And good riddance! We got more snow than was needed to be delighted by the general concept of snowfall, and we got way more rain than needed, resulting in historic flooding. We also got some record-breaking cold, though that at least didn’t accompany the historic flooding.
Winter remains #4 on my list of favorite seasons, and I’m tempted to add blank spots for #4-9 just to put it in tenth place.
Now I can check off “Use the WordPress Quick Draft” feature from my bucket list.
If it had been on it to begin with. Which it wasn’t. Nor ever will be.
Fake edit: This feature literally just lets you enter some text into a box and click a Save Draft button. That’s it. I guess it’s useful if you happen to be on the WordPress Dashboard, have inspiration strike and must record your incredible moment of insight ASAP, lest it be lost forever.
In other bloggy news, I’ve changed the fonts in an attempt to give the blog a slight refresh, going with a somewhat matched set of:
I am feeling the need for change, but at the same time I’m not even sure if I want to stick to WordPress. Or start a new, different blog. Or something. All I know is I am restless and things will happen. Soon. Not fake soon™, but actually soon!
I’m not sure how I feel about this cat being impossibly cooler than me. But at least I still have opposable thumbs!
Or “Nice song…IF YOU’RE DEAD AND/OR DYING.”
The algorithm burbled up Queensrÿche’s “Silent Lucidity” on YouTube, and it’s been awhile since I listened to the song, so I watched the video.
It’s still a very nice song, and yes, it still sounds a lot like Pink Floyd. I submit that if Dave Gilmour recorded vocals for it and had included it on The Division Bell, no one would have suspected a thing. In fact, it might have been picked as the best song on the album. Zing!
Anyway, I started reading the comments because I wanted to see if people were still making the comparison to Pink Floyd (the song was released as a single way back in 1991), but instead I found what almost feels like a parody of YouTube comments, where everyone is proclaiming how old they are for reasons (??) or how the song means something to them because someone they know died or nearly died or maybe they themselves died, which I guess are things that can happen, but most especially happen in YouTube comments. Am I a bad person to find these comments weird? Probably. Here are some samples:
I played this song after I was dealing with health issues 4 years ago. And 3 years later today, I’m now cancer free! 85 years old and music is my life. Just played at my Mother’s funeral. Boyfriend of 6 years only ever played this song for me after he was diagnosed with cancer. PLEASE SHOW YOUR CHILDREN THIS MUSIC I’m a 97 years old man and i love this song so much!!!. OMG Im 55 years old and heard this song yesterday It’s my late husband’s birthday today Reminds me when I was in rehab for a year My mom would play this song for my brother and I when we were younger. She passed away 5 years ago today. This was the first song I heard in ICU after coming off sedation . My late husband practiced and practiced until he got this just right on his guitar. My son is special needs, almost died at 20 days old My dad passed away one month ago because of covid-19, he dedicated me this song when I was just a kid
And an actual Pink Floyd reference!
Una obra maestra a nivel Pink floyd. En mi top 10 de temas preferidos del rock! Translation: A Pink Floyd level masterpiece. In my top 10 favorite rock songs!
Oh, and here’s the actual video, for reference:
A few months ago, I stopped reading and posting at Broken Forum, after being a member there since its inception in January 2012. The main reason was pretty simple: I got tired of most threads and discussions being complaints about everything. The forum is dominated by a few voices, and these people are largely given to complain about things. I am certainly not complaint-free myself–though I’ve tried! The last couple of posts I’ve made here have been more negative than usual. Who knew monitor stands could rile me up so much? The general state of humanity is perhaps a bit more understandable.
I came across this article on Slate via Pocket: Venting doesn’t work
Here’s a quote from the end of the article, with some techniques on how to counter the urge to vent. I especially like the imagery of the macarena-inspired technique:
There are lots of other things you can do when overwhelmed by negative emotion. Try “square breathing,” four breaths in and four breaths out, in order to take your body out of fight-or-flight mode. If that doesn’t work, there’s another schoolteacher trick: Cross your arms in front of you like steps five and six of the macarena; make fists, pretending one holds a bouquet and the other a candle; breathe in the roses; and blow out the flame. Psychologists call techniques like this “psychological distancing,” and studies show that they’re an effective way to defuse upsetting emotions like anger. When a modicum of calm descends, try to identify the root of your frustration by asking yourself: “Why am I so upset about this?” Ultimately, anger is like smoke. You have to get at what’s feeding the fire. After sitting with your emotions, move forward by problem-solving, scheduling a future time to discuss underlying issues, or using any number of other healthy coping mechanisms.
I like the excellent timing of this article showing up just after I lapsed into a bit of venty behavior. It’s helped me step back and calm back down. I am not committing to the macarena, though. Not yet, anyway.
I’ve removed the share links to social media from the site because:
There are still a few options, though:
Specifically, leaving one thing–a community that I’ve been part of since 2012, and really, going back further, closer to 2000. This was a break I made as a positive step, a way to help get away from not doomscrolling exactly, more like complaint scrolling.
