Month: August 2026

Yesterday, I went to my neighbors’ little fête down at the tiny park on the corner. There, they and other neighbors gathered to drink spaghetts and just be social. It was, with the exception of the mosquitos (I am a magnet for those) and the heat/humidity, mostly lovely. I’m very lucky to live in a neighborhood with mostly kind, liberal, educated people.

I had one spaghett, which was refreshing (although I think maybe more lemon would have helped), and stayed and talked with people for about 90 minutes or so. I met new people, like a lovely young couple who just moved into the area with their 6-month-old son (who was not at all annoying–and from me that is saying something!) and really sweet little scruffy (in the best sense) dog. Everyone knew me for my yard signs and the dog bowl. There was much laughter and, well, neighborliness.

I realized later, after I got home, that I could have listened better and asked more questions. I was too much the center of attention at times. Oh, it’s not like I talked only about myself, but rather that didn’t ask them enough about them. For example, I realized that I didn’t ask one neighbor where his wife was–something obvious that I ought to have done¹. It was a bit of a fail on my part.

Worse, though, is those who knew about my breakup and how I was trying to assume the mortgage asked about that and my ex and, well, I don’t really like how I sounded when I answered their questions; that is, I sounded bitter.

Fuck me. I really don’t like that. But, and this is a difficult admission: I was bitter, in the moment. I’d love to say that I am above all that but the reality is that, standing there with all those families, I was furious at my ex and feeling sorry for myself. When some of them were discussing trees and yard maintenance and then house maintenance, I felt the weight of my singledom and the burdens on my (and only my) shoulders. When they talked about vacations planned or taken, I felt the sting of promises broken, especially the financial security and opportunity to (finally) work a bit less ripped away. I felt alone and hard done by, as the English say. In other words, I was feeling like a victim and so, yeah, one could easily call that bitter.

This, combined with the talking too much, sent me into a bout of overnight anxiety that interrupted my sleep, repeatedly, and had me still on edge this morning. So, I decided to take the day off–to just take care of myself, including figuring out what was/is going on in my brain that caused all that. Yard work, etc., that can all wait. I need to take care of me.

I’ve noticed very recently that I am feeling off. Not sick, but more physically sore, often bloated, easily distracted. I’m arguably self-medicating a bit by drinking more than I usually do². And, ugh, I’ve been picking at my cuticles, which is a big sign for me that I’m heading in a bad direction. In sum, I have be exhibiting a bunch of low-level symptoms that all point in an unhealthy direction. So, I’m stopping and giving myself some kindness and compassion. And making healthier choices.

First off, I realize, logically, rationally, that last evening I was missing something I didn’t really have in the first place: a true partnership, that is, someone with whom to share life, good bits and bad. The ending of our relationship, rationally and objectively, was for the best.³ Moreover, while I may have sounded bitter last night, the feeling wasn’t actually that–it was grief. Bitterness is marked by being stuck in the past and a need for resolution/apologies. I don’t feel like he needs to make anything up to me. While it would be nice to hear, for example, that he doesn’t blame me any more, the reality is he may think whatever he does about me and our relationship forever, and that’s okay. Those are his thoughts and feelings, not mine. In essence, last night I was hot and pretty exhausted–so not my best self. It was easy to slide into victimhood. Really, I was simply mourning the stories I told myself, the what could have been stuff, nudged a bit by all the ostensibly happy couples⁴ at the party.

That said, I was (and am) missing a simple but profound connection with someone. I would like to have that felt sense that someone is there, even when (especially when) I am less than my best self. The externals for all of us these days make life generally more stressful. The world, particularly here in the USA, is almost unrecognizable in its darkness, cruelty, greed. Having someone with whom to say “Holy shit, this sucks–but at least we have each other” would be grand. Necessary for happiness? No. But lovely if it happens. For now I have Ruthie and my friends.

Also, I can take better care of myself–be kind to my body and my mind. I can re-jigger my activities to focus on things that bring me joy–like cooking (as soon as the heat breaks⁵) and making art. I can paint that wall in the kitchen I have been thinking of doing. Same in the bedroom. I can make my life. And I can put myself out there to others, despite my social anxiety, and forgive myself when I am imperfect when I do.

