I ran across this photo I took during a quick fast food stop in a small rural Texas town during a road trip last month. It reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about during my travels the last few years, so I wrote a little bit about it today.
#blogging #america #ruralamerica
A genius runs this gas station.
One of the things I hate most about being sick is that not only do you have to cancel all the fun stuff you might have had planned (as I’ve had to this week), but I’m also completely useless to get anything productive done.
I have just zero motivation, level of focus, basic competence, or desire to get anything done. Nada. Zilch. So it feels like doubly-wasted time. Here I am not doing the things I want to be doing, and can’t even get some stuff done that will make future-me happy. Bleh.
Brendan reposts this every year, and every year I reread it. Make 2024 The Year Of Maximum Enthusiasm - today’s contribution for #Junited
I ran across Keenan’s 2021 post Hey, so, I think I fucking hate the internet, which is about how I felt about twitter at the time, too. Here’s an entertaining song that describes what living your life in a feed feels like.
The last six weeks or so have been a crazy blur, and I just realized that I didn’t get a chance to post much from our 6800-mile road trip.
Anyway, one of the highlights was hanging out with our buddy Doc at several days of the French Quarter Fest in New Orleans.
Here are a bunch of ways to get old school Google search results—you know, just the ten blue links.
Finally added an /interests page to my website.
I use RSS as a buffet, not a task list
I ran across this (very well done) post on hating RSS feeds yesterday.
It’s really well done and I appreciate the underlying notion: rss feeds can feel like “work” to be done.
But I’ve always viewed them as a buffet from which I can sample. Not as a task list. A place to graze.
I have absolutely no desire to consume everything on the buffet. Yes, I have some things I’ll eat nearly every time. But in general, it’s a broad selection from which I can sample, depending on my mood. I have no obligation to eat it all, and in fact, that might be considered unreasonable.
The stuff I always put on my plate first is in one folder. The stuff I don’t eat that regularly goes into another folder, from which I only occasionally peak. I even have feeds from my friends' blogs that I never read, as they’re not on topics I care about, or are a bit too influencer-y for my tastes. But I’ll occasionally pop in to mark those as read, giving me a second or two to scan for a (rare) life update or something surprisingly interesting.
There’s simply too much to consume in the modern era to ever consider some grouping of content as a task list. If your default is to view that as such, I think you’re going to feel especially overwhelmed in the modern world.
I’m considering signing up for omg.lol almost entirely for the damn statuslog…
Are there any similar solutions I could use to quickly plant a status on my various sites? 🤔
Reposts from my Hey World blog
I reposted several posts from Hey World to my personal website.
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How to make driving across Texas more fun - a quick discussion of how a somewhat ridiculous new travel quest is making the boring parts of travel more fun.
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Friends for the sake of memories - re-examining some online friendships and choosing a path forward.
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I paid $100 for the privilege of travel today - taxing your own privilege.
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The last years of your life suck - a reminder of what your final years might look like.
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The only possible way to drive directly from Missouri to Kentucky - weird geography meets a weird quest.
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How can a digital camera from 1999 change your life? - purchases that change how you live.
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How many countries are there? - it’s more complicated than you might think.
Day 27: Surprise for challenges.micro.blog
This is Surprise Lake in Aniakchak National Monument, a collapsed caldera in remote Alaska that’s the least visited park unit in the country. I spent 5 days waiting for a short window to fly here via bush plane in 2019, so it’s a surprise that you made it!
Day 21 Mountains for challenges.micro.blog: “The Great One”
Day 18: Mood for challenges.micro.blog
Day 17: Transcendence for challenge.micro.blog.
This is the spot where the mutilated body of a young black boy, Emmett Till—whose crime was being black in rural Mississippi during Jim Crow—was dumped, an event that transcended a “simple” race murder and helped to launch the Civil Rights Movement.
I’m considering abandoning my general Mastodon account (I have another one that solely dedicated to travel/outdoor adventures) and moving everything to Micro.blog, where I’d also pull in my other fedi-posts and my blog posts from my primary website.
What drawbacks will I encounter?
Shot this from inside my tent in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in February.
Day 13: Cactus for challenges.micro.blog.
Day 13: Page (Arizona 😜), for challenges.micro.blog
Day 11: Sky for challenges.micro.blog
Day 10: Train for challenges.micro.blog - The most unique train car I’ve seen was this cut-out display at Steamtown NHS in Scranton, PA.
