We did very little this year as far as gifts go. The wife and I gave each other a few trinkets but no real big gifts as we’re going on an internation trip next month, so: money.
The wee one did get a few things. A small digital camera that’s as good as the ones I used to want so bad in the early aughts. It’s funny how technology advances - the digital camera I gave her came with a memory card, reader and all the charging cables for $20. I don’t think an iPhone comes with cables these days.
It’s a very warm holiday this year, compared to the blizzard of ‘22 we experienced on Christmas day this year is downright balmy!
So, we’re happy and healthy and gave the just right amount of gifts!
I’ve chased a lot of numbers over the years. I have wanted to be older when I was young and younger when I have been older.
I have had numbers on a screen show I owe people a lot of money,and I have had numbers on a screen showing that I have some money at least.
I have child who identifies by her age - also a number
Heck, I have a license plate number and a house number.
I have lots of numbers. Some I like and some I don’t and some I care about and some I never will. I have an alien number for crying out loud.
The number I want to care most of all is the number of posts number you see at the top of the page. At writing, it’s a 40. I want that to be 1000 and then 2000, and so on
Why? Because I want to be known a writer and not an Uber Driver. And to do so I figure I have to write. A lot.
It doesn’t matter what app I use to either write or publish, and believe me when I tell you I am pretty sure I have found and tried most of them and they all have thier flaws. The apps and tools have long been the distraction. It’s a lot more fun to be a part of the new darling of writing site or social media or whatever.
It’s a lot more fun to stall writing. It’s a lot more fun to tweak this sites design over and over again, until I get it just right.
It’s not as much fun to put yourself out there. I write with too many commas,1 and my sentence structure isn’t the best either. I haven’t learned to type correctly so the backspace button is my favorite button.
All of it doesn’t matter
I just have to write. I want to tell people I write and have written and been self published. I don’t need to submit my writing to publishers as I am the publisher.
What matters is I push the keys on the keyboard and then make the words and sentences happen. Then I push publish.
And then I do it again, and again. I am hoping my writing will suck less and less over time and I will become better at the ‘craft’ of writing. Or, maybe I won’t.
I do know that I want that number at the top of the page to count higher and higher. I think if I do that, all the other details should take care of themselves.
She had a love/hate relationship with the car wash. She loved the lights, and the bubbles but hated the noise.
What to do? I couldn’t take her to vacuum the car because she couldn’t handle the noise - but she wanted to go. She begged me to go.
The solution? Noise cancelling earpads for kid. She loves them and can now go with me to the car wash. She looks a little bit dopey, but whatever. At least we have a clean car for Christmas
It’s been pretty warm this winter. I think our snowplow guy has come just once this year and so far I have paid $400 to get my driveway plowed once this year as I pre-pay for the entire year. Sometimes he wins, and sometimes I do.
It was too early for this he thought to himself as he poured the water over the grounds and watched them bubble and settle before he pushed the plunger down on his aero press
This wasn’t the plan. Amazon delivery was not in his life plan but he needed to do something and this was a pretty easy gig for the most part. The metrics were a bit of a pain in the neck but he was old enough to know they wouldn’t fire him over a few customers complaints. You can’t please everyone
At least 5h4bweather was nice and the forecast said it might hit 70 degrees which would be welcome after the long winter where he worked through I r storms and blizzards so people could get their stuff delivered.
For the most part, the people he met on this job were few and far between. Dometimes he would be given cold drinks on hot days. He could guarantee that the older man with 5h5 huge trump banner would be ready with an ice cold drink. We might not agree in politics, but we’re all just people at the end.
With his coffee thermos full, he went to the hallway to put in his boots. He pet the dog, and left doe another day of delivering smiles.
He wasn’t sure when the change happened but for whatever reason she didn’t like to wear her headphones when she was watching YouTube Kids and he was annoyed.