For today, I am going to forgive myself for my imperfections and rest. Ice cream may be eaten. A nap may be taken⁶. Novel reading is likely. Overall, admit that I need the break and permit myself to have it.
I am only human, after all.

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1. In retrospect, I think some of this was simply being out of practice. I have not been in larger groups, socially, for a bit. I have a little social anxiety (like my dad) and I mask by talking too much sometimes. ↩︎
2. To be sure, I’m not getting drunk and it’s not every night–just more than usual and I think it’s important to be aware of trends like that. ↩︎
3. And even if I had had that, it would have ended at some point anyway–impermanence is a universal truth. He could have been hit by a bus or something…or had a stroke or whatever. ↩︎
4. The way couples appear in public is not the full reality, of course; all couples have good and bad bits; maybe some of them were just masking really well–no one but they know. ↩︎
5. I really think this long heat wave is a big contributing factor to this malaise. It’s hard to do anything when it’s this hot and humid for so long. ↩︎
6. I am not a napper; but last night I did not get enough sleep. ↩︎

My wonderful friend Bee sent me a leash sheath that is red with white block type, reading “No Men” for my birthday. I snort-laughed when I opened the mailer today. Not having a dog, much less one that doesn’t like men, this is extra funny. I immediately had an idea of where I might be able to display the gift and, turns out, I was right. It fits perfectly on the passenger seat handle of my Triumph.

As I looked at the addition, and laughed, I noted the Feminist Power sticker on the side of the box. Then I looked at the top of the box where there is a square green sticker that reads “Don’t tell me to smile.”¹ I realized that I have turned the moto into the Triumph of Feminism.

This cracked me up and made me kind of proud.

I’m pretty sure this will be off-putting to many men. I’m not too upset about that. I mean, if a man is threatened by my feminism, he is not right for me. Sadly, many age-appropriate men are threatened.

My ex, a “girl dad,” got more and more bothered by my feminism the more I wore it openly. I think he had issues with women generally (thanks to his mom, especially) and that, despite his sincerely wanting to be a supporter, it was more than he could do. And, of course, when a relationship is already struggling, things like smashing the patriarchy feel more important to the woman in the hetero couple, and more of a threat to the man. But generally, even when things are good, I’ve noticed that otherwise decent, liberal, educated, well-read men still get weird more often than not when presented with open feminism.

I suspect that is true particularly for many men of a certain age, that is older². I get the impression many GenX men say (and absolutely believe!) “Oh yeah, you should be paid equally!” However, they also say/think things like “But would you shut up about the mental load inequality bullshit?” They tell their daughters they can be whatever they want to be, do whatever they want to do, accept their college girlfriends and their pronouns (then later their post-college boyfriends and their pronouns), but at the same time they privately wonder how their little girl will ever settle down and start a family. And they get frustrated that their female partners are exhausted and not interested in sex (see mental load).

Even at my sangha, which is super liberal, supportive of all people no matter what their particular flavors of whatever, they very well meaningly refer to the person who is hosting a meeting as “the host.” I’m your host, Bob. I’m your host, Leslie. They (and maybe you, dear reader) think “That’s not sexist! That’s the non-gendered term!”

As Maxwell Smart said: Missed it by that much.

Host is gendered: male. Host v. Hostess. When we choose to use the traditionally male form of a title for all, we are being sexist. Male privilege. Sneaky patriarchy.
By the way, something like “Greeter” would be non-sexist, instead.

I read a thread today that was on, I think, BlueSky (linked to from Mastodon)³ where some man wrote an article about how hot women were “Shreking”; that is, they were dating guys who weren’t as hot and successful as they should be dating.
Yeah, you can hear my eyes rolling, right?

