I began the Miles Morales Spider-Man game on my PS4 today, and I felt a bit guilty about it. First, I purchased this game last holiday season, and this is just one example of many where I’ve purchased games only to never play them, or play them months or even years later. Second, I began to play this game more out of boredom than anything else. I used to feel that boredom was some character flaw, that only uninteresting people were ever bored. But I was bored! So. Very. Bored. I had done my morning routine, and I just finished eating my lunch, and… I didn’t know what to do. I have a long list of tasks in my todo list, but none of them gave me a reason to feel excited about life. So I sat on my couch and I looked around my house, and I saw my PS4, a console I hadn’t turned on since last holiday season, and I saw the Spider-Man game, and I thought, why not?

And you know what? I had fun. I’m worried, though, that the enthusiasm I have for the game now will dissipate before I get a chance to finish it. I have started too many games that I have never finished because I had lost all interest in playing games. I was, and most of the time am, in work-only mode. Who has time for games? I sure don’t! I have to work. But it never used to be this way, right? All I wanted to do as a kid and teenager was play games. I had all the consoles growing up, and I had two younger brothers to play games with, and we had loads of fun. And now, I live alone, and I’m only really playing single-player games because I don’t have any friends who play games, and my brothers are doing their own thing, and so… I dunno.

Maybe I miss my brothers? Maybe I need friends? Maybe I’m not being hard enough on myself? Maybe I’m too hard on myself?

Sometimes I forget how old I am, and when I remember, when I really soak what that number means, and I realize who I am and what I have and haven’t done in life… I feel sad. I feel like I’ve been stuck at a certain age but life has kept going anyway, and then I wake up and see that yes, I am older, no, I’m no longer a kid, and god damn what have I done with my life? But then I have days where I’m dancing and inspiring the next generation and jamming out to music and life just feels fun.

This is just life, isn’t it? It’s messy, it’s fun, it’s heartbreaking, it’s delightful. Life is just life, and I need not feel so guilty about being bored or playing video games. Because hey, swinging through New York City as Spider-Man is fun as hell, and I want to get back to that feeling again.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around what exactly I’m wanting to do with these weekly notes (this is only my second one), but I’m the type of person that needs to do something to get a feel for it and not one that’s good at planning ahead… Anyways! Here are some notes from today, this 18th day of November, 2022:

Grab two of everything and hop onto the Arc

Earlier this week, I received an invite to try the brand new, overly hyped, Arc browser. First impressions:

• It’s… a browser? But the sidebar is on the left side, and it has a nice enough design, but that icon… it’s very ugly? Is that just me? It kinda looks like the Apple App Store icon had a baby with the Amazon logo.
• I really like how the ⌘+T shortcut brings up the Command Bar instead of opening a new tab. That shortcut is already ingrained in my muscle memory, so using it how the people behind Arc want me to use their browser is easy enough. I like how I can switch between tabs from here, search the web, enter URLs, whatever. Clever idea.
• I really like the idea of folders and spaces, and the easel seems like a great way to collect research and notes.
• My problem with all that though (and the fact that it’s based on Chromium) is that I already have years and years of workflows built using Safari, not to mention some amazing Safari-only extensions that I simply cannot install in Arc. I want to like Arc, but old habits die hard.
• If you’d like to try it, I have 5 invites to the first 5 people to click this link!

Not your father’s wrestling federation

Earlier this week, I hopped onto the Mastodon bandwagon, and I have mostly been enjoying myself. It’s not a place I’m spending too much of my time in, but when I do, it’s nice. Quiet. But it does have its quirks, quirks that were nicely explained in this article by the EFF:

No matter how much you love or hate email itself, it is a working federated system that’s been around for over a half-century. It doesn’t matter what email server you use, what email client you use, we all use email and the experience is more or less the same for us all, and that’s a good thing. The Web is also federated – any web site can link to, embed, refer to stuff on any other site and in general, it doesn’t matter what browser you use. The internet started out federated, and even continues to be.

I really liked this email analogy because once I read it, I immediately understood what a federated social media network actually meant and what it will mean in the future. This is what social media should have been all along!