He couldn’t listen to this thoughts as the constant drone of paw patrol saving the world squawked through the small tinny speakers
It’s not like she watched the tablet the time. The rule at home was that there were no “shows” on the weekdays. There was crafting and toys to play with as it was encountered to use her imagination instead of hours of screen time
The headphones themselves were fine and designed for children with the volume limited for little ears so he didn’t understand the push back.
Perhaps it was the feel of the headphone themself that bothered her. She was too young to fully explain the problem she had with them.
Sometimes he let it slide and just dealt with the chirping of cartoons from those tiny tablet speakers
Sometimes, it just wasn’t woth the fight and the headphones would sit unused on her dresser for one more day.
She hated getting her hair [[brushed]], but it had to be done. She did not like it one bit and she completely shared her dislike with her father who was trying to do the brushing.
It was this nightly dance that never ended well and both felt defeated at the end. Some nights hair got brushed. Some nights hair kind of got brushed and some nights the screaming was out of control and brushed hair wasn’t in the cards.
If only he get through to her that if she brushed her hair regularly than it would be less effort to keep her hair tangle free. But her 4 year old brain couldn’t handle the comprehension so she fought and screamed instead.
Sometimes he got lucky and she would be distracted with a toy or even just her imagination and he would be able to get her hair brushed without her even noticing, but tonight was one of those nights.
When she got the idea in her head that she would be fighting the hair brush, there was no turning back. The most annoying thing was when he did finally get some hair knot-free she would go and take her hands and tangle it all back up again.
She was stubborn. All the techniques didn’t work that they suggested on the internet.
He knew that one day he would be hard pressed to get her to stop combing her hair and he was unsure if that day would better or worse, so for now he would just deal with the tantrums and wait for a new day. That’s all he could do.
I have waffling the past few days on what I should use to get my words down with and I’ve narrowed it down to substack, ghost or using something else.
Of course, I chose something else.
The easy way would be to use substack and call it a day. If I end up making a killing on email subcriptions, I just have to give them their 10 percent. Think of it as having an agent and this is the fee off the top. But to start substack is free and free is hard to beat.
The problem is that all my efforts are on their servers which makes it easy, but also makes it hard too as you’re tied into a platform. They might be the platform of the moment, but how about in the future? Will this still be the case? I dunno, and this gives me pause.
There’s ghost, but it’s $100 a year up front for the hosting fees. So it would actually cost me a bit to get started which would not be the end of the world.
Lastly, there’s what I am using already: This site runs on Jekyll and is already setup for writing so why reinvent the wheel - yes?
It’s tempting to use the other tools, but I fear over the long term things will change ie: twitter and then I will have married myself to another dead or dying platform.
I have the blogging thing set, but what about the newsletter part? I found buttondown that offers a free service for the first 100 subscribers and then it’s a reasonable amount after that per month. If I’m getting 100 subscribers, then that would be fanatastic. To be honest, I can’t think how I would get mroe than that.
So after an evening of sharpening up my CSS skills, I managed to add and style some subscribe buttons to put on this site. One day I hope somebody will use one and subscribe but I guess time will tell…
I have been giving some thought about starting a newsletter and the choices seem to be either
substack or ghost
Substack is Free
That should be the decider right there, yes? One would think but there’s more to it. I like the ease of writing it offers but I dunno…there’s something about it I don’t like. All the notes and other features seem to me to be frills and extras not needed.
Substack makes their money by taking a cut of your incomee and that’s okay if you only have a few subscribers. I can live with a 10% fee if I’m only making $20.00. But what if I make more? Do I want to give substack $5000 if I get there?
Ghost Costs Money
But there’s no cut. You keep 100% of the money you make. But you have to pay a monthly fee for ghost pro. To start it’s under 10 dollars a month so it’s definitely reasonable. But to build an audience you’re probably going to lose some money up front.
Stick at it here.
This might be the way I go. I like using jekyll and a plain old text editor to write with and as this is already setup then I may just start here. I don’t have to tweak anything to get going or get used to writing with a new product when the one that I have just works.
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