YES

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Unfortunately, this is what all of the internet is right now: social media, owned by large corporations that make changes to them to limit or suppress your speech, in order to make themselves more attractive to advertisers or just pursue their owners' ends. Even the best Twitter alternatives, like Bluesky, aren't immune to any of this--the more you centralize onto one single website, the more power that website has over you and what you post there. More than just moving to another website, we need more websites.

threads? threets?

in

Signed up for Threads (which, to its credit, is remarkably easy to do), posted a Thread (Threet?) or two and a dog GIF, and realized that a.), Twitter is its own Twitter killer – Space Karen is just the latest (though admittedly far more loathsome – if he and Zuckhead fight it out in the Colosseum, the world would be far better off if the rules of engagement were historically accurate to the place they chose to besmirch, read: lions) wrecking ball; b.), while I’m willing to fiddle about with it, I have little interest in another short, status-based ambient social/swarm experience; and c.), having asked myself, "If I were to start using social media for the first time today and not 15+ years ago, how would I use it?" the answer is, without fail, I wouldn't: while I'm grateful for the eyes that “the socials” have brought to my little narrative experiments and mental gesticulations, I've felt a mental and creative freedom in these last couple of weeks away from all of them – yes, even Mastodon – that I haven't felt in, well, 15+ years. That being said: perhaps with a bit more time (I'm experimenting with once-weekly photo dumps from the week prior on Insta and, like I said, I’m willing to fiddle with Threads for a spell) I’ll find a modicum of enjoyment but I'm not going to expend any significant mental energy to do so.

tracks

in

The sameness of my days keeps me sane until I think about it: the perpetual repetition, the same thing day in and out. Remembering something from ZEN MIND, BEGINNER'S MIND about not looking down at the track: summers tend to open up too much time to look down.

Maybe it's that I'm jamming everything that I consider to be forward motion (writing) into a single morning chunk – basically 0445 to 0745, which I do love: not only is it the closest I can get to working at night but the knowledge that this is all I get tends to cultivate deeper focus – and the surplus of time outside of that – shock of shocks, I do want to spend time with my wife for the three months she's a.) not drowning in the needs of seventy-five representatives of the future and b.) I don't have to worry about her being shot for doing so. But she's on her break, which is necessary for her – even if I don't do well with breaks.

Also: this could be a symptom of withdrawal from social media – as much as I love Mastodon and the Fediverse and what it means and what it stands for, it's still social media – and the perception that it, social media, was part of the forward motion, my only option for opportunity in this backwoods hell. It wasn't and isn't: the only thing that moves me forward is doing The Work and sharing it here or in the NL but I'll cut myself some slack (my therapist would be proud): when you've spent the last decade and a half hooked on an addictive substance like social media, coming off of it and finding clarity in the space the release allows will take some time. It took me eleven tries to quit smoking, after all.

Head up, walk the track. Don't look down.

links/2023w10.2

in

thu/20220915

in

56ºF, clear-ish: monitor + keyboard riser + Obsidian + ipad + Muse + standing desk + pen and paper = a winning combo, a dance between different elements, between different phases and sides, etc etc, all coming together for the final whatever-it-ends-up-as. In theory, anyhow.

Post-great-aunt-funeral haze continues: a combo, I think, of too much socializing and of too much telling the story of how my mother died (thanks for not wanting an obit: now I have to explain to everyone that you're dead when they ask – I swear, if more had asked how I was or if I needed help when you were alive, I mightve been possessed of if not a different set of emotions then at least more qualified ones) mixed with a general dissatisfaction of current path and no clear modification to vary it.

Staring at Twitter, my fourteen years of it, and I have no clue – other than a general pervasive addiction and hope that somehow something will materialize from it (meaning that my buying into the hook/line has become learned and habitual) – just what the hell I'm doing there: have to learn to be content with toiling here in my own little corner of the ether of indifference. Working on it.