See, until today I’ve been getting roughly 8.5 hours of sleep a night. Every night. I set an alarm, and Google has a nice bedtime mode thing that reminds me when it’s time to sleep. I generally have a “no screens” rule in my bedroom which I routinely break thanks to TikTok, but still don’t spend much more than 15-30 min a night scrolling through the funnies. I can safely say that I get around 8-9 hours of sleep a night.
Is that too much? Maybe. I’ve been running on the hypothesis that I personally need more sleep because I’m a tall guy. To me, more body mass = more hours of sleep required to replenish my energy stores. That makes sense, right?Also, I’m a Taurus. But I watched this video recently:
In short, one of the myths centers around the amount of sleep you get a night. Dr. Lieberman says that most people get around 7 hours of sleep per night and are doing fine. So now I’m thinking: maybe I sleep too much! I’ve decided to adjust my alarm to 7 hours a night to test this updated hypothesis.
Obviously there is no definitive answer to the sleep question, and not everyone gets the same amount of sleep every night due to all sorts of factors. But I’m in a position where I usually get the same amount every night and I’d like to see how I work on less.
The schedule was 10:30pm – 7:00am. Now it’s 11:00pm – 6:00am. I could do 12-7 but I’m not a huge fan of staying up late. I used to be an insomniac/night owl but the older I get, the more I enjoy the sunrise and the quiet hours of the morning. So we’ll see if I enjoy the winter darkness for an extra hour. Hell, I might even do a workout in the morning or something!
I will say that my 8.5 hours of sleep has resulted in me often waking up in the middle of a dream, which is not ideal. But Sleep Cycle kept “naturally” waking me up at around 7-7:05am, which I think was more Jowers somehow making the app wake me up than it was me actually waking up naturally. She’s a smart cat, when it comes to getting food.
On the other hand, I’ve slept 10 hours before and woken up fine, so who knows. I think the optimal amount of sleep is “what feels right when you don’t have an alarm clock.”
That’s all. Just something to think about re: your sleep schedule. I’ll let you know how well it goes.
Before we begin, very important announcement: I am drinking eggnog. It is now officially Christmas season.
Perhaps you live on the planet Neptune and have been far too engrossed in the drama between Mme. Pilgrix Meflmlork at the Skurzzzzz Awards1 to see that Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion dollars a week ago. Judging by his behavior since the purchase, he seems to be attempting to keep the ship he sank afloat by tossing weight overboard in the form of Twitter employees, while also asking Stephen King what he thinks about charging $8 for verification, thus completely obliterating the concept of verification. He is the capitalist version of Donald Trump; a grifter, in other words, who flounders when actually put in the hot seat. Thankfully, Elon’s decisions with Twitter do not impact actual Americans/people of the world like the ones Trump made. His other companies, on the other hand….
I joined Twitter in 2008 and long story short, I liked it. It was the perfect spot for writers, a place that felt like a chat room except it was more like a bunch of people shouting into a collective pot to make a “word stew” that other people could eat from if they wished. Twitter was especially fun before News came and fucked everything up. The moment people realized that they could get millions of views disseminating news and information, and then politics, the site became less weird and fun and more “Thank god we can make money off of this now.” That’s the plot, see: find what reels everyone in and then trap them so you can start showing ads at them.2
Recently though, since Elon’s purchase, I deactivated my Twitter account on a whim, for a few reasons which all centered around the purchase and the general response by everyone to the purchase. On both sides were smug assholes, either for or against Elon, and I was just kind of sick of it. Gone was the fun, weird Twitter that I enjoyed posting absolute nonsense on. Trump already ruined that during his presidency, and when he was banned I thought we might return to a bit of silly normalcy. But alas, it was not meant to be, for websites are capital now, and capitalism is anti-fun.
Thus, with the blue bird to my back, I signed up for Mastodon. Mastodon is a more communal social media app which is open source (I think?) and has multiple “instances” which are basically communities. You can sign up for an account at any of these communities but are still able to access the whole “fediverse” as they call it. On paper it seems fine, but the problem is that it feels like a thing on paper and not an actual fun, enjoyable experience. I’ve signed up to this site three separate times (the third being my current), and each time it feels like tech bros talking to other tech bros about the site and how great it is more than anyone actually having fun or interacting with each other in any meaningful way. It’s a reaction to Twitter, which is the inevitable problem; it’s not a thing of its own. It’s a sequel, and we all know that sequels often aren’t as good as the original.
Another issue I have is that people on Mastodon seem to be looking for other people within their network, whatever that may be. Like, geologists looking for geologist communities, for example. Why? Why are you doing that? People’s jobs are not their personalities! You’re turning this into a networking site.
Most recently (read: today) I logged out of Mastodon. It’s just not it. The vibe feels like a LinkedIn Slack channel, not a cool group text thread where no one is really listening to each other but everyone’s saying something funny. Right as I left, people were arguing about the concept and deployment of the Content Warning system (and even attempting to redefine what the letters CW could stand for, instead of Content Warning). It’s just banal chatter to me. Content warnings are great but the discourse was either “All CWs for everything” or “No CWs for everything” and then people of color came by and were like “We’re not putting CWs up for racism, btw,” and white people were like “But that’s what CWs are for,” etc etc etc.