However, it took email a long time before people fully grokked it, and I think the same will be true for Mastadon and other federated networks. Max Böck put it best when he wrote:

I think we’re at a special moment right now. People have been fed up with social media and its various problems (surveillance capitalism, erosion of mental health, active destruction of democracy, bla bla bla) for quite a while now. But it needs a special bang to get a critical mass of users to actually pack up their stuff and move.

When that happens, we have the chance to build something better. We could enable people to connect and publish their content on the web independently – the technology for these services is already there. For that to succeed though, these services have to be useable by all people - not just those who understand the tech.

Just like with migration to another country, it takes two sides to make this work: Easing access at the border to let folks in, and the willingness to accept a shared culture - to make that new place a home.

These services have to be useable by all people - not just those who understand the tech. Exactly. I think we can get there, though, especially if these services can accommodate more and more people, people who don’t want to understand all this “tech stuff.” Give it to the big guys, though: they made this stuff easy for anyone to understand. But it was this ease that got us into this mess in the first place!

“This enshittification [more mass surveillance, finer-grained and more intrusive ad targeting],” writes Cory Doctorow, “was made possible by high switching costs. The vast communities who’d been brought in by network effects were so valuable that users couldn’t afford to quit, because that would mean giving up on important personal, professional, commercial and romantic ties.”

With federated networks, these switching costs are no longer an issue. Hell, I created my Mastodon account in 2018, but I switched to the social.lol instance in just a few minutes. All my followers, everyone I followed, my block and mute lists, all transferred over just fine. The whole experience was slick! Again, this is what social media should be.

To the moon! Some stretchy stuff! 8 billion people!

NASA launched the Artemis 1 rocket earlier this week, “which will, among other things, take scientific experiments to produce metal on the moon.”

What if we could save money by using the resources that are already there? This process is called in-situ resource utilization, and it’s exactly what astrometallurgy researchers are trying to achieve.

[…]

While the moon has metals in abundance, they’re bound up in the rocks as oxides—metals and oxygen stuck together. This is where astrometallurgy comes in, which is simply the study of extracting metal from space rocks.

I love that astrometallurgy exists. What a cool word and what a cool science.

Apparently, scientists have created a “skinlike sticker” that “runs machine-learning algorithms to continuously collect and analyze health data directly on the body. The skinlike sticker… includes a soft, stretchable computing chip that mimics the human brain.”

“We envision that wearable electronics,” they continue

will play a key role in tracking complex indicators of human health, including body temperature, cardiac activity, levels of oxygen, sugar, metabolites and immune molecules in the blood. […] Our work is a good starting point for creating devices that build artificial intelligence into wearable electronics – devices that could help people live longer and healthier lives.

That always seems to be the promise, huh? This promise to “live longer and healthier lives.” Living longer is always nice, but should we? Our bodies might possibly go on for forever, but can our minds? Can a human mind handle 150, 500, 1000 years of being alive? At some point, we have to die. But this stretchable sticker idea is cool.

The UN reported earlier this week that humanity has surpassed 8 billion people. Imagine 8 billion people living for over 100 years. Can planet earth sustain that? I don’t think it can. I’m glad and excited that we’re pushing our species past our home and into the great unknown that is outer space, but earth is our home, too. Are we parasites or caretakers? Are we here to ravage this place and move on, or can we live with some sort of harmony with our ancestral home?

I hope we can, but unless I live to be 250 years old, I might not be alive to find out.

Sleeping while on duty

Finally, I learned a new term today: ‌inemuri (居眠り), or “present while sleeping” in Japanese. Basically, it’s this idea of taking power naps while at work, and in Japan, these naps are seen as virtuous because it signifies that you’ve worked to the point of complete exhaustion.

For me, though, it means that napping is a necessary part of modern human culture. I’ve been having trouble sleeping all year, but my 10, 20, 30 minute naps I have taken throughout the year have helped me stay sane. And yes, sometimes I have snuck a quick nap or two while at work, and I am not ashamed! It means I have worked myself to the point of complete exhaustion. Like a real American!

