Honestly, this title is a lie. This has been a horrible reading year. I’ve read 15 books, reread 3 books, and that’s it. That’s about half of what I usually do. I’m a little ahead of last year, which was also a down year. So, I guess that’s good?

It’s not as if I have to meet my goals of reading so many books, but it feels like I’ve been going for a long period of time between books. I finished 11/22/63 by Stephen King back in the end days of August, read a smutty harem book, and then nothing since then. Oh, I got about 90 pages read of the next Dresden Files book, but nothing significant. I just can’t seem to keep my interest on anything lately.

I’m a man of habit. I do the same things every day, I eat the same things every week, I wear the same three colors all the time. I also have bad habits, like everyone does, and my bad habits are just as entrenched into my lifestyle as the good ones. I definitely get caught up in my habits. I tend to get very grumpy if things don’t go my way.

A few months ago, I talked about my note-taking problem. In that post, I talked about my new solution: QuillPad and Obsidian connected via Nextcloud. A few days after that, I talked about how much I was loving Obsidian and the setup in general. That was June.

Now, I wrote in that first blog post about how I have trouble sticking with a note taking solution. I like trying new things and I’m very picky when it comes to how this all works. I want it to work exactly like I want it to work, and if something doesn’t… well that shiz has to go.

I have talked a lot about regrets on this blog since I started out. Nobody wants them, everyone has them. One regret I didn’t think I had was about LastFM of all things. First off, I didn’t even know that LastFM was still a thing. I thought that died along with FourSquare and MySpace (to add to the list: Digg and Stumbleupon). But nope, it’s still around (even if the website is kinda broken and never gets updates).

I admit that I do a lot more doom scrolling than a healthy person should. I enjoy other people’s drama and opinions, and there is no shortage of that on social media, and I’m a little addicted to it. I also like good things too, and that is my excuse for staying. Things like BookTok and BookTube are usually great places to find some good books (though they do seem to all get attached to the same books, so you have to be choosy on who you follow), so at least it’s not all politics and hating on other people and people who want to constantly predict the end of the world.

I haven’t always had a clear opinion on this question. Back when I worked in the real world or even further back when I was at school, laptops were really the best way to go. It’s hard to heft a desktop, monitor, keyboard, and mouse to the library on campus so you can write that paper that’s due at midnight. Obvious when you think about it.

Of course, it’s easy to choose laptop when, in my case, the Michigan State University Computer Store had “sales” on those white MacBooks almost every week. They nearly threw those things at us students, everyone had one and nobody paid more than $500 bucks, and if there was a way to get your financial aid to pay for it? Free laptop. I don’t know if MSU still does this with MacBooks, but I wouldn’t doubt it.

I’ve talked about my note taking “issues” in the past. I’m pretty happy with my current digital setup. I use obsidian on the desktop and I use QuillPad on my Android phone with Nextcloud in the middle. I will admit that things there are messier than they were a few months ago. I’m going to have to work on simplifying that again, but I think it still works well.

But I need to add something quicker. I don’t know what it is, but my memory isn’t great. I can remember things, but I often forget to do things that I need to do. Not really planned things, but things that come up throughout the day, usually when I’m away from my computer and my phone. There might be an entire blog post on how my digital life has ruined my ability to remember things, but that’s for another day.

First off, I recognize the irony of me complaining about subscriptions when I have a Patreon page that offers subscriptions. I appreciate the support folks throw me, and I always will. I don’t think I can help though complaining about my own struggles with subscription services. I think this revolution we’ve gone through where things aren’t sold but are instead rented is horrendous and may just ruin the world as we know it.

31 days of blogging, in the bag. It was pretty easy for about the first 20 days. After that, I ran out of ideas. It’s why I’ve talked about blogging for the last four days. I had, at one point during that first 20 days thought: “Oh, I’m going to write every day until the end of the year!” Yeah, that’s not going to happen. I’ll write most days, but only when I truly have something to say or to share.