Algorithmic Loneliness

Hello, friends who're just finding this blog. It's funny that, after all this time dithering and missing LJ, I've just gone and YOLO'd into posting my most intimate personal life for anyone who hasn't got the foresight to look away. ;)

I've lived in San Francisco for six months now. And... I didn't think this was likely, but I'm more cut off from folks than ever. I started thinking about it - I see that friends are gathering, I see that things are happening, but I have no idea when or why. (There are also a lot of events I see happen at which I feel unwelcome, but that's another story entirely.)

Some time in the last month, Facebook  or Google discontinued the FB-Events-feed-to-Gcal integration. Is it a bug? A Product choice to make people look at the Events page, thus increasing DAU (daily active users, for those of you so blessed as to not have to think about these things)? Since the feed apparently still works with iCal, is it some sort of competitive maneuvering between Google and FB? All three? Possibly. But the end result is the same - I no longer know what's going on, and it's made me take a hard look at the infrastructure of my social life.

Years ago, we used to plan our lives on Yahoo Calendar. These days it's GCal. Evites went out by email, and we added them laboriously to our To Do lists. Blogs were written, invitations to those who found them. Parties were had.

Now, we have better technology (automatic add-to-calendar! feeds of events!) and yet the experience is so much worse. Why? Ads have broken the internet.

Spammers are ruining email. (Spammers send ads on an incredible scale for marginal return, but since the services are "free" and the tools are easy to come by, they're happy to hydraulic mine the virtual world.) An acquaintance of mine maintained a Google Group for mailing invitations to her (very popular) annual event (she'd outgrown the threshold where she could use her normal email client), but at some point she ran up against the limits for spam reputation scoring. She'd send the invitation, and suddenly her account would be locked down (rate limited). Only a third of the emails would be delivered (SMTP ban). In the end, she split the invitations into more groups that were below the "bulk email" threshold - but like so many of us in the small-Silicon-Valley, she has more than two thousand friends (including partners and plus ones) who'd be welcome at this party. Last I heard she was considering a newsletter service like MailChimp to get around how we've broken email.

What about commercial invitation services, like Evite? Evite is clearly struggling to monetize - they need clickthrough on their emails to make sure that they get their ads served, and so the "invitation" is now an envelope, which you must click, and then click again, and then a third time (three pages of ads!) in order to read the details and RSVP. If there's an "export to calendar" link I haven't yet found it. And this explains why, in an age when, when making a dinner reservation I automatically have it on my Gcal in seconds, and when my partner's arrival gate is on the calendar minutes from their plan touching down, Evite, Green Envelope, and other commercial services will never add this convenience feature. Which means that in the deluge of email, if I miss one that contains an invite, I'm effectively not invited to that party. (There are of course edge cases with spammers sending Evites to think about... but guh.)

There are Public Gcals, but nobody has time for that, somehow. There are RSS feeds, but it seems like since the death of Google Reader, so few people are actually willing to shell out a few bucks to maintain continuity of feed.

No, let's call it what it is - integrity of feed. When companies started dicking with the chronological order of information in order to show more ads, they broke... everything. We've got dark patterns, corporate skullduggery, and human suffering as a result.

So now we come to Facebook Events, and why I don't like to use them.

Facebook events are subject to The Algorithm. I noticed this the second time I tried to host a birthday party - Only about 1/3 of the list was actually shown the event. You can imagine how that felt. And yet I tried a few times to host birthdays this way - at one point I had thirty people RSVP and six show up. Two years ago, three people. Last year, none but my partner. So this year I messaged some people who were local, and who wouldn't be too put out, and I put an event on my Gcal and I invited the eight of them *by email*. It was the best birthday in years.* At some point I can't blame this on having shitty friends (though there's literally a meme about "The San Francisco RSVP") but on algorithmic meddling.

I also work with a few groups who put on semi-professional events, and I've seen where the Algorithm gets its hooks in to monetize. "That's a lovely event invitation you have there. It's a shame if something were to... happen to it. Maybe you'd like to buy some... ahem... insurance for it? Say like $5 in promotion? Look how many more people will see it!"  That works for the first event, but the next event it's $8, and then at some point it's $20 and the service says "Oh huh, you should just get a monthly subscription to promotion services! It'll save you money!"  Not today, Satan.  Every single person on our list is here because they specifically signed up, and you're holding our audience hostage?

In the end, most of these groups I've recommended get... a email newsletter service like MailChimp, so that we know that the people who want our notes actually get them.

It's interesting, because post-Tumblrgeddeon, Patreon is also building what's essentially a cul-de-sac, walled-garden shadow RSS service. I should also mention that post-Tumblrgeddeon, I *miss* seeing content (however inane) from my friends, and knowing that they're out there.**

So here's my request to you - email me. 