The policing of speech is a difficult one; I definitely want people to feel safe and comfortable where they are online, but I also, truthfully, don’t want to look at every single piece of thing that I write and assess it carefully for any type of content that might trigger any type of person. Maybe that’s the artist in me talking. Some people get triggered by things I wouldn’t consider triggering, while other people aren’t triggered at all by incredibly traumatic things. A lot of people are doing content warning screens on political topics on Mastodon, which I think is what incited the argument in the first place. Are politics triggering? Shouldn’t they be triggering? If you don’t find politics triggering then what’s your deal? So people began to discuss what “CW” could actually mean, especially in the space of a “federated” social media app, where not everyone is receiving the same information all the time, since the whole thing is meant to be decentralized. It’s like … didn’t you guys figure this out years ago? You’re still arguing about it? Sure would be nice if you hired some content management people or something.
In the end, I think there is a lot more nuance to the content warnings discussion than conservatives give a shit about, which sours the whole experience, making it near impossible to come to any sort of concensus on how we should implement them. Honestly, I’m surprised we don’t have AI capable of reading whatever it is you’re writing and cross-referencing the concepts with whatever the reader doesn’t want to read. Instead we just have photo AI stealing base images to make Richard Nixon eating phở in the style of a political cartoon.
Anyway, without Twitter and feeling less-than-good about Mastodon, I decided to restart my blog. Yes, my blog, like a 2000s era technophile. A place where I would write more freely about whatever the hell I wanted. No text limit, no concern about Elon Musk buying my website for $44 billion dollars. (I would sell it, though, if he wanted.) No real concern for readership—hopefully somebody will read it, but I won’t cry if they don’t. Somewhere where I could feel like writing a bit more personally and a bit more concretely, as I had set an app on Twitter to delete my tweets after a month because nothing gets you cancelled-and-then-eventually-rehired-because-you’re-a-white-man faster than a tweet from 2012.
With that in mind comes the obvious question: what do I do with a newsletter? Well, I think I’m going to just put the best two or three blog posts in here, gussy them up a bit, and post ‘em. That way if you’re not into reading blog posts, you can read a couple of my insights and be done with me. Otherwise, things will be the same. In fact, I’m hoping to get a podcast episode up by the end of the week; I’ve been surprisingly busy with stuff this week!
That’s all. I just wanted to say that I’ve got my blog up and you can go check it out if you wish, but instead I went on a diatribe about a meaningless social media app. Whatever. This is MY newsletter!
Last night I found my lil mini French press, which brews but one cup at a time! and this morning I used it to make coffee. My normal, to-go method is pour over. My reasoning is thus: out of all the methods one can use to make coffeeThat don’t include a machine., pour over is the easiest. All you do is grind the beans, heat the water, put the grounds in the cup with the paper strainer, pour the hot water over the grounds, the end. You got coffee.
But recently I’ve been watching James Hoffman‘s coffee videos on YouTube, specifically one that I can’t find right nowSide note: James’s videos are great. He is a very pleasant sounding man and he is rigorous with his research and experiments. Highly recommend if you’re into coffee.. The gist was that the finer the coffee is ground, the better it tastes in immersion brewing (i.e., French press) vs filtration brewing (i.e., pour over). The problem with filtration brewing is that when the coffee grounds are too finely grounded, water makes a channel in the grounds which prevents it from thoroughly steeping in all the grounds. I’m saying grounds a lot. Water is super lazy and once a channel opens up for it to travel through, it just does it. Immersion brewing, on the other hand, means that all the grounds are immersed in the water and thus you get a more even brew.
At this point you’re probably thinking, “Josh, buddy, you said that pour overs were super easy, but this immersion brewing sounds even easier!” Well the problem with immersion brewing is time. You have to time the immersion. Too short and the brew is weak. Too long and the brew starts to taste like an ashtray. The latter is not as big a deal if you add things to your coffee, like cream and sugar, but if you’re a black coffee drinker like myself, it makes a huge difference.
Pour over, on the other hand, you just pour and let it strain. There are variables to consider, yes, but none of them are time related. It’s more temperature based, for me at least.
Since I hadn’t had a French press coffee in a long time, I made one this morning. Since my lil guy only makes about 8oz of coffee when done, I ran it twice, using the same grounds both times. I also paid absolutely no attention to any of the rules because, in my mind at the time, it was easy: grind, pour into French press, add hot water, stir for about 30 seconds, let steep for four and a half minutes. But I think I screwed a couple of key factors up.
First, brew time should’ve been a minute less, I think. Also, according to Stumptown’s French press brew guideI think this would make a decent band name, by the way., you should heat the glass with hot water first to have a more stable extraction temperature. I didn’t do that and I think the brew suffered a bit from it. Nothing that, again, would come through if you added milk and/or sugar, but straight black, it was definitely more on the ashy side.
