Ok so this is a weird little thing that just happened to me this morning on March 24, 2021.
I am doing a little early morning creative work, and trying to open an old illustrator file. The internet says I need to covert the .ai file into a .svg file. I have managed to do that easily but now I am looking for a free tool that will let me edit .svg files. Trying to open the file from google drive, one of the options presented in the “connect more apps” thing is something called Nearpod, an educational addon for google slides that lets you “Embed the magic of Nearpod directly into Google Slides”. Anyway, it says it’s for K12 and I sometimes teach college, so I think maybe I should check it out – yet another diversion…
Scanning the comments section, I realize they are kind of spammy with hashtags like #freecookies4ever and repeated posts of the same poem by someone called Abigail Enright. Thinking this is a waste of time, I am about to leave, but something motivates me to read a little of it. So I stop and read a few lines. I find some of it deeply reflective of how I am feeling at this time of my life in this pandemic place, things like:
My world’s on fire, how about yours?
You’ll never know if you don’t go (go!)
Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb
So much to do, so much to see
So what’s wrong with taking the back streets?
I am intrigued by the random serendipity I am feeling and my curiosity leads me to paste some of the text into search. Almost immediately I am transported back 20 years or so as I watch a video and discover that the poem is actually the lyrics from the Shrek song I first heard with my partner and offspring in an immersive theatre in Disneyland or maybe it was Universal Studios…
You probably recognize it.
Lyrics to the Smash Mouth song All Star, from their 1999 album Astro Lounge.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xxQs34UMx4
All of this to say, despite everything, just remember, you’re a rock star, get your game on, go play!