Here’s the background, in convenient list form, because I love lists:
In the last few years, I’ve come to realize that much of the forum has become dominated by a few voices and there is an unspoken requirement to fit in, to toe the line, not just by following the actual rules, but by following the implicit rules as well. Deviating from these will typically result in a dogpile. I never experienced this directly because I don’t express any particularly controversial opinions and had long ago lost the taste for debate on public forums, anyway. But I did witness it, and it was off-putting.
The other thing I noticed was the complaints. The regulars on BF love to complain about everything. EVERYTHING. There is a venting thread that is thousands of posts long. The tech forum is filled with threads that all have variations of the title, “What has [company] fucked up lately?” And yes, there’s also a generic one as a catch-all for all the tech companies that aren’t big enough to warrant separate threads. There is no real discussion here, just complaints about whatever.
The sheer volume of negativity began to wear on me. Several of the most prolific posters have always rubbed me the wrong way and when one of them started a thread with an especially bitter title, it finally made me sit back and consider if reading the forum was still a good investment in my time. And I found, on balance, it wasn’t.
It’s been a few weeks since I last logged in, and what has surprised me the most is how little I actually miss it. I suppose that means it had become that poor a fit for me. I may pop back eventually, just to see what may or may not have changed, but right now there is no urge to do so. I feel a weird sort of relief at not subjecting myself to all the rants, complaints and negativity. It’s even inspired me to try to be more positive in general, including on this blog. I’m not giving up on writing about bad design or anything, but I am being more mindful of complaining just for the sake of complaining. I want to get away from that and after many years of being an active member of BF, I regret that leaving that community has turned out to be a key part of making this change.
UPDATE, July 26, 2023: It's now been over a year and a half since I last looked at Broken Forum, and I've yet to feel any urge to go have a look. Someone still there asked if I might reconsider, then admitted the forum is much as I had seen it last in January 2022. I did not reconsider!
UPDATE, June 18, 2022: It's now getting close to six months since I last logged onto Broken Forum, and I've still had no desire to check in on it. I installed the LeechBlock extension in Firefox back in January to lock the site out in case I was tempted to look, but it's never been needed, because the temptation is just not there. Again, I think this emphasizes how the forum had evolved into something that simply wasn't for me anymore. And I'm okay with that!
I counted, using all of my fingers and toes, the number of posts I made to this blog in 2021. My math skills are questionable, but it appears I made 399 posts. If I had known I was that close, I would have written one more to hit an even 400.
Still, it works out to more than a post per day, which is my intended goal, and while one can argue the quality of the content, I’m happy to meet that goal.
Really, that’s the only stat I can be bothered to look up. There was no real pattern, otherwise, just lots of random stuff about everything, as is my way.
About one-quarter of the posts were drawings, which is a new high. I’m happy with that. This year I’m hoping to do better.
On this site itself, the redesign I have planned is still in the works. It’s tricky since WordPress doesn’t really have a way to create and maintain a staged environment. I sometimes think about moving to something else, but would the grass be greener elsewhere, or would it just have its saturation turned way up in Photoshop [nerd joke]?
This is not a momentous occasion or anything. Twitter is one of the social media sites that can be both a dumpster fire and pretty useful simultaneously. Looking over my history, it’s clear I’ve been content to be an observer.
As an observer, I still find people posting screenshots of walls of text composed elsewhere to get around the 280-character limit of Twitter to be weird.
Here’s that first tweet. While I still like the quote, I would not exactly jump at the chance to quote Woody Allen these days. I probably should have known better in 2011, really.
Thinking about it now, I have no recollection at all what my last tweet was. Let’s find out!
It turns out that was my only original tweet. Every other tweet was a reply to someone else and amounts to 12 total. Eight were to Nike Support, which forces you to use Twitter, the other four were inane responses to friends. A captivating Twitter Time Capsule, this is not.
As the final days of 2021 draw near, and we look forward (?!) to 2022, let’s reflect on the year that was. And it was a year.
Unlike previous posts, I’m mixing everything together–personal victories, political nonsense, the state of the world and so on. Let’s call it Earth Blend, available for $11.99 at your local Starbucks.
The Good
The Bad
The Rest
I have no idea what the malls were like today. With snow on the ground, the high temperature of the day being -6C and the Omicron variant of COVID-19 doing a variation of Oprah’s “You get a car and you get a car and you get a car!” with the entire general population, it seems unlikely the stores were packed.
But people do love a good bargain.
I went for a walk but otherwise stayed inside, warm and content to avoid crowds, plague and things.
I did a quick drawing to celebrate Boxing Day, though. In hindsight, I wished I had put flaps on the box. I mean, I still could, but maybe I should just move onto bigger, better boxes.
I’m also thinking about restarting some art lessons, to better ground myself in the basics. I’m a bit rusty.