Somehow, I also had a lot of fine grounds in the bottom of my cup, something that never happens with filters because, well … they’re filters. So that was annoying. That might have also been caused by me brewing twice with the same grounds; something something the grounds disintegrated further into finer bits. Drinking the filtery little fine grounds is kind of gross, so I just had to toss the bottom bit of my coffee. Oh well.
Speaking of lil, I went for a lil run today. Not even with the C25k app, just a 5 minute run followed by a couple of short jogs. Just to test out my legs, you know. Results: still kind of tense. I’m not sure entirely what’s going on. They’ll feel fine before the run, they felt fine for about half of the 5 minute run, and then my shins started to feel tense again. I’m sure it’s something like shin splints caused by that damnable Mt. Tabor run. The fact that it goes away and mostly stays away when I’m not running is a good sign, and I’ll just keep that going by not doing any significant runs until my next 5k in two weeks. Just long walks to keep the circulation going!
It’s the day after Election Day here in the United States and you know what that means: lots of hand wringing. I, for example have been wringing my hands greatly over the Oregon governor race, where Tina Kotek is winning by 1% over Republican Christine Drazan. I am also fist shaking at independent Betsy Johnson, who pretty obviously was on the ballot just to take votes away from Tina; though, last I checked Multnomah County ballots are still being counted which means that Tina will likely win anyway.
Meanwhile, human waste pile Lauren Boebert might lose her seat in Colorado. Raphael Warnock is pulling ahead of Herschel fucking Walker, thank god. If Herschel Walker won a Senate seat I would apply for asylum in Canada, I swear.
I really wish American politics didn’t feel like I am watching an episode of American Idol or something. News channels have really hopped on this concept of elections being nail biters to the point where the whole thing almost feels rigged. Like, I kind of get when people think this shit is rigged. Our Senate race might literally end with a 50-50 split, like last time, which means it’s going to be harder to get anything done. How is this even possible? More people live in the large cities of the U.S. than they do in the rural areas–so why is it an even split between Democrats and Republicans? Seems rigged, right?
Don’t worry, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, other than that the American political system has basically been rigged in favor of rich white men since its inception. That’s not really a conspiracy though, but a feature that we’re slowly but surely patching out.
We’re probably going to lose the House, which means absolutely nothing is going to get done for the next two years because the GOP House will introduce bills that Tim Minchin I mean Joe ManchinThis is literally just a joke because I keep getting the names confused. and Kyrsten Sinema will vote for in the Senate, Biden will veto, then it won’t get past the 2/3rds vote. They’re just going to lame duck Biden until the election and then Donald Trump will be resurrected with the flashing red lights, appearing on stage to absorb the conservative Supreme Court justices and attain his final form.
In other, more awesome political news, Portland is finally, FINALLY after over 100 years going to scrap its stupid-ass commissioner style government–the last of its kind in the U.S.!–and turn it into a more traditional city council-style government. This means that five commissioners will no longer be the people that run the show. Also, candidates will be voted on in a ranked choice system, hopefully keeping the Betsy Johnson’s from stealing votes.
Rene Gonzalez is usurping Jo Ann Hardesty’s commissioner spot but hopefully it won’t matter due to the gov’t change. (Though I don’t suspect that the change will be immediate.)
Other measure results: 111, which would make healthcare a fundamental right in the Oregon constitution, is currently failing but with only 71% of the votes counted. I was leery about this one because while yes, I do want healthcare to be a fundamental right everywhere, all the time, the measure links it with our education budget, which might mean that education takes a dip for healthcare. Both of these are fundamental rights in my opinion and both should be independently funded.
Measure 112, which removes slavery from the OR constitution, is passing. Excellent. Measure 113, which vacates a legislator’s term if they accrue more than 10 unexcused absences, is also passing. This is very good, as we had a few moments where the GOP members would just not show up to votes, which is A) cowardly and B) shitty. Glad we’re fixing that.
Measure 114 is apparently the strongest gun control laws in the country, and is slightly passing. We’ll see if that holds up. I’m imagining some lawsuits if it passes, ones that will rise up to SCOTUS, where beer-laden Brett Kavanaugh will puke on the docket, destroying the bill.
The cities of Estacada, Sandy, Molalla, Banks, Cornelius, and the entirety of Clackamas County all passed measures to prohibit psilocybin-related businesses within their areas. Cowards. Cowards! Someone send an educator there to explain that magic mushrooms aren’t fentanyl and that most people have better lives on psilocybin.
Mult County is amending the charter to replace gender binary terms with gender neutral ones. Good. Take that, gender binary! Also, county officials will be elected via ranked choice voting, also good. BIG win on Measure 26-233, which will have annual jail inspections by commissioners, with volunteers reporting. This is very good, and will very much find more corruption within the jail employees than the prisoners, I guarantee it.
Overall, locally the election seems to be doing some good. Hopefully Tina Kotek will win the governor spot and we can get some real work done with Oregon and Portland. Nationally … I’m not expecting much. Just give me my $20,000 student loan forgiveness at least.
