For years, I’ve just used the Kindle app to read on my Android or iPhone. It was easy, and send to Kindle is awesome. The UI, while cluttered with Amazon nonsense, was pleasing enough to get along with. But I now host all of my own eBooks, and I am trying to divorce myself from Amazon as much as I can. The issue I’ve had is that there are no great eBook readers for Android.

So, I used to read a lot more. The last two years I’ve slowed down some, mostly because of some truly epic reading slumps. I’m kind of back on track right now, but I still have days where I just don’t want to read a book. Sometimes I want to read some fanfiction or just watch a movie.

This got me thinking about the pressure I feel to read every day and to read a lot every year. I wondered where that feeling comes from. And the answer is social media. I like to follow book YouTubers and Instagramers, because they give me ideas and it’s entertaining to watch other people’s reading journey. But they all read a hundred books a year or more, and often read 7 books a week if they push themselves. It’s not all of them, but if you get into BookTube, you’ll see the number of super readers on there far outpaces the normal paced readers.

So now that I’m actually self hosting my own music collection (which I’ll write more about soon), something I’ve noticed is that music sounds better now.

It isn’t actually better, though. I always listened to lossless when I could and close to it when I couldn’t. Besides, I’m no audiophile. But it does sound better now. I’ve decided the reason behind this is entirely because now it’s being streamed from my own server and it’s music I own.

I’ll admit, that I like having a lot of subscribers. I’m also pretty realistic in knowing that I’m never going to be Mr. Beast. It’s unlikely that I’ll ever get to 1 Million subscribers.

But I will also admit to being human and being a bit jealous of Linux YouTubers who started well after me and have done better. I’m not saying they don’t deserve it. They most definitely deserve their success. My jealousy isn’t about them so much as it is about disappointment in myself.

I’m going to start sharing some of the music I’m listening to. I’ve finally moved away from streaming music services and I’ve found it very nice to listen to my own music for once. I talked a few days ago about albums vs playlists, but I’ve actually found myself listening to a few albums. It’s been very nice.

Leave This Town by Daughtry

I love this entire album, but Life After You is by far my favorite track. I love Daughtry’s voice, I think he’s probably one of the most iconic singing voices of my generation.

I don’t even know what I did this week as I sit down to write this post. Thankfully, I have some daily notes to check out. It has been a really, really long week.

Work

Meh. That’s all I have to say about that shit. Almost done. Writer’s final articles are in. The editing will be done during the next two weeks, and then they go to design and media. And then after that’s done they’ll come back to me for my final approval, and then I’ll be done.

So, I wrote in one of my link posts that I had decided to buy a Platinum Preppy fountain pen. I’ve now done that, and I have to say, I love it. I’ll do a full review of it soon, but I am a convert. So much so, that I hopped on Amazon and bought myself some more fountain pens. I found this multi-pack with loads of colors called Eyeye Pen. It has 10 colors for about 15 bucks, I think, and those too are really good.

I have been publishing a new post every day since mid September. I’ve had a good time doing it, and I’m going to continue on into next year unless something happens. But I do have to wonder, does publishing too much bug those of you who subscribe to my RSS feed? Do the people who post four or five times a day, usually short posts, come across as spammy? Is there such a thing as too many posts?

So, I’m in the process of rebuilding my music library so I can finally get away from music subscription services. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that I download albums, but I don’t really listen to albums. I used to, obviously. Back in the CD days (and before that cassette tapes), you listened to one artist at a time, and usually you did so one album at a time. Unless you made mix tapes, which was fun. Mix tapes were the first playlists.