It's been a while

 It's been more than a year since the last time I posted here.

This month I decided to start writing a journal. I try to write at least once a week. 

My pen writing arm is sore, but that could just be strangeness when I slept on my side.

Who knows where this will go. I just know that I've got to get out of the cycle of getting in my own way and let things flow.

general truths

1. can't do everything in one day
2. get some sleep
3. exercise is good
4. life is not about winning or losing

Given these truths:

1. do a little bit every day
2. form regular sleep patterns
3. go for a walk or maybe a bike ride
4. enjoy every day. even though some days are boring and maddeningly annoying, it's still a day
   

Sea Change

Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.

- Ariel, The Tempest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_change_(idiom)


A sea of change comes into sight, just beyond the horizon at the moment. I'm feeling the ebbing and the pull of something new.

Social Media Time Out

For about one week during January I went on vacation and tried to log out and turn off all my social media accounts and take a time out. I had some success, but I ended up logging back in to just one account in order to keep in touch with some of the events that were going on.

It was a great time to be visiting and focusing on my family, and I really enjoyed turning off and not knowing anything that was going on.

At the time I turned off all my accounts, I had: facebook, instagram, twitter, mastodon. I logged out and deleted the saved credentials so that all my accounts would reprompt when I do try to log back in as an added "extra step" that I hope would remind myself why I would be logging back in at all. For the first few days, I felt myself opening apps that would stay on the login page, and that did deter myself from getting back online.

I didn't delete my accounts, and neither did I suspend any.

The results were fascinating - it was personally a calm week in the middle of a maelstrom. I went skiing with my brother (a story I should write!), established a good practice routine for my fiddle during the mornings, and used my cell phone way less than usual. I went walking, and shovelled lots of  snow, a zen practice in its own right.

I had some in depth discussions with my family and I really enjoyed it.

In the midst of all of this, it became public knowledge that the company I work for was going through an invasive round of layoffs. This post isn't about the layoffs, but that changed my mind about staying completely off the network. I feel a sense of kinship with the people I work with, and I felt it was important to get back online to see and hear what people were saying, what people were feeling.

I went back online on twitter specifically, because that felt like the place I could get a sense of the pulse of the greater community (instead of just the internal dialog taking place on Slack, like many companies).

The results of my week's time out was that I did find it beneficial to stay off the social web. My internal thoughts were clearer, with a better definition of what I wanted to spend time on in the future. Many people try to plan out the year ahead with the new year, and I imagined some possible pathways upcoming this year.

After returning to Toronto, I opened back up the spigot gradually. Got back onto mastodon, and briefly on facebook to interact with my choir concert friends. Instagram I didn't open back up until much later. I found that I didn't need either of the facebook properties, and felt that the notifications that were awaiting less than useful. Most of the notifications were sent by the system instead of conversations from people (it does depend on whether a person has an active messenger life on these properties though - I just don't have people wanting to message me). The system notifications, whenever I encountered them I would turn them off.

Now that it's been a few weeks past my time out, I'm starting to re-engage on twitter mostly. Some mastodon, but facebook and instagram I'm feeling a bit ambivalent about. It's surprising to me because prior to this time out, I considered facebook to be my primary social network, followed closely by instagram. And now it turns out those two are the least impactful on my life.

Moving forward, I don't know if this experience will result in any major changes in my online life. I'll most likely stay off the networks and only check briefly, instead of constantly throughout the day.

Long term, I'd like to migrate away from facebook and instagram, perhaps onto one of the federated alternatives. That's another post for another day.

For now, I'm being more thoughtful about what websites I decide to open and spend my attention on. It does make a difference in my own wellbeing.

Thanks for reading.

It's time 2020

It's time for a change in my writing and my presentation to the world.

I've been thinking about this for a while:

• move my writing oriented projects to an independent domain 
• start building and writing a technical focused blog - first post will be a Threadripper 1900x build I did in November and December
• combine my musical blog somehow into the mix
• get more into the federated world - self host music videos on a local peertube and try to stand up a pixel.me instance  
• self hosted writing and story editing platform (for myself of course!)
• build saison.maison and self host all videos

Writing projects on the go:

• Books I read 2019
• 100 days of musical learning 2019
• travel log 2019
• The Fire Story - I've been meaning to tell this story for a long time, but it's been on the backlog - Recent events have made me want to resurrect the old notes I collected for this story 

Health projects on the go:

• Scotiabank Toronto Half Marathon - October 18, 2020 - already registered
• Reprisal of Ride for Karen 2020
• Instead of Paris to Ancaster, pick another off road race, possibly Vermont Overland 

Relationship goals:

• Go out on a date! A real date!
• Get out of the house and do something with people.

Last light of Summer - Reports from the field

This is a mid-journey report from my writing-retreat-in-progress.

I've started thinking about the next part of my Dress Cycle.

During a hike in Chutes Provincial Park in Massey, ON, I've decided on a cute or not-so-cute title:

What to Wear to a Protest, -or- alternatively, What to wear when going to a protest.

Of course, still work in progress, but it's an interesting topic that I want to investigate.

The goal is to have something to submit to this year's CBC Short Fiction Prize Contest, 2500 words, submission open from Sept. 1, 2019 to Oct. 31, 2019. Obviously I want to get it in before Oct 31, and this is the earliest I've ever started thinking about this contest.

Some thoughts thus far:

- I'm a morning person. Some of the best thinking and experiences I've had are in the mornings. I can't describe how much I love mornings.

- Self-imposed No-Coffee rule. Broken only once to get decaf Timmie's during a long night drive. Otherwise, I'm holding fast on this rule. As a substitute, I've had many Earl Grey, London Fog, and oolong-from-a-bag teas.

- The loneliness from not being in relationship hits me sometimes. I wish there was someone who I can drag out of bed at 4am to go hiking or to go stargazing.

- As a related topic: I am good enough, and I don't need to change myself, except to become a better person. I know this sounds really vague and maybe even conceited, the thought I had was that I shouldn't need to change myself to suit the mass-market notions of attractiveness. I just need to be the best version of myself.

- Also related topic: DRIVING AT NIGHT IS DANGEROUS BECAUSE I KEEP LOOKING UP OUT THE SUNROOF AT THE STARS. OF WHICH THERE ARE SO MANY. DO NOT DO THIS.

- It took me about 2 days just to slow down. By mid day Sunday I finally gotten myself slowed down, and now I am marveling at how much time we all have. It's the same 24h a day, but golly, how you experience it and how you use it is up to you.

- The long road to practicing a craft that I've almost forgotten. The act of putting words, one after another, in a sequence, to form sentences, paragraphs, chapters, stories, to encompass an idea, a thought, an argument, a whole world. I welcome you back old friend.

- Should I go out driving or stay in watching netflix and trying to procrastinate? (ok there is no answer to this question.)

Ottawa loop

Thought I should record my Ottawa loop. There was really great scenery, but the short leg on 34 to Cumberland were some of the most boring and bad broken roads I've ever ridden on. The only reason I took the ferry across to Masson-Angers was to avoid having to ride back on 34. Great decision in hindsight since Gatineau is kinda cool.

An interesting feature I passed through was Petrie Island Park, which feels like their version of Toronto Island combined with Cherry Beach. A great beachy area on an island, people everywhere walking around, enjoying the sun.

I also ate St-Hubert for the first time! It was pretty good and all the servers tried to speak French to me which I thought was really cute and hot at the same time.