It’s raining in Portland. What can you do. I am resting a bit from running because I think I overdid it and my lower legs weren’t happy with me when I started week five of the C25k program. A significant uphill 5k run after only four weeks of 5k training will do that to a person. Makes me anxious though; I’m concerned that I will slip back into a sedentary lifestyle. Let me show you a picture:
This has become a foot fetish blog.
Those are my feet, in a photo taken in June of 2021.Fun fact: I don’t have this photo in my personal backups, probably because I didn’t want to keep a photo of my puffy feet. But I happened upon it while scrolling through my Google Photos backup online. Google, it never forgets. The reason why I took this photo is because I looked down at my feet and was like, “Hey, my feet are, like, very puffy right now, maybe I should take a photo to show a doctor.” I didn’t end up doing that. The puffiness of my feet has gone down considerably since last year, especially in the last couple of months because, you guessed it, exercise. They’re basically unpuffy at this point. Humblebrag. I ate a lot of salty foods and hardly moved a year and a half ago. Now, I eat salty foods but at least I get up and walk around to get the circulation of fluids going.
So, I’m concerned about being sedentary again.
I tried running again today and failed halfway through. My shins and feet are just telling me to take a break. So I will, even though it is discouraging. I have to break though because I have another 5k to run in two weeks, which I simply will not be able to complete if I don’t rest. So, I rest. I’m worried about sliding back into bad habits, but I’m also somewhat confident that I won’t do that. These aren’t my Depression Days, they’re more like me … Very Contemplative Days. The days where I find things depressing in the same way one would find a painting beautiful: recognizing that I am not the painting.
D&D
We’re playing D&D tonight, starting the second chapter of my Portlandia game. This is a game where all the ice has melted following a nuclear warYes, I know that nuclear war would cause a nuclear winter. In this version the bombs eroded the ozone layer and accelerated global warming. Just deal with it. It’s fantasy! and the sea levels rose about 200ft. Portland and the surrounding area are islands separated by shallow seas. Around 2,000 years have passed since the Lost War and for some reason, the vibe is “western.” Chapter One was supposed to be just a couple of sessions but ended up being twelve. One of those sessions was streamed on Twitch, which was fun and also felt strangely like doing a play; I felt that nervous preshow energy, you know?
This first session tonight I’m bringing in my friend Kati as a guest. Kati is an old friend. That is an understatement, but I don’t really want to get into the tides that are our friendship because it’s mostly embarrassing on my end. It’s one of those larger issues of mine that I am very glad I’ve been to therapy to work on. Maybe a blog for another day. But I’m glad she was eager to play in my game. She used to work at Wizards of the Coast. She is very popular and cool and I feel like I’m bringing, like, Tom Hanks to play at my softball game or something.
It’s good to have D&D to fall back on these days. I honestly am not quite sure where I would be now without it, after the pandemic hit. I think I would feel much more alone and sad.
Well, I was going to write more and got sidetracked. Maybe tomorrow!
It’s Monday, the Monday after a full week of Elon Musk owning Twitter. I deactivated my Twitter account on a whim after just kind of being done with it. Not my account, per se, but the vibe of Twitter in general. It’s just off. It’s bad. The sociological decay rate of social media seems to put the Best By date around 10-15 years after its inception. So, I once again signed up to Mastodon, after deleting my previous two attempts and then realizing that I can’t get my old usernames back. Oh well, who cares.
A lot of Mastodon now is reactive: people reacting to Twitter, mostly. It’s not really a society as it is a shared trauma experience, one where we’ve all collectively escaped from our abuser and are now qualifying ourselves in reaction to that. It’s annoying, is what I’m saying.
This Monday, I feel the itch. The itch to tweet. To say something dumb on Twitter. I’ve tried on Mastodon:
This is what I would call a Quintessential Josh Tweet. A QJT. Something dumb that would pop up in my head and that I’d type out on Twitter as fast as humanly possible. This is Weird Twitter. My type of people are people who would see this tweet and appreciate the humor. They don’t have to laugh, just appreciate.
But Mastodon doesn’t scratch that itch, for two reasons: one, I don’t know enough people there. That’s fair, I just started up again. And two, this is not what I’m seeing on my timeline. This one’s a little more difficult to fix. You have to find the right people. But in a way, I don’t want to find the right people. I don’t want to join a “comedy” instance because then it’s all people trying to be comedians. Plus, as Mastodonians continue to remind us, instances don’t even matter because you can see other people’s postsI refuse to call them toots. across all instances. Fans and friends, that’s all I want. And not even “fans” necessarily, more like … appreciaters.
Mastodon is a poor nicotine patch for Twitter, despite all the tech folks trying to convince us that it is. Decentralization is good perhaps but for social media? The concept of “decentralizing” a thing where the point is for people to come together doesn’t make much sense to me. I read a post from someone saying that they should rename “instances” to “communities” … like Google+, which failed. I think Google+ failed in part because a social media concept like Twitter–fast paced, short messages–wants to relate to people in a general sense, rather than a specific, community sense. In other words, you don’t want to have to negotiate a bunch of community “threads” to find things that you want to read. Plus, you can already create your community on Twitter by curating who you follow. Now you want me to split that again into communities?
