General

Is nostalgia bad?

Yes!

But also no.

I think nostalgia can be healthy, as it provides an anchor to a past that is presumably pleasant and nice to reference back to. It can be a big warm fuzzy to embrace on a dull, rainy day, or when you’re feeling down and want a little mental boost.

It becomes bad or even dangerous when you ignore the things that were not so great in the past, or when you embrace those things instead.

For me, nostalgia is childhood memories of family activities like travelling, hanging out at picnics, going to movies and playing in the backyard, or bouncing tennis balls off the back of the high school gym (and occasionally hitting a ball at a bad angle, causing it to skyrocket up and disappear somewhere on the roof. I wonder how many balls ended up there?)

Sometimes my nostalgia goes retro and I think about what technology was like in the early 1990s, how I added a 2X CD-ROM drive to my first PC in 1994 so I could play Myst, or wrote a batch file to present a screen on boot-up that let me launch different DOS games, or boot into Windows 3.1 if I wanted to get my GUI on.

But in all of these warm, fuzzy memories, there is always some darkness. The fights with friends, the ignorance or mean-spirited behaviour of others, or little things like growing up under the existential threat of nuclear annihilation!

Mostly, though, my dives into nostalgia are like easing myself into the cool waters of a lazy river on a warm summer day. I’ll stop here before I start mixing metaphors.

It’s been almost five years since I saw a movie in a theatre

That movie was Pixar’s Onward. It was fine, mid-tier Pixar stuff. At the time–the first week of Marc 2020–I had no idea we were on the verge of movie theatres and nearly all other retail shutting down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Onward ended up on Disney+ before the end of the month, mere weeks after it opened. I could have saved $12 or whatever if we’d waited.

Since then, the movie-going with Nic has been replaced with birding. Birding is better because it gets you outside, you get exercise, you see birds, and going to a movie always seemed like a weird way to socialize, since you don’t actually speak during the length of the film, only before and after.

Do I miss going out to movies? Given that theatres have been open for actual years again, I’d have to say no. I no longer have the urge to see something new ASAP. I’d actually wait for reviews before seeing a new Star Wars movie. Nothing else gets me excited enough that I just can’t wait for streaming, VoD or just skipping it altogether. Sorry, Marvel, I’m just not that into you anymore.

Part of it is likely just getting older and having shifting priorities. I don’t need big and loud now. Quiet and deep works just fine.

I suppose I should eventually get around to watching Inside Out 2, though. I hear it’s quite good. And it’s on Disney+, so no need to go to a theatre!

A farewell to January 2025, with my foot firmly planted in its monthly butt

Sometimes I am glad a particular month is over. Sometimes a month was mostly fun or rewarding.

And then there is January 2025, the start of a new calendar year and a month that was just kind of horrible, mostly due to health issues. Let’s look:

  • I did not run. The month began two days after I mangled the heels of my hands on my last run, due to tripping and falling hard on a sidewalk. Technically, I could still run today, but that is unlikely. Running is something that keeps me centered and focused. Not running does not help me achieve these things.
  • Any month I get blood taken three times is not a good month.
  • One day I logged 190 steps because I was bedridden, feverish and in a kind of delirium thanks to an infection.
  • Said infection plagued me for more than the first half of the month.
  • 11 days of outpatient IV therapy.
  • Having to shower, sleep and exist for those 11 days with an IV in my arm (five days left, six days right).
  • Still awaiting tests, including my first-ever MRI scan, for possible follow-up issues.
  • Speaking of firsts, I had my first CT-scan.
  • And all those IVs? The first one was also my very first.
  • Strata nonsense added greatly to my stress. I still haven’t found an effective way to deal with it. The stress, that is.
  • My camera stopped working, though technically that happened before January.
  • I leaned into comfort food a lot. I had Pop Tarts. Surprisingly, I was only up a modest 0.4 pounds for the month.
  • My sleep scores have been generally terrible–too much stress, generally not enough of everything else. I had one score of 81 (rating: good) shortly after the IV therapy wrapped up. It feels like a dream now.
  • No drawing. My last was at the end of December.
  • Blogging was down and I spent a lot of time staring at a blinking cursor.

On the plus side:

  • I got Jeff red velvet cake for his birthday and it was yummy, the perfect indulgence.
  • It didn’t snow (that may change in early February, sadly).

Will I write 22 posts tomorrow?

This would ensure1I can never remember if I should use “ensure” or “insure” I maintain my average of two blog posts per day (62 for the month of January), an arbitrary metric I settled on a few years ago to keep the ol’ writing juices flowing. Don’t ask what’s in writing juice.

The answer is very likely no. But it would be kind of amazing to see what I’d write over the course of those 22 posts.

I must conclude this post with typing cat.

Blog Question Challenge, 2025 Edition

This apparently started on Bear blog, a minimalist blogging service, where people answer questions about…blogging!

I’m not going to tag anyone or anything, but I love lists and answering questions makes a list, so here are my answers to the Blog Question Challenge.

