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Are s’mores paninis? Discuss.
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you should be reading a book instead
I love reading. It is probably my favorite thing to do. Reading is great. Everyone should read as much as possible. Quick point of clarification: What I mean is that I love reading fiction and I think everyone should read more fiction. The reason is pretty simple: Reading Fiction is Fun!!!
There is, however, a problem with reading fiction. Just like everything else in the world social media has ruined the simple joy of reading fiction. There is booktok, bookstagram, goodreads, and all of those other sites that want to tell you what to read and what books are bad. And I am sure there are bad books out there, but you should find them yourself.
When I was a much younger person I thought I needed to read “literary fiction” to be a reader. That I shouldn’t be reading sci-fi, fantasty, etc. because those aren’t “good”. Whenever I started to feel that way I would read a “good” book and not really enjoy myself and go back to reading enjoyable books. The books I wanted to read are always better than the books I was told I should read.
STORY TIME: When I was in elementary school I was part of a program called great books. The idea was to get children to read “great” books and discuss them. You had to read the books in a certain time frame and discuss them during lunch. It was a BIG DEAL to be part of great books. I think I was invited every year that it was available and I never made it past the first book, not because I was bad at reading but because the books we read were not interesting. That meant that I got kicked out every year. I blame Tom Sawyer and their ilk for my failure at great books. STORY OVER
At this point you are probably wondering “What is the point of this post?” Well, like all my posts I am not 100% sure. But here goes:
I think that as a society we put too much pressure on people to read books that have the best marketing or have been reviewed well. I think it is more important that we get people to read books. They can be absolute trash but if you enjoy it, good for you. “But Dylan, " you say, " it has been years since I have read a book and I don’t know what I like to read.” That is totally fair. Do you have a favorite type of movie, tv show, or video game? There are probably books that fit in those genres.
Over the last year (plus) I have been reading a lot of romance novels. Like a ton. I would venture to say that it is my favorite genre to read. I enjoy books about love. Since I tend to read for pleasure, romance novels work out well for me because they generally have a happy ending (not always but mostly). And Romance Novels exist in every genre. Here are some recommendations complete with links to romance.io (which is a romance focused website with spice ratings and reviews).
For true crime people: All the Missing Pieces is about a true crime podcaster that drives around the country trying to solve cold case, including that of her sister. Super fun and interesting.
Alternate History: American Royals is a what if America had royalty. Pretty fun all around with some mystery and court nonesense.
I hope you like Fan Fiction: Spoiler Alert This book is not fan fiction, this book is if someone who writes fan fiction who meets one of the stars of the show that they write fan fiction about. Super duper fun and I enjoyed the shit out of it.
Force proximity in Alaska: Under the Sitka Sky Someone goes home for reasons, gets stuck on an island after a plane crash with a childhood friend… one thing leads to another and LOVE HAPPENS.
Wierdo Sci-fi/fantasy with birbs: The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love was one of the most fun books I have read recently. AND THERE IS A SEQUEL. Basicall about two professors of bird stuff trying to get tenure as part of a contest to find this rare bird. It is pretty great.
Have I mentioned that I love a fauxmance?: The Bigger Picture. You know how sometimes your sibling is running for office (or something) and is fake dating someone because it helps (there are more reasons) and then you move in with them for reasons and fall in love with the person your brother is fake dating… so basically awesome.
Speaking of Fauxmance: In Development was the first one I read. Pop star and Actress fake date for career reasons. Queer awakening and just all around fun read.
For my DnD nerds: Dungeons and Drama Bascially angsty teens fall in love at a game store. Pretty cute and sweat with all of the trappings that us nerds wanted when we were young.
Are you crafty and/or love sports ball: Close Knit is a book about a yarn influencer and a premier league footballer who enemies to lovers the shit out of life. It involves a bunch of footballers learning to knit which is a plus. Speaking of knitting you should go buy some yarn from Little Squirrel Yarn to help support my book habit.
All of the books by Abbi Waxman are amazing. There is a few that take place in the same universe and a couple that are stand alone. Start with The Bookish Life of Nina Hill and go from there.
