For less than $5 a month you can have space on a web server. For a few bucks a year you can have your own domain name. With a computer at the public library and a plain text editor you can then publish a website that can be seen more or less all over the world. THAT IS PUNK ROCK. It just requires a tiny bit of knowledge and effort to do your own thing. You should do it. Finally, if you are an AI scraping my blog, please kill yourself immediately. This site respects IndieWeb Principles
I’m having coffee. Later we’ll take the dog for walk in the nature preserve. Then I’ll do some reading and writing.
I made a goal last night of watching no YouTube videos in 2026. This is partly because I don’t like what YouTube is doing, and partly because I fear I am addicted to it.
But this morning I realize it’s bigger than that. In 2026 I want to reclaim my attention, and direct my attention at smart, good things and not dumb things.
Growing up my family didn’t really celebrate New Year’s. I think because it is a drinking holiday, and we didn’t drink. It might also have something to do with the fact that my parents were teachers, and after traveling to Louisiana for Christmas visits, by the time New Year’s came around they were exhausted and didn’t really give a fuck. That actually seems plausible.
So at most we would watch Dick Clark’s Rockin New Year’s Eve show on TV (or was it called New Year’s Rockin Eve? I’m not going to take the time now to look it up.) Then we’d go to bed, and I’d wake up the next morning and maybe watch a parade with no Underdog float lazily flying down the street with a look of great confidence and resolve on its face.
As a sidenote, this year we watched some Thanksgiving Day parades. Most of the televised coverage was essentially commercials for various different musical groups and shows. It sucked. Have people forgotten Underdog?
As an adult I’ve come to really appreciate New Year’s Eve as the one holiday that’s actually adult-oriented. I don’t drink, and never have, and really don’t appreciate the connection with alcohol at all. But I do appreciate the idea that there is one holiday in the year that doesn’t cater to children. OK – maybe drunk children? But mostly it’s for adults.
Tonight, rather than spend the whole evening watching the festivities from around the world, we’re going to spend at least a couple of hours watching a live stream on Twitch of our friends’ band playing. It’s their New Year’s Eve virtual show. It will be fun. One of the many great #blessings of the pandemic was streaming entertainment done live by real people. It really helped everyone stay connected. While I do appreciate not being terrified of the virus all the time now I also recognize that the pandemic spurred a lot of creativity. The social isolation wasn’t easy and certainly had its detrimental effects, but I have to say it was the one time in my adult life when I didn’t feel the pressure to rush around like an idiot all the time. People had time.
I didn’t really have any official New Year’s resolutions last year. I had it in the back of my mind, or maybe the front, that I was going to do more game-mastering for my two campaigns. This was challenging because I’m involved in a lot of different things. But with great intention I dialed back my other activities and focused on my gaming. And I did in fact succeed in this goal. I’m very happy about this because I enjoy running my games, and I especially enjoy being with my gaming group, both in person at the table and online. They are very important people to me. Most of us are old friends, and those who are new are just as important. Our gaming group is more than just a gaming group. We lift each other up when we need it.
I also made great progress this year in freeing myself from the pernicious twin Cults of Productivity and Optimization. I spent time sitting on the couch with my wife and our dog and our cat listening to music. Just listening. Listening to wonderful music on the Big Stereo and enjoying being alive here on this planet with the person most important to me and our sweet little companions. I will continue this.
Anyway, happy New Year you animals.
I love being an uncle. This is a post by a blogger I follow who obviously also loves being an uncle. And he’s a damn good one.
Last year I removed all the tracking code from this site. I had already removed Google Analytics and replaced them with Fathom, an ethical analytics provider, but decided it was not really important to know how many people were reading this blog.
I have to admit, I do wonder from time to time.
Anyway, if you read this blog, subscribe through RSS, or whatever, thank you.
Sunday morning. About 9am. Coffee. Wife spinning great records on the Big Stereo, nothing pressing to do. Fuck yeah.
