointestinal upset)... Only to be told that its just "anxiety", or to just... Ignore the issue.

I don't want to assume this will be my experience but, care providers make it difficult not to assume this is how I'll be treated!

"It's normal to feel poorly when you've been sick!" 🤡

2 years ago, I caught the flu. It was really bad, but I got over it in about a week and a half. After about 3 weeks though, I began noticing something: my hips felt... Stiff? Really stiff and kinda sore to move. They kept getting worse. One day, I was in town, and I physically could not walk back home. I had to get a taxi. Ordinarily I think nothing of walking 20k steps.

I booked a doctors appointment, and saw a doctor. He asked me what bought me in, and I described what was happening to me and how, I'd recovered from my flu, but this stiffness gets worse. Also that it happens whenever I've had colds recently too, for months after I get this inflammation. His response? "Well, whenever you get sick, its normal to feel poorly for a while after". He then suggested some deep heat and sent me on my way.

The mind boggles. 5, maybe 6 years of medical school. 2 years of foundation training, and at least 3 years of speciality training to become a GP to tell me to use Deep Heat. No scrutiny as to why I'm experiencing this. No acknowledgement that it is in fact, not normal, to be limping around from the pain and stiffness of your hips 3 months after a flu or cold infection. Like imagine? Imagine if for 3 months after being sick with a cold, most people just seized up for weeks on end!? The world would come to a fucking stand still!!!! I still don't know why that happens.

🧾 Keeping those damn receipts...

This is where I think its so damn important to monitor and record your symptoms. They can patronize you all they like, they can treat you like you have no agency or knowledge of your body, but they can't argue with cold hard data (well, they'll still try, but it'll certainly make it harder for them). It also has the added benefit of making sure that they don't get in your head. If you have this shit recorded, whenever you start feeling like you're "just overthinking it", you can look at that little document you have, and you'll have irrefutable proof of your experiences right in front of you.

Its depressing that we should have to do this. The whole point of the medical system is that the care providers in it are informed on the conditions they're trusted to spot and diagnose. But unfortunately, the burden often ends up on the chronically ill to spot and advocate for diagnosis long before our care providers do. Its a big responsibility and it takes up precious spoons we so scarcely have.

I think this also highlights the importance of being in community with other crips/spoonies. I don't think words can do justice to what a distressing experience all this external (and internal) denial is. It shakes your confidence, it makes you think you're just making things up. But I promise you're not. Being in community with others will help you see that, but will also help you chat with other people who have gone through the diagnosis process, who can help you figure out what to say to your care providers etc.

To the crips and spoonies reading this post, much love and solidarity to y'all. We have hard lives, and people dont give us credit for that very often. We KICK ASS! Love y'all <3

over and out xo

Living slower...

Bloo — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 02:27:53 GMT

I recently came across an Instagram Reel showing this girl doing all these daily tasks in a very frantic manner. Brushing her teeth with vigor. Cleaning the dishes at 1000mph. Running around the house rather than walking. Moving around with tensed up shoulders, as if bracing for impact 24/7. For each one of these examples, she immediately showed the regulated, softer and more relaxed example of each. That's when I realized: I do all these things and more, and that It directly links to my cPTSD informed nervous system.

We're living through multiple genocides, my rights as a trans person are disappearing by the day, my life has been upended by academic ableism and disability from COVID, and to top it all off? The far right are everywhere. Hanging up England flags everywhere like nazis. Those reasons are as good as any to be so freaking tense. But it gets even worse when you combine those reasons with a life time of accumulated trauma too. Which is why I'm really beginning to realize how important it is to understand how to rest, replenish and let go. This is a recipe for burnout and ill health in a time where I can ill afford it.

Seeing this video made me rethink how I approach everything. I remember walking downstairs to make myself a tea to relax, I briskly walked with tension in my body. Noticing this, I loosened up and made a point of walking slowly to the kitchen. When I had my daily walk, I noticed: holy shit I walk fast, its almost like I'm trying to run away! I understand, I've gone through a lot and there's a lot of pent up energy going on... But sometimes, I wonder if its better to see if a slower and softer pace would work better to regulate myself. This time? I walked round the park at a much slower pace, without my music and just took in the sound, smells and light. I felt so much more present.