Of course, all the women were replying that these women weren’t dating down, they were dating the men who treated them well, who were good, kind, interested and interesting… 10s to the women. The only people who saw these men as less than were the looksmaxxing douche-bros who treat women like objects. I mean, they are deciding who the women should date, not respecting that the women get to choose for themselves. Guys who either are incels or would be, if they weren’t lucky enough to find some women who haven’t learned their own value yet. Several of the more “enlightened” male responders said “I see it all the time–in couples the woman is always hotter!”

Cue more eye rolling.

To be sure, I don’t hate men. I’m definitely heterosexual⁴, too. I do, though, hate being talked over, looked over, held to a different standard, and being told what I think (and that what I actually think isn’t what I think, because I couldn’t possibly know my own mind…). I hate being told I’m a threat if I stand up for equal treatment.
But men, generally? Nope, don’t hate ’em.
I’m just tired of the bullshit.

And yet, I remain hopeful that, some day, I might meet someone who gets it. I’m pining for a good kiss… at least. So, I thought for a second about going back onto the dating apps but putting only this as my bio:
If you understand that wanting a man who wants to help me smash the patriarchy does not mean I’m a dominatrix, say hello.

Yeah, no… maybe before AI fucked the apps even more than they already were. Now, nope.
I’m fine on my own. I have the Triumph of Feminism.
Now if it would just cool down so I could take a nice ride!

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1. The black star is for the Alpinestar brand, whose boots and gloves I wear. ↩︎
2. Unfortunately, however, the younger generations may be getting actively worse here, not better, thanks to the Manosphere, etc. ↩︎
3. I wish I had bookmarked it, sorry. ↩︎
4. As I’ve said, sometimes I wish I wasn’t so straight, but I am what I am. ↩︎

People often come to Buddhism thinking it will make them happier; as if Buddhism is about happiness. It’s not. It never has been. The historical Buddha never said “Meditate your way to happiness” or even anything close to that. If anything, he pointed out that the path is difficult. Buddhism is about acceptance; that is quite a different bird.

Buddhism teaches that what we think things are is almost certainly not what they actually are. Very (very!) much simplified, there is conventional reality and ultimate reality. We experience something through our senses then create projections in our minds based on those sensations, and then we believe those projections are reality. Truth. The way things actually, objectively are. Those projections are conventional reality. We think the table is made of wood because our senses tell us this hard, wood-like thing with four legs and a flat top reads to us as “table” and the material reads as “wood.” And conventional reality isn’t wrong¹, exactly; it’s incomplete. I mean a table is a table and wood is wood. Ultimate reality, though, is more and beyond our (unenlightened beings’) scope.

Think about a brick. A typical, generic, red brick. It has weight. It feels solid. When you hold it in your hand it is a heavy, kind of rough-surfaced thing that you are holding. It is not you–you are softer and fleshy…it is something not you: a brick. But where does the brick end and you begin? Can you find that? What about the space in-between the atoms that make up the brick and that make up you. Neither it nor you are as solid as we like to think. Is there an overlap of the electron shells? When the dust of the brick stays on your skin after you put down the brick, is the brick less a brick? Are you, with the brick dust on your skin, now a bricktohuman? It is unknowable; that is, the ultimate reality regarding the brick and you and the interplay of them both is unknowable. The ultimate reality is beyond conventional reality, and beyond our own capabilities of knowing.

So, in Buddhism, we learn to accept that the brick is both the brick (conventional reality), a thing in our hand, and something more/different/other-than-brick (ultimate reality). So is our hand. So are each of us².

Moreover, our understanding of conventional reality is based on our (flawed) senses (sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing, thought) and our interpretation of those senses is even more flawed and pings our brains to like, dislike, or feel neutral about whatever. We make choices based on how we feel about things. As the leader at my temple says sometimes, “Do you ever go to a restaurant and have a meal that tasted awful then go back to that restaurant and order that same thing the next day? Of course not! You didn’t like it so you push it away (aversion). But if you liked it, you may order it again (craving).” Aversion and craving cause dukkha, i.e., suffering. I like this person, I don’t like that one. I like this feeling, I don’t like that one. This one I don’t feel anything about (neutral). I want more of what I like and less of what I don’t… boom, dukkha.

