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Hiking
I’ve somehow hiked 70 miles this year.
I like hiking. I always have. But I’ve never hiked quite this much.
Having kids really put a damper on hiking. I still hiked, but when there were lots of little kids at my feet, and it was really hard to go anywhere and go there for very long.
A few years ago, I started running off and on, and sometimes I would go on trail runs. Mostly I would run around my neighborhood. Running got me more used to going outside, to spend time by myself exercising.
Now I’ve started trail running a bit this year, not totally on purpose. I got sick of running on the road. I thought I was going to stop running, but then I wanted to try a really long trail, and I didn’t have a lot of time, and it felt nice to run. Trail running is slower. It’s more beautiful. And I want to go further, actually.
By trail running, I mean that I run sometimes, not that I run all of the time. I don’t run when going up steep hills. I don’t run when the trail gets too rocky. And when I run, it’s usually a slow jog. I’m going at my own pace–too slow for some, too fast for others–but when I’m just alone with my dog on the trail, I can go however fast I want to.
I own too many pairs of shoes, some old and some new–new hiking boots, trail runners, other running shoes, other hiking shoes, older hiking boots–because different shoes are nice on different trails and different conditions, and I’m becoming more particular about how my feet feel when I go.
My kids are older. They tolerate and somewhat enjoy hiking, but they also most often sit at home while I go by myself. I live by lots of good trails, and sometimes I repeat trails and sometimes I try new places. I put hiking on the calendar, squeezing it in between taxiing my children to jobs and library trips and all of that. They complain about how bad I smell when I get home, relieved when I take a shower.
And I still take the time to stop and take pictures and that surrounds me.
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Internet Nostalgia
I’ve been around long enough that I remember the early days of the internet and I’ve seen a lot of changes. I remember searching something (before Google, on Ask Jeeves or AltaVista) and finding lists of mainly pages of just random text-based websites that tech-savvy people had stuck up. I remember going to the computer lab with my friends before school and sharing funny things and videos–there was no YouTube, just random trains of emails and word-of-mouth of the best websites (like Homestar Runner). I remember a conversation with my uncle during the early days of Wikipedia, when a lot of people were skeptical that it would ever be any good. I had a Juno email address and a Hotmail address, and email was often used to share links with friends and family. I started a blog in somewhere around 2005 or so, and I’ve had my own website of some sort ever since. Back then, blogs were the main way to connect–I remember meeting people online in the comment section of my favorite author’s website. I was also active on a self-hosted forum (no Reddit) and found a sense of community in that small group talking about reading and writing. I would go to Amazon to buy books. And instant message people because texting was hard.
That is just a whole bunch of nostalgia, and I don’t want the internet to be what it was in the 1990s and 2000s. There are some things I like about the internet now, like how Wikipedia is really good.
I got on Instagram a few days ago, and I scrolled through stuff I didn’t care about. I haven’t checked social media very much lately. I used to do it all the time, sometimes for hours. But if I’m honest, I’ve never really enjoyed it. I get sick of seeing faces of people who are good at producing a lot of content, but they aren’t my friends or people I care about. Those shortform videos are so jarring–too short to really convey that much, and always viewed in large, random, confusing batches. I think we might keep scrolling over and over again because none of them leave us feeling satisfied. Our attention is actually starving to be engaged in something. It’s like eating too much popcorn or candy when we’re really hungry for dinner.
I posted some pictures on Instagram. That’s what Instagram used to be, just pictures. I like creating content, but I don’t like trying to game what’s going to be popular. I’m still blogging. I’m still posting pictures.
So much of the internet is about selling attention to corporations. Advertisements are everywhere. We all go to the same few websites. It’s mind-numbing, frustrating.
The good thing about having your own website is you are largely in control of it. You can take up space, have time to be yourself and present yourself in the way that you want to. You aren’t fitting yourself and optimizing yourself into a corporation’s view of what should bring the most views, chasing attention.
Sometimes I wish more people blogged again–people I know and care about. I have quite a few blogs I used to follow that have quit in favor of more lucrative social media posts. Blogging is rarely done by individuals anymore. People did it for a while and then they stopped, leaving a graveyard of former blogs that have since died.
I wish I could go on a website and not be inundated with ads and sponsored posts. I wish I didn’t search things and get false information from A.I. I want to visit website of people who are sharing what they love instead.
But I think we can bring back elements of the internet that we miss. Homestar Runner is still posting videos, after all, and you do not have to visit YouTube to view them. I’m still blogging and occasionally posting pictures. And I still very much enjoy and support long-form content and people who are doing really creative things on their own websites. I like when people post on occasion something meaningful.
We used to have blogrolls and share our favorite blogs with each other. So here are some fun things:
It’s Nicky Case!
Home – Utah’s Adventure Family
xkcd
Cool Things We Found
Neocities: Create your own free website!Maybe I should share more often? But I like discovering things randomly, hearing about them from friends, connecting with people. And I don’t need that much of the internet in my life either. The most important part of my life is real-life interaction with actual people.
