Asides

Fatima:

I’ve been sensing more clearly that expressions like bismillah, alhamdulillah, allahu akbar, and subhanallah vibrate on a higher frequency. When we say it, we tune in to those frequencies. They also double as affirmations. A lot of this New Age spiritual “manifestation” culture has existed for centuries in the Qur’an.

Going down the rabbit hole of leftwing tendencies is enlightening. Before today, I didn’t know what council communism or who Anton Pannekoek was, but ultimately it is an exercise in futility. The left fractures, and the reactionaries cohere much more easily. The project of keeping things the same or traditional lends itself to cohesion, whereas radicals and people for change have their own ideas of the future and readings of the past of what went wrong and right.

I’ve been thinking about this tension within the concept of a vanguard party, espoused by Marxist-Leninists, or dual power and mutual aid groups, preferred by anarchists. I’ve historically though myself more in favor of decentralization, but when confronted with the problem of climate change, perhaps a centralized project is worth considering. 🤷🏼‍♂️

I updated my /now page today. Seemed like an appropriate thing given that now is so different than before, for all of us.

Without any English classes on Tuesdays, I’m using this rainy day to continue my dive headfirst into the new block-centric world of WordPress. Funny thing is that I’m just getting more comfortable working with Divi for a site. But really, with a Gutenberg-compatible theme like GeneratePress and a few block library plugins, I can pretty much recreate everything I’ve worked on.

Blocks are the future of WordPress. And with the new editor integrating into the WordPress iOS app in a recent beta, maybe my dream of developing (at least simple) business websites and blogs from an iPad is coming true.

A thing I need to get used to about the working-from-home lifestyle is utilizing the time in between commitments to be more productive. When I was teaching full-time in Mauritania, I was more carefree on breaks between classes. I considered them downtime, a space to breathe, to rest the mind, and prepare for the next lessons.

Now, I have things to do around the house, errands, and other projects I want to complete, like writing or reading. Sometimes I have hours between classes and I need to make the most out of them.