Okay, I’ve finally done what I meant to do in January and moved back onto WordPress. Tinyletter is gone (RIP), Substack has a Nazi infestation, and you know what, self-hosting a WordPress site has worked for me since 2007, so we’ll do that instead.
But to be honest, 1) I’m about six months behind the curve on leaving Substack because of Nazis, 2) I still use Twitter/X, and 3) a quick google search of my webhost + Nazis did not lead me to believe my latest move is ideologically above reproach. So I don’t think I deserve any social awareness gold stars after all, but I do find a plain old WordPress blog to be quite a bit more manageable, at least.
So, here we are, and I’m trying to remember how to, you know, have an online presence.
2024 has been rough. I won’t go into details, but my family had one of those moments that instantly splits the timeline into Before and After, and we’re all still reeling from it.
A few weeks after it happened, my therapist told me that I absolutely could not attempt to power through my daily life without giving myself any kind of recovery period or I would burn out like a struck match. If you know me, you probably know exactly what I did after receiving that quite sound advice.
Play stupid games and win stupid prizes, right?
I’m trying to take life off of Hard Mode for a little bit, with somewhat mixed results. I’m also trying to find my way back to writing. I’m having a really hard time, honestly, but I haven’t entirely flatlined. I did finish and submit a piece this week, which felt like a feat of strength, and I’m trying to retrain my creative execution muscle, which is about as out-of-shape as every actual muscle I have is.
The one thing I can do that will reliably and instantly send me into a flow state is play the piano. When I was little, I loved to swim out into the deep end of the water park wave pool without an inner tube while the waves were on, just to see if I could stay afloat. This resulted in more than one instance of the life guard having to fish me out with a metal pole. When I think about the role that piano is currently playing in my life, I remember clinging to that pole. Maybe I can use it to climb out of this creative slump I’m in if I just keep trying, but without trying so hard I send myself into a stressy doom spiral and make the whole problem worse.
Anyway, I’m back, and I’ve missed you, and I love you. Thanks for holding the door for me.
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