I grew up in the ‘90s, and one of the most popular channels in my household growing up was MTV. Our family loved tuning into MTV and watching music video after music video (yes, MTV used to play music videos!). Every day before school, my mom would turn on the TV, and we would all get ready for school listening to the music from these videos. When I finished getting ready for school, I would sit on the couch waiting for my siblings to finish getting ready and watch music videos by Aerosmith and Jamiroquai and Mariah Carey and Nirvana, and on and on it went, music video after music video. This was my childhood, and I didn’t know I missed it until I inadvertently stumbled into my own music video channel.

A few years ago, I made an attempt to get rid of my reliance on Google and their services. At the time, ever since Google Reader’s demise (RIP), I had began transitioning away from Google, but I never made the full transition. I had switched from Google Search to DuckDuckGo, from Google’s productivity suite to Markdown files and Apple’s capable alternatives, from Gmail to iCloud Mail, but the one service I could not replace was YouTube. For years I kept my Google account active because of YouTube. I wanted to keep track of my subscriptions, to like videos, to create playlists—to use YouTube, essentially. But there was a way I could delete my Google account and still use YouTube without having to visit their website and watch their ads and train their algorithm.

That way was by using youtube-dl.

Using a command-line and a bit of configuration, I could use youtube-dl to download any video from YouTube at whatever quality I wanted, with whatever settings I wanted, and watch it later on whatever device I wanted. The original youtube-dl has, sadly, gone dormant, but because the project is open-source, some awesome people have forked it and made their own version, yt-dlp.

yt-dlp picks up where youtube-dl left off, and they have been awesome at keeping this project active and up-to-date.

Once I had yt-dlp setup, the next challenge was to “subscribe” to all my favorite channels so I wouldn’t miss any videos. Fortunately, YouTube has made it so each channel has its own RSS feed, and many RSS readers support YouTube right out of the box. My feed reader of choice, Reeder, supports YouTube, so adding all my favorite channels was a breeze.

Finally, I needed a place to watch my videos, and for me, the best app for this is Plex. Plex has been around forever, unlike others (remember Boxee???), and they have apps for most devices out there. I use them on my Apple TV, and the app has been nothing but great.

With yt-dlp setup, with a way to get all the videos I want, and with a way to watch them, my dependence on my Google account vanished, and I could finally delete my Google account. So a few years ago, I did.

But wait, I might hear you saying, wasn’t this supposed to be about creating my own music video channel?

Why yes! Yes it was. I wanted to get all that out of the way to get to how I do things. First things first, here is the command I use to download my videos:

yt-dlp -o '/path/to/YouTube/%(uploader)s-%(upload_date)s-%(title)s.%(ext)s'
--download-archive '/path/to/archive.md'
-f 'bestvideo+bestaudio/best'
--sub-langs all,-live_chat
--embed-subs
--yes-playlist
--batch-file '/path/to/youtube.md'

I have a dedicated YouTube folder on an external SSD (CALYPSO) that saves each video with the channel name first, the upload date, then the title of the video. For example, downloading this video by Jomboy Media will output as: Jomboy Media-20221117-Tom Brady falls and trips player during botched trick play, a breakdown.webm. I prefer this format because sometimes I can go days or weeks without watching videos, and when I find the time, I like watching a certain channel’s output by the order they were released and catch up that way. It’s how I like to watch my videos.

The --download-archive setting helps ensure I don’t download the same video twice.

The -f 'bestvideo+bestaudio/best' ensures I get the highest quality version available.

I follow lots of foreign-language channels, so --sub-langs all,-live_chat helps download subs, and --embed-subs simply embeds the file in the video itself, and when I go to watch it on Plex, I can select the file and view the video with subtitles.

--yes-playlist downloads playlists. Simple enough.

Finally, --batch-file and the file itself is where some of the magic happens. I can go through my day, and I can simply add the URLs for all the YouTube videos I come across in my various feeds and append them to this file, and when I’m ready to download them, I run my yt-dlp command once, and all my videos start downloading. It’s really nice.

I know there are ways to run this automatically or on a schedule, but I download my videos to an SSD I take with me everywhere, and I don’t want my desktop at home to be my only media server. So I run this command manually when I need to, and it has worked fine for me.