Why did you make the blog in the first place?

This blog, creolened.com, was started on February 2, 20025– nearly 20 years ago! The first post is here: Bloggity blog blog

That short post doesn’t explain why I started the blog, but does suggest blogging was a hot thing in 2005, and I wanted in on it. Also, I like writing and rambling, so a blog seemed like a good place to do this. Journals and diaries are fine (I keep a daily journal now and have kept journals in the past as well), but there’s something about having my thoughts hanging out in public that makes me write a bit differently. I have a voice and it comes through regardless of whether I am writing just for myself (diary) or not (blog), but there’s a little extra zestiness when I write on the blog. I know others can see what I’ve written. It adds pressure to at least check for typos. And maybe organize my thoughts and make them occasionally interesting.

Also, I find writing about something, then referencing back to it years later is just neat. And handy.

Mostly, I started the blog because I like to write and have things to say. Those things are not always serious or well-articulated, but that’s why this blog never had a particular angle. It’s just me rambling.

Why did you choose bear blog?

Sorry, bear, I tried you and liked you, but you are too minimalist for me, because I am a weirdo and spend too much time playing around with formatting and images and junk like that. It’s a fine service, though! Hopefully the person running it isn’t a monster. There is a weirdly large number of monsters on the internet these days.

Have you blogged on other platforms before?

WordPress was my first blogging platform. Prior to it, I posted on various forums, and had a gaming website I updated by editing the HTML files, then seeing how things looked in Firefox 1.5 or something.

I have more recently dabbled/tested many different blogging platforms. Search this blog to find my thoughts on them!

Do you write your posts directly in the editor or in another software?

It varies, but most of the time I write using the built-in WordPress editor. I occasionally use the Classic block editor when the block system, uh, blocks me from doing what I want.

Sometimes I write in other apps and then copy and paste over. For a time I thought of doing this permanently, so I’d always have a local copy of my stuff, but it just seemed like more work than I wanted. Other programs I’ve used to write for this blog:

  • Notepad
  • Notepad++
  • iA Writer
  • Ulysses
  • Obsidian
  • Maybe Microsoft Word at some point?
  • Probably a few others I’m forgetting

When do you feel most inspired to write?

Never! Inspiration comes and goes, and I have yet to observe any particular pattern to it. Sometimes I can get up and write a long, lovingly handcrafted post first thing in the morning, other times I scramble to find a cat pic to post at 11:30 p.m. It just depends.

I will note that when I am feeling down, I rarely feel inspired to write, so I reject the idea that one must suffer for one’s art (or writing). On the other hand, writing about weird or bad things that have happened to me is something I enjoy doing after the fact, when I’m at least one step removed (see my recent ER visit for an example).

Do you publish immediately after writing or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

I publish immediately, baby. Sometimes I will look over the post for typos or awkward phrasing just before hitting Publish or just after it goes live. If I come across the same in an old post, I fix these things.

If a post is especially long or complex, I will sometimes save it as a draft, then come back later to finish it, but most drafts tend to go to the place where drafts die. Then they die.

Your favourite post on your blog?

At the time of writing this, I have 5,462 posts, so trying to pick a favourite one is pretty much impossible. I used to maintain a small list of favourites, but tossed it aside at some point.

Rather than specific favourites, I’ll list a few general themes:

  • Some of the writing prompt posts are entertaining, and not bad when you consider they are written in the moment, without any editing afterwards.
  • Some of my own (silly) writing prompt lists still amuse me. Others don’t, so this is definitely “your mileage may vary” kind of thing.
  • Birding posts with actual photos are nice. I’ve fallen out of the habit of posting the photos, but I’ve still got some decent ones up for viewing.
  • Some of my art is okay! These are found under Creative.
  • I tried to learn how to swim in 2009. It didn’t go well, but was kind of funny.
  • And more. I have a billion tags because I am a chronic tag abuser, but some of the odder ones sometimes have cute/interesting posts to go with them.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, changing the tag system, etc.?

I have redesigned my blog multiple times through the years and will no doubt do so again. Right now it is sporting a more minimal look, with little colour. I’ll probably change that again sometime.

The biggest upcoming change will be moving to a different platform. I am still thinking through this (and have documented the process here on this blog, to go all meta). I no longer have confidence in the WordPress platform, and it’s really more than I need. I am very used to it, though, so moving to something new is going to have a learning curve, accepting certain compromises and other stuff. But I feel I should, and the time to do so is pretty much now.

And that’s about it. Here are some other people who also took up this challenge:

Rockin’ New Year’s Eve, 2024 style

Which means going to bed before 11 p.m. Technically, I might still be up reading at midnight, so I might be awake for the calendar to flip from 2024 to 2025, the year in which flying cars and baby machines become reality.

I am surprised as I type this that I haven’t heard any fireworks. Maybe people are just quietly drinking heavily instead.

Happy new year.

UPDATE: It seems one person had a small cache of fireworks, and they set them off precisely at midnight. It lasted less than a minute, so my drinking heavily theory was probably correct.