Let's go low(er)-tech for a bit. We'll start a conversation, and I'll invite you to things. No ads need be involved.



(* Modulo some health stuff which I haven't blogged about.)
(** Though if I can't tell your posts from sales pitches, it's not "friend" content. That's a blog for another-'nother time.)

Return

Well, it felt good until the bubble popped, at least. 

Work has been frustrating, but apparently not just frustrating, but the person I'm reliant on's inability to hit deadlines is actually endangering my employment. I'm pretty freaked out. I'm being given another task to prove myself, but... It also feels like I'm being given enough rope to hang myself.

Time will tell, I suppose.

Another half a year gone

A bit more than half a year, I suppose. It's been hard, but... good?

I last wrote that I thought I had PCOS. I was incorrect. This year after nearly three years of constant bowel and stomach problems which my primary care doctor blamed on, essentially, my fatness, I went to see a GI doctor. After a round of antibiotics for SIBO did nothing (well, it did make me less flatulent, but yeah that wasn't the biggest problem), we decided to do some exploratory work. On June 5th I had a routine exploratory endoscopy and colonoscopy, which turned into the removal of a 22mm tubulovillous adenoma from my lower bowel. That's about the size of a quarter, for folks imagining this from home. Imagine that interrupting the flow of things. If it had been a few millimeters larger, it would've been considered cancerous. 

June 29th was my last day at "work" - and we had one last round of ramen and that was the end of that. What a time to be facing health insurance stability questions, hey? They were kind enough to leave us on the books until July 2nd, so we got an extra month, so in the end I only needed one month of COBRA coverage before the new job's insurance kicked in.

(On December 5th I had a followup colonoscopy. They cut out a few straggling bits of leftover adenoma, but the fact there were more means I have to go back in another six months, which I do not relish at all. The prep for the procedure is horrible and the recovery period from sedation makes me feel like an impossible invalid.)

So... the new job started right before Burning Man. I literally had two weeks on, then two weeks out in the desert, then came back and threw myself back into startup land. And honestly, I'd missed it - the feeling that at this size of company you can really DO things and make change happen. My new team isn't an engineering one, and that's been really hard for me to adjust to - but at the same time they have the social skills that I'll need to keep climbing the ladder.

I should mention that I seem to have skipped "senior writer" titles entirely and gone on to something slightly above that? There was a pay bump that matched that title bump, and after a very spare few weeks commuting I found myself staying up in the City more and more, despite... Well, let's say there were some big changes in the life of one I hold dear, twenty days after my last post, and we've been helping each other through everything since.

The housing search that'd stalled out so fruitlessly kicked back into gear, and the end result was a terrifying move, and I now live in the Central Sunset, in San Francisco. 

I have so many thoughts about the weirdness of finding myself here, after all those years protesting that I never would come here because I was from the suburbs for crying out loud and we don't do cities.  What changed?  I did. London changed me. I still own a car, but right now it's a luxury I wish I could do without. (The City is weirdly bifurcated between places of dense urban layout with transit and shops... and suburban deserts, still densely populated but poorly served by transit and things like grocery stores and pharmacies. I'm on the inner edge of one of those latter spots.)

Menlo Park, it turns out, is stupidly expensive. And my now-ex-landlord decided to make my leave taking as hard as possible - even after all the move was done, I had three days of hard graft cleaning and emptying and cleaning some more. (All unnecessary by law, as I found out - and then she tore out the entire bathroom after making me clean it. ) I hope she reaps the bitter fruit of the exploitative prices they've charged.

It's been a long day and it's nearly one in the morning so I should sleep. But I live in a 1945 duplex and have a surprisingly well furnished place. I just need to figure out better storage options and empty out some more boxes!

Half a year

It's been nearly half a year since my last post, since I'd resolved to look for a new job. I spent the first quarter year there looking and interviewing while also trying to remain loyal to the team and do the work asked of me. In early March, after working myself actually into illness, and failing a writing sample for a prospective job because I just couldn't give enough time to it, I returned to work and was told that my project was being reorged away from (heavily implied: costly) San Francisco.

The deliverables I'd sacrificed my health and a prospective future to were no longer due.

It figures. It was on-brand, really. The queen of lost causes, going down with the ship. (Oh yes, and today is one year and one day since Things Ended.)

At least this time I have some time. There's a little work to do to help the transition, and the company feels badly about this since everyone here was performing well. They're trying to place us internally, or letting us ride out to the transition date, so it's *like* having a part time job that retains my salary. Everyone else has started going to the gym; almost everyone else has a transfer offer in hand though, and none of them are quite living as close to the wire as I am.

