Got to be birds flying higher

Posted by Wil

https://wilwheaton.net/2026/01/the-footsteps-of-a-rag-doll-dance/

https://wilwheaton.net/?p=9886

Marlowe and I were out on her morning walk, when we saw one of her friends.

“Hi Marlowe!” He said with a huge smile, while I struggled to keep up with her efforts to get her head under his outstretched hand.

While they enjoyed scritches, he and I had a long talk about the squirrels and birds in the neighborhood.

Y’all, I became a weird Bird Person so gradually, I can’t even tell you when it started.¹

Marlowe looked back at me, letting me know she had finished Friendship and was ready to return to Walkies.

Her friend and I said goodbye, and continued our walks.

We were about halfway up the block when I started thinking about my blog. Every morning, and almost every evening, I sit down at my desk and open WordPress. I click new and spend some disappointing minutes trying to post … something. Usually, I get overwhelmed by options or current events or both, and close the tab in frustration.

I’ve been trying, and failing, to find my way back to writing every day, even if it’s about something that I have decided is silly or pointless. Not everything has to be Super Important, I tell myself, and then I look at the news. It’s so awful. It’s like America ripped off the mask, and the monster we always knew was lurking underneath it wasn’t just a monster, it was a cosmic horror, indescribable and incomprehensible in its violence, fear, and anger. I look at that and I’m like, how can I not do something about this? How can I not talk about it, if only for the record? And I get stuck there.

One of the local ravens, Little Kevin, landed on a branch in front of me. They did that corvid chortle cluck thing, which I have come to understand is a greeting.

“Hey, buddy,” I said. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a couple of peanuts. I made my own clicking, clucking, chortling sounds as I tossed them into the middle of the street. Then I deliberately looked away, which I understand is a way to let corvids know we aren’t a threat.

I had only taken a couple of steps when their shadow passed across my face. I glanced behind me and watched Little Kevin pick up one, then two, peanuts, before they flew up into a tree. I made corvid sounds at them.

I love this, I thought. I’m going to mark this moment, so I don’t forget.

We rounded the corner, walking out of the shade. The sun was warm and welcoming on my skin. I am grateful for this. Everything is terrible, but I am grateful for this.

Maybe I’ll write about this on my blog, I thought.

And that’s when I got this anxious tightness in my chest, like I have a midterm in an hour and I haven’t studied. At all.

What the actual fuck is that about?

I don’t know, but It’s literally just a blog post, Wil. It’s not … whatever you’re making it.

I noticed that Marlowe was looking up at me, expectantly. I became vaguely aware of the jingling of dog tags. I realized that my body was on the corner, but my mind was someplace very far away. I realized that I was looking at a dog we call Marlowe’s Nemesis. Their Person waved to me, and I waved back. For the last three or four years, we have worked to convince our dogs that they don’t need to yell at each other when we pass on the street. Around a year ago, something changed and they both just … got over it. So now, when Marlowe sees her, she does a super good sit, just like I taught her. Her nemesis ignores us both, while their person and I exchange a silent greeting. None of us knows each other’s names.

“Better late than never, but waiting until you were 14 was certainly a choice, Mars,” I said as I gave her a treat.

Little Kevin flew over me and landed on the street light. They called, loudly, bowing their head a little bit and opening their wings. Almost immediately, another raven joined them. I was pretty sure it was their older sibling, who was a fledgling last year. We named them Kevin, after the bird in Up. Did you know that corvids live intergenerationally in the same nest? The older sibling will stay for a year and help raise the new fledgling². We watched Kevin teach Little Kevin how to hunt and eviscerate baby birds last summer, for instance. There’s nothing quite like walking out into the yard and discovering an avian ritual killing, first thing in the morning.

“Hi Kevin,” I said. I tossed another handful of peanuts into the street.