As part of my RSS subscriptions, I subscribe to a lot of music websites and YouTube channels. Whenever there’s a new video out, either from someone I know or, especially, someone I don’t, I add the video to my YouTube.md file, and sometime later, after adding more and more videos to this file, I download all the videos.

Within my main YouTube folder, I have another folder called music, and within this folder, I add every music video and song I have downloaded. I do this for days, weeks, sometimes months, and I don’t watch them. I let them pile up for a while, and when I’m feeling the urge to sit on my couch and jam out to some music videos, I navigate to this folder in Plex—and here’s the fun part—I click on the “shuffle” button.

Music video bliss.

Doing this has brought back all the nostalgia from my childhood, back when I could sit on my couch before having to go to school and simply watch and listen to some amazing music. Those really were the days…

Chris Coyier quoting Dan Cederholm:

As soon as I typed the HTML for my first hyperlink, the power of it hit me. This is the DNA of the web, the fabric that connects all of the bits and pieces all over the globe. It sounds so primitive now, but when this was all new to me and I was discovering how it all worked and how simple it was to create links, it was magic.

It’s still magic! URLs are one of mankind’s greatest achievements. It took a lot for them to exist, and now that they do, they have literally advanced civilization. They are the ultimate unbeatable feature.

I couldn’t sleep last night (big surprise), and when I can’t sleep, I either watch TV or think. I watched this tutorial on how to create and organize a Capture One Catalog (yes, I like watching webinars sometimes), but that wasn’t enough to knock me out. So I lied in bed, and I thought—about my life, about my friends, about my writing, about things I’ve read.

About a week and a half ago, I read Tom Critchlow’s post titled Small b blogging. In it, he wrote:

And remember that you are your own audience! Small b blogging is writing things that you link back to and reference time and time again. Ideas that can evolve and grow as your thinking and audience grows.

As Venkatesh says in the calculus of grit - release work often, reference your own thinking & rework the same ideas again and again. That’s the small b blogging model.

Before I read this, I always believed that “small b blogging” was about linking to my ideas again and again, that none of my “ideas” or “essays” or “posts” existed in a vacuum. I’ve always considered my website as my second brain, and by linking to other things I’ve written, I’ve been able to reinforce these connections in my head, helping me remember things I’ve thought about and thus, helping me connect disparate ideas together and create new connections. It’s really fun when I think, “Wait… didn’t I mention something like this before?” And I search for it, and there, I did write about it before, so I link to it and move on, this new connection firmly created in my brain.

I don’t know how many people actually follow my links (my guess is not many), but that’s okay. I write mostly for myself. It’s like I’m holding a conversation with myself through time, and each time I link back to something from before, I’m crafting this web of ideas that only really makes sense in my head. Am I “literally advancing civilization” like Chris says? I doubt it, but I’m advancing myself, I think, and that’s pretty cool.

Small b blogging is cool.

Om Malik:

I have known the truth about social platforms. I quit Facebook and Instagram years ago, and candidly I am better for it. I don’t need 5000 friends — 15 good ones will do.

I don’t need 5000 friends — 15 good ones will do.

I read this article today, and this line has stayed with me since. I never deleted my Facebook or Instagram accounts, especially after writing my thoughts on social media platforms on my website, but for a while, I either had my accounts deactivated or I simply didn’t login to them. That changed this summer. In this post, I described how I shared one of my posts on Facebook. In truth, I’ve shared many of my posts on Facebook this year, and the entire experience has been wonderful.

I have such a love/hate relationship with Facebook. The hate part is easy. If you have paid attention to what that company has done over the years, it’s hard not to hate them. Disinformation. Zuckerberg. The Metaverse. I get it. But I’ve had a Facebook account since September 2004. That’s 18 years, or half my life. For half my life, I’ve been on Facebook. I don’t think I have an active account that’s older than this, and that’s crazy to me. At the end of 2020, I downloaded all my data, then I spent a few days deleting as much as I could from that site short of deleting my entire account. I deleted all my posts and photos and likes and comments and anything else I could see to delete, but I never deleted my account.