Basically, and I mean basically, when we try to control what arises, to get more of what we like and less of what we don’t, we get neither and a big old pile of dukkha, instead.

However, if we recognize these sensations as they arise, like/dislike and all their variations, and curiously observe the pull and push rather than be jerked around by them or trying to control them, things feel better. Oh, I don’t like that flavor…isn’t that interesting; I notice I smile a lot when I’m with Barb…huh, what’d you know. We can learn to just be with whatever is arising, react less and respond more. Do that, and everything shifts. That is, if we practice acceptance for things as they are, not wish for them to be otherwise, we suffer less. We may not be “happy” but we’re definitely less miserable.

We can do this with all the emotions that arise. Today, I feel sad, really sad…I can feel it in my chest and there is even an odd sensation around my temples…this is what sadness feels like in my body today…huh, interesting… Or, my chest hurts from laughing at that comedy and I’m tearing up even…this is definitely joy. I’m surprised at how strong my appreciation for this comedy is… wow, there’s more than just the laughter, how cool… Or, I’m hurt by what my partner just said…I wonder what is going on with them that they said something hurtful…

No matter what it is that we are experiencing, we can accept that we don’t know the whole of it and we can choose to accept it for what it is, as best as we do understand it. Moreover, we can know that it will end, like all phenomena. Impermanence is a universal truth: everything changes/ends. Sad now…not sad in 30 minutes (or whatever)³. None of it lasts. When we accept the impermanence of what is arising, as well as whatever is arising itself, everything feels less weighty.

In that lightening, we can then actively choose how to respond to whatever it is. Your partner says something hurtful and, instead of reactively sniping back, being curious about the causes behind their action gives you space to respond. Still hurts, sure, but now instead of yelling at them you can choose to calmly say, “That was hurtful. Can you tell me what’s going on with you that made you say that?” You’re not letting them get away with being hurtful–you are seeking to understand the bigger picture. Moreover, the hurt they inflicted will be lessened.

I can attest to this shift, especially in the physical realm. I’ve written before about my butt surgery and what got me through it was the acceptance (1) it was whatever it was; and (2) whatever it was would end, eventually if not sooner. Did I experience pain? Absolutely. But when I chose to accept it (both 1 & 2, above), I did not fear the pain and process as I had in the past. I am sure it was less bad than it would have been if I was stuck in the aversion to pain. I’m not saying the surgery and healing process were easy; I am saying that I had less anxiety and suffering, even though there was pain, etc.

So, although Buddhism (and meditation) is not about happiness (sorry!), but rather acceptance, at least to my mind that acceptance and its effects feel more like happiness. At the very least, it sucks less.

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1. Well, except about the truth stuff, then it pretty much always is wrong. The truth about anything is probably more than we can fathom and, thus, is in the ultimate reality realm. ↩︎
2. This, by the way, is related to what Buddhist are talking about when we talk about non-self. There is no actual thing that is Leslie, separate from everything else, separate from the air, the earth, Ruthie, a morning poop, or the brick… everything. Leslie arises interdependently and as a result of all sorts of other phenomena, but there is no such thing as a solid Leslie…which is kind of a relief, when you think about it. ↩︎
3. Same for happiness, too. It’s not just the “bad” stuff that is impermanent…it’s everything. ↩︎

I was thinking about tech recently…actually, I think about tech often, but this was specific: we have all these tools to (in theory) make our lives easier, like digital assistants and smart appliances, and we have all sorts of tools for health tracking and improvement; yet, we are mostly more unhappy/dissatisfied (and less healthy) than ever.

Why? I think one part of it is that we are making ourselves miserable by reducing our friction with/in life. Matthew Crawford¹ writes a lot about this. I think our brains fire better when we are trying to do something difficult, and especially so when we are doing something that requires our bodies as well as our minds (like fixing things, riding a motorcycle, driving a stick shift, navigating). Remove that friction, the difficulty, and our brains look for it someplace else. Boom, there it is: dissatisfaction, discomfort, unhappiness, anxiety… dukkha, in Buddhist parlance.