There’s a vast, vast difference between what people in tech think social media should look like, and how the general populace operates social media. Tech wants to bring in features, but most people want the app to be as simple as possible. People don’t want to know about instances. They just want to post things and read things, and they want to know how to block people. Mastodon is pretty much this simple, it’s just that the users are making things confusing by constantly elaborating on stuff that I don’t care about. I don’t really care about instances; I do care about Mastodon being able to quickly and effectively “sever the limb” of alt-right/extremist instances. But I want no part of that. I just want to read and post things, and I want the things I read to be things I like, not people constantly telling me how great Mastodon is and all the multitudinous things I can do with it.
Thankfully, Elon Musk is absolutely fucking up when it comes to running Twitter, which is delightfully hilarious in a way. Guy’s like a five year old who got handed a $1,000 camera and thinks he’s going to take Pulitzer Prize winning photographs with it, but then the first photo we see is just a blurry dog’s anus. “I did it!” he cries. “Give me my Pulitzer now.”
Something makes me think this is one big misguided attempt to try and get Grimes back. “Look, Grimes, I bought Twitter!” he types into his phone. Sends text. Is left on read.
I think Mastodon will mellow out over the next few weeks as the adrenaline of leaving Twitter wears off and everyone realizes it’s just another app. They’re all just apps. Meaningless, ultimately. Get food, get sleep, procreate to extend the life of the species. Then very far down the list: check social media accounts.
So, I ran a 5k. I talk about that in the newsletter. It, like most runs, was one of those things that was good before it started, agonizing while I was doing it, and then great after I finished. It sucks to realize it, but your body actually likes it a lot when you’ve exercised. It’s funny how at odds it is with your brain, which oftentimes (for me at least) likes to eat a lot of bad-for-me things until my body forces it to stop. You’d think my brain and my body would be more connected, considering they are both inside of me and are me. But no, instead, there is my brain, my body, and then whateverthefuck it is that is watching and judging both of them right now.It’s my brain, I know it’s my brain, but my brain talking about my brain is weird.
I’m a runner now; Wolf Parade was right all along.
Running is one of those things that is easily rewarding. You move forward quickly for a bit and then stop. It’s hard work, but when you’re done you’re like “Hey that was good!” (Maybe you have to do this a couple of times to achieve the effect.) Now I’m at a point where I must go exercise every day. Either a run or 5,000 steps, whichever is on the docket for the day. Today I walked, because the 5k plus finishing Week 4 of my Couch to 5k training has caused my legs to send a message to my brain, that message being, “Hey, take it easy for two days instead of one.” But I walked twice, once to get an absolute fuckload of day old bagels from Henry Higgins through the Too Good to Go app. Seriously, I had to freeze most of the bagels, there were so many bagels. The second time was to Safeway, to buy cream cheese for said bagels.I ended up spending too much money at Safeway and my account was overdrawn, but thankfully I still have credit on my credit card, so it took the hit. I may be 39 but I am still bad with money! Ladies, I’m single!
In November I am tackling the Turkey Trot, a 5k at Portland International Raceway, where I will be racing some of the fastest cars ever built. Just kidding; they put Christmas lights up there and you get to drive around and see them. But we get to see them first, apparently! Last time I went to this event I was in a friggen car! Now, I’m on my feet? Insanity.
The plan is to sign up for some sort of 5k every month up until Shamrock Run time. Then, my triumphant return to the Shamrock Run, after being gone for, I believe, five years. I’m just going to keep running until I grind my legs into a pulp and then grow new legs, which is the custom of my people. I want to be one of those guys who has a million medals hanging off of a wall in his den. I need a den first. Baby steps.
I’m in the hobby of making stuff. Not the business. I’m terrible at the business stuff. I don’t know how people do it. “You built that entire chair? And somebody bought it? That’s a goddamn miracle.”
No, I make things and then haphazardly try to get people to check them out. The things are various levels of “good”; some of the things could be better, some of the things could be worse. But I’m always making something. I can’t help it. It’s kind of a burden, honestly. I can’t not create things. “Ohhh, such a probleeemm” you sarcastically say to me. But it’s true. I wish I could just not make stuff, but my brain doesn’t work that way. It’s like MichelangeloA man who is just like me in terms of creativity, not in the “gay and possibly asexual” way. staring at a big chunk of marble and being like, “I can make David out of that.” Except for me, the chunk of marble is “A foggy void inside my brain” and the David is “A podcast” or “A song” or “Some poetry.”
The problem is that I have no discipline. Creations slough off of my brain like old skin, festering on the ground, waiting for a vacuum. I could be using a skin care routine, but no, I just let the dry stuff waft away on the winter breeze. Twitter does not help this! Twitter is the place where you say whatever you want into a void that their PR team has convinced you is actually reading your dumb shit. It’s the textual equivalent of your grandmother sitting you down to watch blurry slides of her trip to Italy from 1952, except instead of the beautiful Tuscan landscape, it’s every single thing everyone has ever thought, ever, times 20.
Can you tell this is a blog about me convincing myself to delete my Twitter account?
