Busy

I haven’t written in a while. I’ve been busy.

I decided, back in September, I didn’t want to write on substack anymore. I don’t like fascists, and I don’t like platforms that promote and monetise fascists. But I guess, I also don’t like platforms. Substack feels more interested in trying to be twitter, than actually being a good platform for writing. I still feel confused about what substack is. People write articles, and I pay for them to email them to me? That seems dumb. In my head, its like youtube, but for writers, but I don’t think it is. Youtube doesn’t email me. Also, when I go on substack, it doesnt show me articles to read, but for some reason tweets and tiktoks? I don’t understand.

But I feel like I do understand. Its enshittification. Substack is valued at over a billion usd, for what? Email newsletters? Who the fuck wants to receive more emails. So its trying to be mediumtwittertok with patreon built in.

I resolved to no longer rent a flat from a platform, but lease a bit of land and build my own house. Its up, but I haven’t connected the plumbing. I’ve been too busy. So I’ve had less motivation to write, because to write I need to finish the website, but I’ve been too busy.

I am very busy, but it’s a good busy.

One thing I did to try and help with the overwhelm I’m feeling at the moment was try and fix my email inbox. I know that gmail has loads of smart filtering options that I’d been consciously ignoring, so I decided to turn them on. Now my email has adverts in it. I can’t tell whats an email, and whats an ad. So now my inbox is somehow even more overwhelming, but the upside is its now just a pit of despair and ads I am pretending doesn’t exist, rather than a list of things I need to do something about. I’m going to try moving to Thunderbird. I know Mozilla is almost exclusively funded by good, but at least its a nonprofit. They’ll probably not put ads in my email. I hope.

I recently bought some winter tyres for my bike, and now I’m on a mailing list that’s telling me which tyres will make the perfect Christmas present for my loved ones.

That’s the world we live in now. I can’t buy tyres without being added to a mailing list. If I went to a local tyre shop, and as I was paying they asked for my address so they could send me a newsletter, I would probably stop what I was doing and walk out.

I was thinking recently of the whole GDPR apocalypse thing a few years back, where basically everyone I knew had weeks of shit trying to sort their data out so they complied. I feel like at some point everyone collectively started ignoring GDPR and went back to spamming you as they did before.

My email inbox isn’t my real problem. My real problem is I’m busy. Its a good busy though.

I keep saying that. Its a good busy.

Good busy. I keep saying that. I don’t really know what it means. I think it means “everything is terrible, but I can’t complain”. Four Yorkshiremen meets stiff upper lip. The more I think about it, I think its actually my way of saying I’m stressed, but not depressed. My old job was terrible, and when it was busy, it was hell. My current job is great, so when its busy, its busy, but not a living nightmare.

I wonder if winter closing in has anything to do with this. There’s a redirection of activities. I’m not sat in a park or a cafe writing this, but at my dining table. I don’t cycle into the country on sunny days, but to my basement office when its dark. The radius I explore decreases. I drink less, I go out less. The days shorten. The nights get cold.

This leaves me with less distraction. I fall deeper into my work, and my work becomes more central in my life. Is it cyclical? Do I focus on work, because I’m focusing on work.

I don’t know how to end this thing I’m writing. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it doesn’t need an ending. Maybe the fact I wrote it is an ending in itself.

Today I created something. It might not have been good, or necessary. But there’s something out there in the world now, that wasn’t there before. And that makes it a good day. Even if I am busy.