Another thing I noticed? That tension I hold in my body? A hell of a lot of it was in my stomach. I tense my stomach as if I'm bracing for impact by default. Its very hard for me to even notice I do it- its that default. But I've been working super hard at learning to just... Let it loosen. Its so so hard to do, sometimes I know I'm tensing it but I dont even know how to relax it. I'm slowly getting better at it but its going to take time.

For the last 7 years, my IBS has gotten progressively worse (alongside my general tension, foreshadowing???). Its recently gotten to a point where I'm more or less in a constant IBS episode. Its debilitating and sucks. No doctor can get to the bottom of it (hah)... But you know what? After I started loosening my stomach, my symptoms have dramatically improved. Is it gone? Absolutely not. But oh my god is it better than it has been!!! This is WILD to me.

It's also been making me rethink my phone usage more. In the morning now? I'm only opening up my phone to see message notifications. IF I do open up social media, I limit it to 10 minutes. After that? I go on my Steam Deck to play some Animal Crossing City Folk Deluxe for half an hour. Then I open my work email and start my day with a reasonably rested brain.

Bit by bit I'm noticing big changes in my wellbeing, even though things are still unbearably hard. Its funny, I feel in some respects some things are more painful. But I feel like thats also because I'm doing better at letting myself feel things. I'm not walking around so guarded and numbed to the world all the time anymore.

I'm SO overwhelmed: is it that damn phone?

Bloo — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 02:27:53 GMT

I've noticed something recently: I'm frequently overwhelmed. Worse yet? My capacity for hobbies that used to nourish and recharge me are so low that I cant really engage with any of them. And honestly? I'm starting to think it's that damn phone. I've starting to realise something: the internet used to be an escape for me. Now? I feel like its a weight thats dragging me down. A magnetic pull away from my hobbies, clarity and agency. I end most days completely exhausted and with no capacity to really think.

One disclaimer here though: there are other good reasons why this is the case. I've recently had to abandon my life's dream of getting into medicine. I was in training as a Physician Assistant, with the view of (in the long term) applying for medical school again in the future. My life has revolved around making these goals happen for the last 7 years. Unfortunately, after 3 years of constant ableism and lack of support at uni, I succumbed to COVID, ended up with EBV and very seriously ill. Over the course of 6 grueling weeks of my health spiraling out of control, worse day by day, I lost everything I had worked so hard for. This is a devastating life event that I'm still learning to adjust to, especially because my body and stamina still aren't quite the same. But I also know I've been through similarly horrific things while doing all that and I was still able to engage with all my hobbies.

So what's changed? I have SO much more time than I did before. I'm not living under the hammer of an ableist and exclusionary university threatening to blow apart everything I worked so hard for anymore. But the world has gotten so much worse. There's a devastating genocide waging in Gaza and Sudan, the war in the Congo... The fascist presidency in the US, kidnapping marginalized folk on a daily basis. I have many queer friends in southern US states that I'm worried sick about. Tech billionaires that own the platforms so many of us rely on are consolidating their power, firmly on the side with these genocidal vermin. I'm a trans person living in the UK where the govt regularly makes moves to remove our rights and limit our freedoms. And then? There's the enshitification of the internet. End stage capitalism infiltrating everything. AI this, machine learning that. Our data is constantly getting scraped without our consent, used to train AI models that are boiling our planet and stealing our water. And for what? You can't even browse now days without coming across a picture you're not even sure is AI generated or not. That's just perfect.

But is it really that damn phone...?

As all of these factors stack up, the dysregulation grows. So does the screen time. In search of something to pacify... I open up Instagram to play the slot machine that is Reels. Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. Ping! Dopamine. Glorious! Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. By now, 10 minutes has passed for what should have only been a couple minutes at most, and I don't even remember what the last Reel was about. Worse yet? I don't even feel any better. I actually feel worse. I feel like I just pummeled my brain with more information than I had bandwidth for, despite the fact that it also somehow had a numbing effect? But thats fine so long as I've given Meta my eyeballs, that attention is important for their bottom line.

