Seth Godin reminded me today that “no one cares about the noise in our head (or the actions we take) nearly as much as we do”. That noise kept me wary of changing a few things with my setup till today. I pulled the plug and have changed how and where I write. Thanks, Seth!
Evening walks are cheerful again
We are enjoying the walks around the neighbourhood with Snoopy. With this guy getting all the attention, it makes our evenings joyous. He is the favourite among my daughter’s friends. And they all are his best friends. He enjoys running around and walking along with them. Neither of them can get enough of the other. The goodbyes are sad; none of them wants to go back home.
They can’t even converse with him. He can’t tell them anything. Yet you would commonly hear the phrases “he is tired now”, “he wants you to run”, and “he is saying slow down” as they play along. It is heartening to see the friends unable to talk to one another yet understand each other so well.
I had another realization today. Since we started walking Snoopy, I have been a lot social in general. Not swiping, committing and liking on my smartphone. But social in real #life. I have met and talked to many old friends with whom I had lost touch. And I love talking to people.
Why couldn’t I do that when I went on my walks alone? Well, for one, I always had headphones in my ear. So the only interaction we friends had was a nod of acknowledgement. Another reason was none of us had any topic to make us pause in our steps. Now we do.
Will this continue? Who knows. But I want to enjoy these cheerful evenings as long as they last.
How will these smaller groups of happier people be monetized? This is a tough question for the billionaires. Happy people, the kind who eat sandwiches together, are boring. They don’t buy much.
I can’t remember the last time I had read all the new items from Stoop and Reeder. No unread items - they both read. It felt nice - we must get some badge for that.
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I do not plan to crosspost any of the posts I write here to the known social timelines. So no Micro.blog or Mastodon. And, of course, not on Twitter. I may selectively share or reference them in other places. But there is no timeline where you can follow these. What I write here is first for the audience of one - me.
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It’s only been two weeks since I have written a post every night, and I already feel off if I do not sit down to write as the people around me sleep. This has been a nice routine. I feel relieved that I publish something every day. I was very close today to skipping writing. A brief moment ago, I was extremely sleepy. Then I needed to record one observation.
Even while doing nothing, walking around the house is enough to freshen me up. Putting me back in the mood to get back to the routine. And once I am in the zone, sleep doesn’t disturb me. It’s only a brief moment of weariness that I need to fend off typically. That I need to overcome it to sit down at my regular place.
And then the words start flowing.
What also helps is I have marked a corner as my #writing place. Every day, at a fixed time, I sit down and start typing on a blank page. Today, I tried writing at a place which wasn’t my regular corner. I failed. I was distracted by sounds. Or the lack of regular sounds in my corner.
The moment I returned to the writing place, the process became easier.
Being productive writing only at a particular place/time or in a particular environment isn’t sustainable. But it’s a hack that works for me and might help pull me out of the writing slump.
Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work. ― Stephen King
I am done waiting.
I had no idea a Mercedes-Benz makes a special sound before a crash which helps “make the noise from the crash impact not nearly as harmful” to our ears. Now I Know.
That’s a smart feature. And here I was getting pleased having a few buttons aligned to the centre through CSS.
If you’re a developer or a tester, and you want to abbreviate the word “accessibility” in a bug report, then as my New York friends keep saying to me, “knock yourself out”. But when we’re talking about accessibility in a public environment like Mastodon, where we can connect with people who know little about it, using A11Y as a hashtag creates a clique that has the potential to lessen the reach of the subject matter.
With Snoopy’s last vaccination done, today was his first walk around society. My wife and I had carried him around earlier though so that the surroundings weren’t so new for him that he would go crazy whenever we take him on his first walk. That effort in the past must have helped because Snoopy behaved as if he had been on walks for ages. He didn’t run around sniffing and biting and eating stuff. He walked and jogged and played with my daughter, never feeling overwhelmed by the large world around him.
I have noticed peculiar behaviour, though. People judge you when they see a pet with you. They visualize you as idle and workless, living a worthless. Their eyes speak, “you care for a pet; you must have so much time”.
I am tired of these looks. I am tired of the questions. I am tired of the suggestions. Don’t be an asshole, man. Don’t ask me a question to satisfy your puerile opinions. I may not answer as per your wish.
You live yours; let me live mine. #Life.
Late to bed and late to rise
One of my routines for the past week is spending a good couple of hours on my laptop reading and writing stuff before I go to bed. This all started with my change in daily routine, where I begin the day late and stretch it late. Mornings never allowed me a good couple of hours for anything. At night, I feel in control.
Knowing that I will spend time writing during the night, a task right at the end of the day also frees me from feeling burdened in the morning. Otherwise, I felt I had to get words in before the grind began, or I would ruin my chance.
Sure, #writing to a writer shouldn’t feel like a burden. But with my recent slump, the only way I knew was to push myself to get at least 100 words in every day. On anything and everything. I have been doing that for the last few days, mainly looking inwards. In a way, these are all my journal posts.
My growing liking for the write.as platform was timely too. I haven’t announced this blog’s feed to other known places. I don’t share these posts at all. No crossposting either. These thoughts aren’t open to comments in any way.
Would you write more (+freely) if you know no one is reading?
I had quipped recently. If these past couple of weeks are anything to go by, it’s true for me, at least.
Will I never publicise this feed? Or share any of these posts? No idea. But if I do or someone stumbles across this place and follows the feed, I am happy to gain a reader organically. After all, who doesn’t like his words being read?