Black swan kind of: Reverence is a lot darker than most of my reading but it is very good. It is probably historical fiction if you want to place it in a sub genre. Ballet and cold war shenanigans for the win.
Heartbreaking: The Unfinished Line This is a stand alone book that takes place in the same universe as Jen Lyon’s Senator’s Wife series (which you should also read but you don’t have to). It is wonderful and the only book on this list that doesn’t have a happily ever after (kind of, it is weird, just read it, but also have tissues handy).
Royalty/Queer Awakening/Fauxmances… Yes Please!! Ascending is the first book in the Royals series. It is a lot of fun and all the books are in a shared universe so once a characters story is over you still get to see them again.
Monsters need love too: The Belladonna Series. Imagine if you liked poison and also fell in love with death… that is this series. Pretty fun and great world building. I devoured this series and really enjoyed it.
There are so many more that I have read and enjoyed. I recommend everyone start reading romance novels right now. Or read what makes you happy. Read for enjoyment and entertainment. Don’t let anyone tell you what you should read… except me with the list of books above.
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Long time no blog.
Granted in the grand scheme of time periods where I don’t blog… this is pretty short.
I was doing on of my favorite things today, cruising the adhd subreddit, and I cam across a post about how people with ADHD, like yours truly, don’t do habits. They do streaks. This was like a lightbulb coming on inside my little brain. It made so much sense. I am really good at starting something, going hard at it, and then just stopping. For no reason.
Now I know. I don’t need to think about it in terms of building a habit, instead I need to work on increasing my streak. Now I just have to figure out how to get a streak going for things I don’t like doing. But that is a problem for another day.
While I was thinking about streaking snort my mind wondered to a weird thing my brain does. As is common with a lot of people with ADHD I am not always great at remembering things. Out of sight out of mind is very real for me. I don’t put things away because then they are gone forever. I don’t read text immediately because then the notification goes away (I did recently learn that you can mark things as unread in iOS, which has been a game changer for me), and I don’t remember peoples names.
This hasn’t been a huge problem for me because I am charming AF and can usually fake my way through things. But it does make me feel bad. Not the names so much but other things about my friends. Birthdays are one that really bothers me, how do you ask someone who you have been friends with for 20+ years what their birthdate is? Especially when they always remember yours. It is a weird anxiety that I have but I just push it down (which is totally healthy and won’t cause problems later). I know that I need to just ask people and then put it in a calendar, but then I have to remember to ask people.
I have taken to thinking about my ADHD as having an outdated system that has a bad habit of installing updates, failing, and reverting to a previous back-up overwriting things I am supposed to remember. I used to write things down a lot, but for some reason when I write it down it is out of my brain and unless I find where I wrote it down I won’t remember it anyway. The one trick that works most of the time is telling Sarah to remind me.
I think this works because the one person I never want to disappoint is Sarah. My brain doesn’t remember that I asked her to remind me, it just knows that it is important and that Sarah is involved. So it writes that immediately in memory. One nice thing about this is Sarah doesn’t have to remember it or remind me. My brain is like SARAH NEEDS US TO RECALL THIS INFORMATION, YOU ARE AWAKE NOW, HERE IS THE INFORMATION. It doesn’t always work but when it does it is nice.
The only advice I have for anyone who has ADHD is that you have to figure out your brain and what works for it. A lot of it doesn’t make sense to non-ADHD people because, let’s face it, it doesn’t make sense. My business partner knows that he can lie to me about due dates for projects, tricking me into getting the work down sooner, and I won’t get mad. I told him to do it. And the best part is, when he does it I don’t even think about how he might be lying. My brain just thinks, LETS GET THIS DONE.
This year (or maybe two) have been a bit of a shit show for me health wise. I have been diagnosed with a stupid chronic illness that limits me physically at times. I am a very physical person with hobbies and fidgeting so it has been a little hellish. One of the positives has been that I have become more introspective on my mental and physical health and have been trying to find things that work for me. This has been positive overall but it also makes me mad at times because I don’t want to hurt all the time or feel trapped in my anxious brain or not be able to recall things easily.