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A collection of thoughts
Marriage isn’t about compatibility. It’s about making it work even when you aren’t compatible.
If you want things to happen more often, schedule them.
If you want to help someone fix a problem, listen first. If you think the solution is easy, you might not understand yet.
Depression is unromantic, unurgent, inconsolable, and incredibly embarrassing and boring.
Therapy is not the only answer and sometimes it can make it worse.
You cannot be successful on your own through working hard. Successful people have help.
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Spring flowers
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Thoughts on higher education
I’ve been a student for somewhere around a decade of my adult life and taught some college classes.
There is a lot of things I like about higher-education:
- Getting a well-rounded education and learning about a wide variety of topics that can make you a better person
- Improving a huge variety of skills: critical thinking, problem solving, reasoning, writing, interacting with people, grit and determination, etc.
- Training for job skills and other ways to contribute to society
- Being surrounded by people you can learn from
- Some professors are just really good at what they do and change students’ lives
- Learning how to keep learning on your own and what questions to explore
- Learning how to become a better person in difficult circumstnaces
There are also things I don’t particularly like:
- Underpaid teachers, particularly adjunct positions
- Many teachers with limited pedagogical training and poor pedagogical techniques
- Class size minimums that force large class sizes
- Grades (grades mean very little, and yet are so important)
- Large expenses for students for tuition, fees, textbooks, etc.
- Large student debt without a clear way to pay it back
- Bias and ideologies, limitations on academic freedon
- The constant feeling of stress and burnout from both teachers and students
- The feeling that schools sometimes don’t really care about students
Higher education has enabled me to become a better version of myself and given me opportunities and skills to help others. It’s been worth it to learn and grow and be in that environment.
But I get frustrated sometimes too. There is no perfect school, and no way to build a perfect school. It’s just messy, with some good things and some bad things thrown in there.
I want my kids to go and get a college education, but they need to be smart about it too: don’t go into debt you can’t pay back easily. Remember the values that you have and set good goals and work to achieve them. Find good friends and people that will help you become better. Know that college won’t be perfect, but you can still take charge of your own learning and get what you need to out of it. It’s also okay to fail sometimes, and to take breaks, and to figure out your own path.
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It’s not broken. It’s just flawed.
We like to say that things are broken. Education is broken, immigration is broken, healthcare is broken, politics are broken.
When we label something as broken, we may mean a few things: first, that it’s so broken that we just throw it away and it doesn’t do any good. If I drop a glass on the floor and it shatters and breaks, I throw it in the garbage because it doesn’t serve its purpose anymore. Second, we may think it’s still repairable, but it’s not going to function well until we repair it. If a car is broken, then you need to take it into the shop and fix it up so that it can drive safely again. When something is broken, we have an idea of how it should work and function, and it’s not meeting that ideal. It’s no longer in good working order, and it needs to be fixed before it does any good. And if it can’t be fixed, it should just be thrown away.
But I think it’s not helpful when we label things as broken when they are, instead, flawed, but valuable.1
There are many things we can’t really fix to some perfect functioning because there is no perfect functioning. Instead, there are going to be messy tradeoffs. Sure, some items have a clear function and can be broken and then fixed. Things like cars and computers and shoes and stuff like that. But many other things, like education and immigration and healthcare and politics, don’t have a singular function at all. They have multiple functions that often conflict with each other.
Take education. Part of the purpose education is to educate people, but even that isn’t a singular thing. We want to teach students various subjects and skills, and they can’t learn everything all at once. And education also does things like research, innovation, job training, community support, extracurricular activities, sports, childcare, ensuring basic well-being and care, feeding students–this list goes on and on. There is no such thing as education that functions perfectly. It’s always going to be flawed, but it still can be extremely valuable.
Then let’s look at healthcare. There are a lot of tradeoffs in healthcare. If it’s more affordable, there may be longer wait times. If there is a lot of innovation and research, someone has to pay for it somewhere. If we want more access, sometimes we have to do it at the expensive of lower quality. There is no system that does all of it well. When we have so many different specialties and we need medications, research, preventative care, palliative care, specialized care, mental health resources–no one system can do it all. So, it’s going to be flawed, but it still can be valuable.
We should definitely still work on improving things. The systems that we have are doing some things well and doing some things rather poorly, and sometimes there are improvements that can increase efficiency and lead to overall better outcomes to people. (And sometimes a system might be the best at creating more wealth for the wealthy, which is not a functioning that I particularly support.)
Instead of just throwing up our hands and saying something is broken, let’s also recognize that these systems are in place for certain reasons, they are giving a certain value, and even if we do improve them in certain ways, there will still be tradeoffs. It’s not going to perfect. It’s not going to get all fixed up. But it can be a bit better, and if we’re more worried about improving something flawed but valuable, then often we can make more progress. We don’t always have to overhaul everything, but instead make small changes, building on what is already working.