Every Reddit thread about social media has like five guys who are like, “I deleted all my social media ten years ago and I’ve never felt better.” They type that on reddit.com. Was life better before social media? No, and if anyone tells you different they’re lying. Life has always been the same. The same amount of bullshit, the same amount of joy. It’s a bell curve. It’s this:
Some people are slightly left of the bell curve, some people are slightly right, but everybody’s gotta shit, you know what I mean?
So the question is: does social media make life worse? Or does life make life worse?
Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion dollars. In comparison, 44 billion seconds is 1,394 years. You know what happened in 1394 AD? Richard II started giving Geoffrey Chaucer 20 pounds a year for the rest of his life for being a diplomat. You know how much those 20 pounds are now? £19,924, or $22,694 US dollars. What does that have to do with any of this. Nothing! I just thought it was neat.It’s also amazing that the Bank of England has inflation values from all the way back to 1209. I’m getting distracted! Anyway, Elon, this guy, this fuckin’ guy, likely bought Twitter for way more than it was worth. And now he’s going to charge $8/month for Twitter Blue, which he knocked down from $20 because Stephen King complained. It makes me realize that businesses don’t always tank because people want them to–sometimes they tank because the guy who bought the business is a fucking idiot.
So here’s the thing: Twitter is content creation. It is meant for you to churn out content, so that people will read it, so you will see more advertising, so the advertisers and Twitter will make more money. Content creation is a farm meant to grow food for rich people. And you’re the lowly serf who thinks your TikTok carrot will make a difference in the pile of billions of carrots. Art is not an assembly line. Content creation dilutes good art. The necessity for people to constantly make TikTok videos or YouTube videos or podcasts, etc, ruins the lot of it. Imagine is Michelangelo made a new statue every day. You think the quality of those statues would go down?
This is an argument toward me deleting Twitter. And I think it’s winning. People need time to think, to grow, to write and edit and delete. And then release. We’re too inundated with content creation, and younger generations are indoctrinated to believe that the internet is content creation. But it’s not. It’s content consumption. It’s the snake eating its own tail. And it’s all ultimately meaningless. It’s jokes and cats falling off TVs and it’s the most important thing and the least important thing at the exact same time. Social superposition. Quantum physics in macro.
So what is it? Do we continue feeding the content creation monster? Or do we divest ourselves of these apps and go outside and look at a tree?
I just don’t like to see you thinking about stuff, is all.
What is that supposed to mean?
Well, you start to think about something, and then that thing turns into two things, and then those two things turn into four things, and —
I’m just thinking about —
It’s exponential, you know.
Right, right. I get it.
This is all about Twitter, isn’t it?
… Sort of.
Alright, explain.
I signed up for Twitter back in 2008 and have more or less enjoyed the hell out of it until about 2015. Or whenever Trump started being more of an issue on it. Really, I could say that it was when news and politics became a thing in general on that site, but it really stopped being a fun site during the Trump presidency. My interest in it has waxed and waned since then.
I’ve written some type of blog since forever. 1998? But when Twitter took over, instead of blogging, I tweeted. If I didn’t start auto-deleting my tweets a few years ago, I’m sure I’d have around 30,000 tweets by now. That’s a lot. Most of it dumb jokes that were topical and wouldn’t make sense now.
Anyway, Elon Musk bought Twitter and that guy is a real dumb piece of shit, so I’ve been thinking about leaving Twitter for good. It’s hard because I like writing and I like the microblogging that Twitter offers. But I’ve also noticed over the years that I’ve become less introspective and honest in my writing, which I miss. So I thought I would start up a blog again, to keep that going.
How’s that sound?
Eh, it’s fine I guess. You’re talking to yourself, though, so you’re already worried that you won’t ever update and nobody will ever read it and everybody hates you forever.
Damn, you really know me, me.
So what about the newsletter?
It’s still going to happen. I might copy blogs from here into it though, spruce them up for the newsletter crowd. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or a bad idea, but who cares.
Gotcha.
Blogs for the blog crowd, newsletters for the newsletter crowd.
when you do things over and over again, that is known as repetition
It occurred to me that when I restarted this newsletter last year that my first post was in October. My newest post since restarting this newsletter this year was in October. I think there is a pattern here, one where I develop some kind of drive to create in the later months of the year, which peter out in the early part of the following year.
That’s the explanation for the title of this newsletter. YOU’RE WELCOME.
This is Astrologically Known as Turkey Season
November. The leaves are turning vibrant colors and then just dying, just dying right there, in front of you, holy shit. The cold wind of winter whips through your hair from around the corner, teasing you with its promise of Santa Claus doing a B&E at your house. Your favorite hipsters have donned their cardigans, pea coats, and thick cable-knit sweaters, sometimes all at once. Decorative gourds are fucking everywhere. Check your bathtub for errant gourds.
November begins the two months where it’s family time, whether you like it or not. Families get together for Thanksgiving, families get together for Christmas. You eat a turkey and a ham, respectively. You argue on Thanksgiving, you complain about your presents on Christmas. The president pardons turkeys, arguably the dumbest tradition in the history of the United States. And we’ve got some dumb ones over here!