What it really comes down to is I want an easier mode to life. I want to be able to get up off the couch without groaning. I want to have someone tell me something and recall it easily when I need to. I want to use a goddamn planner for more than a day. But, alas, it is not meant to be. So all that I can do is do the best with what I have. I remind myself everyday that I have a wonderful support system, a great career, and cats.
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Joke-a-tron is here to party
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MOAR HAND UPDATES!!!
It is official I have intersection syndrome. What this means is stretching, heat, and not being stupid. To protect my hand, well the being stupid is probably a good thing overall but this is mostly about my hand. It is nice to finally know what the heck has been going on with my hand and to hopefully avoid surgery to make it better.
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Whenever someone asks me how I use AI… this is how:
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HAND UPDATES
Apparently I don’t have nerve damage, so I have the correct amount of nerve. I get to start OT in a couple weeks and hopefully that will help. What I have is intersection syndrome (or something) which is that my thumb and pointer finger tendons are real mad and cause the pain/numbness. So… I guess that is good or something.
To take my mind off of my stupid hobby ruining hand I have been able to play math rocks with some friends. First was a game of blood bowl (spread over two days because Mr. Beam was in town for a education conference). It was Lizardmen vs halflings(me) and surprisingly to everyone involved I actually won. The dice gods were smiling. The second game was a game of Age of Sigmar with my rats (all 135 of them) vs cities of sigmar. I won that one too. Which was less surprising because I am really good at playing the objectives and I had too many rats for my opponent to kill.
I need to find some more people to play with so I can play more often. Sarah even offered to play one of them with me but I am hilariously worried she won’t have fun and will never try again. So I probably need to have her pick a team and we can try out blood bowl. That is my favorite table top mini game because it is ridiculous and hard to take seriously. Or at least it is hard for me to take seriously.
Stay safe everyone and remember to enjoy the end of the world.
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Is it getting better? Maybe.
As I have oft done, I would like to complain about my ailments. Mostly because whining on the internet seems to make it feel better. Not really but maybe? Truthfully I am just tired of the pain in my hand. I miss doing things without pain. Sadly this seems to be my current lot in life. But on the plus side this is forcing me to be more mindful in my activities. I am attempting to learn how to do things left handed (which I am not good at) and I have gotten used to having my wrist immobilized all day long.
Of course this is annoying but since I have stepped away from a lot of my normal hobbies I have discovered my love of writing again and have actually made good progress on a new story about a Ph.D in folklore researching cryptids in north america and encountering actual cryptids. Which begs the question: If a cryptid turns out to be real, is it still a cryptid? What are you thoughts?
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Had a surprise visit from my friend. We got tacos (because Trump Always Chickens Out) and played Bloodbowl and for once my half long circus team (plus two treemen and a squirrel) killed two lizards and actually won. Which never happens.
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Hey authors… do you have a discord for your readers?
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I have been reading (well listening while I go to sleep) to a lot of older children’s books. wizard of Oz, Alice in wonderland, many others by L Frank Baum. And the best part is… there isn’t a physical description of the main characters. Just imagine a little girl and go with that. Simple
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If you want me to grate cheese you need to be real specific on the amount or I will grate all the cheese. Consider yourself warned.
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You have some nerve
I am in a little bit of a rough place at the moment. My entire life I have done things that require manual dexterity (juggling, balloon twisting, slight of hand, building and painting models, playing banjo/ukulele, crochet, making puppets). There are probably more than I am remembering, but here is the problem.
My right hand (aka my good hand) has some sort of weird nerve thing happening on the pointer and middle finger. This basically means that most of the time it is fine but can hurt if I move it in a certain way. But if I am feeling lucky it will randomly feel like someone is smashing my fingers with a hammer. My doc has me wearing a wrist brace during the day (since it doesn’t seem to happen at night) which limits my range of movement and makes my hobbies hard to do.
And since that can’t just solve the problem, I have started getting pain when I attempt to do the basics of all of my hobbies. They don’t think it is carpel tunnel because none of the other markers are there for it. Basically I get to have a super fun nerve test in a couple of months. Until then I can write, which I have been doing, and play video games. But I feel like I am going crazy because I want to do all the things I love to do.
