The More Things Change The More They Remain The Same

Once again, I took a hiatus from blogging and once again I’m back to give this blogging/writing thing a chance. Also, I have backtracked from what I said I have done in the last blog post. I reactivated my Twitter account. I’m back on Reddit as well. I even did some podcasting again before finally pulling the plug on it today.

I keep going back and forth on decisions and actions with one stance or another and then do a complete 180 on said stance after some time. Blogging has definitely taken the bulk of being put on the back burner of all my hobbies. And yet, here we are again. Will it stick this time around? Guess time will tell.

My current reasoning is that I have been increasingly dissatisfied with my podcasting. Maybe it’s the self-islolation, but I feel like it’s hard for me to voice my thoughts and opinions like I have inthe past. Not having people to talk to on a regular (customers at work aside) has affected my talking skills for sure. This has resulted in painstakingly spending ridiculous amounts of time editing the audio recordings. And let’s not even bother talking about making transcripts with otter.ai. Just more time disappearing before my eyes. And the end result was a final product that I didn’t feel too satisfied with.

Writing/blogging is definitely less time consuming. I just have to make the effort to push myself to type words on a. blank page, reread to confirm all dots and commas are where they need to be and then publish. So far, so good for for 2022. We’ll see if I will keep this up.

Removed Social Networks From My Life

It’s been many moons since my last post and a lot had to do with my continued interest in podcasting again. Well as of October 7th, 2020, I decided to call it quits on podcasting, at least for now. I did a lot of hemming and hawing before coming to that conclusion but finally decided to pull the plug on my audio diary. I decided to focus on other things in my life that didn’t allow for much time for podcasting. I also decided that if I want to podcast again sometime later, it will be a different show altogether and the audio diary route, like all of my past attempts at journals and diaries, lost its appeal to me.

Also, sadly, as I looked over my last post where I stated that I was going to be all about the iPad life, hasn’t quite come to full fruition. If anyone has been listening to my podcast, they will know of the purchase of a 2019 MacBook Pro 16-inch laptop and my plans of using it for my film major that got cut short abruptly. Consequently I just went back to using a computer for my podcasting needs and my iPad Pro became a media consumption device.

Maybe, with podcasting back on the back burner, I’ll start to blog more and try other creative things on my iPad. I’ve sadly have not done any drawing like I had initially thought I would. And now that I’m using a wireless mouse I only use the Pencil whenever the mouse isn’t able to interact with the screen the way my finger or the pencil will.

Anyways, enough of the recap, lets get to the subject of this blog post, social networks. I’ve had Facebook out of my life for 2-3 years now and I couldn’t be happier. But I was still doing the doom scrolling on Twitter and on Reddit. I also used WhatsApp b/c of others in my life that just have to use that messenger app for some reason or other. Well for almost a year, I had Twitter deleted from my device and almost never went to the website to keep up with my feed and, surprisingly, I didn’t miss it like I thought I might.

And then COVID-19 happened. I’ve become more isolated from the real world as I began to work from home. The first month I was living the sedentary life and just consuming media whenever I could. But then I finally started to exercise more regularly than I’ve had most of my life, and started doing meditation to improve my state of mind and calm any of the anxieties I was starting to feel from this forced social isolation.

I’m a social hermit and homebody by nature so being home away from the masses is nothing new to me. But I also had to interact with people at work and when I was in school and I did enjoy those moments of human interaction. I was starting to really missing those moments and tried to connect more on Reddit and Twitter but those interactions were making me feel more empty and a bit despondent. I removed the Reddit apps from my devices again and, along with meditation and exercising, I was feeling better again and noticed, like with FaceBook, I wasn’t missing those networks.

This revelation, led me to delete my Twitter account, of many many years, and my Reddit account and I haven’t felt any regret about my decision. It has been quite liberating and I’m further enjoying my completed isolated life from the world. I still have those close to me that I keep in contact with via messaging and video/audio calls. And that has sufficed.