With that said… I believe that Facebook is a fantastic tool to keep in touch with friends and to even know what’s going on in my community. Here in rural Montana, where all our towns have more bars than schools, more churches than grocery stores, Facebook is where everything happens. Somebody lost their dog? Sure enough, if you post it on the local community group, someone will help to find them, and most of the time, they do! It’s amazing. Somebody needs help with paying for medical bills? More than likely, the community knows the family, and the community will pitch in what they can to help this family. Hell, I donated to a family I know through Facebook because I would not have heard of it in any other way. In this sense, Mark Zuckerberg has succeeded in connecting people in a way no other tool has done before.

And for me? By posting many of my essays on Facebook, I’ve been able to grow closer to more of my friends, and I truly value that, and I hate to say it, but Facebook helped in that. Ever since I first heard about friend circles, or some optimal number of friends that people can realistically “have,” I’ve tried to keep my “friend” number on Facebook at or below 150 people. That means I’ve both unfriended many people and haven’t accepted many friend requests from people, even from people I know. If I met you at a party once, that’s not enough for me to accept your friend request, sorry.

I can’t count how many times someone I know, either a friend or a coworker, has come to me or contacted me and told me how much they liked this essay or that essay that I posted on Facebook. Many times, this has sparked conversation, and sometimes, these conversations have turned into regular contact, either at work or through text messages. I cannot disregard the fact that Facebook had a hand in this. Even today, a coworker came up to me and asked me if I was a “professional writer.” I said no, and she said I should be because I have “such a way with words.” It was heartwarming and amazing, and this 50-60 old woman would not have had a chance to learn about this part of me without Facebook. Hell, the day after I shared my essay on how I secretly like to dance, a friend of mine jokingly started dancing with me, and that was adorable as hell, too.

Sure, I’m on other social media platforms, most notably Micro.blog, but as much I value that community, they are not part of my life in the same way my friends on Facebook are. I see my friends regularly, and they now know something more about me because of my website, because I share them on Facebook where they are more likely to see these posts. I don’t personally know those people on Micro.blog or, now, Mastodon, and that’s fine. But like Om says, “I don’t need 5000 friends — 15 good ones will do.” And my 15 good ones are part of my regular life, but they are also part of Facebook, and Facebook helps connect us in ways that no other tool can.

However. I’ve had to setup rules around my social media usage, and these rules have changed everything for me. If you have noticed me be more active on social media lately, it is because of these rules. I will write about them soon. But for now, I’m not deleting my Facebook account anytime soon, not when it has proven to be a valuable tool in my life.

And yes, I truly cannot believe I wrote an essay defending Facebook. But here we are.

I have a secret.

Sometimes, when I’m listening to music, and I’m really feeling the sound, I like to dance.

Not full-on dancing or anything—just a shake of the hips here, a rocking of my shoulders there.

I like to dance when I’m cooking dinner or when I’m cleaning the house. Sometimes I like to dance when I’m driving. Again, not full-on dancing, but you know, what I can. Head bobbing, foot tapping, hand drumming on the steering wheel.

I like to sing to my favorite songs. I cannot sing, but who cares? I’m not belting out lyrics as loud as I can. I sing at a somewhat normal volume. Well, it’s more like singing a word or a phrase here, then mumbling a good chunk of the song, then going back to singing the few words I know. I’m good with choruses. Sometimes I make robot noises when I’m listening to electronic music.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who does this.

In my head, I’m a good dancer. No, I’m a great dancer. The best dancer this side of the Mississippi. Natural talent, I tell myself. That’s what I have. And when I sing in the shower? Oh man! The next big thing right here.

But I know that’s all in my head. I don’t care. Dancing and singing makes me feel good. Dancing and singing makes me happy. Dancing and singing makes me feel alive.

Dancing or singing in front of people, though? No way! I can’t do it. I can’t shake my hips in front of my friends. I can’t sing karaoke in front of complete strangers. Well… load me up on shots of bad vodka and I’m backing my ass up all night long! I’m blowing my voice out singing the lyrics to All the Small Things. I’m waking up the next morning with a sore throat and a throbbing headache.

But I’m happy because I sang and I danced to some good tunes, and good tunes make life worth living.

