That phrase popped up in a Facebook post this week, where a friend shared this video from author John Green. It fits rather well with the whole “Writer Unfocused” concept, I think.
Mastodon
Last weekend, a friend shared a link to MoveToDon.org, which lets you catch up with your Twitter friends who have moved over to Mastodon. Note that this only works if they’ve added their Mastodon info to their Twitter bio; that’s where the app looks. I found that of the 1,608 people I follow on Twitter, 28 of them have made it easy to catch up with them on Mastodon. You’ll have to authorize the app through Twitter and Mastodon. It only took about 1 minute for me to check my followers/follows.
I should point out that when I made this post, the site was timing out, probably due to excessive load.
Ink Update
I had occasion to visit the tattoo and piercing shop I’m going to use for my new stuff. They said the tattoo for the kids would take about an hour and gave me a very reasonable price. “We could do it right now if you want.” I was tempted but needed to run the price past the treasurer first. I’ll probably do it in the next couple of weeks.
The baddish news is that because my forearm tat is so dark already, it would be very difficult to cover. In fact, the artist I spoke to was surprised at how old it was. His advice? “Own it.” He said it was old, sure, but it looks really good for its age, and he couldn’t see a decent way to cover it.
There’s a saying or trope or metaphor about writing, usually attributed to sportswriter Red Smith. It’s often paraphrased, “Writing is easy. Just open a vein and bleed.” I originally thought of turning the dagger into a fountain pen and coloring the smoke red to look like ink or blood. I still want to do this concept, but I think now I’ll put it maybe on my right forearm. I’m picturing the pen dipped into a vein or something like that. We’ll see. For now, I’m scrolling through half a bazillion Pinterest pages, because that seems to be the only place to find good tattoo designs. If you find some cool fountain pen ideas, let me know.
Landscaping
I’m really starting to get into the flow with landscaping and garden ideas. I’ve got a decent mental image of what I want to do with the space right off the front porch, though I don’t know that I could translate it to a real picture. There’s plenty of software out there that could help, but I’m a cheapskate when it comes to stuff I’m only going to use once. I’ve never been good at moving mental images to paper or pixels anyway.
It’s very easy to get paralyzed by decision-making, too. The ditch and slope that I mentioned last week? I’ve thought since we moved here about putting up a retaining wall of railroad ties. So do I really want to put in the time and effort to get some plants growing there if I’m just going to take them out later? On the other hand, I know it’s going to be several years until I can afford that wall project. It’s going to be a five-figure job, even if I could somehow do some of the work myself. So most of the time when I think about the front slope, I think I should go ahead and get going on some plants. I can probably reuse some of them further up the road where the slope isn’t so steep later.
It shouldn’t be surprising that there are more than a few subreddits to peruse, too. I’ve found /r/nolawn and /r/nolawns as well as /r/gardenwild and /r/landscaping. It’s far too easy to get lost in the weeds there—pun intended. I’m probably going to find my way back to Pinterest for landscaping ideas, too.
Writing
I got about a thousand words done on Ghost this week, which isn’t a lot in the overall scheme of things, but it was enough to get some of the creative juices flowing again. I met a new character, too, so that’ll help. I think.
I got a little over 600 words in on some Storyworth pieces. I’m up to 21 articles and about 135 pages. I’m really looking forward to getting everything wrapped up so the family can see it. I’d encourage you to check out my affiliate link to learn more.
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