Category: NoJoMo

I started doing this on the now-defunct OpenDiary in 2010. I’ve done it every year since.

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NoJoMo Uncategorized

Not So Easy

That’s tomorrow, and I might have earwormed you.

I make not apology for that.

This morning, in between catching up on podcast episodes sitting in my queue, I’m listening to 90s stuff that’s stuck in my head.

I have a week’s worth of Kennedy on my DVR, but who knows if I’ll get to that today.

But for the 90s plame, that goes to Jewel.

Tomorrow is 1 November. Tomorrow I’ll start my binge writing month.

I was trying to assemble the list of topics I’ve assembled, but I’m too lazy to dig through the draft entries into a single document.

I think I have most of the days covered, with little resampling, or free-writing. If I need to do the latter, it’s there, and I don’t need to plan it.

So I need to figure out what to do for some birthdays next week.

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NoJoMo Scarred Brain murmurings

Learning to Relax

I started writing this on Thursday, but got distracted. I’ve sortakinda been off work since Tuesday, and trying to figure out what to do with myself. See the title.

I’ve been trying to burn built-up leave. When you go, what, five years without any paid time off, you grow accustomed to just working all the time.

Because of a change in my company’s policies just before the lockdown, I had a ton of time built up that I needed to spend before the end of the calendar year.

A few weeks ago, I told my boss that I probably just wouldn’t be working on Fridays through the end of the year.

So, after I finished paying my protection racket to the “professional organization” that has a protection agreement with the government, and demands money from me every three years just so I can stay working.

My psychologist thinks that I should try doing my writing via a microphone. I don’t know what to do with speech-to-text stuff, and I’m not sure what to do with the resultant audio.

Do I try to record a podcast?

Nobody wants to listen to that shit.

Besides, who knows if I physically can even do it. This morning, after doing my normal things, I’m slowly calm down.

But when can I get some continuous sleep?

I don’t know. I’m not sleepy at this point, but definitely, as the kids would say, woke as fuck.

So work on the NoJoMo stuff for next month.

11/1: Intro, etc.

11/2: ???

11/3: Election Day

11/4: Election Day reactions (if we know the winner….) Other things in the week, relatives’ birthdays.

11/11: Veterans’ Day

11/26: Football, especially Thanksgiving Football. (As I write this, the games are evenly balanced among conferences; if you look at some previous years, I was complaining about the paucity of AFC teams….)

11/27: Thanksgiving

11/30: Final/wrap-up

Another thing I did this morning was clean up some Shmoocon entries I’d accidentally had under the NoJoMo tag. Oops.

I think what I did during the summer was somewhat-effective. Maybe I’ll try to incorporate that in. My first thought was to do that for every entry, but given everything that has been, and will be going on, I worry that I’ll be writing far too much.

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NoJoMo

Twenty-six

I spent a lot of my Saturday trying to pay the racket to keep my certification valid. I mean, I swear that I didn’t know before yesterday that you could embed things inside a JPEG!

I’m wondering, however, how much it’ll eventually cost me to keep working. Moar regulation, now, pls, kthxbai.

But four more days of the challenge left. I’m ready to be finished.

I considered a separate post for this, but with the shortness of the original one, I figured I’d just go ahead and update this one.

I heard this story on newscasts last night and today.

Look at the photo. He’s got one drive-in bay, and probably four squirt-it-yourself bays.

That he would dare open is a clear and present danger to public health.

Give me a break.

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NoJoMo

Nineteen

Another day without a challenge. I do see that some of the other participants are using Friday’s thing later.

Again, I really am not in a position where I can bake. Sarah did make some hamburger buns about a week and a half ago.

This morning, I woke up too early, again, and will probably go back to sleep for a while. *shrug*

Listening to this, and wondering if there’s anything to say.

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NoJoMo

Thirty

Wrap-up

Ten years’ worth of month-long writing, and I”m finished.

Today, as I’m writing, I’ve been tweeting back-and-forth with someone about the place I tweeted a photo of on my train ride out yesterday.

But back to the topic, yeah, I don’t know if I’ll do this next year. Part of the reason I was so into doing it was that I felt like it was something that helped me prepare for the down part of the year.

I almost wrote that it “felt like a chore,” but that isn’t true. It’s something I can still do, which is important.

I could provide the resignation that I’ve reached about as high as I’m going to go, but, if so, that’s fine, too.

I think I’ve started to figure out why I like what I like.

Do I think I can still crank some things out when I need to? Yes. Do I know exactly what I’d like to crank out? No.

*deletes bit that I don’t want to share…nothing embarrassing, but just something I want to keep to myself*

I can still write. Even if I can’t see that well. The muscle memory of typing is something that I do remember. And, no, I won’t quit putting two spaces after sentences, even if the modern practice is a single space.

The next question is how do I make money doing it. Hmmm….

Regardless, thirty days down, so Fin.

I have some things I’d like to do today. Get my hair cut, maybe shave this, and get my hair cut.

*checks nearby barber my wife recommended*

No, they don’t take credit cards, so that won’t work for my Small Business Saturday purchase.

Nope, they don’t take credit cards. So much for that.

I’m finished, though. Despite two travel stretches, I’ve gotten them all out this month.

Merry Christmas.

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NoJoMo

Twenty-nine

Shopping/Free-write

I’ve not done much shopping, as as I write this, I’m on a train headed back to Alexandrai.

It’s so strange how I can now talk myself out of just about anything that I might have wanted for a moment.

Even momentary urgest to maintain are fleeting.

I could fire everyone right now.

What does that say about me?

Yes, I’m going to do that some, at least.