- I got that phrase on this post: Universities: Flawed but Valuable – Daily Nous ↩︎
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undeserved spring
In the arrival of spring without winter,
I feel I do not deserve
birdsong and sunlight on cheeks
unbitten by frost.
Spring is only spring when
it emerges out of melting icicles
snow evaporating off of crushed grass.
But this year,
Snow never came.
When too-early daffodils emerge,
I wish
in the desert wrongness
for winter.
I grieve for
a snowman never built.
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Review: Luxe Value Menu, Taco Bell
I tried all the items from the Luxe Value menu at Taco Bell so you don’t have to.
I went with my husband on a date and we ordered one of everything from the value menu. Some of these items are limited time only, but here’s what we got and what we thought of everything, in order of how we ate it:
- Mini Taco Salad: 5/5
- I had high expectations and this did not disappoint. My school lunch in high school used to serve the best taco salad and this is a miniature version of that: a crispy shell, meat, beans, cheese, and some veggies. Loved it.
- Nacho Supreme Dip & Chips: 4.5/5
- This was like my high school nachos, which were also popular. I loved dipping in the chips, though there was more dip than chips. We particularly loved the pico de gallo situation, with onions and cilantro.
- Cheesy Roll Up: 2/5
- You can make this at home by putting cheese in a tortilla and putting it in the microwave. It doesn’t taste bad, but it’s not worth getting unless you are feeding a small child who won’t eat anything else.
- Cheesy Double Beef Burrito: 4/5
- We enjoyed this a lot. It had crispy bits and some texture with added rice.
- Cheesy Bean and Rice Burrito: 3.75/5
- The rice helps the texture, and I appreciate a vegetarian version.
- Spicy Potato Soft Taco: 3.5/5
- These are good, but the tortilla was sort of dry, and the taco felt underfilled.
- Beef Potato Griller: 4/5
- This was very hot and gooey and the potatoes were delicious.
- Avocado Ranch Chicken Stacker: 4.75/5
- This was a surprise in a really good way: it was huge, and the flavors were so good. The only bad thing was the somewhat dry tortilla. It felt a bit lighter than many of the other options, which was appreciated.
- Three Cheese Chicken Flatbread Melt: 3.5/5
- I like flatbread, but the filling wasn’t cutting it. Too soft. I did put the avocado chicken stacker filling into some flatbread, and that was a really good bite.
- Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes: 3.5/5
- These are great, but a little boring.
- Chocolate fudge and caramel empanadas: 1/5
- These were a huge disappointment. The flavor was just not great at all. It was more bitter and did not taste right.
And my overall ranking:
- Mini Taco Salad
- Avocado Ranch Chicken Stacker
- Nacho Supreme Dip & Chips
- Double Beef Burrito
- Beef Potato Griller
- Cheesy Bean and Rice Burrito
- Spicy Potato Soft Taco
- Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes
- Chicken Flatbread Melt
- Cheesy Roll Up
- Empanadas
- Mini Taco Salad: 5/5
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Photos of a warm winter
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Thoughts
I have a hard time talking about current events on the internet. Recently, I said to some people that the certain things in the world are a dumpster fire right now. I don’t know exactly how to think about it, how to say something that’s not already been said. I believe in caring for people and in protecting rights and freedoms and life. I believe in improving equality and equity, and that we should work to make the world a better place instead of pursuing our own self-interest. I believe in democratic values and honesty and transparency. But sometimes, I mostly just feel powerless, a spectator, and I’m unsure of what I can do that would actually make a difference.
I don’t think we should engage in contention to fight contention, or that we should hate those who are hateful. Sometimes the best way to get rid of the fighting is not by fighting back, but by refusing to engage. Refusing to stoop down to hatred. But it’s so hard, because we can get so angry–and anger can be motivating and useful. But if anger drowns out love, if we can’t see hope anymore, then maybe we’ve gone too far.
I do have hope in a better world. I’ve seen a lot of things get worse in my lifetime, but I know that there are good people working toward good things, and good changes have happened too.
My son was once frustrated with all the ideas that he had. He knew they wouldn’t all happen, that they couldn’t happen. And he was sort of mad that he had all these ideas that would always just be ideas.
But we don’t want to get rid of all the hopes and dreams of what we wish the world could be. The world is better with our ideas and our hope, even if things are still hard, and those ideas and those hopes aren’t realized.
I used to make goals and to-do lists and scribble things out, always feeling like I never got things done–never on top of things, never the better version of myself that I want to be. But I’ve tried to remember the good things that happen in life and the good things that I have done. I write down the accomplishments.
We hope for a better world, and we work towards it the best that we can. We recognize progress we make, even if it’s slow and halting. We keep approaching life with kindness, towards ourselves and others.
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Heather Hoyt 