Bad for me, good for me

Bad for me

• Checking social media (becomes addiction, always makes me feel worse)
• Keeping up with the news (becomes addiction, always makes me feel worse)
• Consuming nicotine (becomes addiction, always makes me feel worse)
• Chasing material things (getting whatever just makes me want something else)
• Playing status games (reaching a new level just makes me want to reach for the next)
• Keeping up with the Joneses (always a Jones up the street with something out of my reach)

Good for me

• Reading books (requires effort, always makes me feel better)
• Reading thoughtful blogs (requires effort, always makes me feel better)
• Working out regularly (requires effort, always makes me feel better)
• Writing regularly (requires a lot of effort, makes my head feel clean)
• Showering in cold water (requires only a little effort, makes me feel great)
• Living in the moment (because there is nothing else)
• Doing meaningful work (work that is meaningful to me)
• Enjoying the process (anything else is unsustainable)

Notes

On social media

Even Mastodon is too much for me. I get caught up in polemic discourse, hottakes without nuance and black and white world views. It poisons my mind and I need to stay away.

To wit, I have retired my original Mastodon account. All my online sharing and socialising will be through this blog. To facilitate this, I have enabled comments, webmention and ActivityPub federation.

Which means you can follow and interact with me in these ways:

Follow: By subscribing to the RSS feed.

Follow: By subscribing to weekly email summaries of all my posts, notes and links.

Follow: By using your fediverse account to follow this website.

Interact publicly: By leaving a comment directly on any given post, note or link.

Interact publicly: By commenting from a fediverse account of any given post, note or link.

Interact publicly: By sending a webmention from your own blog to any given post, note or link.

Interact privately: By emailing me.

On reading

Since my last month report, I've gotten back into the groove. I'm a bit behind on book reports, but will try to catch up with notes on the books I've read lately over the coming weeks.

On writing

I fell off the horse. Lost my streak. Couldn't sustain getting up at 5AM in the morning, when life threw a couple of extra curve balls at me. Nothing serious, just life being life. Have to figure out when and how to make writing every day a sustainable habit. Will share more on this in future posts, as I attempt to figure it out.

My head needs it. My soul needs it. I need to make it work.

On life in general

Update coming to my /now page soon, as I've secured a new role at my current company. I'll be working with stuff I really enjoy working on. But it also involves some changes that require some adapting on my end.

I'll write a post on this, too, in the coming weeks.