Actually, it’s probably more than I can’t focus long enough to sit down and write something. In any case, I intend to start cranking up the old writing machine in the next few days, seeing if I can hit a goal of an average of two posts per day for the month (62 total). As of right now, I am 10 posts behind. That’s a lot of McTopics. I need to get cracking.
Here’s a haiku to start. I even wrote it myself instead of outsourcing it to ChatGPT!
Time to Write
Time to get writing
Put fingers on the keyboard
Magic gushes out
First, it would be cool, if somewhat corny, if I could play the actual fiddle musical instrument.
Alas, I cannot. I can barely play a kazoo.
But I do like non-musical fiddling, and this occurred to me while I was adjusting the fonts and icons in Obsidian, two things that have no real effect on how the program works, but make it look nicer or more personal.
I mean, I love these little custom icons I added through a community plugin (certain folder names redacted). They’re cute, and also functional, because I am a visual person. And yet I have probably spent way more time fussing over them than would seem logical:
What does this say about me? That I’m a silly person? Probably. That I care about aesthetics? Almost certainly? That I am a fiddler? Oh yeah.
Yeah, it’s not spring yet, but I feel like my brain could use a good spring cleaning. Lately, I’ve been coming up empty for writing and drawing. Is it the time of year? Is it lack of sleep? Is it some other unpleasant thing in my life, like mismatched socks?
Tulips means spring. It’s the law. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
In this case, the question is: How many days until spring?
This also means we have about one more month when snow is possible, after which it becomes exceedingly unlikely through mid and late March and all but impossible by April.
Though we have had snow in April.
Also, it’s only 34 days–just over a month–until accursed Pacific Standard Time gives way to better Pacific Daylight Time. This is all to say that I’ve had my fill of winter, and bring on the warmer weather and longer days.
Recently, I’ve been feeling nostalgic and watching old episodes of Siskel and Ebert on YouTube, having regularly watched the various incarnations of their show when they were still new, going back to the 1890s or thereabouts. Siskel died in 1999 (Ebert was felled by cancer in 2013), so it’s closing in on 25 years since they last appeared together reviewing films.
One of the things that struck me in watching them, captured in that timeless way old TV shows have, is how life is as much about loss as it is about anything, especially as you get older. Your life is framed increasingly by losses. Sometimes they are cruel–how Ebert must have felt to lose Siskel at the young age of 53–and sometimes they’re just silly, like losing your hair. And sometimes the losses simply have that weight of inevitability to them, as when an old actor or musician succumbs to old age and your mind shifts from thinking of them as here and now to being in the past, forever locked there.
But the losses can be other things. Your childhood home might be replaced by an apartment building, your old neighbourhood all but unrecognizable as time sweeps away what once was. You realize that the pace of change is relentless, that so many things we take for granted as always being there are far more ephemeral than we realize.
The McDonald’s in Duncan seems eternal, though.
I remember riding my bike through the freshly-paved parking lot with a friend the day before it opened in the summer of 1978. It’s still there today, 45 years later, though it looks contemporary, thanks to a remodel a few years back. No matter what else changes in Duncan–and Google’s Street View confirms that so many things have since I moved away way back in 1986–there are some places that seem to just stay on forever.
I don’t really have a neat wrap up for this, and I’m not saying getting older is a downer because your life becomes filled with all the things you lose, it just struck me tonight when watching Siskel and Ebert dissing on what would be Gene Wilder’s second-to-last movie as one of the worst of 1990, that so much of our lives is impermanent, even as we don’t realize it until much later, when we begin to look back.
Literally the only image that comes up when I search “spam” on Pexels. Photo by Moose Photos on Pexels.com
After getting nothing but spam accounts endlessly registering on this site (but unable to post because the first post any account makes must be manually approved by me before it can post freely afterwards), I shut off registrations altogether. My blog–this site–officially became me shouting into the void, with people unable to directly comment or cajole.
Today, I ran an experiment: I once again allowed user registrations.
Within moments, a new user had registered: clintonvanderpoo
Yeah.
I mean, I kind of like how the name is sort of a portmanteau as imagined by a spambot, but still, having a poo name show up within seconds of opening registrations, while unsurprising, was a tiny bit depressing. I’m not exactly lamenting the old days of Internet Explorer 6 circa 2001, but the web has certainly changed since then. In most ways, for the better.
I’m actually doing some of the things featured in this generic blog image for “resolutions”! Photo by Polina Kovaleva on Pexels.com
Here are a few more things I thought of:
Drink more water and conversely, drink less soda. I only drink non-sugary soda, but it’s still bad and I should feel bad. And I do, somewhat.
Reorganize the cabling for my computer and tidy up the desk. Somehow it’s become a complete mess again. Whoops. I also need to replace my beloved cat DJ in space mouse pad, it’s starting to curl up.
Renew my “draw something every day” vow because I kind of dropped that. I think the messy desk is a minor contributing factor.
I am cautiously optimistic that 2023 will be better than 2022, but then at the end of 2019 I never expected a global pandemic, either, so you never know what’s going to happen, then it happens.
That said, I maintain the cautious optimism. And now, a rabbit:
Remember when social media was just seeing what your friends were up to? That was about a hundred years ago!
Here’s how I use social media in 2022, which roughly mirrors how I’ll probably use it in 2023, too.
Instagram: I use this solely to post my photography and drawings, and to look at birb photos Nic posts. I follow a few people who don’t post much, so most times I’m on and off in a few minutes. Recent changes to IG make it really wonky on the iPad, which still lacks a native app because who’s ever heard of the iPad, am I right?
Facebook: My IG posts automagically go to FB, so I will see if anyone liked or commented on them there. Friends and family post more on FB, but most of the posts are memes and travel photos of places I’ll never get to, and I’m totally not jealous. FB is also stuffed full of annoying ads.
Twitter: I rarely used Twitter and started logging in more when Elon Musk bought it, and every decision he made regarding Twitter was terrible. But I don’t check anymore and deactivated my account. I don’t have a good analogy, but imagine driving a regular route and seeing this spectacular flaming car wreck one day. Then imagine you see it every day, forever. Eventually, you’re just done with flaming car wrecks.
Tumblr: I have never purposely used Tumblr.
Mastodon: A decentralized Twitter-ish service run by non-profits. A little clunky, but I made an account and pop in to check the few people I follow there. I have only made a few posts, and will probably not make many more.
Post: Another post (ho ho)-Twitter refugee camp. I made an account, will probably never post.
TikTok: I have never used the app nor been to the site. I’ve probably seen more TikTok videos on IG than IG videos.
I think that covers most of them. If I have accounts on anything else, I’ve forgotten about them.
Basically, I don’t use social media much, and I am good with that. I spend more time creating than consuming, which scratches the itches I have better. Although I do watch a fair number of YouTube videos. Do they count as social media? Probably.