I close Insta... I need to make lunch. I head to the kitchen and stick on a YouTube video. Must have something on in the background! Can't be alone in my own thoughts. Before I know it? I've watched 2 video essays while cooking and eating lunch, but can't exactly recall the details of either. I feel a little better now, but maybe its time for a walk. I head out, get my bluetooth earbuds, open up Spotify and use the DJ mix AI feature to give me the pleasure cube mix of non-offensive music perfectly curated to keep me within my comfort zone. Ah yes, the perfect mix of tracks that I've been listening to for the last 2 years, nothing new to scare me with. Must keep listening for as long as possible, data and attention is the new oil, after all! I get back from that... Peaceful? Walk, and start some work. I stick yet another video essay on in the background. Another ad! Got to extract the maximal amount of value from my attention real estate.

I end the day with a nice relaxing bath... With my phone. What do I do? Scroll. Scroll on Instagram, watch a few YouTube videos that honestly? I dont even know if I'm listening to anymore. I catch myself watching a video, finding my mind wondering, with even less will power to try and concentrate. At this point, its just white noise to pacify me. To help that feeling go away.

Before I go to bed, I check my screen time... 6 hours. Oof. I can honestly say I only got 2 hours tops of enjoyment out of those 6. The remaining 4? Time taken away from my cherished hobbies that regulate me: piano, Spanish/language learning, crochet, writing and gaming. But you know what? So long as the tech billionaires have suitably colonized my attention, that's all that matters right? They've struck gold! 4 hours of my undivided screen time to profit from ad revenue and data with. Better yet? They're securing my overwhelm. Perfectly disarming me, leaving me unable to fight back against the very system they benefit from: capitalism.

Did those 6 hours make me feel any better? Did they fuck. I felt so much worse, actually. I got to bed feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and barely able to watch my favourite shows to at least try and get myself semi regulated.

Well thats just perfect: not only have I not felt any better for giving away those 4 hours of my life. I feel dramatically worse, and even less able to deal with all the horrors of our dystopic world. Even less able to conjure up the energy to imagine a what a better future might look like, to organise with my party's members, to work on my hobbies to keep me grounded, nourished and ready to fight back...

So is it that damn phone? Yes and no. The emotional turbulence is a product of this horror show of fascistic, late stage neoliberal capitalism we're all living through right now... Lets be clear: its no sign of being "healthy and well adjusted" to feel fine in this climate, I'd argue quite the opposite. This distress is a natural byproduct of living through such wide scale injustice, especially as a marginalised person. But it's also being dramatically compounded by that damn phone. My phone is pulling me away from all the things in my life that give me nourishment to deal with said horror show.

So what now?

First off: I've banned myself from spending any significant time on Instagram in the morning. I've also stopped myself from using YouTube when I'm waking up. The only thing I'm allowed to do on my phone in the morning is chat to my friends or partner. My phone also has this screen time feature that allows me to ban certain sites at different hours... So I've banned all news websites in the morning. I do have the capacity to engage with the news, its just... Not in the morning. I have cPTSD. My body is already in a more or less constant state of tension and "danger mode", so mornings are horrific for me. I'm sluggish, at my most anxious and very triggered in the morning, the last thing I need is heavy content or information firehoses directed at my brain in that state. I need to start my days in a way that gently welcomes me in. And once I'm ready and more awake? Then I can look at the news, or watch YouTube.

Another thing? I've also made it so Instagram is blocked by a screen time app. It makes me wait 5 seconds before opening, which sometimes causes me to get bored and turn off my phone. Win! And when I do use it? It's 7 minutes before it locks me out again, to go through the same process. Its capped to this for 10 times in a day, which I hope to reduce to maybe 7 soon. This has me a lot more aware about how I'm using Insta and when. Alongside this, I'm also just making an effort to open it less, to instead engage with a hobby when the urge for dopamine comes up.

