Potpourri 2

This morning, the usual, waking, dressing, coffee, oatmeal, drugs

It’s trash and recycling day and I hauled stuff out in the rain just before the trucks came thinking about the fact that it’s 34 degrees F and thirty years ago, when I was a kid, this would probably be snow instead of rain, because: Climate change.  Then I thought about how I can’t even really share these thoughts with most people because of the a) the politicization of climate change aka global warming and b) it is a big fucking downer and people don’t like downer topics of conversation, we like memes and puppies and thoughts of where we will go to eat tonight after work.

Jennie up again in the middle of the night, waking me up too.  She had the flu earlier in the week and while her fever is gone and she’s going to work again, it left her with this hacking cough.

I actually felt like getting out of bed this morning though.  This is the second time this week where I was awake in bed, didn’t yet have to get up, and got up anyway.  Maybe the Lexapro that I’m on is finally doing something — maybe it’s helping.  It’s hard to tell.  It’s week 5.  I don’t remember any of my dreams either, which is unusual.  I wonder if that has something to do with the drugs.

I have to start programming for my job, I have my best energy right now and I should probably try to bang it out so I can have an easier afternoon.  But I’m supposed to write 800 words or so.  I don’t know where these words are going to come from — I feel absolutely no flow about anything.

In the afternoon I have to talk to a friend’s kid.  She’s in high school and she’s generating a report on what it’s like to run a website.  I ran a mildly successful blog for about three years about saving, investing, and financial independence.  I wanted to examine what it’s like to be frugal in a world that encourages everyone to be a spendthrift.  (Shortest possible answer:  It can be isolating.)  I don’t know exactly what questions she will have but I will do my best to give her what she is looking for.  Writing is the easy part of running a blog.  Editing is harder.  Worrying about what other people will think of what you post isn’t fun either.  Publicizing it is a pain, reading comments can be both a pleasure and a headache, you may get crazy readers who decide to stalk you or send you death threats, and the constant need to publish new articles will hang over your head like a stormcloud that follows you wherever you go.  But it can be rewarding, too.  You can make connections with people, real connections.  And it can be fun to think about something other than your day job for a while — a good, healthy hobby.  Some people even manage to make some extra money.

Running that blog.. it seems like forever ago.  I still sometimes think about adding another post to it — I haven’t posted in a couple of years and I have lots of ideas.  But when I get the urge, I sit down, write a few pages, and stall out.  I get lost thinking about how to edit the content for clarity.  Then I start overthinking peoples’ reactions to whatever it is I’m going to post.

As any writer will tell you, if you are trying to write in such a way as to please everyone, then your writing and content will please no-one — it’ll be uninteresting, dry, and without value.  In the current age of internet toxicity, though — writing anything of interest is guaranteed to spark negative comments.  This is the main reason I gave up on the damned blog.

If my friend’s kid asks why I don’t do it anymore, that’s probably what I’ll say.  I got tired of the fuck you nature of the internet.  The negatives started to outweigh the positives.

I could also give a more generic answer and just say the blog had run its course, i didn’t have much else to say.

But that’s not really true either.  What I would say now is:  Frugality is fine, but not when it comes at the cost of your interpersonal relationships.  Don’t turn yourself into a freak just so you can save more money.  Spending money — particularly when it allows you to be social or have a new experience — helps your relationships, and healthy relationships and connections are the foundation of a good life.

I had therapy yesterday.  No breakthroughs, not much of note.  I gave updates on Jennie’s parents (still sick, deranged, a pain in the ass) and work (boring, I wish I didn’t have to do it), and my heath updates that I’ve already written about in OD this week.  He asked how my mood was and I said that it fluctuates a lot but overall it’s all right.  I gave summaries of how Christmas went and also New Years and the extra visit with my mom and my brother.  I mentioned we’re doing the solar panel project this year.  I signed a contract to get 26 panels on the top of the house.  It’ll finish probably in June.  He asked if I’m journaling and I said I hit four out of seven days last week and he asked if it’s helping and I said I don’t know but man I am cranking a lot of words out and that can’t be such a bad thing now can it?

So we will continue doing this thing, Open Diary, as often as I can, for the time being.