I find myself in a curious limbo at the moment - anything I post will not be delivered to subscribers until the administrators that run the Ghost infrastructure approve my account. It serves me right for signing up on Christmas Eve, but it’s still tremendously frustrating.
Deep breaths. It’s not the end of the world.
It’s “Boxing Day” - the day after Christmas Day.
We’re still navigating the most unusual of Christmases. Our eldest daughter unexpectedly returned home last night after an argument erupted where she was staying. It’s not my story to tell. She was fine, thankfully. The events that caused her to engineer an escape have influenced my opinion about somebody - and not in a good way.
We still haven’t seen our youngest daughter. I’m resisting writing anything about her absence. Nothing I write will change her decisions, so there’s not much point voicing opinions any more. I guess this is a part of parenting they don’t tell you about - where you are consigned to silence while watching mistakes being made - wondering how many pieces you’ll be picking up later.
It’s been a quiet day today – eating snacks, dipping into the multitude of drinks we bought, and watching forgettable movies and “Christmas Special” television shows.
Late last night I dipped a toe into the new “social” networks - Threads and BlueSky - and spent some time reciprocating Christmas wishes to those sending them. This morning more-or-less confirmed my suspicions that social networks really aren’t social at all - or rather, any search for kindred spirits is akin to the search for a needle in a haystack - a haystack filled with attention seekers, self marketers, thirst traps, porn robots and scammers.
I wonder what the inventors of the various social media platforms think when they see the arrival of mechanised users - following scripted conversations that steer the unwitting towards onlyfans, bitcoin, or patreon accounts? I suppose it’s a bit like the Nigerian Prince scam - it must sometimes work, otherwise they wouldn’t do it.
While satirically extolling the perils of gun ownership, Jim Jeffries famously commented that “everyone gets a bit sad”. I guess that’s how the robots work - fishing for the vulnerable as countless organisations, movements and chancers have done since time immemorial.
I’m back at work tomorrow. I have a few projects to continue with, and am expecting - or rather hoping for - a quiet day. We’ll see. I can’t imagine many people will be mad enough to be working on anything of consequence. The risk will of course be something going wrong somewhere, and finding myself being parachuted in, unarmed and unprepared.
I wonder if anybody will find this post?
In other news, I need to start setting out a new bullet journal for the new year. Hell - I need to buy a new bullet journal first. I have one in my Amazon wish-list, and a voucher my brother-in-law gave me for Christmas. I’ve half a mind to spend his voucher on books though - if only I could choose some. I scrolled the various “on offer” books for over an hour last night, and chose nothing.
Any ideas? Good books you’ve read recently?