For YouTube? Honestly? My information fatigue and burnout is kinda taking care of that. I'm using it a lot less and any videos that do catch my fancy, I chuck onto one of my many "Watch Later" playlists. Then, at the end of the day when I have more time and less interruptions and reasons to multitask, I'll turn on my telly, and watch them on there instead.

Music is a little hard... I hate with the slop algorithm on Spotify has done to my music tastes. There was a time where I would discover new bands and music every month or so. But now? It's keeping me VERY firmly in my comfort zone, it honestly feels like everything I listen to sounds the same now days. Unfortunately, what I'm about to do with my music will make this worse: I'm trying to switch to using my iPod for music. The idea here is to make myself less reliant on my phone. To have a more intentional relationship with the things that I do with technology. So far? I'm loving it! Though I do need to modify my iPod with an SSD, bluetooth and a better battery.

But has any of this worked??

Honestly? Yes. I've been doing a mixture of these things for about a week now. And honestly? The frequency of overwhelm is definitely dropping. I know for a fact I'm finding it easier to engage in my hobbies, and I'm certainly finding it easier to write. At the end of the day, my brain isnt as full, I feel more able to take on more information easily. It feels like I can read again, though I do need to get back into practice with that!

But I also want to experiment more. In the interests of relying on my phone less, I'd like to get my old Sony NEX5n camera up and running again. Maybe get myself a compact 50mm pancake lens, which will make it more portable. Maybe then I can reignite my decade old hobby of photography!

Conclusion

All this is to say: yes, it is that damn phone! But it's also the genocides, spread of fascism, eroding of rights and the boiling planet. To have any hope of dealing with those things in a way that has us ready to fight back, to imagine a better future and to secure it, we need to do whatever we can to allow our minds and emotions the space they need to breathe. The unfortunate thing about the modern day internet is that: it's designed specifically to colonize every last bit of your attention, and every last minute of your day. Tech billionaires want you preoccupied, they want you numb, they want you overwhelmed. If you're numb and overwhelmed, then you're much less of a threat. But if you're out there, regulating yourself with your hobbies, building local (and remote!) communities and solidarity with one another? That's fucking dangerous for them, and they know it.

The focus of this post has been from a very individual perspective. So I really want to take the opportunity to emphasize here: grieve in community. Commiserate together! Find your comrades and find them quick, we're going to need each other over the next couple of years, we need more reasons to go outside and less reasons to stay inside, frozen and scrolling on our phones. No amount of "self improvement" or "self care" can substitute community care. However, I do say that knowing that its very hard to build these sorts of connections, especially as a disabled autistic trans girl. But I'm also a firm believer in how essential they are for our survival. Part of the difficulty of doing this is also a reflection of the neoliberal individualistic society that we live in, especially in the wake of the smartphone. We're out of practice with making friends, introducing our friends to each other, mixing our friend groups, reaching out, building and growing our connections with intention. That doesn't mean we cant, and I think we owe it to ourselves and each other to fight like hell for a community where we can heal and nourish each other.

Free Palestine, free the Congo, free Sudan.

Take care of yourselves and each other. Keep fighting.

Over and out xo

The Life is Strange end credits song: Max & Chloe

Bloo — Sat, 31 May 2025 02:05:04 GMT

So I've recently played through Life is Strange. Wow... What an experience. Funny thing is, I got it in 2016, played thru the first episode and ditched it. I've always been a very fast paced gamer and very addicted to instant gratification, which you definitely do not get with LiS.

But in an attempt to cut down on my Steam library backlog, I thought I'd give it another go. Especially owing to the fact that I'm trying to get better at being patient with games that challenge my tastes and play style. Whew boy am I glad I did.

I may be 10 years late to the Life is Strange party but god damn did I enjoy myself!! The characters, as deeply flawed and weird they all may be, are amazing, and the story is just... Woah. That twist toward the end left me SHOOK. I couldnt deal with it, or wrap my head around it.

I have so much more to say, but what I'm really here to talk about is the music, and a specific song at that. After that intense emotional journey you tag along with all the characters on, when the credits roll the song Max & Chloe plays.

There's something about this song, man. It's got a very particular vibe to it. It feels warm, melancholic, sad, pensively hopeful and broody all at the same time. Its a very perfect fit for the autumnal wonder that is Arcadia Bay.

