Josh Writes a Blog

Category: personal

  • Sleep

    I’ve decided to adjust my sleep schedule.

    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.

  • Coffee Talk

    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!

    That was my running update on running.

  • Musings on a Monday

    More Running

    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:

    pic of my puffy ass feet from june 2021
    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!

  • A Running Update … on Running

    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.

  • Detaching Writing from Content Creation

    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?

  • Josh Writes a Blog (Again)

    Josh.

    Yeah?

    A … are you starting a blog again?

    Yeah, I am.

    Don’t you have a newsletter already?

    I do.

    So … what’s this for?

    Well, I was thinking about it, you know —

    Oh no.

    — and I thought — what do you mean, “Oh no”?

    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.

    Alright. Well, good luck.

    Thanks, me.

  • latent nascent thoughts

    the weekends have become the shell that i crawl into. showering is the hardest part. no one will smell me so who cares? i lick the front of my top teeth and debate whether i should brush. who cares? no one is here, no one will mourn my teeth. should i put the dishes in the dishwasher? who cares. the trash? only i see it. i sleep 12 hours and long for more. these are the weekends.

    fortunately the weekdays need me to be awake and alert. they need me to shower and brush my teeth. because there are people on weekdays that require my assistance and pay me in exchange for it. that money keeps me from sleeping in a gutter or not eating. i am appreciative of that part, at least. i am a high-functioning depressive, you might say. but still it seeps in, every day. “mental health day” has become my new celebration; when life gets too hard i can say “fuck it” and go back to sleep.

    if you’re reading this, i’m okay. and i’m sorry i cancelled on you. it’s not you, i cancel on everyone. but it is better than the alternative–a meeting where i can’t be fully present with you. i hate that more.

  • ursula & toilet paper & eggs

    this morning i woke up as i usually do, with my cat leaping up on the bed at around 6:30am, meowing and pawing at me to feed her. and i did what i usually do on weekends–shooed her away to give me another half-hour of respite. sometimes i get up, feed her, then promptly go back to bed. but even on those days, i can never sleep past 10am. the morning is imprinted on me now, i am used to its summer light and chirping birds.

    i am reading a collection of short stories by ursula le guin, and they are very good. women authors are fantastic at sharing the experience of being a woman with their audience; their stories are as much emotional encapsulations as they are plot-driven. i laid in bed and read for an hour, a story about a man from a planet where women dominate due to genetic shenanigans centuries ago; most male babies die in childbirth. so it’s all women and a few men, who are raised in “castles” where the play games of sport and then women pay for the men to fuck them so they can have more kids. but the women are all in love with each other, and men are little more than breeding stallions.

    anyway this man lived in a time where the men were trying to become free, after researchers from another planet arrive and decide to “interfere” with the people. once the men (the populace in general) see that men from that planet are free and educated and do whatever they want, the men from this planet want that too. and this man in this story gets it, but it’s hard, because now what does he do? the women aren’t used to men not being in castles or “fuckeries” as they put it. (i love that le guin calls them “fuckeries”; the view of sex in this story and in a couple others that i’ve read so far is so free and polyamorous and definitely a stance re: american prudishness.) he eventually goes to hain (a planet colonized or co-inhabited by terrans, apparently) to become educated. it was a good story and a good collection of stories so far (the book’s 800 pages).

    it’s nice outside and i opened the blinds and jowers laid in the sun splayed out over my bed as i read, and then she insisted that she lick my hand for a long time, which she does sometimes. she doesn’t like it when i pet her when she wants to clean me; she’ll look back at my hand like, “bring it back here, it is still unclean.”

    it’s clear outside and i walked to the corner store to buy some toilet paper, eggs, and a dumb hazelnut starbucks drink. sometimes when i buy weird things together i like to conjure weird stories in my head about why i’m buying these things together. like, what would be the weirdest thing the cashier could think. the starbucks was just coffee (obviously) but the eggs and TP were for some sexually deviant thing i was going to do: hardboil the eggs and stick them up my butt, of course. TP was for cleanup. at 9am, of course. but then i thought about it more. even hardboiled eggs are no match for the cinching power of the sphincter. i would just end up with broken egg bits in my rectum, which was the least sexiest thing i could think of at 9 in the morning.

    i drank the starbucks drink and thought about making breakfast, but my pan still had leftover bacon grease and fat in it so i have started the dishwasher and eaten a fiber granola bar thing instead, one of several unusual things i buy at grocery outlet. i am bad at doing dishes, especially when i’m depressed. i have some used tupperware in and around my sink that i’m afraid to open. my sink is full of grossness. it’s embarrassing and i should do my dishes more often but it’s hard to do when the only prevailing thought in your head is “nothing matters, who cares,” etc etc.

    i am attempting to write more again, morning pages or 750 words or whatever you wish to call it. to write freely and to not censor myself or delete the words because i don’t think they’re good enough. i feel a sense of serenity this morning that i haven’t felt for a while. i’m okay at home right now. my depression is no more than a feeling of content loneliness, which is something i can capture and care for. nothing in my world right now feels content, usually, so i enjoy the brief respite. i am alone in a full room, i don’t really care about myself currently. about or for myself. i can’t remember things, my productivity at work took a dip because i was in a depressive fog and fell behind on my tasks. i tell my therapist this but leave some of it out, because i view myself (and my depression and anxiety) as a burden on others. even to my therapist, whose job is entirely to be a emotional beast of burden (no offense). there are some secrets i don’t even tell myself.

    but i’m listening to classical music (thank you thank you allclassical.org for existing) and the sun is shining through the blinds and my cat is asleep on her cat tree and i’m writing and feeling only very minimally ashamed of it. that’s better.

