Watch as I go through all my open Safari tabs one by one

A stroll through a part of my brain

I have recently become aware that I keep tabs open on my browser for insanely long periods of time. Both on my phone and my laptop. Here is a list of Safari tabs open on my phone:

1. article on Ghost.io, an alternative to Substack that some to many substack writers are moving to over their platform partly or entirely due to the fact that Substack platforms some terrible anti-trans humans? I have a previous piece where I wrote about this. I still have not come to any kind of decision about leaving Substack so I’m still there and here on Medium.
2. lol a link to Carvell Wallace’s website I must have opened like over a year ago. It was a link to this piece in The Toast titled The Negro Motorist Green Book and Black America’s Perpetual Search For A Home from 2016. I’m glad I finished it, it’s stunning, personal, and vulnerable and why I love this person’s writing.
3. Multiple links to Going With Grace’s website, an end of life training course started by Alua Arthur, that I completed this year. For the class starting in June 2021, I will be a student guide for 8 students who I will help guide through the course materials but more importantly the various feelings that come up when we examine our own shit around dying.
4. Patreon page for Oceana Sawyer, end of life doula. My first time becoming a Patreon for anyone. Oceana is an amazing resource for grieving people, BIPOC people, people wanting to live more fully because of grief, people wanting to live. Their instagram.
5. Nycgovparks.org — I live in Brooklyn and it’s now summer so I’m interested in all the public pool offerings. All the pools seem open so that’s great.
6. Prospectpark.org — for a hot second I thought I could sign up my kids for last minute tennis summer camps but then I remembered who I am and where I live. Everything is god damn full, and you know what, I’m better off with all the kooky camps that let me in last minute anyway. That’s where we belong.
7. thepaintedcloud.com — one of these camps that I love, art camp for kids that is run by artists, who care about process over product. Sarah and Julian run it, they’re dope and it’s based in Williamsburg.
8. Facebook — someone tagged me in a photo and i had to open the app.
9. google forms by my kid’s school about summer programs.
10. I was googling “hui another name for white people”? because I heard the term being used by two white women and maybe wanted to believe white people were now talking about themselves more directly as a constructed race, maybe it was kind of hopeful thinking. But no, google says “The Hui people are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam distributed throughout China, mainly in …”
11. This is so funny because it’s true, have fun watching: #TinaFey : “Having a teenage daughter is like having an office crush, because you’re thinking about them a lot more than they’re thinking about you.”
12. https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781635900767 — Link to this book that I wanted to order but forgot to so I’m ordering now. by Kate Zambreno. The description: On the ongoing project of writing about grief; Zambreno’s addendum to Book of Mutter.”I came up with the idea of writing these notes, or talks, out of a primary desire to not read from Book of Mutter, and instead to keep gesturing to its incompleteness and ongoingness, which connects, for me, to the fragmentary project of literature, and what I long for in writing.
    — from Appendix Project
13. Ordering Japanese takeout from https://www.tradroombrooklyn.com/
14. Googling when does voting end today for the NY Primaries.
15. Googling whether the bear in Please bear with me is spelled bare or bear.
16. A hipster bagel shop that I should have ordered in advance from b/c the wait was very real on a Sunday AM.
17. I spoke about this interview in LATimes with historian/writer Robin D.G. Kelley in a previous post, and it’s still open in my Safari tabs which usually means I don’t want to let it go.
18. Mobile tickets for Brooklyn Botanical Garden which we didn’t use because of #16.
19. I was checking out Sabrina Orah Mark’s column Happily in the Paris Review, I don’t remember how I got to this column, I was resisting reading it because I have some weird (likely rooted in patriarchy) issue with columns/posts/etc specifically about Motherhood. But I finished the ~Hope.docx piece from March and I’m glad I did.
20. Link to sample ballot for the NYC primary.
21. Link to a farm camp upstate. Farms are great, I have sent my kids to some of these camps, it’s all mostly been fine and very white. Hence the link stays open and no decisions are made, because things are complicated. And sometimes links stay open on your phone, and you just sit with a decision and it’s not a failure. It’s just taking time. And often, things become clear, or other things enter that feel like a better fit. So all those open browser tabs are not a failure, that’s mainly what I’m here to say.
22. Following writers on Twitter is so strange. People will be using acronyms like BL, which stands for BreadLoaf which is a writer’s conference. I guess I was looking up what BreadLoad or BL was. It looks lovely and is for two weeks in August and I’m waiting for the writers’ conference that also has a summer camp/farm thing that I can bring my kids to during the day, oh and can you feed us all 3 meals a day? I’ll write the best shit you ever heard of. Promise. Someone please invent this or point me to one that exists.
23. UPS link to try to figure out what kind of ID I need to pick up a package from one of those random UPS access points where your packages go in the neighborhood when you’re not home. I’ve recently picked up two packages that have ended up at places like these. One was a deli where the packages were piled up next to the hot griddle, and the person helping me pulled out sheets of paper with names and numbers on it, and despite everything seeming chaotic, I got my kids’ sandals from Zappos delivered to my hands and my name was crossed off a paper list, which in case you were wondering, is still very satisfying.
24. Leaving this one blank because it involves the privacy of another person.
