Distance

Watching another grieve

You almost want to cut a little bit of the sadness and hold it on their behalf

But you can’t, you can only sit with them, hold them,

Try to pour all the love you can muster into them and hope the sadness doesn’t swallow them whole

Very much okay and it’s also okay to be uncertain about it from time to time, there are no rule books anyways

90% of the time I am worried about doing something wrong, guess what?! I still end up doing something wrong

Spinoffs: Space Station Innovations in Your Cart (and Heart!)

You might think NASA technology is just spaceships and telescopes, but did you know the camera in your cell phone is, too? It’s one of many NASA innovations now found everywhere on Earth.

The International Space Station has had crew living on it for 25 years straight. In that time, the space station has enabled a tremendous amount of research, helping NASA and scientists better understand long-term living in space – but it’s not just knowledge coming back down to Earth! Technologies developed for the space station and experiments conducted aboard the orbiting lab also benefit people on the planet below. Here are a few of these inventions, or spinoffs, you can find in your everyday life.

A Sunscreen That Blocks Radiation in Space – and on Your Face

After surviving for 18 months outside the International Space Station, an extremely hardy organism is now improving sunscreens and face cream products from a cosmetics company, which licensed use of the organism from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Build Muscle With or Without Gravity

Muscles atrophy quickly in space, so when astronauts began long stays on the International Space Station, they needed some specialized exercise equipment. A resistance mechanism made of a coiled metal spring formed the basis of the first way for astronauts to “lift weights” in space. Soon after, that same design became the heart of compact home gym equipment.

Fresh Greens Every Day of the Year

The need to grow fresh food in space pushed NASA to develop indoor agriculture techniques. Thanks to the agency’s research, private companies are building on NASA’s vertical farm structure, plant-growth “recipes,” and environmental-control data to create indoor farms, resulting in higher crop yields and better-quality produce while conserving water and energy and eliminating the need for pesticides.

Cultivating Hearts and Knees in Space

Gravity is a significant obstacle to bioprinting cells and growing human tissue on Earth because heavier components settle to the bottoms of petri dishes. In the absence of gravity, each cell layer stays in place, which is how it’s possible to grow heart and knee tissue on the space station. The same principle also allows mixing of complex pharmaceuticals on orbit.

Storing Oodles of Energy

NASA chose nickel-hydrogen batteries to power the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station because the technology is safe, reliable in extreme temperatures, and long-lived. NASA’s improvements brought down the cost of the technology, which is now used by large-scale utilities and renewable power plants that need to store energy generated by intermittent sources.

You can read about many more products sourced from the ISS on spinoff.nasa.gov.

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On the verge 

This is not a poem or poetry, it’s rambling, I feel close to tears not for anything in particular but because I think I feel everything and nothing all at once, i want them to come get me and make me feel better, i want them to call but i know I don’t want to pick up, I want them to stay and I want them to go, I want the opportunities but I don’t know if I can manage, I want ice cream, berry blast and suya, I want to be home so bad, I want to close the door of my room and disappear, I want to ball my eyes out.

I want to not care so much, while simultaneously caring about everything, I wish I had more bandwidth, I feel loose at the hems, I feel too overstimulated but somehow bored, I want to not exist, I want to not feel, I want to sleep so deeply and only wake up when necessary, I want love, I want to be wanted but also not care about being wanted, I want to move out but stay put.

Nothing helps, nothing helps, should I have fought harder, why does life have so much to do with fighting, even plants fight each other for sunlight, can being alive even ever be categorized as peaceful, I think to be alive is chaos, living is chaotic, the entire universe is chaos with everything hanging on a delicate balance.

This too shall pass, Abi is that this too shall end, anyone Sha, social media is shit, the economy is shit, can I manage my life, myself. Knowing there is something special about myself doesn’t make me feel special, does anyone feel so uncomfortable being seen as I do? I don’t want to need anyone or anything, why do we all need sustenance, why can’t life be just a little easier, to be Nigerian feels like you drew the short straw, do you think we draw straws for the kind of life we get to live?

I passed out once, I think about it sometimes the simple and quiet emptiness of not being conscious or could we also say of not existing, I feel nothing but a low buzz of everything, I know it’s there, I am just disconnected

Sometimes it pays to be embarrassed by a romantic partner or prospect for you to start to see clearly if a relationship makes sense or not

Shame can be strong teacher to re asses s situation

I participated in a live quiz by a writer on Substack, which got me thinking about love, partners, and relationships. People who believe in and practice monogamy often see their love as pure, earnest, and true. In contrast, those who explore other types of relationships, such as polyamory, are often viewed as less pure, less earnest, and definitely untrue.

For a long time, I believed in the ideology that polyamorous love was somehow less pure because society teaches that true love is meant to be between two people forever. However, we are society, and we have the power to determine our own beliefs and values. Thus, we can choose to view love differently.

Regardless of other factors, love is love. If it's not genuine, then it simply isn't. When you truly love someone—or multiple people—your affection for one person doesn't diminish the love you have for another. We express love in different ways, and it's impossible to equate or quantify it.

An important aspect to consider is the notion that differing levels of commitment in polyamorous relationships indicate a lack of commitment overall. However, that is not the case. If someone is open and transparent with their partners about wanting to be involved with both, how is that not a form of commitment? In fact, it could be seen as a double commitment!

The idea that someone can love two or more people romantically because one person isn’t enough for them is a common myth. It’s important to recognize that it’s never truly about the other person. What does it even mean for someone to be "enough"? We need community and connection, and a person can thrive with more than one meaningful relationship. This doesn't automatically make each person any less whole or sufficient. In my view, the answer is no; they are still complete individuals.

I am tired of ranting and will head to bed now

Fe

A friend once said “anxiety leave me alone”

Somehow that felt profound to me, cause I also would very much like to be left alone.

I like to think to myself that my mind is an interesting place, I laugh nowadays when my mind conjures something that we need to be afraid and I think to myself like really, a new one? And chuckle a little.

I think making fun of myself makes me feel like I am more in control.

It really does help.