At this moment, I'm feeling exhausted. I've had a cold or something for last 15 days and am now on some antibiotics to try to clear up any bacterial infection. I've been making a sizable dent in a Costco-sized bottle of generic Mucinex DM.

The last couple weeks have been rough, even if you don't work in government. (And if you do, my heart goes out to you.) Then someone at work brought this to my attention: the Trump admin is floating the idea that they can just revoke passports because they feel like it.^[1] Revoking passports and the freedom of movement that comes with them is a standard authoritarian move. If your scapegoat can't escape, it's a lot easier to brutalize them. I may not be trans, but I won't stand by and watch them be attacked any more than the immigrants in my community.

At work, I'm working on a giant data pipeline to move terabytes across the wire. We're standing up new platforms and trying to expand our business. It's stressful.

All of that brings me to this. I want nothing more than a quiet life with people I love. I want to read books, take photos, take walks, play games, laugh, and live a gentle life. That's all any of the immigrants they've kidnapped have wanted. That's all the drag queen dancing for tips wants. On the balance, people just want to live.^[2]

Anyway, that's all. I can envision a really gentle and loving life that makes the world around me a little bit better. I can imagine living in harmony with others, and that sounds really nice.

When I wax poetic about this quiet life, a lot of folks have told me, "What's stopping you? Just do it!" The answer, dear reader, is that I give a shit about other people. I can't retire to a quiet life because none of us are free until all of us are free.