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      1 [1]@puddingtime
      2 [2]sign in · [3]lmno.lol
      3 
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      9         \___/   \_/     \____/  \_|     \___/ |___/  |___/   \___/ \_| \_/ \____/  \_/   \___/ \_|  |_/\____/ (_) 🔥🤘🏻🔥
     10 
     11 September 11, 2025
     12 
     13 [4]Aspiration
     14 
     15 [5]Gasworks park metal structures
     16 
     17 Wow. First post in almost a month. I suppose it has been busy: Two long
     18 weekends away from home in SLC and Seattle, and a generally busy work month.
     19 
     20 Last weekend we went to see Thee Oh Sees in Seattle. That was 90 minutes of
     21 intensity. Al said it was her favorite show of the year. I'd place it a close
     22 second or a tie with Mutoid Man. We have tickets for one more show this year:
     23 YOB at Revolution Hall.
     24 
     25 I mentioned on Mastodon that I had just gone through and unsubscribed from a
     26 bunch of apps and services. DayOne was one of them. I thought about it a little
     27 at the time, but only to reassure myself that I had a few formats worth of
     28 backups, because I've been using that app for over 20 years and while I haven't
     29 been a diligent user, it has a lot of stuff in it.
     30 
     31 Yesterday, as I got ready for a meeting, I fired up my SuperNote tablet and had
     32 this brief idea of "oh, this'd be great for an interstitial log," then started
     33 a log page with a few entries from the day so far, when I stopped and thought
     34 "why am I doing this?"
     35 
     36 The answer was, "because I read about interstitial logging a while back, have
     37 tried it in a few contexts, and it has never really 'taken', so it remains this
     38 thing that sounds cool but hasn't had a habit built around it."
     39 
     40 So I stopped writing.
     41 
     42 And this morning I noticed my DayOne backup sitting in the transit folder I put
     43 it in, waiting to be put somewhere permanent, and I thought "oh man, how am I
     44 going to journal?"
     45 
     46 But the answer is, "I don't really journal that much." I write posts now and
     47 then when moved, but journaling isn't something I do a lot of, and I haven't
     48 made a habit of it.
     49 
     50 I don't think I want to make a habit of it. The same way I don't think I want
     51 to make a habit of interstitial logging.
     52 
     53 (On review: I have a particular relationship with the word want. When asked "do
     54 you want to ..." I try to reserve "yes" for things I have already considered
     55 and have decided to form an intention around. And on the back end, if I find
     56 myself saying, "I want to ..." but then never do it, I have sort of an
     57 existential relationship to the word: You aren't what you say you are. You
     58 haven't done what you said you want to do. You are what you do. And barring
     59 blockers, obstacles, and other matters of physics and circumstance, if you
     60 thought you wanted to do something, then never did it, but completely could
     61 have, can you really be said to have wanted to do it? At the very best, "not
     62 much." I don't think this is a popular point of view because people are
     63 increasingly suspicious of the idea that anyone actually has any agency.)
     64 
     65 So rather than wanting to do all sorts of things, I'm just sort of a sucker for
     66 the occasional "someone on the Internet says they do this thing and I think
     67 that sounds cool so I take a poke at it, don't really feel the value of it so
     68 much as I briefly liked the idea of it, and then there's this zombie file or
     69 application or folder full of something I'd hesitate to even call an
     70 aspiration."
     71 
     72 Someone I once knew said something withering about me regarding that whole
     73 loop, and I let their framing dominate my thinking for a long time. Maybe in
     74 the past four or five years, especially after I read Digital Minimalism, I
     75 began to think about it less like evidence of a character defect and more as
     76 evidence that I have moments of curiosity and interest, and am probably more
     77 willing than many (broadly considered) to just try stuff out. It's just me. I
     78 don't owe some outer authority any reporting on the matter. And that particular
     79 drive has put a roof over my head, put food on my table, and is paying for my
     80 kid to go to college. It has led me to some weird places, including Ft. Bragg
     81 drop zones, but it has also opened doors. If I've got an issue with the whole
     82 thing, it's more a question of how I want to spend my time, and if I'd rather
     83 be doing other things.
     84 
     85 So, the big unsusbscription/app deletion kick was good, because it did get a
     86 lot of brush cleared away: I not only turned off all those things, but made it
     87 hard to see them and either a. poke at them some more for no reason besides
     88 idle curiosity or habit, or b. decide to resubscribe. Which means when I think
     89 "Oh man, how am I going to ... " [some thing that never really took and that I
     90 didn't seem to want to make into a habit] there's a better chance I'll have an
     91 arresting thought, because there's nothing to go click and fuck around with.
     92 
     93 That's a good state to be in, because with nothing to idly do, I tend to go
     94 just a few places:
     95 
     96   • I pick up a book
     97   • I do something photography-related
     98   • I pick a game I can zone out with, which really means that I occupy my
     99     superficial awareness with a smidge of sensory exclusivity while I have a
    100     long thought about whatever I need to think about right now
    101 
    102 Those are all the things I want to do. Not the things I just briefly thought
    103 sounded cool.
    104 
    105 
    106 
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    111 
    112 References:
    113 
    114 [1] https://lmno.lol/puddingtime
    115 [2] https://lmno.lol/signin?goto=/puddingtime/aspiration
    116 [3] https://lmno.lol/
    117 [4] https://lmno.lol/puddingtime/aspiration
    118 [5] https://pix.puddingtime.org/-1/i-TP3qH9Q/A
    119 [6] https://lmno.lol/
    120 [7] https://lmno.lol/blog/privacy-policy
    121 [8] https://lmno.lol/blog/terms-of-service