Indecision
Being off work for such a long period opens up a lot of thinking time I wouldn’t normally get.
This can be a double edged sword.
On the one hand I’ve had time to add functionality to the blog, read more and take an online course but, on the other, I’ve had the capacity to really examine what I’ve been doing for the past 18 months.
I think I've reached one of those junctures where I'm not entirely sure what I want to do or achieve with my online presence.
It happens from time to time and I've been through various phases in the past 14 years or so, wanting to be or accomplish different things.
I know one thing: social media is not the way I want to spend my time. Returning to social would be doing so just for the sake of it, not because it would actually achieve anything. It's not as though I would be using it as a tool to promote something more worthwhile.
I'm not running a business or promoting a product or book, using it as a customer service avenue or outreach tool.
No, I would be simply posting status updates for the purpose of posting status updates. And without a goal or plan even my blogging is starting to feel a little empty.
I have no need to modify the site or develop new functionality - I'm very happy with how it looks and works - so "getting meta" is not currently an option. Although that can only be a viable one for so long.
I think my desire to make a difference is actually down to wanting to achieve something worthwhile, something of value. Not financially but creatively.
I want to produce something that stands out, stands alone; something I can be truly proud of. Instead I just scrawl angst-ridden words on to a page - words about nothing in particular.
I dance around the matter rather than actually doing something about it. But therein lies the problem: I don't know the what or how.
If I did I'd be doing it already!
(I wrote this last night while unable to sleep and was unsure of whether I should post it. But I decided not to censor myself and the best way to hold myself accountable is to put it out there.)
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# I did it!
After three weeks I uninstalled Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. I'm close to collecting all the amenities and have things in the middle of being crafted but I'm not waiting; I've just had enough.
Although Nintendo has been pushing out events at a remarkable rate it's just too much of the same thing, over and over.
Games like this appear harmless fun but they can be massive time sinks. They're addictive and blatantly meant to be.
The way everything happens in timed cycles (an hour for this, three hours for that) is designed to pull us back in throughout the day. Add the timed goals where you have to do or collect a certain number of things within a specific timeframe (usually that day) and all the ingredients are there to get you hooked and coming back for your next fix.
Yes, you could resist the urge and just play once or twice a day for a few minutes but your progress would be so slow as to be unrewarding.
So I'm done. I've reached my limit with it, as I always do with mobile games.
I'm just surprised it lasted this long!
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Changing permalinks
Ever since I moved to WordPress I have had my permalink structure set as /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ which served well enough. With the increase in microblogging and posts without titles, however, this structure looks a bit messy as the post permalinks also include date and time, such as: 13-12-2017-1127.
Not nice.
So I wanted to change the structure to just /%postname%/ which looks much nicer. The only problem is that changing it means links will no longer work unless redirection is in place.
I was looking for the best way to do this and came across the “Permalinks Migration Plugin for WordPress” by Dean Lee.
This is a great little plugin! All you do is copy your current permalink structure into the plugin settings page and click to update. Then you are free to change your permalink settings to any other option and all links will be redirected.
No messy link lists or .htaccess editing required and my post URLs are much cleaner.
@colinwalker I enjoyed this one.
@colinwalker It's almost like watching you think. Feels more like a diary entry.
@patrickrhone I suppose that’s really what it is. I think you can tell this was written by hand on paper first.
@colinwalker Yes, I kind of have some experience with that. ;-)
I agree with Patrick, it was fun reading this. There's one thread I want to pull -
You say you want to produce something that "stand alone". I assume you mean something that is complete in itself. Or maybe you mean something that comes from you alone.
Neither can truly be the case. Sure, you can have an outpouring of creative energy and something beautiful will come out of it - either code or words. But that never happens truly in a vacuum. I'm sure you have your family to support you, but you might also want to look towards others outside who would want to support your writing and contribute their own.
I've often thought about this - what's to stop me from creating a well maintained blog right now? Well, me, and the lack of other 'me's working with me.
So perhaps you should look for other 'you's and work with them to create this thing you so want to create and yearn for.
Maybe I didn’t quite explain myself properly. I’ve always wanted to create something that was a piece of work in its own right, distinct from the blog. Maybe a book, I’ve always wanted to write a book. But knowing what to write it about has always been the stumbling block. As I always say, I tend to think in small ideas not large ones.
But I hear you on working with other “me’s” to produce something. Who knows.
A book? I'd like to write a book too! And wow, you hit the nail on the head with you comment about "small ideas not large ones". That's the problem with me too. Whenever I think of a story, I can see large parts of it, but never the ending. I toil and toil over stories but without an ending, what's even the point. So I write short stories and lately, snippets instead of larger ones.
And yes, now I understand the point. You want to move past the blog (and perhaps into the physical world, based on your comment about writing a book) and I say, kudos! You have the urge! Now materialize it! Discuss your ideas with other mes. Create a slack channel and slack around in it. Have discussions about doing work instead of doing it and maybe one of these days, you will!
A few months ago, I wrote a few snippets which I liked and then pinged two old friends who I consider good in writing and asked them to edit the text. They sent the work back, marked red in many places, and I have been too lazy ever since to go back and work through the edits. Even the idea of editing my own work gives me the itches! (goes to show I'm no better than you)