Category: Generic

Skipping a Year

Yesterday I posted something about how I used to do New Years day posts where I posted one picture from each month as a year in review kind of thing. I said I was still thinking of doing one for 2023.

I just went through my Flickr trying to decide which pics to use for the post…

…and it turns out that most months don’t have anything worth highlighting. It was a nice quiet year but photographically? There are long stretches of time where there’s nothing special to look back on. There are lots of guitar pictures and lots of cat pictures and not a whole lot else.

Oh well. Let’s try to make 2024 a little more visually interesting, m’kay?

Maybe I am just old and uninteresting now. Not that I was ever very interesting to begin with.

(Non) Daily Haiku for You #123

Today’s haiku is brought to you by the fact that what we call A.I. these days is just a search engine on top of a language model and is neither artificial nor intelligent.

New York Times Lawsuit…
A.I. ignores copywrites…
No one is surprised.

Buzz

Daily writing prompt
What is your mission?
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If there is one thing I hate, apart from snow and winter and TV commercials pimping medications, it is corporate buzz speak. Mission? Buzz buzz buzz. Ugh. So today’s daily writing prompt is to write a corporate mission statement. Hows aboutcha blow me, Bloganuary?

My mission (I feel gross just typing that word in this context) is to do whatever I can to make Jen happy. She’s the love of my life, my soulmate, and my wife and it is my job to make her happy. I fail a lot but I will never stop trying to be better at my one job. 

There. My mission. If you didn’t see that coming then you haven’t been paying attention, and that is okay. We’ll get through this together, friends and neighbors and kind readers.

Long Life

Daily writing prompt
What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?
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The short answer is that living a long life sure beats the alternative, right?

I suppose the missing piece of this question is how do you define a long life? Is 70 years long? When I was 20 I would have said yes. Now that I’m 52? No, no, and no. What about 80 years? My father is in his 80’s and that no longer feels long enough. 90 years? Maybe. 100 years? Probably. 200 years? No we’re talking.

Heads up, readers, things are about to get a little dark here… You’ve been warned.

The other question here is not about length of life but quality of life. My mother made it into her 80’s before we lost her last year. She made it into her 80’s. On paper that sounds like success, but the reality was that her final few years were a nightmare of dementia and memory loss and constant physical agony. My father’s mind is still sharp as ever, but physically he’s in pain and barely able to walk. He’s also suffering from the passage of time in that his wife and all of his family that he grew up with and most of his friends are gone. Is that the quality of life you want in your later years? As stated at the start of this philosophical masterpiece, it’s better than the alternative. It’s also so sad and depressing.

Okay, that was way more sharing than I’m currently feeling comfortable with. Let’s put this post to bed now. 

Different

Daily writing prompt
What could you do differently?
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I’m still not in a sharing mood (shockingly) so I’m not going to give specifics. Suffice to say if you ask me what I could do differently, my broken little brain is going to hyper focus 100% on negatives. You’ve been warned.

What could I do different becomes what must I do to stop failing as a human being. I must be a better husband, a better step father, a better son, a better uncle, a better brother, a better employee, a better supervisor, a better democrat, a better citizen, and a better neighbor… and that is just for starters.

The problem, of course, is that I don’t know how to do any of it. I’m working on it all though. I’ll do better. I’ll be better.