Today, I saw an article about GPS and never being lost, and what we may lose by not ever being lost. Turns out, we may be hurting our brains with all that GPS use. I must admit I felt a bit smug because I rarely use GPS. In fact, I hate it in the car². I’d much rather print out a map and take that with me when going someplace unfamiliar. But most people use GPS and why? We are afraid of getting lost.

Why do we use all the apps (and “smart” devices) we use, every day? I think mostly out of fear…or laziness, or the combo. We’re afraid of not getting enough steps, that we’ll miss a call/text/email, that we’re not maximizing whatever the hell it is that we feel compelled to maximize. We’re afraid of wasting energy or having food go bad if the fridge dies and we don’t know it the second it happens³. Mostly, we’re afraid of failing at anything and everything, in part because these “tools” essentially make us afraid.

I noticed this more with the Ex’ kid–my touchstone of the younger generation. Sure, she’d go hiking or camping or travel to foreign countries, but do any of that without a device? No friggin’ way. Nothing is left to chance in their lives. In a way, she, like so many of her cohort, was walking on eggshells through life.

I think we all do that the more we rely on “smart” devices: live our lives as if walking on eggshells. That is a short route to depression and anxiety. Can’t make a mistake, must be perfect, errors are impermissible… **shudder**. I lived far too long walking on eggshells⁴; I don’t want to do that now, at all.

So, I stopped wearing the Apple Watch, except for my actual exercise period in the morning (and I’m trying to find a good solution to dump it there, too). I don’t look at a lot of the data it provides, now–just distance and calories, really. I don’t download apps for anything that I can access using a web browser, instead. Is it slower and a bit more difficult? Yup. When I do download apps, they are usually on my iPad, not the phone, so I don’t have them accessible if I’m not at home.

Speaking of home, my appliances do not talk to the internet. I had a string of “smart” lights the Ex had purchased that we had on the wonky arbor. They were programmable and had infinite color choices; they were also buggy and annoying, so when they acted up, again, I threw them out. Instead, I got a very unsmart Ikea string that turns itself on at dusk/off at dawn (via a light sensor) and has just a couple of color choices. Works great.

I recently bought a singing bowl and started using it and a timer⁵ to meditate. The apps kept demanding more attention (“What’s your meditation goal?” one even asked), which seems particularly wrong for a meditation app. I don’t care that Apple Health doesn’t know my mindfulness stats. I don’t HAVE mindfulness stats.

I find that the more I get rid of these attention-demanding apps and things, the better I feel. This usually means more life-friction, like using a printed map or not having some app with me when I’m out or choosing to stay in hotels and never use an AirBnB when I travel so maybe fewer choices available. However, in exchange I notice that I feel less afraid, overall. My anxiety is much, much lower.

When I backslide and spend too much time online/using apps/tracking/checking, I feel worse⁶.

Sure, this is just my experience, but it seems to be the same for other folks who make similar changes. The more I read about the science of the “attention economy” the less I want anything to do with it, and others seem to be feeling similarly. Is it age? Perhaps, in part. Whatever, since making these changes I generally feel braver, more at ease, and present. I like it.

1. To be sure, there is much about which I disagree with Dr. Crawford (the patriarchy is sometimes quite strong there), but I think he gets it right when he is talking about the difference between humans using tools to do things and things being done by tools (allegedly) for humans. ↩︎
2. I do not have it built-in, by the way. My lovely 2014 Miata has no screen, etc. ↩︎
3. I was forced to install a “smart” water monitor device to get home insurance and, even though it did actually catch a leak shortly after it was installed (one I would have caught myself, though), I hate it because I now worry about it failing, or working…just another potential problem. ↩︎
4. My Ex demanded I not trigger him–which is actually super unhealthy because one needs to learn how to live with triggers, not expect the world to stop producing triggers–anyway, it meant serious eggshell walking. ↩︎
5. Yes, the timer on my phone, at least for now; but not a meditation app. ↩︎
6. I did that yesterday, actually. It was awful. ↩︎