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Trying out a new way to log Inputs - especially movies and books - something less involved than writing small pieces about them, but still useful for both of us. Simple star system, *****+ / ***** being the soul-shaking best, *- / ***** the shitheap worst (though I doubt I’d stick with anything lower than a **) in the title field, poster / cover underneath. Simple, simple - and, if I want to write more, I can write individual pieces when the mood strikes (or write them in the newsletter).

inputs

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Didn't plan on spending much of this first morning chunk re-doing my reading page into a full-on log of each year's inputs (movies, books, comics, games), but here I am. Blame Cassavetes: SHADOWS was so brilliant I wanted to write more about it than SixWords – but in a different format from my previous postscripts; in other words, needed to separate the words from the log. Think I've found the best way to do it: yearly list which moves to archive (which is just reading until next year) at the start of the next. SHADOWS thing coming in a bit.

garden

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In my more morose moments, I wonder why I bother posting here - or, hell, even why I continue to write; in my more lucid ones, I can tell you that, having given up the ambition of ever having a "writing career" and leaving behind the attendant trappings that either bored me or drove me insane (read: the performative cesspit of social media), I feel more free than ever to follow and process my interests and curiosities wherever they may lead and share the results of that processing - or, sometimes, the process of that processing, weeds and all - in this, my tiny little patch of internet garden. This is my home.

sitehopes

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A desire, over the coming weeks and months, to bring more of a texty-thinking-out-loud thing back to this space. Journal and half-baked notions – not so much an issue of figuring out what to say, but how to present it here in a way that strikes a balance between (adding another) routine-based posting and the whenever/whatevers that have populated this hermitage for the past few years. Also, a balance between what I keep in my private journals and what I put in this public one: if my exit from social media taught me anything, it's that I hate repeating myself; I want to avoid that in this relationship between public and private.

At the same time, striking that balance is tricky: I've got the start of the day covered with Attendance Cards and, while I've considered tinkering with a single daily post throughout the day again, the writer that I am when I start the post isn't the writer I am by the end of the day: every minute brings new experience and new rhythms – and my efforts to do Codas at the end of each day inevitably fall victim to my utter exhaustion.

But I'll get there. Considering this posting to be my kick in the ass to get me there. It was nice just writing this.

bye, social – one month+ later

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Been a month since I left social media and I don't miss it at all. I take that back: I miss some of the digital people, certainly, and their work – but I don't miss the rest of it, that perpetual feeling of repeating myself (that was the biggest one, especially over the last year), of fragmenting myself, of all the other assorted fuckeries that came along in the 15 years I was “present” on any one of a variety of networks.

No, I'm happy here (and with the newsletter), with doing my own things, with exploring other options for life (especially once The Emptying is complete, which should be today), and with carving out my own little existence and identity here in this new whatever it is. And so I go, on and on.

attempt(s) at thought

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Finding that the longer I'm away from social media the less I think in smaller blasts, the less desire I have to share the tiny and dashed off. Expect, then, this space to move more (back?) towards longer (read: more than 50 words and likely possessed of a title) pieces that are still dashed-off, half-baked, and not at all fully developed but are, nonetheless, representative of an attempt at thought processes deeper than the clever turn of phrase.

That said, (still)life pictures, EarBliss, and Attendance Cards will continue as per normal. Just fewer "status" posts.

bye, social

in

Effective 01 Jan 2024, I will no longer be on any social media platform, fediverse or otherwise. My only connection with the outside world will be via this blog (and its Hyvor Talk-powered comment system) – please add Parenthetical Recluse to your collection of RSS feeds! –; my weekly MacroParentheticals newsletter; and the semi-annual (that being the goal, at least), physical-only PRESS(A) TO START zine, which is newsletter-exclusive anyhow, but I might as well include a blatant plug for it here.

To all of you who have connected with me, especially in the fediverse over the last year, please add your newsletter signup page or blog to the comments here (no sign-up required; can’t turn that off yet in Hyvor) so I can follow you (and start a blogroll here) wherever you may be thinking out loud and making cool stuff in public.

You can always email to say hi: tww(AT)parentheticalrecluse(DOT)com.

It's time and I'm ready: this feels like the next logical step for me. As ever, thank you for your support, and I look forward to whatever new conversations await in this next iteration of the online we.

in

Looking forward to when I can again concentrate (what passes for) my mental energies on my creative stuff in the morning and not on all of the cat herding required for the grand emptying of my grandfather's house: little bit of progress on things creative leads to a notion of another thing I have to do in the emptying, another person to contact, another thing to find, to put aside, to sign. Hope to get things back to regularity and thinking out loud in public here sooner rather than later.