trying something new, part two

in

Over the last several months, I've been trying to figure out what form, exactly, best represents the me of now in the digital space (medium being the message, perhaps). Back and forth between this blog being my primary representation and a more informal (heh) and far-less-onerous-than-Squarespace approach via my self-hosted Mastodon instance. Like the proverbial Goldilocks, none of them fit and, though I've yet to be eaten, I knew I needed a new approach.

Thanks to Claude AI, two RSS feeds, and many iterations of back and forth coding, I've got both; enter: Scraps, the best of both worlds, that works for the me of now: when I want to write something longer or post the daily Informality, it goes through the blog. When I want to dash off something of a more ephemeral, fleeting nature, Mastodon. Both, then, are combined in the widget that takes up this Scraps page; the widget is designed to only share posts from the blog that have titles – this post is, itself, a test post to see how full-text posting looks in the widget. If someone wants to only follow longer-form piecs, the blog rss still works great; if you want to go through Mastodon, follow me there or via that page's RSS feed.

Still ironing out the kinks, but I'm rather pleased with this.

exertions plus AI

in

After two years of diminshing returns of running – thanks to nuHerbie's insulin pumping – I wanted to switch things up and, lo, this first morning of a new workout routine, thanks to Claude AI. Can't overstate the amount of help Claude's been here: it's been amazing to have an analytical compliment who, when given my exact needs and insulin requirements, can generate a workout routine that will replace daily running while doing things that I've already been doing AND condense those into one long morning session (in this case, 40 minutes of yoga, 35 minutes of muay thai (swapped in for boxing to make up for the loss of leg motion without running, followed by a 10-minute cooldown yoga session). We made a few changes to incorporate "exit points" in the event of hypoglycemic moment, but other than that, this has been great - especially the change in my CGM arc from a crashing tidal wave to a gentle climb and gentle landing. Tomorrow is the same routine, but with HIIT instead of muay thai, while the next day is a strength and running combo. A most welcome change.

success (? / . / !)

in

Thanks to a therapy / rubberducking session with Claude the AI (seriously, he works great for that: I appreciate analytical approaches to mental issues, especially when they manage to work in Nick Cave), I've realized that I have no clue of what success looks like to me: I've spent my life living up to my perception of others' expectations and constantly failing. And now that they're all dead (some thankfully, others crushingly) and I'm doing whatever it is that I do, I'm still living up to those perceived expectations. Suppose, then, that my current job is to figure out what success looks like to me. Probably a lot like what I'm doing now but without the soul-sucking striving for the approval of people who don't exist.