Eggcream, mug of java, whisky and nostalgia

~bartender

"This is the first winter of the Midnight", I think to myself as I'm trying to perfect my eggcream technique. It's also my first winter in such a big city. While I try to keep it cool behind the bar, it's a little overwhelming to leave this pub. I'm not sure if it's got to do with the million people walking outside, the constant gloomy weather, the neon advertising of main street or simply that intense cold, but I feel better here.

"Did you know that eggcream don't actually contain any egg?", I say as I serve it

As I'm cleaning the counter, I see ~tffb enter. The outside wind tried to come with him but he was quick enough to close the entrance.

Bartender, if you are around, perhaps a coffee? Thank you!

Coffee it is! I take it that it's too cold outside for a root beer float?

Right Now, I am listening to a Tidal-curated playlist of classic Punk on the laptop, and thinking of more ish to write after having a good amount of coffee.

Jukebox on

As the music starts playing,

I like this list of links format much better than the wall of text summary from before. Haven't been around lately since holidays are a busy time for me. It's that time of year again where I get the urge to redo my entire website, rebrand everything I have, or start another new project that ultimately gets abandoned in two months. Right now I'm just so busy with work and kids that I haven't had the chance to sit and think about it so I figured i'd sit and think about it in the Midnight lounge area, in text form.

Cheers to projects that get abandoned in two month! It makes me feel terrible just to think about the ones I've done. Here's your old fashioned by the way. Sometimes, that's all we need to find some creative power. When I was younger my friends I would work on projects all the time. I remember this one night when we were 10, we decided we wanted to be journalists and created our fake newspaper. I wrote a game review and I thought it was the best thing in the world.

I get nostalgic when I think about that era. Connecting to internet was very audible thanks to the modem. All my friends up on ICQ. But as zampano points out, nostalgia is a strange one.

Nostalgia is another avenue of attack. Whether it’s for the 1950s or the 1980s, it tends to display a very different view of society than was actually the case. Nostalgia by its nature is very selective, and tends to enhance our tendency to remember things fondly while editing out the negatives. But ultimately these nostalgic pseudo-memories can start to overwrite real history.

I find it comforting to think back of how things used to be. Especially next to the soothing fireplace with an bit of whisky. The outside world is cold and not very welcoming, and it's hard to get through the days at times.

Meanwhile, my anxiety about being physically in the office has never been worse. It's not just the COVID risk, though of course I've seen several people not wearing their masks correctly. It's also the difficulty of having to put that public persona on again. It's trying to be the upbeat, easy going, knowledgeable leader while staring down a giant pile of someone else's fuck ups.

Man, I feel you right there. I will probably need to re-learn from scratch how to interact with the outside world when the whole thing will come to an end. In a way, I find it extremely exciting. If anything, this last year's been a moment to learn more about ourselves.

I'm endlessly fascinated by what I can learn from shifting my attention from the outside world into my inner world

Talking about inner world,

One trick that direction is to see individuality as just another purely conceptual phenomena in the seeming field of conceptuality often referred to as "mind".

My own mind is still wondering why on earth did we call eggcream eggcream if it's got no egg? I guess that's why I love reading so much. It makes my mind think about something else. By the way, thank you starbreaker for bringing a copy of The Milgram Battery!

I read at night, and it took two sessions to finish it, but found it very captivating. Morgan Copper is incredibly bad ass.

I guess reading is one of those simple pleasures.