I need to find a new dentist, PCP, and dermatologist. I’d be working on that right now, if I wasn’t on the quiet car.

I would say that I’m very dissatisfied with many things in my life, but that’s not true. I’m just so ambivalent towards pretty much everything that I don’t do anything.

I guess the question ought to be whether dissatisfaction might be preferable.

I just don’t know. And I’m not interested enough to find out.

Tomorrow is the final day of this.

I’m not sure what I should think or feel. Ten straight Novembers.

I think I should feel some sort of accomplishment to say that.

But I don’t.

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NoJoMo

Twenty-eight

Thanksgiving

So, I’m writing this from my inlaws’ couch, with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

We left out at about 0630, and got down without too many issues.

My wife got the turkey in, and we’re waiting for my mom to show up.

This is the first time I’ve been down here since I left last May. No feelings of comfort at all, whatsoever.

So, the plan is do dinner, go to a hotel for the night, then I get on the train to go home in the morning.

But I do what I’m expected to do.

*shrug*

I should be looking forward to the football games. Even moreso with the Saints playing the Failcons tonight. But I’m having trouble being excited. About that, or much of anything.

*thinks of turkey*

Nope, that doesn’t work, either.

Maybe I’ll have some inspiration while I’m on the train tomorrow.

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NoJoMo

Twenty-seven

Write about social media. What are your accounts? What have you set aside?

I’ve heard a lot of discussion over the past few months saying that social media is very destructive. Maybe that’s too much listening to Bridget Phetasy.

Still, there’s been the thought that’s been going through my head for some time now that you can leave.

I stick with things longer than I should too often; just how I roll. Still, when I do leave, it’s a decision I’m not often going to reconsider.

For the social media sites, it’s probably more difficult because of what they do to make things addictive.

But, as is the case with some of the therapy I’m doing lately, I am able to resist.

What’s going on on Facebook?

Uh. Maybe I’ll look later.

Or maybe I won’t look at all, because fuck them.

Choose something different.

You’re free to do that until the men with guns come and tell you to submit, or get locked in a cage.

A nastier follow-on comment to that just got deleted.

I’m self-censoring, even without the ginger, or the totes-didn’t-used-to-be-evil company’s urging.

With the self-censoringediting, though, I wonder if it’s really a problem. You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who’s as much of a free speech absolutist as I, but I really don’t see a problem with people watching what they say.

Yes, you can shout “fuck” in a crowded theater. Yes, the proprietor is free to kick you out. Yes, you can shout “fuck” on a street corner. Yes, you can probably be ticketed for doing that. Yes, you can shout “fuck” in your own living room, and nobody, other than the gathered assemblage, should know or object to it. Alexa, please divide your microphone gain level by zero.

Tomorrow is going to be a very long day. We’ll see if I have energy to stay up to watch the Saints in Atlanta. Tryptophan and travel may have taken me out by then. That, and I have an early train to catch Friday.

But, as far as what I use.

I still look at Twitter quite a bit.

I check Facebook every couple of days. The FB app is gone from my phone. So’s FB Messenger.

I’ve deleted the Instagram app because I really don’t like some of the privacy things FB’s done lately, or their please-regulate-us-and-cement-our-market-dominance credo

I’ve messed around some with Gab and Minds.

I still check Fark, mainly on the weekends.

I’ve developed a hatred, perhaps irrational, for Reddit. It was slightly less pretentious when it was called Digg.

So that’s about it. I’m sure there’s things I’m leaving out, but I’m leaving myself out, too.

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NoJoMo

Twenty-six

Healthcare situation (reach-back to 2016, trip to Georgetown.)

I’ve written about this some this week already.

MS stuff

  • Neurologist at Georgetown
  • Tysabri infusions at Georgetown
  • Other stuffs here

Since the move to ALX, I need to find a new PCP and a new dentist.

I do like the folks I’ve been seeing since I came to NoVA, but they’re a hike for someone who can’t drive.

They’re also, I think, outside the short bus service area. (read: ADA Ride paratransit)

I have an appointment in late December to address something else that is a side-effect of everything else long-term.

I still have my fingers crossed that there’ll be something that miraculously fixes what ails me.

At the same time, I’m not holding my breath on it. i recognize that the MS probably isn’t going to kill me; I’ll probably die of cancer or cardiovascular disease like everybody else.

The question is whether I live as long as my male ancestors. My dad was 59 when he died. His dad was 54. But my maternal grandfather is 90, and my only living grandparent.

But lately I worry more about people think they should be able, with plurality approval, force me to live by their prescription.

Just a few more. I hope there’s something where I can really dig in and write. I know that there’s a free-write there. Hmmmmmmm.

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NoJoMo

Twenty-five

Recap of your year month-by-month.

Yeah, I’m just not going to do this one right now. I really don’t have a firm memory of the things that happened last winter. I know I got this job, even though I didn’t go looking for it.

Then several months of bouncing back-and-forth to Amazonville to meet my time commitments there.

The whole time, pretty much, I was looking off and on for a new place for us to live.

Takeaways?

  • DC is too expensive
  • Driving in DC is terror-inducing (not for me, since I can’t drive anymore, but for my wife)
  • PGC, Maryland, especially the parts bordering Southeast DC,sketchy as fuck.
  • MoCo, Maryland, home to about half of all the bad local ordinance stories you see on TV news, or read about in magazines

So we ended up in Alexandria, Virginia.

I can get around well enough, here.

Today was a long day. Traffic was nuts, but I did get pretty much everywhere I needed to be on-time.

I am tired. So that’s it for today. I may look to see if I can do a month-by-month thing later this week, when I’m back from Thanksgiving fun.

Doing that last year did help me focus on a few things.

Hasta….