Human Beans

Besides cocoa and coffee, they're the best ones

Dear Fourth Person Who Forwarded that Article About Busy People to Me this Week:

Thank you. I will read it eventually. (Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash)

Right now I have too many inboxes:

1. my email inbox

   1. my spam folder in my email inbox

   2. my work email inbox

   3. a random gmail inbox that I don’t look at but people sometimes use

      1. its spam filter inbox

      2. it’s promotions inbox

   4. the secondary email address that Apple gave me which goes to the first email

      1. the cloud inbox which seems to be separate from the first email inbox

      2. its junk inbox

2. the other email address that I use to sign up for sites that will send junk mail

   1. the promotions folder in that junk mail email address

   2. the junk folder on my junk mail email address

3. BUT THERE ARE MORE! like: the personal news feeds I follow on social media

   1. Twitter

   2. my two Instagram accounts

   3. my three Facebook accounts (one account and two Pages)

   4. Linked In

4. the comments sections of Medium and my Substack account,

5. the private messages I get on Twitter, my two Instagram accounts, my three Facebook messenger accounts, and LinkedIn

6. text messages on my phone

7. What’s App

8. and of course, phone calls that leave voicemail

9. and my actual literal mailbox

10. and notes that my kids write and leave around the house stuck to places I might notice (my laptop screen is prime real estate though the kitchen counter is a close second.)

Not to mention all the incidental “private” message boards that force you to enter a password to go on a proprietary website like Etsy marketplace or my various insurance companies, utilities or banks, or the various grant application comments sections, and nonprofit resource associations, or my doctors’ hubs….it’s preposterous.

On a single day this week, I wasted 90 minutes trying to log into a Pen Parentis account for which I have a password — the password and login is correct — but since the account was set up years ago it is “dormant” — I needed to log in to be able to reactivate it. Thing is, this website newly requires two-factor authentication (which was never set up).

The website required me to log in with two-factor authentication in order to be able to log in to set up the two-factor authentication.

Forget getting the word out about something, no one has time for niceties in all this clutter - all we want is to get to the point, be efficient, file the important things, accomplish the tasks and move on to the next thing. How is a person supposed to stop all that activity to just say hello?

My secret is to have coffee with people. In person.

I don’t remember where this coffee happened but it was magical.

I’m going to be extremely solitary from June 27 to July 25 and while I am absolutely excited about working on my novel every day and doing a deep dive into cleaning up around here and sorting my life from chaos into organized chaos, I wouldn’t mind some coffee hours. If you know me IRL and you want to have coffee - now’s the time to reach out. If we are good friends, maybe even cocktails. If you are a business associate or wish to be, reach out!

I’m tired of filling out forms and offering two-factor authentication. I just want to sit and chat.

PS: I am well aware that X is no longer called Twitter, but if some people are able to ignore criminal convictions and run around acting like nothing has changed, I’m delighted to keep calling my favorite platform Twitter and continuing to amuse myself by posting random things I notice about NYC on @mmdevoe with the hashtag #yourdailyweird or #NYCProblems or (best of all) #domesticManhattan — if you’re still enjoying Tweets do follow me.

(It’s Twitter because, honestly? who enjoys exes?—hahaha)

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Writing News:

My piece about CATS: The Jellicle Ball was accepted by Counter Arts and is live now! (spoiler - I am growing quite frustrated by the inefficiency of the Perelman PAC) The online publication has a paywall I think, so you can only read all of it if you have a Medium subscription (or else if you have not yet read 10 Medium articles this month - you can always wait to read it until July if you have).

While we are reading my work, I think my response to "two roads diverged in a wood" in poetry form is worth reading if you have two seconds.

And here’s an ICYMI “how to” for approaching famous people to ask them to take a selfie with you.

Interviews! I have several this week!

This one was conducted months ago, but is finally live today - Sunday - look for the great photo taken by the great Luba Grosman!

I was also interviewed this week by a pair of lovely writers who are now living in different cities in Germany (Bonn & Dusseldorf if I’m remembering correctly). Matthew Lawrence Garcia and Leonard “Ben” Mennifee were both sweltering in their respective studios during the early-morning (for me) taping, but we still all managed to have deep and intense conversations on everything from the frustration of being pigeonholed into a particular genre, to the ability to overcome anger in your everyday life. It was such fun that you would never know that it was 8:30 a.m. in my time zone!!

It’s Episode 30 —it may already be live - of Doggerel Diaries.

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Random Final Thought:

I’m in Montreal and two years of French Duolingo are doing me no good whatsoever.