So, part of the reason for rebooting this site is also to get myself writing daily again. As seen, this hasn’t been happening so I need to pay closer attention to that and just take the time to do it.
An old friend and mentor of mine, Sheppard Kominars (RIP), wrote a book about the benefits of writing and journaling. He and I would have discussions about it – comparing and contrasting between private journaling and public blogging. In many ways he was correct in that when you privately journal for yourself, it’s just that – for yourself; while when blogging, one typically tends to write for the audience. I’m going to try to keep that in mind, and remind myself that the goal of this is my own cathartic release as well as communication with individuals who have an actual interest in dialogue about the things I wish to share.
My wife is a prolific journaler. (Yep, that’s right – I got married during the site’s “down time.”) She had been doing so since she was a teen and is still doing it today. I think seeing how that habit has helped her is also a contributing factor to my picking this up again.
It’s difficult – I’m finding it much harder to write these days. I have an idea, but my brain immediately tries to condense it down to simple, digestible bullet points. Another curse of social media? I don’t want bullet points anymore, I want to experience deep conversation again. I also need to start keeping a notebook on my nightstand again. With a notebook, I can just scrawl out whatever crazy thought I had in the middle of the night and go right back to sleep – using my phone I find myself caught in the trap of checking notifications and stupid shit like that.
On the upside, I did get 165 heirloom tomato seedlings potted and they are now going outside to be hardened off…
Interesting tidbits:
Facebook would target teen girls who deleted selfies and would show them beauty ads. This is some vile shit – and one of the many reasons I feel that social media is a cancer on our society.
Everyone is cheating their way through college! “ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.” When I was younger, I looked forward to the future of AI and the benefits for humanity we could see – but now I worry for the future of our society when our supposedly educated aren’t doing the work and learning the knowledge. Why bother when you have the sum of the world’s knowledge accessible from a device in your back pocket?
Telemarketers Are Using a Weird Trick to Sell Bare-Bones Health Plans – “At the time he enrolled them in the health plan, he also signed up Joe for a fake job at a tech company in Georgia. Joe says was never told about the job, never got paid and never did any work. But the bogus relationship opened a loophole that the salesman used to sidestep most insurance laws.”
Conclave: How and why a new pope chooses his name – interesting insight on the practice.
Florida man injured by bison in Yellowstone National Park – please don’t try to pet our fluffy cows.