Hankerings and Holdings
A shaking of thoughts, a small announcement and things I've been thinking about.
A blog post, “today from last year” and some changes - it’s my return to my newsletter.
I really wanted an excuse to use the word “hankering” somewhere - I appreciate you giving me a space to do so. It’s a bit past the year mark when thirty five people were laid off from Code for America. I don’t dream of labor but I did cry when that day ended, in private. I felt, despite having evidence otherwise, that I failed the people who let me fight for a contract that’s now a year old. I failed my family, promising them that this would be the place that I saw myself at for years. I built legitimate bonds with folks, most of which I didn’t see in person until we all met up in person in San Francisco.
At the bar, a coworker asked me if there’s anything that I would have done differently during my time there. They knew a lot about the process, my personal misgivings with the environment and even my ambitions at the organization. Instead of a verbal response, my mind flooded with thoughts but my face froze. I was afraid of breaking an image I crafted of myself as someone that people had to have faith in of being unwavering. I couldn’t justify any of the thoughts that came to my mind - excuses kept flooding my mind. So with my mouth ajar, my colleague looked at me confusingly and began to chuckle, which gave me the reprieve I needed.
So many people got drunk that night. So many people cried. Never have I worked (twice!) at a place before where the cardinal rule of “not being friends with your coworkers” was broken. An excellent tool of alienating pushed on by hustle culture.
Hankerings
Ha, I used it again! The word means to have a strong desire. A trait of mine is to be very passionate about reading - specifically critical reading. On my website is a post reflecting a bit on the reader-consumer-facing aspect of the literature world that’s spawned from my now decade-long ambition of making reading not just a luxury but a practice. It’s going to be an evolving series (once I finish porting my site over to the new system) of my perspective and research into the realm of literature. I got inspired by the such as I continue to read The Source of Self Regard (or its more apt title, in my opinion, Mouth Full of Blood). Reading helps us to form thoughts - independent thoughts - and I do worry that we collectively have a level of group think that’s been very easy to manipulate in not-so-clear ways. From labor organizing to wrestling with not being able to fall in line with whichever belief system that’s deemed to be the most “accurate” or “pure” or “correct”, there’s tendrils of cult-like language and logic that echoes what we see in television. I read Cultish some time ago and it danced around this in some of the more popular cases; I want to learn more about how this comes to be in contemporary societies.
My hankering, I guess, is seeking understanding. Be it “logical” or “metaphysical” (quotations being used to allow the reader to imply them as they wish versus assuming what I mean because their definitions seem to shift once a year for me), the understanding of our environment and connections to one another is something that can be reinforced by reading - and also by watching.
Holdings
Intended to be a bit of wordplay, I’ve decided to form the beginnings of my game studio. I’ve had the bones for it for about two years now and have been working on getting my skills with game development going. I’ll have more to announce about it around 24 October or later (the number play with the year felt fun). It’s not solely for games but it’s what I’m choosing to focus it on. It’s been something I’ve been fortunate to tap on some folks in the industry behind games I enjoy a lot so it’s definitely both a privilege and a labor of love.
I’ve thrown a lot of words at you. I appreciate you for making it this far. More of this will evolve on my website so I recommend getting your preferred feed tool to follow up. Of course, I’ll always recap here. Until next time!