So—dance like nobody’s watching. Sing like no one else exists. Because sometimes we all need to be reminded to have fun and to not take everything so seriously.

I know I do.

I’m trying something new. Here are some notes from today, this 11th day of November, 2022:

• I slept for 9 hours and 8 minutes. 9 hours and 8 minutes! I woke up fully rested and ready to go. I have been happy all day. I wish I could sleep in every day.
• I bought an annual subscription to Capture One. This was something I was thinking about earlier this week, and I decided to go for it this morning. Consequence of getting a good night’s sleep? Yes, I think. Now to migrate from Lightroom…
• Earlier this week, Affinity released version 2 of their creative suite of apps. I had purchased version 1 of their apps, but I found myself not using them too much. The one app I used the most was Affinity Designer, and I enjoyed that app when I needed it. As long as it still works, I’m keeping version 1. That means missing out on their 40% launch discount, but that’s okay. Now that I’m moving away from Adobe, I’ve been using Pixelmator Pro on my Mac and Pixelmator Photo on my iPhone. These apps satisfy all my needs for now. They are fast, beautiful, and just powerful enough.
• The one thing I love about Affinity are their educational videos. They are so well-done and produced. I remember going through all their Affinity Photo and Designer videos back in the day, and I nerded out so hard on them. Good times!
• Along with a Capture One subscription, I bought this SanDisk 2TB Extreme Portable SSD. I wanted this to act as a middle man between my SD Card and my long-term storage, something to load all my photos into while I processed them and something to then backup to my other hard drives later. Its rugged nature is what drew me in. This will be something I toss in my bag and not something that lies stationary on a desk.
• Cultured Code, the makers of Things, has a really cool link builder on their website. I wanted to create a custom url scheme to create a specific type of task that I could fire with Shortcuts whenever I needed to, and this tool helped me build it easily and quickly. A great find and a great resource!
• My ArticRisk name is Mario Extreme Winters Villalobos. Fits!

• Batman died today.
• Atlanta aired its final episode.
• Mythic Quest is back!
• Finally, I purchased Debut by Björk last night, and I listened to it today while working around the house. Just as good as I remember.

I’m not sure how many of these I will do, but I always liked the idea of collecting links and other tidbits from my day and aggregating them into a post. I can finally cross that off the list.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Another night of subpar sleep, another uninspired day lived. Going to sleep isn’t the issue. It’s waking up at 3am and not being able to go back to sleep. My morning coffee helped until I went out onto the road and cautiously drove to work on slick and icy roads. Cold weather drains everything out of me. My eyes were heavy all day—still are—but I can’t call it a day yet. Dinner is baking in the oven, and I have to write some words before I can close my eyes.

On the 1st of November, Sault released 5 password-protected new albums on their website, and I downloaded them and added them into Doppler. I’ve been enjoying these albums so much, so last night, I bought their album Air on Bandcamp, and I started to listen to that on my drive to work. Unsurprisingly, it’s good.

A few hours ago, I purchased Blue Rev by Alvvays and Endure by Special Interest. I’m listening to the latter now, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it. I’ve yet to listen to Blue Rev, but I have it queued up next. I hadn’t listened to either of these bands before, but they came highly recommended, and predictably, I’m enjoying them a lot.

Over the weekend, I purchased Fossora by Björk, but I’ve only listened to it a few times. It’s definitely a Björk album, and I love Björk. Did you know she had a podcast where she breaks down all her albums? I did not until today, so I added the podcast into Overcast, and I will listen to it once I buy a few more of her albums that I don’t own yet. For my own records, I still don’t own Debut, Medulla, Biophilia, and Utopia. I’ve listened to them before over the years, most likely on Apple Music, back when I subscribed to that. I love filling in holes in my discographies. I might actually buy Debut later tonight. I’m too tired to know any better right now.

Also on the 1st of November, I purchased The Loneliest Time by Carly Rae Jepsen and Midnights (3am Edition) by Taylor Swift. I’ve enjoyed both, but I agree with most critics—it’s neither of their best. If I had to choose, I’ve enjoyed Carly’s album more than Taylor’s.

