Excursions

Caring for a kid and a puppy while home alone is not easy. With my wife out to the office, today was the day when I had to do exactly that for the first time. It has left me completely drained. It isn’t easy to write freely in such a state.

I try to focus on my thoughts, but my mind is half-sleep, waiting for me to slide down the bed. I know it won’t take much time for me to go into a deep slumber. Everybody around me already is. My mind asks me why can’t I.

Today also lent me a period of loneliness in the afternoon while my daughter and Snoopy were fast asleep. I worked and read in peace, which has left me with a lot of budding ideas to chew on. I thought I would meditate on one throughout the day and put my thoughts in words, but the current state of my mind won’t allow that. Ex-yawwwwnnn-hausted!

Though weary down to my core, I still love such a day. Any lone “me time” I can steal from my routine is worth its weight in gold. But alas, such moments have become rare.

Feeling secure is being together #mbmar

I have written spontaneously in this space for the last few days. Sure, there’s a schedule to it, but no structure. I show up at a fixed time and type away all the thoughts at the top of my mind. Most often, it’s a single thought that’s clouding my mind. But there are also days when I write about a few thoughts strung together. Then, as I begin writing on a particular day, I have no clue what I will write about, just like today.

I looked at the blinking cursor, and no thought jumped to the fore. Everything was mundane. Not something that I felt strongly enough to put into words.

It made me realize how difficult it is to be spontaneous while #writing. I had once noted in my diary that spontaneity in writing is priceless. It is. But it is not natural to me. The train of thought that passes by as I try to stitch the words together makes the job tad more complicated. Before I am through with an idea, my mind is already wandering to the other, more alluring one. I, then, write about neither.

Over the years, I have turned into a planned writer. I usually have a skeleton clear in my mind about what and how I want to say. The planning at times makes me numb.

That wasn’t the case when I began writing and publishing on my blog. I was an instinctive writer then – when an instinct hit me, I got rolling. I wrote till the time permitted, and the thoughts flew everywhere. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to comment on. Precisely what and how were determined as I typed along.

The posts I wrote then sure weren’t the best of my works.

Yet I want to find that writer within me again. He was fun. Next, lend him my experience from writing over these years. He will bring the ideas, and I will bring in the sanity. My anticipation for this space is to be that playground.

I hence append the note I had made. Spontaneity in writing is priceless. Just be prepared.

What a great test match between England and New Zealand! And I love that New Zealand won by smallest of the margins. I wasn’t anyway enjoying what England was doing to the test cricket. Not a big fan of Bazball I am. Brilliant start to the day! 🏏

After three weeks of bearing the beard, I shaved it off today. That act felt nothing short of tearing it apart from my face. These three weeks have elevated my respect for those who regularly sport a beard. Maintaining this beast ain’t easy. It grows willy-nilly. And twists and twirls. And bites the face. And scratches the lips. And pokes the nose.

I was done enduring all of that.

Even that wasn’t easy to do at home, either. The beard struggled with the face. The razor struggled with the beard. And I struggled with the razor. Cleaning the mess the mayhem left behind was no less than cleaning up a crime scene. It took a toll on my morale. I needed a nice warm shower to get back to my #life.

I am past my fascination for a beard.

Surprisingly, the clean-shaven me felt much less burdened, as if the beard weighed kilos. With the weight of the beard off my face, I walked more throughout the day. A nice morning walk. And a long evening stroll around the neighbourhood. I paused at a coffee lounge and sipped my coffee slowly. It felt good not to share it with my facial hair.

For a Monday, today was also unexpectedly productive. I could focus on work better. I do need to improve my way of closing tasks at hand. I like to be particular. I have my way of building a list and ticking the tasks off the list. Though it works for me, I have stopped doing it. It is time to bring out the notepad & the pen and place it on the table again.

There’s also an update on the meta concern from yesterday. Matt responded to my support request and has generously extended the trial by a week while he finds a fix for my payment issue. What that means is blog is up and running as before.

I am happy I didn’t have to give up on this beautiful writing interface. Sure, the issue isn’t resolved yet. But I hope Matt finds a solution before this trial period runs out. After all, the problem isn’t unique, and I assume it has a standard, tried-and-tested solution.

Walked across this cosy little cafe during my evening stroll. The aroma of coffee beans was simply too pure to ignore. I’ve now found another nice spot to read in silence. Yay!

I had almost decided that I would not publish anything today. My blog got unpublished as the trial ran out, and I felt frustrated that I couldn’t get help from anyone from the platform. I still am. Can I trust a platform if it can’t guarantee support and get the working of basic functionality right?

But I am not letting this #meta concern break my streak of publishing the thoughts. Life updates have to wait as I publish another meta update.

I have undone most of the configurations and have set up the redirects. Setting things up with a trial account as if it were a fully working project was a mistake. But then, I didn’t expect basic functionality like payment to fail for a paid service. International payments are hard; I am surprised the platform didn’t hit this problem earlier.

I wonder if I even want this update on my blog as I write this. When I started regularly publishing at this place, I thought the posts would be more personal. A slice of my life. But then, I had also said this space has no structure. No throughline. It contains what is at the top of my mind.

Venting my frustration about the platform is that today. So that’s what I publish. I hope things sort out before I sit down for tomorrow’s session. Another chance to set things right.

The more that text generated by large-language models gets published on the Web, the more the Web becomes a blurrier version of itself.

Source - ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web →

If you read only one analysis on ChatGPT, it should be this on The New Yorker.

It’s time to shake things up, to turn the ship around. To innovate. Meta’s big, new idea: Charge people for basic support features and … a blue check mark.

Source - Why Would Anyone Pay for Facebook? →

Email really is an amazing, miraculous technology. But at the end of the day, it’s in the hands of humans who are always going to screw it up.

Source: Why Is Email Still So Terrible? →