I haven’t traditionally had great end-of-year holiday experiences. Thanksgiving was a nightmare for me as a kid, as I was terrified of eating new foods and felt incredibly embarrassed to be at a table surrounded by my extended family eating all the stuff that I was scared to eat. It’s weird to think of my child self back then; I wish I could somehow go back and tell him that all that stuff he didn’t want to eat is actually pretty good! Especially the stuffing. Man, 10-year-old me would’ve loved stuffing.
Christmas, meanwhile, tends to be an awkward holiday mainly because I don’t give presents, but I don’t expect presents either. When I see everyone’s social media feeds, though, it feels like everyone gets presents. I grew up poor and as I got older, the presents were fewer and fewer. In a way it’s my fault; I am notoriously hard to shop for because whenever I see something I want, I just buy it, because I don’t expect gifts. Similarly, I’m not great at hearing code words from friends or loved ones, cueing me re: things I should gift them for Christmas. So I just stopped doing gifts, and I don’t expect gifts. I miss the quality of Christmas you get as a child, though—the tree, the lights, the look of presents underneath the tree, the social warmth that you feel during that time of year. It’s not the same as you get older, at least it hasn’t been for me. Going to other people’s houses feels awkward; it’s not my tradition I’m going to, it’s yours. It’s different.
When I first moved to Portland, for a couple of years we did a Friendsgiving that was a lot of fun. But most of those people have left and gone to other places. It happens. I feel like Christmas as a holiday is poorly defined for loners. At least for Thanksgiving you can plug into anyone’s home who will let you in. Thanksgiving feels more like a rich meal experienced with people, a social tradition, if you will, whereas Christmas feels like a family tradition, something you and your immediate loved ones experience together.
Also, the recent tradition of watching movies on Christmas has also kind of ruined it. Though, on the other hand, what the hell else are you going to do on Christmas Day? I remember as a kid, waking up early, ripping open presents around 10, 11am, and then what? Food, and then you tinker around with your gifts for a bit, but then life goes on and you might as well go see a movie.
Anyway, this isn’t a plea for help or anything. More of a rumination on getting older. Things change, traditions change. People change!
I had really only known Movember as “when guys grow a mustache in November,” and didn’t realize that it was this big fundraising event for men’s health and men’s suicide awareness. Maybe it was the former at first but then over time grew into a fundraising thing. I don’t know. What I do know is that starting today, I will be clean-shaven except for a patch above my upper lip which will grow from nothing, to wispy bullshit, and then eventually into a pretty nice mustache if I do say so myself.
Movember also includes moving 60 miles in the month, raising awareness of the absolutely staggering statistic that around 60 men end their own lives every hour. That’s 1,440 men killing themselves every day, over half a million every year. So I will be moving for them, moving for myself, keeping my head up and appreciating the life and the body I’ve been given.
Mental health is a big deal for me because mine has been pretty bad for some time, and the only thing that’s really made it better is my cat, therapy, supplements, and exercise. In basically that order. I won’t go into great detail (unless you really want me to) but 2014 to about a year ago was rough for me, lots of ups and downs, lots of depressive brain fog, lots of avoiding bridges because of intrusive thoughts. Thankfully I already had a therapist and Jowers and those two were enough to keep me healthy, relatively, and I want to help make sure that more men have access to mental health resources so they don’t end up in worse positions than I was in.
With that in mind, I am attempting to raise $200 for Movember to help fund men’s health and hopefully end the stigma of men’s mental health. I know inflation is making buying everything shitty, but if you have a few bucks to spare, consider clicking the link above or below and donate! I would seriously appreciate it, as would all the men out there who need the support to help deal with their mental and physical health.
NaNoWriMo 2022
I shaved my face AND I’m doing NaNoWriMo again this year? Utter lunacy. What am I, some kind of … guy, who … does things? Gone are the days where I’d just play video games all day long. Today, I play video games like 60-70% of the time!
This is my 20th NaNo. Twenty. I started in 2002, when I was nineteen years old. Today, I am 29 years old, so something’s clearly wrong with the math there.
It’s crazy to think about the passage of time. There was a time when I was nineteen years old. I’m not that anymore, but I was once. That time existed, and I was in it. But when I think back on it, I’m not in it anymore. It’s back there, and I’m here. But it happened! The future’s going to happen to. The only difference between the future and the past is that I can’t remember the future. But it and the past are still things that exist and that I will be or have been a part of, but will never exist in. Wild stuff.
Also, who knows if the past is a concrete thing? Just because we have records of things that happened in the past doesn’t mean that when the present ends, the past remains the same. It could be the langoliers out there, chomping up time and making a terrible miniseries out of it.
So, my idea is to write articles for my wiki about my D&D homebrew world, Avo. That way I’m not stuck with a single story idea, I can just develop articles and maybe dabble in some short stories if I want. If you feel like reading along, I’ll link the NaNo articles on the wiki’s main page. Huzzah!
I Ran a 5K
Folks, I’ve been running again. I started up around the beginning of October, trudging around the Lone Fir Cemetery with Zombies, Run!’s1 Couch to 5k training program. This was the natural progression from all the walking I’ve been doing recently; at some point a tiny voice in the back of my head would pop up while I was walking and say, “Go run.” “But I am fat, and lazy!” I would respond. “No,” the voice said. “Go run.” So I bought some running shoes. Fucking voice.