I am now living the iPad Lifestyle

Back on December 27, 2015, I had purchased an iPad Air 2 with a wireless keyboard and was imaging a life using an iPad as my laptop replacement. Almost 3 years later (minus 21 days), that day has come. When I got the new iPad Pro (2018 3rd generation model), I was wondering if I could record a podcast and do all that entails to posting said podcast online without the aid of another device (laptop, chromebook, etc.). I found a video on YouTube by Christopher Lawley, about this possibility using an app called Ferrite. I tested it out and recorded a podcast episode for the first time on an iPad Pro and successfully completed the task with no other devices.

Don’t Mind Me, Just Dropping A Few Lines

It’s been quite some time since last I wrote. It’s also been some time since I last even recorded a podcast for that matter. I’ve been half-assing both in such a manner that I’ve lost all motivation to do either. I figured there are people that are much better at both and what could I possibly contribute to the ether that would be worth reading or listening to?

Nonetheless, here I am back again. I can’t shake the scratch. I’ve done a lot of reading, listening and watching media content that, in my opinion, I don’t ever see myself ever being able to produce with my meager skills. Despite that realization I’m still compelled to connect some words together in a stream of conscious manner and post to the very same ether that has all this great quality of content.

Part of the reason is psychological. It gives me some kind of purpose in life. It also helps me combat the loneliness and boredom that I’m faced on my days off. I’m 2 years or more single at this point. I only have human interaction while at work and when I’m off from work I escape into the world of fiction via media content. For a good long while this was a good solution. I was at peace. Life was good. But as the time has gone by, I’ve started to feel incomplete and lacking something.

Anyway, so here I am typing my current feelings and converting them into text form. I’m currently not at my place of residence and don’t have access to my mic so this seemed the simplest option between blogging and podcasting. Truthfully though, if I’m being honest with myself, I would probably still choose this option.

The few months that I started podcasting again, I realized that I just don’t have the chops for it. It was more of a curiosity and an idle hobby than anything I would consistently do. Once I hit a roadblock and went on hiatus it just became harder to get back to it as the weeks went by.

Also with writing, I can erase any hiccups I initially put down. I can edit down my drafts with quicker ease than I would ever be able do with audio. Uhms, like you knows and other disfluencies don’t exist in the written form unless you intentionally leave them in.

So here we are, about 400 words in now and I’m feeling more at ease and better. This has been therapeutic after all. I’m sure there will be more random stream of conscious blather making its way on here some time soon. As this itch to do something, however inconsequential, will persist in the recesses of my being. Until the next urge.

Ending My Run On WordPress

It’s been some time since I’ve taken this blog seriously. I know part of it has to do with my reluctance to write anymore and my increase in media consumption, as was pointed out in my most recent post from a few months back. I think the other reason might be the changes that have undergone with WordPress as well.

Maybe it’s just me but lately I’ve felt lost navigating around my WordPress account in recent months/years. I felt it was much easier to get around and to get right to writing. I feel like it’s more distracting and more about discovering what else is going on around the WordPressverse and less with pushing me to publish my stuff.

I can understand somewhat why WP is taking this direction. They’ve probably lost some current and future customers to social network sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and sure a small (really small) amount to Google+. I’m sure Tumblr is going through some bumps in the road (another WP rival) .

But what I loved about WP in the past was it’s no compromise approach to blogging and website publishing. Yeah Tumblr was a new upstart not too long ago and they were already taking the  social network approach just as Facebook was ending MySpace’s reign and Twitter was just developing and reducing their fail whale outages. It seems now that WP has finally given and tried to meld social networking and website publishing together.

Granted maybe a lot of people like this new interface and I’m and old fuddy duddy reminiscing about days of yore. I just don’t quite enjoy myself on WordPress as I have in the past. I just started podcasting again. In the past I would’ve immediately made a new site for my show on WordPress. This time however I’m going to give Blogger a chance (something I never would have said when I was a huge WordPress fan).

Blogger doesn’t seem to have changed much since Google bought them way back when. And yes their websites don’t look as spiffy as WordPress sites. But they kept the user interface the same and I feel I can navigate it much better than the new WP version. I go right to my blog and publish my podcast. I may even import this blog over there as well if I still feel like blogging as well. I use a lot of Google services as it is. What’s one more.