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ZPM Diary, Sept 25th 2022

I’d like to tell you that this was an eventful week here at RHQ, but I insisted that it be as quiet as possible. After working for a year straight at my day job, I took a vacation this week and mainly took it easy.

Of course, by easy, I mean: end my Squarespace site and move back to WordPress and find something simple. Two years ago when I got laid off, I poured everything into trying to hang my own shingle, not having learned what happened during the Great Recession when I tried the first time. Take note friends, If the general population does not have discretionary income, they are not going to spend it on you. The past two and a half years have been brutal, and it’s taken quite a chunk out of my mental health. While I’m not giving up on the dream, I’m scaling it way back to the point where I can allow myself to have fun again.

While cleaning my Mac, I deleted what I thought was an alias to my digital assets folder. That folder has all the stuff I use to make the podcast, the videos the photography. It wasn’t an alias. It was the actual folder. Luckily I had a backup, but the frustration of fixing my own screwup is something I could have done without. Took the opportunity to create new projects.

My laundry room shelves REALLY needed the Spark Joy treatment. I’m lying. My entire laundry room became the room in the house no one wants to admit exists. It’s clean, let us never speak of this again.

Insulin is not a new thing in this house, but it is a new thing to me. Fighting with insurance over insulin is also a new thing, but of all the new things that have happened this week, I didn’t expect to have my blood sugar go from 360 to 87 in 2 hours. If you don’t know what that feels like, I don’t recommend finding out.

I’ve cleaned this house from stem to stern. I’ve cleaned places in this house I had not known existed previously.

Now, I need to create a new template for the podcast in line with where I want to be now, and get back to creating, period. Photos, writing, podcast, videos, the whole thing. One thing at a time, and we’re going to start with this site. There’s some TikTok audio I heard once that said ”I’ve decided that I’m my niche, welcome to the shitshow.”

Welcome, indeed.

I’m Not That Fancy

Zen Pirate Madman

So, here’s a little bit of a switch. As some of you may be aware, I’ve been a Squarespace customer for almost a decade. I like them, and their customer service has been excellent. However, over the course of the pandemic I’ve been thinking about what it is I actually *need* for a site, and that feeling has intensified over the last few weeks. I’ve also been giving thought to the anxiety I give myself trying to make my multimedia talents a thing, and I just don’t need to do that. I need to have fun doing this stuff, and this hasn’t been fun for a while.

So I’m scaling back. I have made the switch back to a WordPress site, and the first decision I had to make was to whether or not to go look for a fancy theme or not. I don’t need some magazine theme or a portfolio theme, and I don’t need something that has my face plastered all over it like my last Squarespace site did. I need the content to be front and center; more steak than sizzle. This theme does that. It also serves as a platform for me to relearn some of the WordPress development things that I lost over the past ten years or so.

This new experiment—and let’s be clear, this is me playing mad scientist for the first time in a dozen years or so— is meant to do one thing: force me to look at a blank background until I get annoyed enough to fill it with something. I make no promises, but if you’ve been with me for a while, you know this. Of course, you know where the door is if you’ve had enough.

I haven’t.