I tried a little bit of mini painting yesterday and have angry fingers today. I am thinking about trying to paint left handed but I think that might just make me more frustrated.
Anyone have any good hobbies that only need your non-dominant hand that you can do while watching movies?
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Whenever I start writing more I wonder why I ever stopped. Which means I am just on the edge of writing myself into a corner. What is this outlining thing people are always going on about?
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I hate the healthcare industry
I would like to pretend that this is a new feeling, but it is not. For the longest time my hate of the healtcare industry was based on how they treated people close to me or from my time working in healthcare. Now that I have been diagnosed with a chronic illness my hatred is a lot more personal. Like a lot more personal.
My personal chronic illness is truly minor in the grand scheme of all chronic illnesses. But it still sucks. I get to see a rheumatologist(I want everyone to know that I spelled that correctly out spell check) all the time and she has been wonderful, their office staff is great, and they have been every helpful. It is just everything else involved in my care that makes me twitch.
For instance I need to get a Nerve Conduction Study done on my right arm because I have been getting random pinging pain my my right pointer and middle finger. Probably some sort of nerve problem, hence the Nerve Conduction Study. The referral was sent, by fax of course, last Thursday (or maybe Wednesday) and even though faxes are pretty instantaneous I received no call about it. So I called. Thrice I called. One my first call today they had finally received my referral. I thought, “Yay now I can get this test and hopefully figure out what the hell is causing my pain.”
I thought wrong.
The person I talked to told me that they couldn’t schedule my appointment. Like, at all. Not in a week or a month or a year. I had to go on to a waitlist and they would call me when an appointment opened up. WTF. When I asked why they didn’t have any appointments and that I was fine being put way out just to get the appointment on the schedule. She was very clear that there was nothing she could do and they would call me about an appointment. I figured that would be about as good as them calling me when they got my referral.
Needless to say I was pissed and I let it ruin my day. That was all I could think about.
Then I rage checked my email (becasue I was rage doing everything today) and I had a message from local hospital system saying " We just got your referral and you can call to schedule your appointment." What. So I called.
This person was much better and much more helpful at scheduling my appointment for Oct 3rd. Which means I get to live with nerve pain in my dominant hand until then. I asked if I could be put on the cancellation list so I could possible get in sooner. Apparently, unlike every other procedure from this system, they are unable to do that. Like what? Are they trying to make sick people sicker by making everything hard?
All of this to say that anyone who doesn’t think that the healthcare system in America is fucked has never been in need of actual healthcare and is probably an idiot. And anyone who thinks that cutting public health budgets is good for anyone is also a fucking idiot.
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I need to go clean my office… tell me to clean my office
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Starting this new story and I need some help. The story I am writing involves North American Cryptids. So I am wondering: What is your favorite Cryptid in North America? I love them all and love all of the stories about them. So tell me what your favorite is so I can add it to the research list.
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I have started writing again!! YAY!!!
Like always I write like lighting when an idea hits and then I just have to remember how to keep momentum. I am also supplimenting my writing by reading books about writing in an attempt to learn how to keep my writing practice going. Currently me and my story are in the honey moon phase where I write like the dickens in an attempt to get as much of it out of my brain as possible. It is super fun.
The story is about a person who study folklore and biology and is trying to discover the existence of at least on cryptid in north America. She is in North Carolina trying to use trail cams to get a picture of a Wampus Cat when she gets an email that there are weird goings on in Vermont (yay Champy). So she goes to investigate. And because I am writing it she has an awesome VW bus that she travels in and who knows where it is headed.
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Thinking more about writing. I miss writing. Which is funny because I have more time in my life (kind of) than I have ever had before. I have been reading my old manuscripts and I really enjoy the ideas, I just need to figure out the whole revising thing. So… here we go.
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It is about Clown Time
One of the places I find my mind drifting during this horrible chapter in the United States is clowning. Which might seem a little weird but hear me out. Clowns has been around forever in one form or another and they try to use humor to shine light on society. Emmett Kelly’s Weary Willy was a great example of using a clown to highlight the hobo lifestyle. It was a formally successful business man who lost everything and was trying to make his way in a new world. The hobo clown was about seeing the world in a new and different light. Or that is how I always viewed it.