Finally, I sold my FUJINON XF18–55mmF2.8–4 R LM OIS lens on mpb.com for a reasonable price, and once I accepted the payment, I purchased the FUJINON XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR lens to replace it. This means I’m actually going to take more photos now, right?

Right?

I’ll think about it once I listen to more music.

Winter is in full swing here in Montana, and it is both beautiful watching the snow fall and annoying. On my way to work yesterday, I was stopped on the highway for about 40 minutes because up ahead, there was a severe car crash blocking the roads. Earlier today, we had an emergency alert ping our phones telling us to expect flurries throughout the day and to stay home if we’re able; otherwise, to drive slow and safely. On my way home from work, I pulled over to the side of the road multiple times as emergency vehicles drove past us, no doubt because there was another accident somewhere behind me. I saw a tow truck pulling a pickup truck from out of a ditch on the side of the road. Yesterday, I donated to a fundraiser started by a family whose daughter was severely injured in a car crash a few weeks ago. The daughter? A former student of my school, a girl I found sweet and kind, a girl I really liked. Now she’s on life support somewhere in Washington. A few hours ago, a friend of mind texted me, “I hate winter!” Another texted me two vomiting emoji when I told her that this weather sucks. My hands are dry and cracking, and I do not have enough bandages to cover all my open wounds.

But the kids? The little kids at school? They love winter! A bunch of us were watching them play on the playground while the snow fell, and we were all so tickled to watch them run around in the snow, make snow angels, make snowmen, eat the snow, and whatever else kids like to do when it’s snowing. I did not grow up with snow. I was telling my friends earlier how I saw snow for the first time when I was around 18 years old. But, I said, I grew up near the beach, and some people can go a whole life without ever seeing the beach. I have that, at least. Other than enjoying the sight of falling snow, I do not envy these kids for growing up here in Montana. The beach sounds so good right now.

I admit, National Blog Posting Month is kicking my ass.

Part of the issue is finding the time to write. Here’s a rough accounting of my daily routine:

• Wake up at 5am
• At my desk with a cup of coffee and writing in my notebook at around 5:20am
• Finish writing at around 6:20am-6:30am
• Study German and Japanese until 7am
• Leave for work at 7:10am
• Work from 7:10am to around 4:15pm
• Come home 15 minutes later, change into my workout clothes and start my workout at around 4:30pm
• Shower, make my post-workout shake, and relax by watching TV, starting at around 5:15pm and going until dinner
• Cook dinner and eat it, 6pm to 7pm
• Write???
• Go to bed at around 8:30pm to 9pm

It’s a bit after 7:30pm as I’m writing this now, and my eyes are heavy, I’m tired, and I want to go to bed. It doesn’t help that I didn’t sleep well last night. I’ve been having trouble sleeping all year, and I’ve been trying to make a concerted effort to go to bed earlier and earlier so I can get as much sleep as I could. Frankly, I need 8-9 hours of sleep a night or I’m miserable. And I feel miserable tonight.

I’m trying to build this second writing habit, and quitting now isn’t going to help me. I. Must. Keep. Going.

Warren Ellis wrote about the zero draft last week. The zero draft

is the draft you will never show anyone. It’s the draft you know is wrong but which contains the bare bones and meat-scraps of the story you’re trying to write. Get to the end of the zero draft, wait a day, and then go back and make it readable to other humans and fix all the egregiously wrong stuff, and that’s your first draft. Zero drafts are always too short: they fill out in the process of revising into a first draft. Stop thinking about your first draft as a first draft, call it a zero draft, and you give yourself permission to just slap everything you’re thinking about on to the page, knowing you can fix it before you have to inflict the draft on some other poor bastard.

I like this a lot. This is my zero draft. All the posts I’ve written for NaBloPoMo thus far feel like zero drafts to me. Sitting down at 7pm to write something and posting it online an hour later doesn’t feel like it deserves to be more than just a zero draft. Am I being too hard on myself? Maybe.

Did I mention I’m tired?

Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. Maybe I’m trying to bite off more than I can chew. I did give this project very little thought, after all. Writing is something I love, though, and I want to work on being a better writer. But when I have bills that need to be paid and a life that wants to be lived… it’s tough. It’s really tough.