I was only kind of kidding...

 ...About using Blogger again. I mean, it's not hard to learn and the end product looks just fine. WHY NOT?

Here I go, here I go again...

 Ironically blogging again on my Blogspot address. 

Hello. It is 8:16 am ET on January 21 in the year of our Lord 2022. The news today is bad. The news is bad every day. It has been bad for two years now. 

Meat Loaf died. He was 74. Mr. Loaf (born Marvin Lee Aday) collaborated with Jim Steinman to bring young Boomers and Gen Xers an operatic vision of doing it in the car. 

He also showed us rock stars didn't need to look a certain way. They could sound like tenors meant for Wagnerian godhood but look like a guy from Texas named Marvin and the world would not wobble from orbit and perish in the embrace of the Sun.

The Russians might invade Ukraine. They might not. But they probably will. 

It is very cold where I live. 

A billionaire with personal issues wants to tap into our actual brains. 

Elon Musk's Neuralink fascinates me. I wish it didn't, because overall the whole device "implanted flush with skull & charges wirelessly, so you look and feel totally normal" thing he's proposing is as dystopian as awaiting trial for an unknown crime while dressed in a cockroach suit and being guarded by sentient, fascist barnyard animals. At the same time, it points toward something that will happen. The question I have is just how comprehensive such an implant might be. Could someone upload from their mind as well as receiving input? There are things I'd like to get rid of. And if human consciousness could be located in a specific way in the brain, could we simply upload that once our bodies give out? Maybe grow a new self (clone) and download into that? Scary and intriguing. Mostly scary. 

Here ends another random ironic Blogspot entry. I will return later. In a day or six months, not sure. 

I’ve gone feral

 …Facebook is down. Instagram is down. The world is spinning out of control, a belts snapping, cogs and flywheels flying. 

So I went running back to Blogger. Let’s make it 2004 again. No Facebook then. No Twitter. No Instagram. Just uglyass blogs and MySpace and shit. 

I wonder, sometimes

...why blogger is still here. It works, yes. Plenty of people still use it. I'm still oddly proud I managed to get this blog name.

At the same time, Google rarely seems to do much with it and a lot of blogs still look 15 years old. Even if they are regularly updated.

Seems like there should be a better use for the site.

Anyway, here is wherel plan to do a lot of stuff, though I will ontinue figuring out a use for this space.

 https://huff.substack.com.

Now I'm 51

The old cliche about life coming at you fast is too damn true. Pretty sure I was 18 just yesterday, driving a 1980 Buick Regal around Nashville, the car packed with friends.

I'm not sad or down about being 51, just kind of amazed. I've outlived two siblings and some cousins, not to mention classmates from high school and college. I couldn't have predicted who or how many on that score.

I did predict some of where my life would go; I knew years ago. But it's mostly been good and bad surprises.

I have another 30-40 years to go, Lord willin'. I don't know much of what will happen but it will, at minimum, be interesting.

Stoicism

This seems silly as hell on some level but I've been reading up on the philosophy of stoicism.

Stoicism isn't what most people think--it's not about merely enduring adversity with stony resolve. On a practical level it's about understanding what we can and cannot control and adjusting accordingly. There's this lovely practicality to it that soothes my anxiety-ridden nature.

Seeking to understand a new philosophy at 50 is the part that feels so silly, I guess. Yet there is a simplicity about stoicism that doesn't task my supposedly aging brain. And it isn't about enduring hardship but about  finding contentment in the middle of the storms life sends your way.

I need that sort of input. It's pretty fucking cool.

I hate being happy

Hands up if you're the kind of person who tends to actively sabotage your own happiness. That's me. It's not intentional at all--though who would intentionally sabotage themselves?

I do this to forestall everything that can go wrong. You know, if you anticipate disaster then you aren't surprised when it happens.

At the same time it ends up something like a request for bad results. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

I turn 51 in November. Maybe this is the year I fix this shit. Maybe.

It'd probably be funny...

... if I just posted random bloggy stuff here because no one will read it. I mean, it's Blogspot.  Who still uses this other than single aunts with macrame blogs? "Today, we're crafting an owl..."

It feels nostalgic, thinking about that. Before social media, the constant blog poster was tossing out stuff they would later just tweet. Sometimes that seems like it was a better idea.

Still, I keep this space

It's 1am and I am checking in on a blog I never update but refuse to give up on entirely.

Go figure. Guess it's always good to have a backup plan. Or something.

Maybe

For now... I'll confine personal blogging to this space. 

I keep meaning to do more but have set up too many places. And the truth is if I just blog for myself I want it simple and dumb. 

Blogger is good for that.