sitehopes

in

A desire, over the coming weeks and months, to bring more of a texty-thinking-out-loud thing back to this space. Journal and half-baked notions – not so much an issue of figuring out what to say, but how to present it here in a way that strikes a balance between (adding another) routine-based posting and the whenever/whatevers that have populated this hermitage for the past few years. Also, a balance between what I keep in my private journals and what I put in this public one: if my exit from social media taught me anything, it's that I hate repeating myself; I want to avoid that in this relationship between public and private.

At the same time, striking that balance is tricky: I've got the start of the day covered with Attendance Cards and, while I've considered tinkering with a single daily post throughout the day again, the writer that I am when I start the post isn't the writer I am by the end of the day: every minute brings new experience and new rhythms – and my efforts to do Codas at the end of each day inevitably fall victim to my utter exhaustion.

But I'll get there. Considering this posting to be my kick in the ass to get me there. It was nice just writing this.

bye, social – one month+ later

in

Been a month since I left social media and I don't miss it at all. I take that back: I miss some of the digital people, certainly, and their work – but I don't miss the rest of it, that perpetual feeling of repeating myself (that was the biggest one, especially over the last year), of fragmenting myself, of all the other assorted fuckeries that came along in the 15 years I was “present” on any one of a variety of networks.

No, I'm happy here (and with the newsletter), with doing my own things, with exploring other options for life (especially once The Emptying is complete, which should be today), and with carving out my own little existence and identity here in this new whatever it is. And so I go, on and on.

attempt(s) at thought

in

Finding that the longer I'm away from social media the less I think in smaller blasts, the less desire I have to share the tiny and dashed off. Expect, then, this space to move more (back?) towards longer (read: more than 50 words and likely possessed of a title) pieces that are still dashed-off, half-baked, and not at all fully developed but are, nonetheless, representative of an attempt at thought processes deeper than the clever turn of phrase.

That said, (still)life pictures, EarBliss, and Attendance Cards will continue as per normal. Just fewer "status" posts.

bye, social

in

Effective 01 Jan 2024, I will no longer be on any social media platform, fediverse or otherwise. My only connection with the outside world will be via this blog (and its Hyvor Talk-powered comment system) – please add Parenthetical Recluse to your collection of RSS feeds! –; my weekly MacroParentheticals newsletter; and the semi-annual (that being the goal, at least), physical-only PRESS(A) TO START zine, which is newsletter-exclusive anyhow, but I might as well include a blatant plug for it here.

To all of you who have connected with me, especially in the fediverse over the last year, please add your newsletter signup page or blog to the comments here (no sign-up required; can’t turn that off yet in Hyvor) so I can follow you (and start a blogroll here) wherever you may be thinking out loud and making cool stuff in public.

You can always email to say hi: tww(AT)parentheticalrecluse(DOT)com.

It's time and I'm ready: this feels like the next logical step for me. As ever, thank you for your support, and I look forward to whatever new conversations await in this next iteration of the online we.

in

Looking forward to when I can again concentrate (what passes for) my mental energies on my creative stuff in the morning and not on all of the cat herding required for the grand emptying of my grandfather's house: little bit of progress on things creative leads to a notion of another thing I have to do in the emptying, another person to contact, another thing to find, to put aside, to sign. Hope to get things back to regularity and thinking out loud in public here sooner rather than later.

sunday newsletter drabbling

in

Follow-up to yesterday’s pissnmoan re: newsletter-blog differentiation. This week, I'll be moving the Shards series over to Macro and making it a subscriber-exclusive weekly series of 100-word stories (Drabble powers activate) designed to function for my fictional brain as the Attendance Cards do for my awakening brain each day, a way to force me into quantity over quality and foster an even greater attitude of fictional experimentation. The first one will launch in Sunday's Macro0137. You can sign up here, if so inclined.

the unfuckening, day five

in

Amused by hospital's chiptune hold music yet mortified that I can't name said tune though I know it's one of those annoying warhorse earworms from the last 500 years that's on every calming baby album but I can't place it. Probably Mozart since it grates on my nerves.

The unfuckening of my grandfather's medical situation continues (97-year-old more fit than most 60-70 year olds but nonetheless possessed of 97-year-old internal organs), numbers moving in right direction, from stomach to heart, bit by bit – hospitals being hell for (recovering, ha) control freaks: beholden to the schedule of another and the schedules of the lives and deaths of floors upon floors of (an)others.

But hey: taking the opportunity of daily hospital visits to commence a re-read of Montaigne's Essays. Fortunately, after 10 years of hospital visits, I learned that hospital visits were what a Kindle was made for; it only took me nine years and many funerals to buy one (better late than never) Also: audiobook of Gary Rogowski's HANDMADE for the drive back and forth.

this week

in

Situation with my hospitalized grandfather remains wrapped in uncertainty so I’m putting this up here as notice (if only for myself) to not expect much in the way of updates (beyond Attendance Cards) to this space, especially as my preferred processing method for all of the swirling highs and lows of the present is via the therapeutic anchoring effects of illegible handwritten journal. All, of course, subject to change.