  • 2017 state of things

    Hello hello hello.

    2017 has been a shit year for the world. Thankfully we have Facebooks and Twitters and Tumblrs and all sorts of social media that you can reference regarding that particular breakdown of our country’s fundamental governing. This is my blog, so of course I will talk about myself.

    For me 2017 has been more mediocre and lacking in ambition than anything else. There have been some high points: I was in a play, the first legitimate paying gig in like three years. It was a lean cut of Shakespeare’s Troilus & Cressida, done at Lone Fir Cemetery here in Portland, by Portland Actors Ensemble. We had a great cast and an equally great run, and I am thoroughly proud of the production and the people within it. It, for a brief moment, sparked a renewed passion to act again, though to be honest that spark has since dwindled, for reasons I’ll talk about later.

    I have a new job, working as a Legal Secretary for the Oregon Department of Justice. My first state job. I started in September and still have a couple of months left on my trial period. To be honest I took a positional hit for this job–I was a Legal Assistant at my old job, though jobwise it was much more on par with being a paralegal[1. If you’re confused about the hierarchy of these titles, you know how a rectangle is sometimes a square but a square is never a rectangle? Yeah, it’s that kind of confusing.]. Either way, definitely a higher position than secretary. I’m hoping that this is the beginning of an upward climb through the state system, either through the DOJ or somewhere else in the state. I appreciate the job security, the benefits, and the ability to get my student loans forgiven.

    Also, the Dept of Justice’s online intranet site is called DOJO, which is fun.

    In February I wrote some really great songs as part of FAWM, which I hope to throw onto a website this year.

    In November I finished NaNoWriMo for the second time in the 15 years I’ve attempted. The book is called Leap Year One and I hope to get it ready for a first draft by March or April or something like that.

    So I have a lot to be happy about. And yet so many other things are nagging at me.

    (more…)

  • the state of things

    I gave up my blog for nearly a year so I could write a bunch of monologues. As with most of my ventures these days, it ended with a sense of ambivalence. I wrote some good stuff, I wrote some bad stuff. I pretended song lyrics were monologues during FAWM. I wrote part of a NaNoWriMo novel in first person, pretending those were monologues. I delved a bit into my own battles with depression, a thing I keep meaning to write about but end up not doing because, of course, I don’t think it’s worthy of your time. (Then again, this is my blog, and if you’re reading it then you obviously have devoted time to it.) It’s funny; in my teens and part way into my 20s I spent a lot of time being open and introspective about my own life. I’d write tons of material on Diaryland and LiveJournal–completely open for people to read (which got me in trouble a couple of times). I did it so much that I realized I was being repetitious and I guess I decided I didn’t like that. Not for me, per se, but for you, the reader, whomever you may be. My repetitions were usually negative in nature and being repetitious about how I’m bad at dating or how I suck because I don’t want to go out ever ground me down like a weathered rock on a riverbed. Polished, but dull, lacking edges. Same as all the other rocks.

    So later on I just gave up writing things. I decided to be introspective in my own head. Folks, that’s not the best idea. Ideas in your head roll around forever, they get stuck there, trapped in your consciousness until you let them out. And I’ve always been a man who needed an outlet, especially for my creativity, which tends to diffuse sadness or depression vis a vis working distraction. Taking my problems and internalizing them to the extent that I have been has only pulled me down, in ways I didn’t know I could be pulled. I’m still climbing out of that pit. Writing monologues was an excuse to be creative every day, to try and inhabit another person’s mind for at least an hour or two a day. Truth is, some days I forgot and had to make up for them later. Other days I didn’t want to get out of bed. And then around June my job got so busy that I didn’t really have the energy to devote to writing monologues, so I stopped prematurely. Not bothered by that one bit. I wrote 267 monologues! That’s nothing to sneeze at. (Sneeze at? Did I just make that up?)

    Point is: I think my goal for this blog now is to continue being introspective, to be honest with myself, and to write about my life in a way that, I hope, is accessible to everyone who cares to read it. Because I always want an audience, but I think the audience wants to see me be honest with them, and not hide. On the other hand: I hate when I talk about what this blog is about. Who fucking cares. It’s a goddamn blog. It could be about my favorite hot dogs, who gives a shit? Just write you big dummy.