‘Life Cannot Be Delegated’

So, I have talked a lot here about catastrophizing and the fact that I find it a critical flavor of autistic scripting. Underpinning this is the idea that anticipatory anxiety is better than compensatory, because the latter actually can lead inappropriately and disastrously to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. It was on my mind this week because...

Former candidate for the position from District 3, Jon Walker (tagline: “He’s Boring”), has been insisting for days on Bluesky that “voters were repeatedly told” that the Mayor would have the tie-breaking vote, period—including in the matter of the Council electing its own President. Yesterday, I addressed what the Charter provides on this count....

Yesterday I got up early, sat my iPad on an articulated arm attached to my nightstand, and watched the first session of Portland City Council under its new form of government with councilors elected from geographical districts. If you read anything about the session, you probably know that it took multiple rounds of voting to elect a Council...

The day before therapy last week, my last session of the year, I’d realized that tracking the books I read, and the movies and television shows I watch, has something of a self-regulatory effect despite the rhythms involved being more irregular than regular. It’s not a way in which I’ve previously thought about this habit. At any rate, culture is...

As I noted back in October, “there are exactly two days every year that like clockwork make me feel the weight of living”: my birthday, and New Year’s Day. For the past two years, at the end of this annual hellscape, I’ve published a sort of round-up offering my picks for what I find to be my best blog posts of the year ending. It’s a way of...