A September of suddenlys

Yo from the end of a long September. I'm writing this at my standing desk with a cup of delightful sencha I'm waiting for to cool. It has essence of peach.

I say it's been a long September, and it has, but each of the last three months has also felt long to me. I think writing these is making my life feel more full? Something to note.

In this case, September carried a handful of suddenlys with it, to remind me that I need to be more flexible with my plans and expectations.

The fourth suddenly was a nice one: we were suddenly invited to a wedding by someone we met here in Minnesota. I was glad to cancel some of my project plans for this, because people are important.

The third suddenly was perfectly timed: directly after being discouraged by an article about how you can have a translated conversation with someone if you're both wearing AirPods, my language studies decided to become useful several times in a row.

I made yet another friend who speaks and studies several languages, talked to another person who was studying Japanese, suddenly needed to translate some Spanish and French for some friends while watching a video that wasn't available in English, took my first French lesson since passing a certification exam back in June, and got to use my French again giving a man directions across town.

He spoke in hesitant English at first, but seemed more comfortable once he noticed my phone was set to French and he could switch over. He didn't have a phone on him, so he probably didn't have any AirPods to reach for, either.

The second suddenly was fantastic news for Ashley and me, but terrible news for my wallet: Lady Gaga had announced a tour stop in Saint Paul next year. I'm not even really a concert person, but I am a Lady Gaga person. Thankfully, I'll have forgotten the sting of the receipt by the time she gets here.

The first suddenly, which later brought on the fifth suddenly, happened while I was out to support a friend running a half-marathon: taking too many photos around a lake, as one does, the back cameras on my phone suddenly stopped responding.

They say the best camera you have is the one you have on you, and mine was now a broken one. This was far more discouraging than the AirPods thing.

I spent most of September without the ability to properly photograph it. I did still improperly photograph it though, as I'm not giving up photos so easily, especially after my dramatic photoversary video last month. I could still get mildly broken images through another app, which I had to screenshot to save, and my selfie camera worked.

My proudest moment was when I had to lock the selfie camera onto my finger at a close distance, hold that distance while bringing my phone closer to a spider web over some local vegetation, flip my phone to the right side and place it in front of the head architect to take a photo without being able to see the screen.

This trick works really well for anything too small for autofocus to properly recognize, by the way. If you lock the focus onto something by tapping and holding it, you can now just move the phone back and forth until what you want is in focus, instead of frustratedly tapping the screen over and over.

Anyway, this led me eventually to my fifth and final suddenly, which was that I had to waste a bunch of time trying to get this fixed and eventually just decided to get a new phone. Again, not ideal for my wallet, but life is like that sometimes.

Obviously, aside from my own attempts to keep sticking and moving through life, the world has continued to be filled with horrors this month, as it was the previous month, and as it will likely be next month.

I'm certainly going to continue doing what I'm aware that I can, building and supporting my local community, donating to reasonable things, and reading the news like an old man each morning, but I'm going to lean into some preferable horrors for October to embrace the spooky season.

Those horrors? J-horrors. I've been getting really into Japanese horror for the past year or so, and I'm much more comfortable with creeping ghosts than creeping authoritarianism.

If I can manage it, I'm going to finish transcribing and translating a rare Japanese stage play DVD I bought a few months ago, read the original novel for the Ring series, and play both Silent Hill f and Fatal Frame.

I can't let one of my autumns go to waste now, can I?


Martin

Some improperly taken photos:

And, in case we missed each other on the algorithmic seas, here are the other things I’ve been sharing this month:

Hello again from the very end.

Do y'all have any plans or rituals for the beginning of fall? What about a favorite type of monster: ghosts, vampires, zombies, mildly dampened Mogwai?

Or do you prefer the cute spooky vibes of Coraline, Jack Skellington, or the Great Pumpkin?

All fall, after all, is good fall.