Existing in reality
not in what is promised
Houston, 2019: Apollo Mission Control Center brought back to its 1969 glory.
I choose to live in reality. Not to live in empty promises.
Not to sit and write in my ideal conditions, no one home, no noise, no cat toys being thrown by my head.
I choose to live life on life’s terms.
Right now, the cat’s food is being tap-tap-tapped into a plate for him to eat. He’s not very food-motivated, unlike me.
Stacey feeds the cat and, like watering the plants, it will be something only I do when she goes away.
We have an automatic feeder for the dry food. For wet food, he seems to want to lick the gravy off of it. Weird. Not J.D. Vance weird, but weird. There are these little gravy packets he likes a lot.
Life on life’s terms. I’ve got a set deadline for myself to give four (about one a week) text posts of my thoughts per month. This month, that could take the form of a podcast or other things.
However, I do like the platform here and am excited about the new subscribers I’ve gained, both paid and unpaid.
I don’t include the Substack Notes feature in that calculation, but consider it bonus content here; I hope you enjoy it.
I’m also trying to grow my TikTok, YouTube, and Meta subscriptions. But this comes at a cost. Creating video content certainly takes some time, so I usually post it on TikTok first and then share it across all other platforms. Vincent Von Cat has proven to be a valuable resource as I experiment with Meta’s Edits app and post on my YouTube channel.
Last night I found my bike unrideable after locking it up at my work. I think I have myself partially to blame for not moving it, because Central Square had a Block Party last night. My theory, anyway, is that someone accidentally jammed my bike into the post and bent my chainring. SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up).
I had to pry my bike from its temporary home, but it was rendered unusable for the night. I do need to get it repaired with a new part, but the mechanic was able to bend it back like Superman. My chainring was made of steel.
No big deal to take the train home last night and stop at Papa John’s for dinner instead. It was life on life’s terms, as I replied to my sister on the comments on the video.
The ‘shorts’ feature on YouTube has garnered me more views in the last month than in the 19 years I’ve had the account. Did you know the first YouTube video was also based on animals? "Me at the zoo" was uploaded by co-founder Jawed Karim in 2005. Here it is.
I guess you could say I was an early adopter! This video was made only a few months before I created my account.
Here’s my oldest YouTube video, back when I was famous for having MySpace friends. This year, next MONTH I will celebrate 20 years as the “Most Popular Man In Boston”. Something that a critic of mine, (he was the publisher of the rival paper, by the way”) accuses me of “milking” when I only really brag about it once a year.
Special thanks for FOX25 for the feature here and Camille Dodero for the original piece in the Boston Phoenix. Somehow The Boston Phoenix is still alive online.
Sorry, other publisher, I will be milking this some more in the month ahead.
Growing this platform, and Instagram and Facebook and my YouTube comes at a cost. Not really an opportunity cost, but trying to keep up with social media today is a lot different than it was twenty years ago. I had a ‘mass adding’ spree that didn’t get me any closer to Tila Tequila or to Tom, but it did give me a slight boost to local C-list celebrity with a great band that got some extra attention that helped us sell out the only venue that would ever matter to me, The Middle East Upstairs (aka the best stage in the city to play on).
I mentioned that life on life terms is the lesson for today. I mentioned Vincent’s toy whizzing by my head (I wish he were 15% more frisky) and now, as I write this, with no help from AI (until the edit – I’m not a great speller or grammarian, nor do I know where to put proper punctuation after a double quote) I am blasted in the face by acetone from Stacey’s nail polish.
She’s playing video games, and like a correspondent in war, I hear thunder and automatic Tesla Rifles and Enclave Plasma guns from Fallout ‘76, as I suffer my very own mustard gas attacks. I asked her, too, "Do YOU get a headache when you do your nails?" She said no. I guess, I have to suffer with the genes of someone who is allergic to acetone and whatever else is going on there. Pretty impressive she does her own nails (and makes her own costumes, and finds time to work out, and is generally a better person than I am). I see lots of girlies spending lots of money on that stuff. And they look good! But hers look great to me.
This is indeed, an exercise in not only being able to write, but to write under combat conditions. However safe from plasma rays and Tesla shocks I may be, nearly 5,000 miles away from actual war and destruction. Life. On life’s terms.
My frequency of short video content has given me some de-monetization strikes from Meta this month, and some videos across all platforms don’t even break 500 views.
That’s OK. I’m not trying to crack that code like I did MySpace. Or maybe I am. But it is fun to try anyway. Sometimes, I am encouraged to post a video with copyrighted music on it, and get to share in the revenue. Other days, I’m given a slap on the wrist.
Some platforms don’t check at all for these things (I love you, Bluesky), and others take it very seriously like a homeroom teacher that sees you drawing instead of doing your math homework that is due to him in three periods.
A recent YouTube jag has me thinking on Stoicism and Carl Jung. Platitudes and quotes too deep - or perhaps too fake to repeat here. But I have been thinking about the Self and how to be a better person. To myself. Nearly a year ago I was really down, and without that dip, I don’t know if I would be accepting of these philosophies into my life as I am, in the present, at this very time.
Here is one that actually sings to me, I can feel it in my soul. It over arches hurt feelings, being snubbed by my own perceptions of the world around me. It encompasses my years of sobriety.
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
Right now, I am not sure what I choose to become.
But I can feel myself starting to choose it.
I love the 1969 Apollo Mission Control photo (and great article, sorry to focus on just the first image). I would love to have the exact same setup for a data science department or data-driven business. If you put a manager’s chair in the back then it’s like a cross between the bridge of the starship Enterprise and a modern row of corporate work stations. Just replace the old computers with netbooks and you’ve got the office of the future.
We've been attracted to social media, blogging, video posting, and all the other things the internet has made possible when it was new and novel to do. But we really seem to have entered another stage with the 'net - it is no longer new or novel, and a lot of us have realized that in the dazzlement over it, our connection - maybe call it a relationship - with it parallels what young people go through in learning about love - there are the heady fantasies, the delusions, the false connections, the unrealistic expectations, and finally, the realization that while love may be unconditional, a relationship has to be conditional. So it is with the 'net: No matter how much it's become the center of our lives, at bottom, it is a tool and it is best when it is a tool. In other words, this is the kind of relationship that has to have ground rules, guardrails, and realistic, level-headed connectivity.
In short, we have to live in reality, as you've shown.