So, it's been about — I was gonna say three, but really four months (four and a half!) since last I wrote anything here. I went and messed with the styling again, making of my tildeverse homepage something very clean, professional, literary to look at, but, though I still think of it often, I just haven't brought myself to sit down and come up with anything to share.
Partly this is perfectionism, a desire that anything I say be full of substance, profound. These past few months — a full third of a year — have been spent trying to glue my life back together after running out of funds to pay tuition. I'm still unemployed, of course, though I've applied to a local department store recently [as of editing, after checking back with them, they say they're not currently hiring after all], but have been slowly, agonizingly cleaning up the depressive shitheap my room had become since lockdown; bringing my sleep schedule slightly back in line with human norms; flirting on the internet; and most importantly of all, taking myself on walks in the midday sun, right after breakfast.
I used to walk through town at 4am, back when I slept at six (or seven, or eight; it's been as bad as noon). In some ways I miss it, the solitude of it, rushing to get back home before the rising sun could burn me. There were both old warm-toned streetlights and newer cool LEDs, those nights, mingling silver and gold under the stars.
Pitch black tree-shadows are a comfort to me, safe from prying eyes, roaming residential side streets where the lighting is spotty or absent.
I did a lot of thinking like that. It was on one of those walks that I admitted to myself I wanted to transition. But now I'm up early enough to have wondered back down to the water, a week ago now, and realized it might be nice to sit beside it and write a while.
Mingling with that is a growing dissatisfaction with even long-form video. Hundreds of hours of my life have been wasted on YouTube videos I didn't even particularly enjoy. I've been trying to read more blogs by other people, too — mostly about programming (something I said I wouldn't talk about here, but absolutely will) — but also more personal stuff: this article about writing more and being less self-critical, less uptight, and this about the value of a blog as a sort of third space between the public road rage interplay of social media, and the more thoughtful discussions you can have with friends in a private chat room.
Part of this shift is, far from the first time, trying to move from using the actual YouTube website to RSS (poorly documented, but they do still expose RSS feeds for every channel) and mpv with yt-dlp to just watch videos locally. It's going okay so far, probably helps that beforehand I'd been using browser extensions to excise video recommendations, and redirect the “for you” page to a chronological subscriptions page.
This isn't even my first attempt at keeping a blog! It's always been fascinating to me, even before this recent kick of trying to read more; but I've been prone to getting embarrassed over it and purging any trace of my writing. Burning through identities to stay them from getting too public, too searchable.
It makes me a little antsy even now, having a consistent presence anywhere. Having a pseudonym that yields results on the first page of Google. But the positive attention has proved too alluring to keep from social media altogether; more people like my art than I'd ever have expected.
It's starting to get chilly out here, with the wind of the river and the sun behind clouds. A whole sheet of 'em scudding in, blotting out half the sky, so seems like I should get a move on.
Maybe I'll try and write more, about less important things. There's a film I watched months ago and didn't think much of, but haven't seen any reviews that aren't either (a) favorable, or (b) kinda weird and misogynist; and of course some C programming junk to be aired out.
Catch ya later (dubious)