Twenty-Five In Five-One-Two

Today marks the 25th anniversary of moving to Austin on July 28, 2000. Twenty-Five years. A quarter century.

That thumbheaded kid who pulled into town on a bleary, humid Friday morning with a job and a carload of hope is still somehow here. But he’s not a hopeful kid anymore — he’s grizzled. The dotcom he moved for no longer exists, and neither does his optimism.

This morning, that dumbfounded adult drove out to the edge of town on a bleary, humid Monday morning with a career and a carload of concerns. He’s somehow finally making the grade. Somehow.

PPaanniicc

Sometimes, I think social media is a global psy-op to make me feel terror and fear of the future in order to short circuit my executive functions and buy things to temporarily alleviate the horrors. I mean, sure, I want to be informed on what’s happening at the moment so I can try to have an impact, but goddamn, even the hopeful lefties I follow can draw up some dark-present dead-future shit, so scrolling the feed fills me up with the bad stuff.

It’s the Feed. The random-rewards Feed. The Social Slot Machine. The Feed can give me comics and jokes and tits, or it can give me concentration camps on US soil. I just don’t know what’s coming next! Keep scrolling!

Oi. I need to reconsider my involvement in this social media infinite scroll thing. This much cortisol can’t be good for me.

Dance Card

Life is what happens between phone calls. By logical extension, no phone calls, no life.

Joking aside, I’m feeling a bit empty and solitary of late, leaving it to unstructured happenstance to cross paths with random acquaintances and not be alone for an hour or so. Fully-formed adults don’t do this, right?

I should schedule time with people and then show up.

Coordinate. Collaborate. Compromise. Companionship.

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It’s disheartening when I see blogs disappear, go 404, totally vanish because the author closed up shop. I’m a big fan of blogging as a great activity to do, a good thing to keep doing. I want blogs to persist because I believe in them.

I’ve had this domain for 25 years and have been writing journals of some form online since 1997. I’ve been writing paper journals since 1991. I don’t intend to stop.

When I see a blogger turn off the tap, remove all history, completely disappear, or worse, leave it all up and never touch it again, I feel a little piece of the Internet die. It reminds me how ephemeral this all really is.

I always wonder about the end of this site, how soon after my demise will the hosting shut off, how quickly my domain will get snapped up by porn spammers. Will there be any loved ones to back it all up?