Like many, I’ve spent the past while trying to make sense of a twitter/X free existence. Life was simpler then, really. You used your account on the bird site and everyone was there. Generally, it was really quite enjoyable, then it wasn’t. Safe to say, any right-minded person arrived at the latter at some point. But a twitter free existence has thrown a spanner in the works. I think the majority of people have spread their chips and are maintaining a presence across multiple platforms. Very sensible, too.

Confusion.

I left Meta, like many, lock, stock, and barrel. Goodbye, Instagram, farewell Facebook and toodle-oo Threads. And good riddance to apps that have irritated me for a good long time now by showing me mostly stuff I would rather not see. I’m doubly irritated now there’s no word for goodbye that begins with an I.

So I’ve been on Micro.blog for ages and love it, and Bluesky has been there from a time when everyone was scrabbling for invitation codes. I am on Mastodon, but rarely actually check in there — in fact, I moved to a Pixelfed instance as an alternative to Insta.

Micro.blog makes it easy to cross-post everywhere else, I mean ridiculously easy. There’s barely a post I make that doesn’t start there.

Threads and Bluesky users are already starting some funky West Side Story shenanigans, the former accusing the latter of smugness and pomposity, the latter chuckling at the sad losers still using a social-media app that shows them what the app wants, rather than what they want to see. If one Threads user clicks their fingers at me in intimidatingly, I won’t be responsible for my actions. I don’t take disrespect lying down, but rather curled in a ball pleading not the face, please not the face!.

Each to their own I say, people will find their community eventually.

The Other Places.

I’m a man with a social media presence and few followers. It’s a shame really, because I find myself hilarious. Their loss.

Substack seems like the destination for many creatives now, in fact a lot of comics/writers/musicians I admire seem to have a presence there. I’ll be honest, I find it intimidating. To hit the follower jackpot there seems so unlikely, I wonder whether it’s worth it? Brave Ben, the Ben that meets intimidating dancers head on with a shake of his voluminous badonkadonk says of course it’s worth it until you try, you don’t know. In fact, why don’t I maintain two blogs on there, and see what pans out?

The talk about it being a platform that allows, nay, encourages hate speech does worry me. I left Meta for those exact reasons and have no wish to spend time in such places.

But people I like are there, people who I know are on the same political spectrum as me. You know, nice people.

So I’m going to give it a go and at the first sniff of vileness, I’m likely to be off.

My Week.

Well, it started off with a doctor’s appointment as I’ve been feeling off of late with palpitations and the like. My heart is fine, but my cholesterol is up (again). As I’m a vegetarian with pretty decent fitness, I can thank genetics for having to go back on statins again.

Got a good few dog walks in, though there’s trees blocking my usual route.

I’ve read very little since my, frankly, impressive assault on literature during the power cut and internet outage but have written more of my fantasy novel every day.

I’ve also cleaned out the fridge and veg tray, which was harbouring lifeforms that could well lunge given a few more weeks.

Have a productive weekend, everyone!

Well, it was a bad one, as promised. We lost power sometime in the early hours of Friday morning and got it back around 16:00hrs on the Saturday. Fair play to those out in what was still terrible conditions fixing everything.

The internet was out of service until Monday evening, and while it was lovely being nice and warm with light, power, and everything else, you don’t half realise how much time you spend idly scrolling through that glowing rectangular box.

We lost our fence at the most exposed side of the house, totally flattened, and a few roof tiles and adjoining bits have been wrenched free and scattered over the garden — but we came out of it relatively unscathed otherwise.

With no TV, no streaming services in particular, it’s been a great opportunity to power through some reading, and I’ve done just that. Read The Hobbit under a blanket and via the assistance of a head torch, which was quite magical as it happens. Visited Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Empire for the first time and marvelled at just how much influence it had on my favourite book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which made me feel so much better at my attempts to write and the influence Adams has on me.

I also devoured Stephen King’s The Gunslinger and once again felt like gnawing my leg off with envy at just how good a writer he is.

Last, but not least, I read the excellent Jennifer Killick’s Deadly Deep, the fourth in her wonderfully exciting Dread Wood children’s horror series. She’s the best at what she does, a truly brilliant writer.

After the Storm.

The trees are down, again, up my local walking trail, so my mindless walk along the same paths every day has to be changed up a bit. The dogs didn’t seem to mind, and neither did I.

I’ll get back to writing this evening, too.