Today is really my first time traveling just for the sake of travel, as opposed to dealing with family crises or for work, since the pandemic started, and even if it's a relatively short trip, 4 nights each in Guangzhou and Hanoi, I really needed it.

You know the idea of forest bathing? I think there's a need for a more general version of that concept. Like, whether you're in a forest, a church, a temple, a museum, I think we just need to be somewhere quietly, meditatively, beautiful for a few hours a week to connect to something deeper.

Went to Seonbawi Rock on Inwangsan Mountain in Seoul today. It's considered sacred in Korean Shamanism and is visited by women praying for fertility. A beautiful and fascinating place.

Been thinking a lot about folklore and its connections with sustainability and environmentalism recently. Kind of feeling the need to reenchant my interactions with the world.

The exodus from the other site got me thinking about how much media has been lost due to old social media platforms dying. Like, imagine the digital crate-digging possibilities if somebody archived all the music posted on MySpace before it collapsed.

In case anyone's looking for some music recommendations, I made this list last year and have been gradually adding to it since then. It's a record from every country or territory, every year since the invention of the phonograph, and every genre in the RYM database

rateyourmusic.com/list/stereob...

I never actually got any use out of Twitter, and mostly used Facebook to post travel photos for my older relatives who never got the chance to get out of the US to see. I'm going to try to use Bluesky more in the hopes that it can be a more positive social media experience.

I feel like I'm constantly on a rollercoaster of being overwhelmed by the goodness in the world and the marvelous complexity of its beauty, followed almost immediately by being immensely disappointed in the capacity it has for cruelty and stupidity.