Loitering in the echoey waiting room

The slow march toward mid-December

A life update

Here I sit in my bed, decaf coffee in hand, remembering the days when caffeine fuelled my mornings as I commuted to my office at the university to hunker down for a day of chaplaining. That’s the technical term, in case you didn’t know. I miss caffeine.

I sit in my bed drinking coffee because I continue to reside in The Grey Zone, somewhere between health and un-health. Schrödinger’s Blood flows within me. It might be good blood now, it might still be bad blood. I’ve completed my latest treatment regimen and await the PET scan that will make some sort of determination about everything.

This is one of those waiting periods that is fixed—I can’t recall if I’ve mentioned this before, but you essentially have to wait around ninety days after your treatment concludes before a scan can reveal anything useful. It may also take that long for the CAR-T cells to do what they’re meant to do. This sort of waiting makes me feel quite guilty, for some reason, about the level of attention I receive. Most folks I know who need medical attention are stuck waiting simply because that’s where they are in the long queue of folks who need medical attention.

And I understand why that is. The best reason is simply because the level of severity is low(-ish). It took a good friend several months to be scanned for a potential pinched nerve/slipped disc issue simply because while his mobility and pain threshold were in danger, his life was not. I can sneeze weird and get an MRI the same day. This is the worst VIP card you can have in your wallet.

That said, I am starting to get strength back. My brain is starting to brain in brainish ways again. I have the stamina to go for a walk (albeit a short one), to play with my toddler (duration of play depending on rambunctiousness of aforementioned toddler), to stay awake past 9 pm (in order to resist becoming a meme of a forty-year-old).

This pretty much sums up the last year.

However, of all the various white blood cells floating around, the ones I need to be working overtime right now are slacking on the job (neutrophils). These are the lil’ guys that keep you from being sick all the time. Sadly, mine are apparently jealous of the California vacation my T-cells experienced, and so are vacationing in protest. I’ve essentially had a cold for the last month. My neutrophil count continues to bottom out, leading to the need for more growth-factor injections. It sadly means I need to continue masking around my family; my social engagements remain essentially nonexistent.

So, this is why I haven’t written anything in a few weeks. No one is interested in my hot takes on the election; or, at least, there’s nothing I can say about it that’s new and exciting. I am making very slow progress on Ephraim Radner’s Mortal Goods. This is a book that must be read slowly, like all of Ephraim’s books.

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On echo chambers

One thing I have been thinking about quite a lot the last several days is the exodus of folks from Twitter to Bluesky. If you’re not aware of Bluesky, it’s a social media site much like Twitter. It’s designed to give users more control, sort of like the original Twitter, especially with regard to blocking. There aren’t any ads—though we’ll see how long that lasts. Users essentially design their own algorithms with a variety of feeds and whatnot. If you want more details, I can tell you about it.

The point here is that I’ve been trying to get off Twitter for ages, and the main issue has been convincing anyone else to also do so. Social media platforms are only as good as their user base, after all. While I initially used Twitter as a sort of long-distance group chat before group chats were a thing (I joined Twitter in September 2008…that’s when the iPhone 3G was out!), I eventually pivoted to using it for academic networking. And I’ve made real-life friends because of it. So the main hamstring for Bluesky was getting a critical mass of academic folk to slide over. I think this is finally happening. My follower count (and the amount of folks I follow) has skyrocketed, and it’s a beautiful thing.

That said—one of the critiques I’ve seen levied at this movement is the reason why. Twitter has been going downhill for longer than politics in the US have been, but it appears the election has been the deciding factor for many to jump ship in recent weeks. There is only so much abuse and misinformation some can take.

Yet some are critiquing this exodus as only reinforcing echo chambers—recreating the same echo chambers that had Democrats thinking there was no way Harris could lose, and leaving behind the echo chambers that had Republicans thinking Trump had their best interests at heart. If partisan lines continue to be drawn deeper and deeper into the sand, then there is no way people will ever be able to hear opinions differing from theirs, and the world will continue to worsen.

While I understand the root of this complaint, I would very much like to remind folks, first, that true dialogue does not often happen on social media. It may have never happened on Twitter, in fact, since the platform has done nothing but embolden folks to speak their opinions both publicly and anonymously. At least on Facebook there’s a name attached to a post, and it’s generally assumed that you know the person speaking.

Actual dialogue occurs when something personal is at stake. And, much of the time (but not always!), something personal is at stake when you are before the other person in meat-space, not in The Matrix. Family, neighbours, friends, fellow citizens in your village/town/city.

But, second, I want to remind you that being able to commune with people with whom you disagree is a privileged position. As a white male, I can do all this freely and safely just about anywhere. Many people in North America cannot. And many of these people who can’t are exhausted by not having this freedom.

I don’t know exactly where I’m going with all this. I suppose I just want to say that it’s okay to spend time online where you’re going to spend it, with the people who allow you to be you. But 1) be mindful if this is causing you to regard the folks with whom you disagree as the contemptible, unworthy-of-salvation Other, and 2) don’t fault folks who need their online spaces because their space in the Real World is crowded.

Enough for now. Back to my coffee.

Photo by Jeffrey Wegrzyn on Unsplash