I've been busting my ass interviewing. I realized at this point I'm a Senior Writer (tm) and it honestly started to freak me out. "Senior" means more expensive, it means you're the middle layer that gets cut when times are lean. And it wasn't until I was in an all-day intensive interview (the second in this six month period, and the first of... four upcoming) and I heard these inspiring leadership-type words falling out of my mouth that I realized... yeah, actually, I'm okay with that. I think I'm ready.

In the mean time, let me use the last two months of the relatively-good insurance wisely.

The sinus infections that I'd shaken for over a year came back in February. And then again in April. The crusty old curmudgeon of an ENT finally retired, so I'm finally getting an ENT to take a look. My right ear has been plugged and painful since late April so it's Time.

Also, I think I have PCOS. I'm not sure what causes it (apparently nobody is?) but so many of the random annoying shit stacks up into a pile of co-morbidities that are... pretty compelling. My appointment to get screened is in two weeks. I get to talk about the major indigestion, about the cramping and sharp pains always to the lower left and about every four weeks, about the floaters in my eyes, those couple of dark hairs that keep showing up on my chin, the sugar cravings, the weight gain around my middle (god, he'd be so smug to have dumped me "before she got fat again"), the scary liver panel that they pulled from my blood when I drove myself to Urgent Care the day before Christmas Eve.

Last night I gave a talk at Odd Salon and invited an Ohlone woman to give the Welcome to Country. I feel like it's the best thing I've done in awhile. Today I gave a *hard* presentation about myself and my work to a stony-faced interview panel, but it sounds like the reviews may all be okay anyway? On Friday I interview across the street from the place I worked... 12 years ago. My god, how time passes.

I still haven't sewn anything in ages. Costume pieces are piling up and I need to have another fabric sale. I'm holding my house hunt on pause until the job search resolves, and that too is an act of will.

In the end, I have to build my own home first. And there's an order of operations there; I can't do all the things at once. First job, then move, then build that home. (I'd also be pleasantly surprised if I could get the car insurance company of the guy who hit me to actually pay my medical bills, but this seems like one of those things that requires bulldog-like determination, rather than luck.)

Who knows what the future holds? I am reservedly optimistic.

God Jul

I lit the first candle at 4 in the afternoon, when the light began to grow wan through the trees.

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died...

It has been the worst year in my memory.

I am not usually the type of person to say these things. I'm really not. When all of my friends, year after year, spend January 29th and 30th counting off the horrible things that have happened to them, I spend a quiet moment or two in introspection remembering the good things.

But it started in November really, and I haven't felt safe since.

Don't stop, can't stop, it's like a freight train
Don't stop, can't stop, it's like an airplane going down

There are so very few good things this year. (Maybe even really only one, because he's the thread that runs through nearly every good moment this year.)

And there are so many bad.

I discovered a job that I'd taken was terrible. I managed to find a new job that promised great things, even if it only gave a small pay bump and meant the commute would be worse. That's okay, we were going to move and take The Next Step.

I took a vacation that was good, but also... well. If I'd known it was the only break I'd get, I probably would've done something different with it.

I started the new job. The boss I was supposed to report to quit. The guy I interviewed with turned suspicious and sour. The team I was to join had someone doing the role I'd been told I'd be helping, and he didn't want my help. Furthermore he felt threatened by me. There was no steady process. Another colleague left. And another. Down to three devs. Then we hired one, and another left. The team grew, the numbers shrank. Nerves frayed.

In May, my car was totaled.

Two days later, my heart was totaled.

I've got time, but you're tired of waiting
You only want me in other spaces
Come fill your gaps with people
I know no one
So lonely trying to be yours
When you're looking for so much more

I say my heart, but it was as if my future disappeared, like retreating backwards into a tunnel. My plans that would've made the small pay bump okay suddenly weren't happening. And then my rent went up. And I found, to my horror, that my decision to take that job, combined with the low pay and the fact that I'd been under market on rent for so long meant that suddenly... I was living paycheck to paycheck (more or less - I have savings yet) and unable to afford to move.

On these roads
Out of love, so it goes
How it feels when we fall, when we fold
How we lose control, on these roads
How it sings as it goes

(I still am, really.)

I watched friends and loved ones take vacations while I sat at home trying to find ways to spend less money, trying to think of ways to sell the things I don't need, trying to strategize ways to divvy up my things to take up less space, to require less room in a place I could maybe move to.