I’ve been doing daily meditations with the Calm App, off and on, for a few months. I started using it to help manage my anxiety, and to help fall asleep. It was super effective, so I looked into a more regular meditation practice, averaging about ten minutes a day. I can’t tell you why, because I don’t know and I don’t understand, but holy shit does it WORK. I struggle with nervous system dysregulation almost every day, and CPTSD flashbacks is my Sword of Damocles. I’ve been working diligently for years with a trauma-recovery therapist to help me, well, recover from my trauma. I use EMDR and IFS therapy, and it is working more effectively than I ever thought possible.³ I’m so much better, you guys, than I was just a year ago,⁴ but recovery is a journey with no destination beyond the next step, so my work doesn’t really end (but daily life has gotten much, much, easier. I think I may have enough to write a book about the experience).

So. To support my therapy, and give myself a kind of booster between sessions, I do meditation. I don’t know how it works or exactly what is happening, but I do know that, starting in like … October last year? I think? … I have been able to slow down in my head. I have been able to quiet my racing, anxious, worried, hypervigilant brain. And I don’t even know how I’m doing it, just that I am doing it.

Slowing down has made a huge, significant, difference for me.

A lightbulb popped over my head.

“Marlowe, this is important,” I said. “When I was regularly writing in my blog like twenty years ago, everything was slower. We didn’t have smartphones; we barely had dumb phones. We didn’t have social media. We didn’t have Influencers. It was slower, quieter. I could spend a whole day thinking about what I was going to write that night or the next morning. I wasn’t distracted and pulled in a dozen different directions. Daily life wasn’t an endless string of compounding traumas while we all hoped with everything we had that it will happen today.

“A thought that is now one or two posts on a social network was developed into a whole post on a blog. There was a community of regular readers who commented every time, and I had no idea how much I would miss that when it was gone.”

Marlowe looked up at me and did her best to understand. The Kevins fluttered down to the ground and began picking at the peanuts.

“It is unrealistic for me to expect myself to write now like I did then, because Now is fundamentally different. I am fundamentally different.”

Is it really as easy as adjusting my expectations for myself? Is it really as easy as not judging myself, and hitting publish instead of cancel?

There’s nothing tricky about it! It’s just a little trick!

I need to unplug. We all need to unplug. We all need to take breaks from the horrors. We need to slow down, even if it’s just for a couple of minutes.

Everything won’t be terrible forever. There’s a reckoning coming and I, for one, want to be ready.

If I don’t write about the mundane, if I don’t exercise the muscles I use when I make a post about walking my dog, watching birds, and reflecting on who I am right now, because all I want to do is scream at the horrors until I have no voice left, then I have surrendered in advance. I have given up doing something I love, that gives my life purpose and meaning.

I keep forgetting that I am a Helper, which I know is silly since I literally just wrote about that. But, you know, trauma makes you weird sometimes.

The Kevins followed us for a few houses. I tossed them some more peanuts and a minute later they both passed close by me, carrying them in their beaks. I could hear the soft rustle of their feathers and felt the downdraft on the side of my face.

I’m not gonna lie, it was magical.

When we got back to our house, I took Marlowe’s collar off at the driveway so she could walk up to the door. She got there ahead of me, turned around, and looked at me with that great Pittie smile, her tail wagging.

“You did such a great job, Mars,” I told her. “A+.”

We walked into the house. She had what Anne and I call “one thousand times drinks” from her doggie fountain, then lay down, happily, in front of the couch. I kneeled down in front of her and kissed the top of her head. She thumped her tail twice and sighed.

“I’ll be in my office if you need anything, honey,” I said, “I going to go write something for my blog.”

Thanks for reading. I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to get my posts by e-mail, here’s the thingy:

1. Yesterday, I was on my way out the kitchen door, stopped with a gasp, and quietly called Anne over to see the California Towhee that was perched on the wire over the patio. We have tons of finches and sparrows, even the occasional cowbird, but I just love the Towhees, and this was the first time I’d ever seen one on my patio.
   We sat there and made excited noises for a second. Then I looked at her.
   “Still punk as fuck,” I said.
   “Yeah, obviously. Still punk as fuck.” ︎
2. I was one of the lucky ten thousand about a year ago. ︎
3. Honestly, it works so well, it is indistinguishable from magic at times. ︎
4. today is a terrible anniversary; one year since America pulled the trigger on the gun it put to its head in 2016 ︎

https://wilwheaton.net/2026/01/the-footsteps-of-a-rag-doll-dance/

https://wilwheaton.net/?p=9886