Mere Being 022 - June - Procrastination, Wallpaper Music, Popsicles

I've been procrastinating on writing this, largely because I've been procrastinating on my e-mail in general and I know that there's correspondence from a few of you waiting for me in there. I spent most of May sick – nothing too serious, but these days when I get even a cold it feels like it sucks all the oxygen out of my blood for weeks. I'm mostly back on my routine now but I'm still coughing.

I'm Nat Bennett, and you're reading Mere Being, a monthly(ish) newsletter about staring at code that you wrote last month while microscopic Von Neumann machines tried to melt my lungs.

I've been writing a lot on LinkedIn, mostly about how I'm using AI. I've some longer stuff cooking in the background but I haven't really been writing.

I think there's been a touch of depression creeping in. I got outside for Pride last weekend and while it's always nice to be out on a summer day in San Francisco watching people dressed up and enjoying themselves, but I also came out of it with this deep sense of alienation. I see all this people out in little groups and I think, "Why am I not like them? Why am I not here with my little group having my little picnic? What's missing from me?"

On good days I'm able to remind myself that this is actually a sense that I share with many people.

I've spent most of my life with this inarticulable sense that something is missing or wrong – that there's some gap between me and the people around me. I've spent most of my life searching for an explanation for that inarticulable sense – a name for the condition. Is it depression? Social anxiety? Regular anxiety? PTSD? C-PTSD? A normal product of the human condition? Maybe it's a gender thing? Autism? Attachment style? Maybe I don't exercise enough, or talk to my neighbors enough. Maybe I'm not getting enough fiber in my diet.

An irony – one of the things causing it now is my sudden and intense interest in American football. I catch myself holding back in social situations, resisting the urge to unleash my thoughts on the Aaron Rodgers Situation because I know that this is a Magic: the Gathering draft and it wouldn't be socially appropriate.

I love writing for many reasons, but one of them is that it lets me inhabit other people for a while, and lets other people inhabit me. So much of my internal life is words, that while I'm reading, I'm someone else.

Have I talked about the music that I listen to while I'm working?

It varies, a constellation revolving around a center point, but at that center is the soundtrack to The Sims, and in particular this song.

This is the song that plays while you're in what's essentially the loading screen, or making a new family to play. I have listened to it for, at a conservative estimate, thousands of hours.

From this Vice article on its composition:

It’s likely one of the most widely heard album-length collections of music to be released so far this century.

I listen to a lot of "wallpaper music." The kind of stuff that would have been on in a grocery store in the 60s. Occasionally I'll wander into Bossanova, jazzy JRPG soundtracks, or a little Latin house.

We watched Severance recently, and I kept recognizing songs from the soundtrack.

Lastly:

Popsicles.

I made a test batch of these ginger, mint, hibiscus and watermelon popsicles earlier this week. Big hit. After I hit send on this I'm making a second batch for the Fourth of July tomorrow.

I got a silicone popsicle mold a few years ago and a few books. I use this very 2012 in Brooklyn one the most.

This is slightly more work than my other summer go-to of "fruit, creme fraiche, and a biscuit or short bread" but they're very fun and easy to make a lot of at once.

That's all I've got for you for now. More soon–

Nat