Staying Mindful
We must do this
When I cancelled Amazon Prime, I bought a subscription to the Headspace app for its nighttime sleep music that I had previously used for free. But then I started getting into the other things the app offered. They have a really lovely daily “Take 5 Cleansing Breaths” function. It is a varying animated graphic accompanied by soothing background sounds. It helps me stop, focus and be present. It’s like a mini meditation that I can do any time of the day.
There is a whole daily offering that includes the deep breaths, a little “lesson”, a guided meditation, some work music and then a nightly sleep audio story. I stick with my favorite night music as I think my body now recognizes it as my guide into sleep, but I love that I could do these actions throughout the day to say grounded.
For $60/year, it's been really valuable.
💩 Capitalist Bullshit
Boycotts
My list of permanent boycotts stands at:
Hobby Lobby
Home Depot
Chick-fil-A
Starbucks
McDonald's
Target
Making Plans
In making plans for the future, you should keep in mind how Trump's actions may impact you.
If you get subsidies for your marketplace health insurance plan, how much would your insurance cost if that went away? Mine would cost almost $1000 per month (compared to the $350 that I currently pay).
If you have student loans and are on an income contingent payment plan, what would your payments be without that plan? Mine would be $400-600 (compared to the $0 that I currently pay).
Don't assume these subsidies are guaranteed.
I checked GoodRx for the medicines I take and all are available for a reasonable price except Nurtec, my migraine medicine. It's around $1000 for 8 of them. So, that's an issue. (Interestingly enough, I just clicked a bookmark I’d set for AARP discounts with GoodRx, and it’s been replaced with a message. Hm…)
Try to think about how you'll get the things you need if the price is suddenly unreasonable. We’ll need to get creative in these instances.
Should I Buy a House?
Should I not buy a house? I did the math for if I got an apartment for $1200/mo in Troy instead. (And that’s kind of low for the rent there.) That would be $288,000 over 20 years, assuming the rent never increased, which is a HUGE assumption.
If I buy a $150,000 house with a 30 year mortgage, it would be about the same ($300,000) even though my monthly payments would be higher because of the taxes and insurance. And it would be cheaper if I found a way to pay it off early, which would be preferred.
So, that kind of stuck it for me.
However, if my health insurance and student loan go up by $1000 a month, I might not be able to comfortably afford either. Fun times.
Amazon Cracking Down on eBooks
If you want to get your ebooks off Amazon, now is the time. They are going to be implementing even stronger encryption that can’t be cracked using the method I shared earlier. They’re also doing away with support for MOBI format, which matters to me as I’m an author who has uploaded at least one book to sell there. (EPUB is preferred over MOBI, so that’s fine with me. Plus, I’m toying with offering my next book as an EPUB that someone can purchase directly from my website to use in whatever reader they want.)
Cloud Storage
Well, I gave up on Sync. It is the clunkiest damn service I've ever worked with, and it's probably no coincidence that their interface looks like it was designed in the 90s. (That sounds recent to us old folks, but that was 30 years ago.)
I'm giving pCloud a go. It already seems gads better. It's way faster because it's not trying to put an extra copy of each file on my laptop. Plus, I can just tell that the service is faster overall.
pCloud is based in Switzerland and while my files are currently on US servers, I intend to pay the extra $20 to have them moved to European servers that are subject to greater security and regulation.
🦩 Everyday Adventures
On Another Tea Kick
Like in December of 2023, I am on another tea kick. Maybe I just do this every winter.
But I’ve been drinking loads of tea, and I find that I use specific cups depending on what I’m drinking.
I use this fancy little teacup for the lovely powdered mango saffron tea I got in Istanbul. (I also use it for the round matcha teabags from The Republic of Tea.)
This is the cup I use when I’m making regular teabag tea (mostly puerh). It was made by a local potter.
This is the little mug I use for my instant mushroom coffee. Also made by the same local potter.
This is the cup I use to make my loose leaf puerh because it has a filter that goes with it, and it’s a nice size to have a full cup.
These are the teeny cups (around 7 ounces) I use to drink jasmine or other green tea that I make in my wee teapot. I have four of them but keep two tucked away because shelf space.
This mug I often use when making sleepy time teas in the evening.
This one I use to make lattes with instant espresso. It’s around 8-9 ounces.
I'm currently stocking up on things in anticipation of higher prices (or less availability), and an entire pound of my favorite loose-leaf puerh tea from Little Red Tea Cup made the list. They’re in Maine, and I ended up talking to them on the phone (because Shopify weirdly flagged my order… because who needs a pound of tea???). The guy there said they were going to try very hard not to raise their prices when tariffs were raised. I thought that was really cool.
⏰️ Currently
☀🌴 Enjoying some truly beautiful Florida weather with my doors and windows open.
🤪 Trying to get past the burnout I feel right now about work
🌏 Feeling the world contracting instead of expanding