Tonight I lay down to bathe in every little detail waeved within this track. And my god is it gorgeous. The cozy intimacy of the acoustic guitar, the melancholic brooding of the electric guitar fading in and out, the hopeful energy of the drums... I feel like it all sums up the relationship between Max and Chloe and their life circumstances.

Chloe felt abandoned by Max when she left Arcadia Bay for Seatle, she felt sad by the lack of effort by her not keeping in touch. This was only further entrenched by the disappearance of her partner (Rachel Amber), and the death of her father, both of which deepened her abandonment attachment wounds. To make matters worse, her life is made even more difficult by her stepfather, making her feel trapped, misunderstood and alone.

But when Max returns to Arcadia Bay... You both get reunited. Chloe is so excited to see you again, but she's also sad, hurt and lost. She has a whole mix of emotions about how you come back into her life, and she's slow to trust that you wont just abandon her again. But she's also happy to have you back in her life, even if how things were between you hurt her.

And I think this song really does a spectacular job at capturing that story. The trauma and sadness of losing her father and Rachel, the hurt from abandonment, but also the hope of a new beginning when you return to her life, and the pensive excitement.

For this, I'm absolutely obsessed this this track. How it conveys that range of emotions is just... Incredible.

Protests: Building Solidarity, Community and Inspiring Hope

Bloo — Tue, 06 May 2025 01:00:00 GMT

In the wake of the supreme court ruling, I attended 2 protests in one week against it. They were 2 very different protests, and having spoken to a few other trans folk across the country about this, our experiences have varied a lot. It made me think a lot about the purpose of protest and how important it is to cultivate the right vibe, and to not let them get captured by the "well ackshully" brigade.

First demonstration: the "well ackshully" brigade

For example, the first protest I attended that week was organised by someone with little experience. 15 people showed up, all very supportive and lovely people, a real mix of age, race, background and gender identity (both cis and trans!). Very positive on the diversity front. We had a megaphone that got passed around, and a few of us made great speeches of defiance, hope and praxis. Again, all very positive. But unfortunately, it started going down hill after some far right YouTuber with a camera came to pull "change my mind" style bullshit. In the space of 30 minutes, 3 members of the public showed up arguing against us. Within 15 minutes, it turned into a crowd debate against 5 idiots who didn't believe in trans rights with their purported "reasonable concerns".

These idiots ended up arguing with us protestors for over 40 minutes. In this time, the megaphone speeches stopped, a lot of us stopped talking among ourselves, we stopped connecting with each other and the fascists began to monopolise our time, emotional capacity and space. This effectively neutered our protest. While we were arguing with these scumbags, we weren't sending our message out loudly and proudly. To make it worse? In the wake of such a momentous ruling, we being further traumatised by justifying our existence to people who were never going to change their minds anyway. Worse still, there were other protestors who would have really benefitted from just sharing space and solidarity with each other, including me. I came away from that protest feeling disempowered, drained and like the weight of the ruling was even heavier.

The second demonstration: community, solidarity and love

Contrast this with the protest I attended at the weekend: we all assembled together, much larger crowds this time, at least 100 people. We had multiple pre-selected speakers who had volunteered themselves in the group chat the nights before. It started off in a very positive way, much like the first protest I attended. But the difference was: it continued that way. Speeches of hope, of defiance and rage were had. Connections were made, people laughed, chanted and hugged. We were in community, solidarity and company with each other. We complimented each other's signs, we cooed at each other's pets, and we cheered each other on. I attended with my gorgeous cis girlfriend, and at the end of the protest, another protestor walked up to us and said: "you guys are so so cute together!!! Please take this, its my last one!" she gave us a crocheted trans heart. I felt like that very nicely summed up the difference between the first protest and the last: solidarity, commiseration but also hope and defiance throughout, from start to finish. Fascists did not capture or monopolise our time.

