I thought I learned this lesson years ago, but apparently not. I have a small homelab. It is just Proxmox on an old HP workstation that has way more memory and CPU power than I really need. I love it, though, and it has been fun to tinker with. I have known for ages that I needed a better backup solution for the server itself. Proxmox has a backup server project that would have been perfect.

A few days ago, JCPROBABLY wrote this post about finding and maintaining friendships as an adult. I found this blog post amazing and very insightful. It also made me think about the status of my own friendships.

The truth is, in the real world (i.e. outside the internet) I don’t have many friends. I work from home, I don’t get out that much, and I’ve always been reticent about actually talking to people. So, I’ve never been great at making friends, even when I was younger and around more people. As I get older, I get even less interested in interacting with new people. Part of that is just general apathy about people and relationships caused by decades of being a loner. Even when I do have to socialize with people for work or whatever, I’m more interested in when I can stop doing that than actually making new connections.

I’ve been writing a lot about blogging during Blaugust, but I’m fascinated by the whys and hows of why people write and read blogs. Back when Blaugust first started, I wrote about how I subscribed to every Blaugust participant’s RSS feed. I’ve weeded quite a few out since then (people who don’t capitalize their letters, and ones that just aren’t my style), but I still have almost 150 new feeds that are seemingly constantly updated.

I’ve seen several people, including myself, talk about not having something to blog about. When we undertake these blogging challenges, we often suffer from the idea that every blog post needs to be “epic,” or perhaps “revolutionary.”

I’m not sure about other people, but I feel that pressure. The pressure not only to write everyday, but to make the blog posts matter. After all, I’m writing this, I want people to want to read it. Blogging about some nonsense that nobody should care about would make it a waste of time!

In 2020, which seems like forever ago, I set out on a quest to type faster. I chose to do this for several reasons. First, I worked at the time as a writer, so typing faster meant I could get my assignments done more quickly. Second, it seemed like something I could dedicate myself to each day and see actual progress. So, I stared spending 10 to 20 minutes every day on monkeytype practicing. I attempted to change to a few different keyboard layouts, but none of those really stuck around.

We’re just over half way through Blaugust, and I haven’t written anything for today’s post.

I’ll be honest, I got nothin’. I have an idea for tomorrow, but have no interest in writing it today.

So, instead, I’m just going to say hello. If you’re doing the whole Blaugust thing, how is it going for you? For me it has been pretty easy up until today. I have a feeling the second half is going to be rough.

I don’t talk about my health much. My mental health, sure. I’m a shrink’s best customer. You know, if I’d ever go to a shrink. But my actual physical health? I stay away from that as much as possible. It’s private. And while I am an oversharer, in this area, I’ve tried not to be.

But it’s time for me to talk about this, even if only a little.

I’m a big guy. That line always makes me laugh. It reminds me of a joke. I’m not sure who said it, but I think it might be Dennis Leary. He was making fun of people who claimed to be “big boned”, and he said, “no, you’re fat assed.” That always made me giggle.

So one of the posts that caught my attention during this Blaugust, was this one by Why I Game. In that post, one line really got to me:

There’s just a craving to be heard. To be read. To be seen.

This really resonates with me. One of the things I said yesterday in my post was that my YouTube channel has slowed when it comes to growth. One thing I didn’t say, but should, was that I have always told myself that I don’t do YouTube for money or views. When you first start out on any social platform, doing it for money or views is dumb, because you’re going to get none of either. And your expectations that you will earn money and that you will get views, will often leave you dissatisfied with what little you do get.

If you’d asked be six months ago, I’d tell you I’ve been creating things for 20 years. Between being a professional writer and then a YouTuber, I create things all the time.

But, lately, I’ve been feeling otherwise. I don’t write anymore professionally. Not really. I spend all my time editing other people’s writing, and I have no doubt that in the next year my job will go away because ChatGPT can do it for me. As for YouTube, what do I really create? I rant about Linux topics, I maybe look at apps, but really all the content I create is super reliant on the work of other people.

So, since I’ve started scrobbling my music (after I created the /now page), I’ve been on a bit of a music discovery kick.

Tonight I was looking through country music playlists, and found one called “Classic Country”. Now, for me, Classic Country is Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, Ernest Tubb, etc. You know, classic country.

This playlist had songs from the late 90s on there, though. The late 90s? I was a teenager in the late 90s. That’s not classic. But apparently, to kids these days, Alan Jackson is downright ancient.