For me, my favorite clowns are the Auguste clowns. These clowns are not as prim and proper as a whiteface clown nor are they as down on their luck as a tramp clown. Auguste clowns are the person trying to succeed and failing but never giving up. Eventually they succeed in what they are trying to do, usually at the expense of the more proper whiteface clown.
To me the Auguste clown is what we should all strive to be. Never give up, always try new things, and approach the world with a childlike wonder. My clown is an Auguste clown and I miss seeing the world through those eyes. Which means it is time to start trying to see the world as a clown rather then a middle aged dude who is scared of what is happening in the world. It won’t make the world less terrible but it will allow me to choose how I view the world and what my reaction will be.
One of the many parts of clowning that drew me to it when I was 16 is the ability to play. I (thanks in part to my ADHD) love having fun and trying out new things. I have tried to not grow out of this playfulness but life is hard and being an adult sucks. But it is time to find time to play. Time to get out the juggling equipment and balloons and start playing. Not sure if I am going to go back into clowning but am going to try and add it back into my life.
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What are you doing?
Why dylan what were you doing during the collapse of the american goverment? Well that is an oddly personal question… but since you asked here we go.
I spent a majority of the last 4+ months building a python script that will animate characters talking. This is for “work” though it has morphed into so much more. I have finally been able to build my joke-a-tron bot. This all started with jokesareawesome a now defunct website that @harper made that was just a collection of jokes. I loved it. I used it. It was great.
For a while I would do a day of jokes on Twitter (which I will never ever call X) where I would post a joke every 5, 10 or 15 minutes. During this time harper provided me with a spreadsheet of all the jokes are awesome jokes. It was great but it was a ton of work. I thought about automating a bot to do it but that was well out of my wheelhouse of skills.
UNTIL AI!!!
Say what you will about artificial intelligence but it is super duper fun. I know that the way it has been trained has been not great because it has been stealing stuff and all that, but as someone with ADHD it fits well with my hyperfocus. Like super well. And I have learned a ton both from the AI and from general research on things that fascinate me.
You may not know this about me but I love cartoons and animation (and drawing, and making stuff and all that). The problem is that my lack of focus has led me to pursue all of the things and I lose interest just as fast. So by combining all of the things I love into one project I was able to actually create things.
In case you want… here are all of the github repos I made to create this project.
toon-in speech-aligner 2d-voice-sync
There are couple of them that I am still working on. The reason for so many is I am really good at overwhelming myself with features I want. And I am bad at managing my repos so when I get frustrated I take what works and start over. I am going to keep working on making the joke-a-tron work and then I will start posting jokes here.
When I first started I tried to find other projects that did similar things but most of them were outdated or used libraries that were outdated. I also tried out using different AIs for the coding help and found that they all are good at different things and I find my self using Claude the most. It seems to be the most consistent and I have rarely ran into the limits when working.
I also started playing with Eleven labs to create voices and to do the actual voice work for the jokes. Combining my script with some assets that I paid someone to make on fivrrrrrr has really brought it all together. Now I just need to keep refining and then it will be awesome.
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Life is Hard
Which I am sure you know and understand. I think the part of it that disturbs me the most is that there are people making decisions that they have no business making without listening to experts in the field. For instance a certain non-doctor has decided that he will be able to cure autism with wishful thinking and that we are over medicating our children.
That’s cool.
As someone who is medicated for various mental and physical ailments it makes me absolutely sick. I am so worried that I won’t be able to get my meds and not only will I be a squirrel bouncing from place to place, unable to focus on anything, but I will also have horrible pain. I really appreciate that there is nothing I can do to stop this.
If you are a person who can help with this, please do. Because myself and others who are trying to survive this dictatorship are scared.
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Hey!!!
Here is out tv schedule for the year. Watching a lot of shows. Feel free to watch along.
I’ll keep updating as time goes by
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I have been thinking about things and honestly everything is terrible. I am wondering how much I can continue to hide behind hobbies to save my mental health. Of course I am.
Take care of yourselves and do what you enjoy.
And here is a cartoon bear reading the constitution.
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Cats be crazy
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