Shattered by an email
Your words will fade away
Castle built in the sand
Will only last one day
I'm holding on and I don't want to let you go, oh
Yeah, it feels like summer
Yeah, it feels like summer to me

But this past week I had my glowing performance review, accompanied by a raise that is such a pathetic pittance I was stunned and made some sort of half hearted comment like "every little bit helps." It's 1.2% my salary. It's 1/3 the rate of inflation. It's enough to cover five months of how much my rent went up just this year. It covers nothing. I spent way more of that day weeping in the bathroom than I would've expected; I busted my ass and moved heaven and earth and get nothing but some pretty words on paper.

It steeled me, if nothing else? I can no longer afford to work there - my health, my time, my sanity is worth so much more - and so now I have nothing to lose by telling them that they need to pay me more or I'm leaving. Because I will.

And I walked off you
And I walked off an old me
Oh me oh my I thought it was a dream
So it seemed
And now, breathe deep
I'm inhaling
You and I, there's air in between
Leave me be
I'm exhaling
You and I, there's air in between
You and I, there's air in between

This whole year has been the shortest day, when the light seems thin and wan, when the cold bites and nothing seems quite as it should be.

So farewell to the gloaming dark, and welcome the light's return. May things look up from here.

The Shortest Day
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.

-- Susan Cooper

The storm passes

And like lancing an infection, I feel... better.

And I'm going to bed now.

Tee plus six months

or... the Green Eyed Monster.

It's been six months, twelve days, and probably about eight minutes, but I don't feel like going into Google Timeline to see exactly when the perp-walk back to my apartment in the moonlight was, exactly.

It's hellacious.

Facebook is the devil.

Today, a woman I barely know, who is tiny and fierce and thin and pretty, and more or less everything I wish I was, posted that her partner, who shares my ex's name and who I once fancied, had bought a house. And now her housing stability problems were solved for more than six months at a time.

Cue me, 34 years old, trying desperately not to cry on a packed commuter train.

I am having to actively unfollow my female "friends" whose lives seem so charmed. One who has the husband, the house, the kid, the workshop, the high profile business. One who has the high profile, the business she owns, the jet-setting lifestyle. One who has the retirement, the workshop, the cozy stability of house and home.

I am having to actively unfollow my friends with whom I was once close. Because I realize that I have fallen into a realm so far below them; they only invite me to things accidentally, they're surprised if I turn up, they spend their time insensitively bitching about the problems I would love to have, they don't call, write, or ask to meet up when they're in town. They hide the fact that they are in town. They are successful, and if failure is catching then they're insulating themselves from the plague.

I have failed as a person.

I am still estranged from my family; it was supposed to get better with time but I feel, if anything, worse than I ever have about them. After the utter bullshit abuse heaped on my by my little brother in August, and my father's continued failure to protect me from any of it, my little sister's crazy BPD targeting of me and my mother's NPD setting of everyone against me - I just have nothing left for them.

I have nothing.

I have a grinding three-hour-twenty-minute daily round trip commute, a rent which saps my will to live, an allergy which prevents me finding a housemate, a job that uses my own talents and work ethic to keep me off-balance and bound to them, all while underpaying me. All of which was supposed to not be a problem because I was supposed to have someone to share this burden with. Someone to build a home with. And now I have nothing, almost literally nothing, to look forward to. I cannot even afford a vacation, and if I could there is nobody who has time/money/desire to go with me. There will never be a respite from fear. There will never be a feeling of stability. There is little but a grinding loneliness with a grave at the end to look forward to.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are now times when I fear for my own safety.

And that is the scary thing that I need to own, because only by owning it can you (readers) hold me accountable. I have been hearing l'appel du vide for months now, and so far pushing the thoughts away like the arm of an inattentive commute neighbor. Even now I can't write the name here and am reverting to the French euphemism. But I was reading The Depression Thing and I got to the point that ends "Huh" and I got cold chills because if he has to call it that then I have to call it that and putting a name to a thing that's haunted you for so long makes it too real.

I don't want to die.

I want to rest. I want to feel like I have some modicum of control. I want to make art. I want to be happy with work.

There is some part of me that recognizes all the good in my world right now (and in fact I keep thinking about deleting this whole thing, as the best part of my world right now will be reading it from the other side of the world), but that sentiment is being overwhelmed by the fact that after five years together, after four long years of loving someone, he can cast you off with barely a backwards glance and immediately get on with his life. With hardly a word to you. And I feel so cheated, so thwarted, as if every plan in my world had been destroyed and I am owed compensation.

I don't even get the emotional satisfaction of knowing he's hurting. He has no proper feelings and has acknowledged as much himself, repeatedly. He's already dating and the pain is morphing to anger, which, without any target, morphs back into despair.