Basically, I’m Getting My Shit Together in true Belvillian fashion: very slowly. After 2.5 years of sitting on my ass during a global pandemic, eating way too much Del Taco and … well that’s it, really, just being lazy as hell, I started going on walks, and now I’m running, and on the 30th I ran a 5k. Well, mostly ran.
This was the Tar’n’Trail run at Mt. Tabor here in Portland, OR, a hybrid street/trail run that kicked my ass all the way to next Tuesday (which is today, the day this newsletter is being posted). I always run these things on my own because I don’t have any Runner Friends. It’s sort of weird to show up and see all these people who know each other or are in family packs, etc. It’s not too bad now but there were some Shamrock Runs in the past where it felt kind of melancholy, if not downright depressing, to just be there by myself. You run and then you go home and that’s it. (To be fair, I was also much more depressed back then, which didn’t help my general outlook.)
It was All Hallows Eve Ever so there were some costumes. One lady was dressed like a hot dog and made me wish I remembered quotes so I could quote Tim Robinson at her. A guy dressed his cute dog like a referee.2 Another lady dressed as something that I will describe through our awkward interaction after she asked me to hold a map of the run route so she could take a photo of it:
Me: Are you Inspector Gadget?
Her: More like “noir detective” but you can call me Inspector Gadget if you want.
The morning was cool but not cold and it wasn’t raining, which was perfect.
If you’ve never been to Mt. Tabor before, it used to be a volcano. It’s not an active volcano anymore, or else this would’ve been one hell of a run. But it is very hilly. VERY hilly. It’s gorgeous and there are lots of these reservoirs (and by lots I mean three) that the city uses for drinking water. They’re empty now because apparently there are structural issues underneath the reservoirs. Also sometimes they flush the entire reservoir because people pee in it. This has happened twice, I believe, since I moved here in 2008. It’s strange because it’s an open air reservoir, so ducks get in there and shit and piss. What’s a little human pee gonna do, eh? You actin’ like you ain’t never drank no human piss before?!
Anyway, I knew this run would be rough because of the uphill climbs, but it was 10x more rough than I realized. I also didn’t know that we were going up these stairs:
After those stairs, I resigned myself to walking most of the way. There were some sporadic runs here and there but stairs kill me. I know I’m not alone here but still. However, I did maintain my one cardinal rule for running races: I ran past the finish line. Unless my leg breaks off or I collapse unconscious, I will run the last bit to the finish line.
At the end was my favorite part of running races: snacks. Also, booze! I picked up a bottle of Honey Spiced Cider from 2 Towns; it was very delicious. I ate a sugar cookie, drank some Gatorade. Good times.
Overall, 51 minutes is a terrible 5k run time, but a pretty good run/walk time for a guy who hasn’t run a 5k in over a year and has been mostly sedentary since the pandemic, and a very good run time for a guy who has all that AND the course is like 75% hills. I’m pleased with the results and know that I’ve got work to do to improve. Always improving!
Jambon Beurre
As you may have noticed because I told you about it before, remember?, I created a little side podcast to this newsletter, called Jambon Beurre. I did it because Substack allows it; that’s the only reason. It’s like they opened a door in my house and there was an empty room in there. “Hey, you want this room?” They asked. “Free room!”
The first episode was me talking about wellness and then eating and reviewing a jambon beurre sandwich along with some macarons. This upcoming episode will be Thai-centric, with a classic pad thai, and mango sticky rice for dessert. I will also have a ratings system in place, mainly because reviewing food by saying “Mm this is good” is basically just how everyone eats food.
We’ll also be talking about running and how much it sucks and is also awesome. So stay tuned for that.
Recommendations
This is the part of the newsletter where I recommend some stuff at you.
Grounded
Grounded is a video game wherein you play as a teenager who was shrunk down to tiny size and you wander around in a backyard trying to figure out how to get unshrunk. That’s basically it. It’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids meets “survival crafting game.” And it’s very, very good. I cannot stop playing it. Every time I play I find a new, fun thing. Last time I remembered that ziplines exist and made a zipline from the Upper Yard (the more dangerous part of the yard) to my base, situated on the banks of the Pond. The above screenshot was taken after I finally realized that if you blow up the rock next to the shovel, the shovel moves and creates a pathway up to the picnic table, where bees are hanging out over a pot of honey. Why does this table where people were playing D&D have a big pot of honey on it? Who knows. This game rules.
Carly Rae Jepsen – The Loneliest Time
Look, I won’t belabor this: the new Carly album is excellent. It’s better than the new Taylor Swift album. There, I’ve said it. Deal with it, Swifties. Just go listen to it okay?
The End
Thanks for reading through my latest missive of what’s going on in my life. I hope you enjoyed yourselves. The podcast will be out like a week or so after this so stay tuned for that. It’s funny how we still say “stay tuned” even though nobody tunes into TV or radio stations anymore.
