Small Thoughts for a Quiet World.
This year has been hard enough on the face of it, but for some reason I have come up with a number of ways to make it even harder on myself. This wasn't really intentional; most bad habits aren't.
Some part of my mind has decided that “the past” has nothing to teach me, because nobody else in my lifetime has had to deal with all of this.
Hello all! I wanted to let you know that I'm trying an experiment with Write.as' built-in monetization setup. I think this is the least intrusive way to make a little money off of this site; we'll see how it goes.
I've always been anti-ads. I can generally cover my hosting expenses out of my own pocket and I feel that advertising dilutes my point, when and if I have a point. I've tried things like Ko-fi (and you can still drop me a tip that way if you like!) but I haven't loved that either.
I like the route that Write.as has gone with making it easy to use Coil for monetization. The gist is this: if you have the Coil extension installed, and if you have put some money into your Coil account, it will “stream” a little bit of money to me while you read my site. If you read my site for an entire hour it would charge you about 36¢, so it's not exactly break-the-bank territory.
But I like the idea of having a passive way to pay for content if you're enjoying it, and removing the intrusive nature of online advertising from the mix. My goal is to leave my content front and center. No ads, no nag screens, and this is probably the only time I'll even mention it.
If you don't have Coil installed, if you don't pay for my content, then...well, nothing changes. I'll keep writing and you can keep reading what I write. I'm not expecting this to replace my day job, and even if I never make a penny I'll keep writing, if the past fifteen years are any indication. Thank you so much for reading!
I've done NaNoWriMo every year since 2008, and I have “won” (meaning I have written 50,000 words in one month on a single project) every year as well.
Not a lot to say about this one. I've been playing with Hipstamatic X quite a bit lately, just for fun, just to relax. I'm not a world-class photographer, and I'm easily impressed by silly effects, so the Hipstamatic X app is perfect for me.
Sometimes it's “art house” camera, which applies silly effects to pictures, is a lot of fun. This was one of those times.
I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting 100 Days To Offload.
#100DaysToOffload 44/100
But on purpose. I definitely have enough food in the house, I just choose not to eat it. And I'm making this choice because for most of my life I have just eaten all the time. I was never hungry.
I've been on Twitter for a long time, but today I finally closed my account.
This wasn't a decision I made easily. I've learned a lot of good things on Twitter. I've had some good connections start through twitter. A few part time gigs I did back in the day started as Twitter DMs.
But lately I've been doing a little experiment. Every time I let myself look on twitter, I stop when I'm done, and ask myself, “do I feel better or worse than I did when I opened this site?” The answer has been uniformly negative for a long time now.
I've tried to change that. I've stopped following a lot of accounts that were mainly negative, even if the person or entity was one I liked. I've muted just so many accounts, mostly ones that were followed by people I follow, who were harmful to my mental health. I set my “home” to Japan, because I can't read Japanese, thus stopping twitter from showing me news that would further stress me out.
But it's not enough, and in the end I decided it will never be enough. I don't think Twitter can be saved, at least not for me.
Instead I'm focusing on actual people with whom I have actual connections, and on small, intentional online communities.
These are the things that have been occupying my mind lately. Which is a change, because for most of my life I haven't really thought about them at all. They've just been part of life. But suddenly I'm facing them and thinking about them, and, in between moments of panic and stress, learning to appreciate them.
So, no more sugar, far fewer carbs for me, at least for a while, until I can get my relationship with food under control. Which isn't fun. But there's not a good reason to keep looking back, that's just a good way to be discontent.
So it's time to start looking for new better things. Things I can eat and like.
I have a routine now, more than ever, and out of necessity.
For years my motto has been:
Such power there is in clear-eyed self restraint —James Russell Lowell
But honestly, I've been less “powerful” than I could be because my self restraint has been just enough to keep going.
Music is the thin, vibrating line between me and insanity, many days. Being able to channel my emotions into something, anything, has been a requisite activity. Anyway, on with the post.
I learned that Plex has the ability to create “Smart Playlists” a la iTunes back in the day when we all used iTunes. I never used that feature to the fullest, but I did enjoy it.