In fairness, the first protest was a lot smaller. And it was absolutely no critique to the organiser, it was more what we (including me), the protestors, cultivated. Don't get me wrong, I think it's important to say your piece to descending voices. We have to respond with our message. But we also have to practise discernment with that too. Put your message out, even if it falls on deaf ears, but once you're done? Move on and ignore. Do NOT let these worthless vermin capture our time, energy, space or emotional capacity. Protest HAS to be about building solidarity, commiseration, but also building hope, a path forward and community with each other. The goal should be to out organise our adversaries. Because no matter what they legislate against us, they will only be successful if we are divided and atomised.

Using protest as a means to yes: get our message out there, but also to connect with others in our cause is vital. When we're organised and in community together, when the shit starts hitting the fan? We can respond stronger together. We can support each other, share resources and knowledge with each other. All this makes us far more resilient and difficult to target.

The age of neoliberal capitalism that we've been living under over the last 4 decades have split us apart, they have atomised us. The internet is only making this worse, our social outlets are ever more closely tied to spending, in a cost of living crisis that further serves to disempower and keep us isolated. Our lack of social spaces and opportunities to connect entrench this. We're sorely out of practise of being in community with each other, showing up and building connections together. Protest can be used as an opportunity to hone and nourish these skills. Lets out-organise the fascists.

Over and out xo

De-monopolising the web with wisdom & art

Bloo — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 03:21:16 GMT

Over the years there's been a major shift in how the internet works. More and more, big platforms like Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook (to a lesser extent now) and Instagram (to name a few) have become the primary way we share, create and connect with each other. In decades gone by, we still had big platforms (think MySpace or Friendster), but they existed more alongside the federated internet: blogs and personal websites.

Today? Mega-corporations have a monopoly over the internet, our lives, our creations.They have a hold over what we post, comment, -even what we think and see via algorithms (which is only set to get worse with the rise of LLMs). This is a huge problem. A huge chunk of our wisdom, our creative spirit and intellectual property is in the hands of huge corporations who can control the visibility of what we create, remove it without permission or de-prioritise it in ✨ "the algorithm" ✨, or even worse: abuse your data to train artificial intelligence.

Considering that a lot of our art, lived experiences, connections, wisdom and knowledge is often hosted on these centralised platforms, this is very worrying. Especially when you consider that a lot of the companies hosting this stuff are deep in the pockets of Trump's America. Look at how much more hostile they've made it for vulnerable groups on these platforms already. Do we really trust these guys to foster our creativity, communities and growth? Especially when these same platforms continue to proliferate and prioritise the growth of AI generated slop over authentic human creativity? I don't think so. I don't even trust that they will let our ideas and art stay visible/discoverable, assuming they don't end up outright removing them eventually.

So what do we do about this?

Truth be told, there's not an awful lot we can do to combat a bunch of monopolies like this. They have a lot of power, but crucially: they dont have all of it. Now obviously, the vast majority of us rely on traditional monopoly social media platforms to get seen, to share our ideas and build community with others. For many of us, this won't be changing any time soon.

Notice how now days, the internet has become so shitty and dead that we search: "[question here] reddit" in Google to try and get some sort of an answer? Sometimes, if we're lucky we find what we're looking for. Now what if we tried posting about this outside of the monopolised web? What if we wrote a blog post about how that bug appeared in our code and what our version of the solution we found looks like? With full reference to the original, of course.

Or how about when we post our art, what if we still posted on those big platforms we're so used to, but we also posted more content to personal blogs? Or even the fediverse?

The fediverse and blogs

What if we tried, where possible, to post our content on federated platforms and blogs? Platforms free from or at least much further away from the profit incentive? Platforms closer to the original spirit of the internet back in its heyday.

Even if its only a little bit, posting outside of huge centralised platforms, especially about a solution for a niche coding problem, or about how to get past that tricky level in a game, or that really beautiful fan art or OC you made- is resisting the tech monopoly. Youre decentralising your art and ideas in spaces that are more resistant to censorship, spaces that YOU are more in control of.

If you use the combination of the fediverse AND a personal blog: you've got the best of both worlds! You get to take advantage of an audience that isnt driven by an algorithm, and you get to share your content via your platform of choice. Seems like a pretty good deal to me.