These are the kinds of things that keep me on social media and part of why it's been hard to reduce my time spent on it:

Someone should make a script where you can upload a video to a folder (externally hosted) and then it posts it to a page and then you can edit the page to add a caption or whatever and then you get a sort of low effort video feed feed page. I would visit your video page off of TikTok.

This song came up in my YouTube Music year in review thing and it's kind of astonishing to me that this came out in May 2024, not even a full 8 months ago. It's not just what's been happening in America or Europe or Korea or the rest of the world, I've also had a lot of change personally and professionally. I don't usually get this "?!" feeling at the end of the year but it is mind-boggling to me that the Kabin Crew thing happened THIS year.

Rediscovering the Small Web
i want to live like it's 90s
Krampus was a dame!
Come and get me (both you and AI)
Bandcamp Wrapped

A rainbow bedazzled Pride nutcracker

I don't know what to say about this week, it was kind of a blur, but I suppose that's why I challenged myself to write these posts. Let's just start rambling.

I worked a lot and hard and got a lot accomplished. I've been improving and documenting a process that has caused widespread issues for several years and it turns out that it's because everyone thought it worked differently. Everyone thought someone else was taking care of everything, too. Almost no one was in alignment on definitions or the work involved (or how it was entirely manual and therefore can take weeks to accomplish).

Guys, documentation may seem like a "waste of time" to write or "too much effort" to use, but if someone had given me the time and resources to write it down 3 years ago none of these issues would be happening because people would all be on the same page. (Other issues would probably happen, mostly communication issues I imagine, but at least the major impacts to our end users would not have happened.) But let's waste everyone's time instead.

A white cubed shelf with a red and black gothic house on top. The house is decorated for Yule with red bows and candy canes, with a white branched tree behind it. Beside it is a black tabletop creepy tree with various ornaments.

I got into the Yule spirit finally, briefly, and decorated my haunted house. It was hard to find motivation, but on Thursday I watched Krampus (2015) and sent some Krampus postcards and dug out my decor.

I found this little red house in June with the first inklings of Halloween decor this year and I knew it was going to stay up all year. There's nothing inherently spooky about it: No bats, no "haunted house" things; it's haunted because you know it is. Just look at it. Instead of decorating everywhere, now I decorate this house and its yard for the seasons.

A skeleton with a Santa hat sits in the backseat of a car

Text reads: Are you TIRED? LONELY? DEPRESSED? If so, please consider joining a NICHE ONLINE COMMUNITY! big grin smile emoji. There is an image of a mid-90s computer, keyboard, and tower. Text reads: - Obsess over something irrelevant instead of dealing with your real problems. - Annoy your friends and family. - Argue with thousands of new people online!

Monster Hunter Now updated the title screen so this week I've been anticipating a good Tigrex fight. I know it's going to be so annoying with him flipping all over the place at top speed but it'll be so fun too.

I haven't been playing much. My phone says I spent 2 hours and 34 minutes LESS on it this week and that's because I've been playing games less.

Monster Hunter Now loading screen showing Tigrex drifting in snow while a hunter fights it.

A few weeks ago I purchased The Cold Dark so I could play it over winter break and after reading the prerequisites I realized I don't know where my playing cards are or if it's a complete set. Somewhere during 2020 I started using stuff like that to make art. Since I was in need of a new deck of cards, I did a search and found the Happy Halloween playing cards (including a glow in the dark card). They're perfect. They're BEAUTIFUL. I'll never cover them with glue and paper; these will be buried with me. I needed to share them.

Last night I went to see BalletX which has me thinking a lot about the intersections of movement and stillness, light, shadow, and darkness, sound and silence. The ballet group did performances from four choreographers and each of them impacted me in a different way.

I don't want to do ballet but whenever I watch any I wish I did. The emotion shown through music, light, and movement is beautiful. It's of course always impressive how strong and stable the dancers are, able to be both fluid and rigid, expressive and structured, flexible, consistent.

I don't go to live performances like this very often so when I do it's INCREDIBLY FUCKING IMPACTFUL. I can't stop thinking about this one part in Heroes where the dancers all jumped backwards onto their chairs from the sitting position and stood up straight and moved into dance like it was nothing.

I didn't plan ahead very well and spent $70 on transportation instead of $25 on parking or max $10 on public transportation. That's the other impact of not going out very often, I am ill-prepared and forget what I'm supposed to do as if it's the first time ever.

Mood going into the rest of this year:

Twitter dark mode screenshot from user @coolurbanhippie. The text reads We get to allow the last days of the year to bring us softness of joy. No need to 'finish strong.' We've endured enough. We can finish gently. Resting. Winding down like a gentle stream. Inviting in the calm. Let's end this year with celebration and peace. Because we deserve.