When I come back from my current break, I'm gonna be enforcing a new rule: Anyone who brings pessimism/doomerism into my mentions gets muted. Before you get preemptively outraged and/or make assumptions that I'm saying more than the exact words I said, please read full explanation downthread.

Time for another social media break! Please send me messages at proton.me if you miss me.

prioritize the good stuff #photography #scape #nature #takeabreak #wellbeing #mentalhealth #lifeisbeautiful

Anyone wishing to participate in Mishell's birthday festivities-- either through messages, letters, or virtual meet-ups--can reach out to me.

It's weird how "I love America" has become code for "I hate more than half the people who live here."

Sunset in Freemantle.

If there is anything you still care about hosted on LJ -- posts, links, icons, photos, anything -- and you don't have a backup, get that backup ASAP. I have not stayed current on ways to back up. The ones I used to know of:

Hello, day 2 of 2026. I am happy to be in you.

letting go of thought... #Scape #photography #nature #stillness #silence #youarenotyourthoughts #justbe #wellness #lifeisbeautiful

I would have stuck with Proton mail even if I didn't like it much, because I'm that eager to detach from the GenAI Overlords Investment Circle, but I was surprised to find it very non stressful and easy to adjust to. I'll be sharing my experiences with other Billionaire Alternatives this year.

Moving from Gmail to Proton was easy and seamless for me, and I have zero regrets. Same for calendar. Proton docs is not yet where I need it to be (no page breaks) but I have faith they'll get there. @proton.me

I've found I can always count on Jason Sanford to be on the right side of pretty much any issue.

I hate to keep harping on substack's Nazi problems, but I've had an increase in recommendations lately that I read stuff on there, so just a little reminder that I have an Absolutely No Substack, No Exceptions policy, I'm sorry. I would love to read anyone's things if they are available elsewhere!

hey i made it through all of 2025 without feeling even a little bit tempted to use AI in any of my workflows, creative or academic. How come this inevitable technology keeps being trivially evitable

Right. Today is the day. For January, if you would care to join me, we are doing a 200 words a day creative writing reset, adventure, challenge - whatever you want to call it. Prose, nonfiction, poetry. I'll offer a simple daily prompt if you're stuck but feel free to ignore. discord.gg/WmZuTjtRq

Ensure, so uh... balanced? Confident? Fluid? Yes, yes.

What if WHAT IF we resolved to edit out "in spite of everything" and all its beaten, despairing cousins from our posts and instead just say the good thing without apology or mitigation?

Oooooh, I got "preeminent"! Seems unlikely, but I'll take it!

😍 Lovely to wake up to, thank you!!

Bidding farewell to 2025 huddled under blankets drinking Pedialyte, but damn it was a great year for me. I have no shame in saying that. I measure it by the choices I made, not by random misfortune or what other people did wrong around me, and I will always measure it that way.

So what does the M in MTV stand for now?

The starkest difference I see when I look back on the things I grew up in fear of on the Right, is that ALL of it was hypothetical, it was slippery-slopes, it was "sure this LOOKS innocent, but...", it was anecdotal. It was a world haunted by hand-wavey future harms supposedly implied by progress.

I don't normally have a chemo pump attached to me on New Year's Eve, but here we are, and I am going to try to do my New Year stuff anyway, gently raking my brain like a zen garden, clarifying intent, deciding who I want to be.

A lot people still operate under the idea that politics is a bunch of rich white gentlemen in powdered wigs quibbling about tax percentages, so there’s not much difference between the two major parties. They don’t realize one is a Nazi regime and has been headed that way a long time.

Right-wingers feel existentially threatened by simply having to observe us living our lives. We feel threatened by their repeated efforts to wipe us completely from existence and have the world to themselves. This is not a balanced debate.

Ironically, I only kept paying for a @sfwa.org membership after I retired from writing novels because they wouldn't let me volunteer otherwise (which I did for something like 8 years, and have a service award for). If they bow to AI billionaires' schemes, they'll never get another dollar from me.

Aliens. Pluto. It just makes sense.

F) For the love of all that is good and holy stop wondering if your idea is any good! That way lies madness. Your idea, whatever it is, will live or die by its execution. Commit to your idea. Eat and drink your idea. Play with it, have fun with it.

Well, that was the worst Chemo Tuesday so far. Hoping it was an outlier and not a new normal. That said, I'm already starting to feel better, and I managed to finish THREE games on Choice of Games, so it wasn't a total loss.

I definitely am pleased that my books have done well and hope my new book will do even better. But these feelings are completely separate from other writers' careers. I do not understand resentment over others getting money/awards I did not. Readers/critics get to like what they like.

I think it is extremely valuable to have good, smart, discerning readers who are not writers (or not writers of the things I write). If I were only writing for other writers, I would feel tense and besieged and unhappy, to be honest.

Stop allowing people to tell you they need you without asking them why. Everything you need to know is in that why……

This is really good! I am playing as me, more or less, but already looking forward to trying again as someone flirtier and more disruptive.

This is still so good.

Back when I was hot, walking to the post office was a situation. Once when a man started leering and making comments, rather than say "I'm married with two children" or ignoring him I loudly demonstrated my terrifiying impression of a murderously growling and barking dog. He was stunned to silence.

Waiting forever for the hot water so I can avoid the mundane unpleasantness of cold water in a wintry house reminds me of how I used to have to wait forever for the hot water to avoid the feeling of plunging both hands into a bucket of electrified needles. Small victories.

I wish to sleep, but my medication alarm is just gonna wake me up in an hour or two and it's gonna feel weird.

I read aloud the entirety of this silly little fanfic I wrote for my RP guild. Warning: it is not a silly little fanfic. The assignment was, journalist writes an account of a massacre in a way that will help our players feel more okay with the fact that we are about to go Full Murder on the Horde.

your evening moment of calm

Me breaking the ice when people come to visit for the first time since my cancer diagnosis

Does "bury" rhyme with furry or fairy? This is driving me insane.

Most devastating voiced lines in Mass Effect 2: 1) "Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong." 2) "...There was a hole." Both lines are easily missable. Tragic.

I did not know pizza could give me bad feelings, but here we are.

When I say "check in on" people who are depressed I don't mean, insist that they do your favorite expensive treatment, I mean, do something warm and fun and remind them they are people.

I have allowed my daughter to come hang out with me on a Chemo Day for the first time; pray for us both

Some of you, upon hearing that there are orcs in my novel, may wonder if they eat with spoons and forks. The answer is: spoons, but not forks, because if we're being honest, forks are kind of stupid. Just wash your hands. Says the woman who eats a slice of pumpkin pie like it's a slice of pizza

Anyway, I will stop babbling about pretend creatures and see what vidyagame I can manage in my current condition.

As of 12/24/25, USPS changed policy on when they postmark mail. Mail dropped off is no longer guaranteed a same-day postmark. Tax returns & other time-sensitive items are now stamped when they reach a regional processing center, which may be days later. Plan deadlines accordingly to avoid penalties.

The whole "half orc" and "half elf" situation in DnD sure puts me in a pickle. Largely "half orcs" have been removed from the game, but the story I'm running has both orcs and half orcs, so it matters. To start with: these are not "races," they are species. I stick by that.