Since my last post, I have indeed created my record shelf. I still have a bit of work to do on it, mostly just adding the blurbs for each album. While working on that I was listening to the audiobook for Because Internet, which has reawakened my love of linguistics and languages (at one point I tried to learn 14 languages at one time). With this, I got the idea to try and write one post a month in whatever language I'm attempting to learn that month, which will, in turn, give me motivation to practice those languages. I plan to focus mostly on Spanish and Korean, with the chance for Portuguese and Italian to slip in occasionally, and eventually, hopefully, Arabic. Which means I need to test and make sure I can post Korean in this format...
저는 한국어를 더 꾸준히 연습해야 합니다.
والعربية؟
It seems to work, at least in the preview I have on VScode. Which means that I should be able to do as planned.
I went out to a bar for a furry meet up on Saturday, it was a lot of fun, and I met some cool people. I'm hoping I can build actual relationships from it. A lot of the people there are queer in some fashion or another, it was nice to spend time with like-minded people. I got a few people's contact info, and I've talked with most of them today, I'm hoping I can continue to build these relationships, as I am in desperate need of companionship.
I've been rewatching Elementary (yes, again) something about the show helps to motivate me to progress my various interests and skills. It's also been making me rethink internet communication.
Aside from this blog, I no longer have much of an internet presence. I have a facebook account under a fake name for when something requires an account to see, or for browsing the marketplace, but I don't have any friend on there. I have a reddit account, but I don't use it much anymore, same with tumblr (though I'm thinking about attempting to dip a toe back in) I have deleted my instagram pages, and I haven't had a twitter account since I was 17. The only real 'social media' I use is discord, and with that soon getting shot in the head (the company is looking to become publicly traded), that will likely soon disappear too.
In the show, Sherlock often finds and gets to know people online, through various forums and such. This has made me reconsider my online presence. I want to build relationships, to build community, but that requires me to talk to people. I don't have many opportunities to do so in my day-to-day life, so I've reconsidered social media. The problem being that most common forms of social media are now corporations more interested in their profit margins than their users. So I've considered alternatives, Mastodon being the front runner. I've attempted to join some forums, but most of the ones I've found that interest me either don't have an active way of making an account, or are defunct.
In direct contrast to that, the show has also encouraged my desire to forgo my smartphone, though I have yet to do so. It's incredibly inconvenient to not have one, I would need to get a GPS for my car, an MP3 player for my audiobooks and music, and I would likely need to start carrying a notebook, not to mention needing to buy a new, non smart phone. Yet I still want to get rid of my smartphone. Already, I barely have anything on it, a few games, that function more like fidget toys for me, my audiobook and music apps, and some tools for my hobbies, but I'm still dissatisfied with how much time I spend on it, doing nothing. I feel like getting rid of it would force me to find other, more productive means of occupying my time. Not that I think every waking moment needs to be productive to have meaning, but for me, I would rather not spend 8 hours sitting on my couch playing a dumb mobile game. I understand that everyone needs time for their brain to do nothing, to have downtime, aside from sleep. It's been proven that downtime is crucial for mental health, but I would rather spend 8 hours staring at a blank wall, than how I currently use it, but despite my best efforts, I haven't been able to stop myself, though I have been able to redirect a lot of that time into activities I prefer, like lockpicking, or working on this blog, or watching Elementary, or reading, or listening to music or audiobooks.
I want to build a consistent reader base, but that would likely require me to build some sort of subscription, like an RSS feed, which I considered, but would be too much work for me to keep up with, if I'm honest with myself, or an email list, which I may do. I may also start to post links to my new blog posts on the social medias I choose to interact with. I have also thought about adding easy "next" and "prev" links at the bottom of each blog post, to make it easier to read them in succession, rather than having to back out each time, but that would be a large undertaking, although better to do it sooner rather than later, and then I can easily build it into my template.
Speaking of, I did join Mastodon in between writing and posting this, but I quickly found another instance that looks more appealing to me, so I have put in an application, and I'm waiting to hear back, I'll put my profile on my links page once it's confirmed.