a stream

Going to start posting one new thing (or new-old thing) each day here on my website. I’m finally moving to make this little place my central home on the web, an activity archive, etc.

A daily new thing might be:

• a new or old photograph
• a book or article I’m reading
• music I’m listening to
• a film I watched
• a video game I played
• some random thought or thing I did
• a thing I bought and liked
• a place I went
• a recipe I used
• a page from my notebook
• a notice if I write something or make something that is more than a brief note
• a reposting of an item from one of my old, defunct websites or social media accounts
• whatever else I feel like or think of to share

I always talk big that I am going to start doing this sort of thing, and then I fall off the face of the Internet again. We will see if this time is different - one important change is that I am fully at peace with everything just being over here in my little corner of the Internet. I’m no longer concerned with propagating or syndicating my stuff anywhere else; I’m truly getting over my involvement with most of the silos. This will be my personal archive, available just in case anyone ever happens to look here.

Standalone post link: ''one-new-or-new-old-thing-each-day''

As of last night I’m 35% of the way into Summer in the City of Roses by Michelle Ruiz Keil, reading it on my phone. 📚

Standalone post link: ''reading-summerinthecityofroses''

Could not get enough writing random stuff in my notebook this morning - now I have to type random stuff in my digital notebook this afternoon - and post random stuff on my website this evening.

Also learned tonight that if I put an apostrophe in the first few words of a notes update it messes up the title when it appears - I’ll need to see if there is a way I can fix that in the code, but until then I’ll just avoid apostrophes in the first few words of a notes post. For example, I just changed “couldn’t” to “could not” in this post.

Standalone post link: ''randomstuff''

Start of a new month and almost start of a new school year (I don’t go to school or teach but my work still goes by school years) seems like as good a time as any to restart on my blog and social media…

https://www.youtube.com/jVTHFnctLFs

Standalone post link: ''imbackimbackimback''

I am on screenpage 455 of 1034 of The Overstory, by Richard Powers, reading it on my phone.

Past notes and updates on the occasion of my reading The Overstory by Richard Powers:

• It turns out I actually love reading books on my phone, especially large books. (Recently read Jemisin’s whole Inheritance Trilogy on my phone. It’s a habit now.) [8/1/2021]

• This book is kind of the Moby Dick for trees. Meaning, this book is tree-obsessed in the way that Moby Dick is whale-obsessed. Not that I’ve ever read more than 33% of the way through Moby Dick - yet. I read enough to find that it was completely whale-obsessed. Kind of want to join one of those Moby Dick readathons some year. Actually, that is completely untrue - I don’t want to sit around listening to other people read Moby Dick, I want to do my own personal readathon of Moby Dick. [8/1/2021]

Standalone post link: ''readingtheoverstory''

I started reading The Inquisitor’s Tale by Adam Gidwitz with my kids tonight.

[Caption: The Inquisitor’s Tale on top of a book stack, surrounded by the Lego accretions of Will and Mia’s bedroom]

Will wanted to try this book but Mia was grumpy about it (“Can we just read a book with NO magic in it for once?” - valid request, actually) but she finally agreed that we could just try the first chapter tonight since we needed to read something. After we finished the first chapter, she started chanting “More! More!” and I had to read them half of the next chapter.

P.S. Posted this status on Goodreads because I guess I’m back onto compulsively noting all my reading updates on Goodreads again.

Standalone post link: ''reading with kids-theinquisitorstale''

I started reading Home Is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo

(A hardback “review copy” of Home Is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo rests on top of a couple of recent issues of Poetry Magazine, which I am also reading. Image uploaded to my CMS sideways and I decided to just leave it.)

Standalone post link: ''readinghomeisnotacountry''

I’m reading Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri, and it is really good but it is taking a while because some nights I fall asleep while I’m reading it and then some nights I scroll through Facebook or web comics or websites about comic books instead of reading it. And then I feel bad, almost as if I, king-like, have killed Scheherazade by not continuing to listen.

That’s a metaphor like in the book. I should go to sleep now and the book will still be there tomorrow.

Just realized that violin motif from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade has been in my head tonight and maybe I should listen to that while I read this book tomorrow night. I’ve always been a weirdly big fan of Rimsky-Korsakov; it goes back to when I was a teenager. But that’s Russian music and maybe I should find some actual Persian music to listen to instead. Don’t know much of anything about Persian music. Hmmm.

(A couple of nice YouTube options above, and below, what I actually listened to. It was an excuse to listen to some old favorites more than it had anything to do with the book.)

Standalone post link: ''readingeverythingsad''

I suppose I could just fill up a notebook with random stuff all day.

I suppose I could just fill up the internet with random stuff all day.

Standalone post link: ''randomstuffallday''

So I have digital and physical notebooks and a phone and computer filled with photos and random things from the last year that I haven’t shared or done anything with, and I’m seriously considering just starting to go through and post backdated stuff on this website, and on the various social media channels. We will see if I have the guts to be that consistent and that obnoxious.

Standalone post link: ''backdated''