25. This link is my account page for my askpolly. substack which I was checking because I wanted to cancel my paid subscription.
26. Ditto above but for Ask.Molly
27. Link to this art book about the GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE: ART AND MOURNING IN AMERICA exhibit at the New Museum which I missed.
28. ugh mildly embarrassing, I googled “who is herbie hancock”.
29. A link to this TCI interview I did with gamers Tanya DePass and B. Dave Walters. I loved this conversation and learned about Twitch, Black and Brown gamers in joyful resistance, and community building.
30. DOE school calendar trying to figure out when the last day of school was because I had mentally checked out sometime in April.
31. Apparently I was googling Little Simz. Their song Venom is fire.
32. Someone sent me this link. And I haven’t looked too much into it but here is some of the description: horny explores the personal/political/cultural moments and events that have reshaped women’s attitudes towards sex/dating/their own horniness. i’ll be telling a lot of my own stories of horn and i want to hear all of yours, too.
33. A crowdcast.io link to a reading series with Alexander Chee and Melissa Febos, two of my favorite writers. It passed and was great. I hope zoom readings don’t go away completely. I’ve gone to a bunch over pandemic and it has been wonderful.
34. A link to my last substack which I thought was quite good, have you read it?
35. I don’t know what this was about:
36. I was googling this book: Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian American. Wow i’m getting tired of my open tabs. I saw Jenny Wang, PHD in conversation with psychotherapist Shinhee Han on instagram here. It all has confirmed what I believe to be true, no therapist/mental health provider can be providing care to a POC in America without understanding on a base level racism towards that ethnic/cultural/religious group, immigration, the historical context of that particular group of people. And if this seems too difficult to do, then why did you enter a healing profession? Mental health in America of BIPOC people cannot be looked at without understanding systemic structures of oppression and harm.
37. This lovely list of Nikky Finney books on Charis Books & More. I haven’t read their work but I’ve loved other poets and writers’ work who swear by Finney so it’s just a matter of time. Enter your fave Finney book in the comments.
38. OK this is so dumb how many tabs I have open, I’m tired but I’m stubborn so I will finish this. It’s getting brief from here on out. This link: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/books/review/caleb-azumah-nelson-open-water.amp.html
39. Taxilandia link that no longer works b/c the show is over. Sidenote: you know you’ve had a tab open for hella long when the link is now inactive.
40. I googled a Brooklyn Family court attorney for a friend who needed a lawyer rec. I used to work there.
41. This paper on Imagining queer futures to ensure queer survival that looks interesting but can’t remember how I got here or how much I read through:
42. https://www.green-wood.com/event/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-death-doula/?mc_cid=42f0522cf4&mc_eid=4e3af78bdd . Lowkey… evening events at Greenwood Cemetary are your summer hot ticket. Take a friend and this is a whole weird thing to do in the city.
43. I was googling the white dude who has a statue of him in Fulton park in predominantly Black but very quickly gentrifying Bedstuy. Robert fulton made or designed steamboats or something and the statue should not exist. If you need me to say it, find me 5 statues of women or even persons of color in NYC. If you can find 5, then google how many statues total there are. ugh i’m so tired of my tabs!
44. This is cool. https://griefdeck.com/about/
45. A nytimes covid link that went dormant (b/c covid shit changes all the time).
46. I was googling a ymca in cape cod b/c I took my kids there for a week and I’m recently separated and a single co-parent so travelling with my kids on vacations solo still somewhat terrifies me. but i’m getting better at it. And my kids did not get put into a camp on our vacation LOL and we had an amazing time with friends. (Is anyone reading this?!)
47. OK I guess I was googling Christopher Reeve.
48. I googled turkey dog food allergen?
49. I buy coffee beans from Nguyen coffee Supply and it’s good. this was tab 49.
50. I get dog food from The Farmer’s Dog, b/c I thought it would stop the itching, this is tab 50.
51. dead link
52. googling TTRPG — tabletop role-playing game, research for #29.
53. Old substacks of mine, read them all, they are excellent.
54. Link to my TCI interviews.
55. I googled Black superhero movie.
56. Some Curbed article on office spaces in history that honestly looking back seems like a not so subtle ploy to get people back in those hell-holes. Dont quote me though I haven’t read it.
57. A QR code for a menu for a restaurant that I had lunch at with my mom and sister on my birthday, they are lovely they have senior hours and provide free meals to those who need them, no questions asked. https://qrco.de/bbqWCn
58. Sidenote a strange thing is happening as I write this, more tabs are opening on my laptop browser as I write this substack about closing and documenting tabs on my phone and I just think thats wrong and maybe just a metaphor for life. or not.
59. how to i even have 59 tabs open on my phone safari??? ok #59 is me googling flower shops in my nabe. I think I was looking for marigolds, b/c they are healing in death and grief work.
60. a letter from the Chancellor of DOE schools at the end of the school year saying we made it.
61. I ordered this frother and its great so here’s the link for that: https://golde.co/collections/all-products/products/superwhisk
62. my vet
63. googling pet insurance.
64. WHEW, I feel like if you’re still reading, well, thank you? you now know me in a strange and intimate way that I now know myself in as well, having completed this exercise of exploring all my open phone tabs. I learned somethings about my brain, how I leave things undone because somethings are not ready to be done just yet, I like where my brain wanders generally, and I hope maybe one or two of my open tabs did something for you.