Weeknotes – 004
This week I found myself asking the question, “Why did I start blogging?”
- One reason was that after I took a hiatus from social media, I didn't know what to do with all my free time. So, I kept myself busy by blogging.
- The other reason was that I wanted to create a way for my friends to stay updated on what's been going on with my life, without using social media. Basically, I wanted to see if I could replace social media with blogs and personal websites.
On my previous weeknotes I said that there's no feedback loop for my photo-blog. That was part of the reason I created an Instagram account for it. Well, I was wrong. At the very least, there are stats for it. So, I guess that's something.
Turns out, I was serious about no longer wanting to publish overly personal posts on this journal. I created a new blog on Write.as and set it to Private. Then I moved over all my journal entries into it, plus a couple more posts with personal content.
... you’ll answer for it because when you claim Christ you choose exile, and therefore will be held to a different standard, entirely, than the world’s.
~ Throwing Away Our Holy Things by Elizabeth Scalia
Choosing to follow Christ means going against what is expected of people in this world. Sometimes I forget that it is a totally different way of life. And if you follow that way of life, chances are, you will be ridiculed for doing so. It is as Elizabeth says, to choose exile.
Every time I think of taking a break from posting on my music blog, I go through the posts, listen to the song previews and think to myself, this is really good. I don't want to stop posting.
This week I remembered one of the main reasons that made me want to start a music blog — it was the beautiful lyrics in songs like Close the Distance by Go Radio.
I remember starting an Instagram account a year or two ago, to share lyrics from a song. It didn't pan out because it was too hard to do on Instagram. That's why I ended up writing music logs on this journal instead. That eventually led to the creation of my music blog.
There's so many good songs out there, from the past and the present, with some wonderful lyrics that are just begging to be heard. Surely, I'm not the only one who feels this way about music, right?
The new Field Notes Winter Limited Edition “Snowy Evening” memo books are beautiful!
And no this is not an affiliate link. I'm just a notebook fan sharing something I think is truly beautiful.
So, an interesting thing this week was running into the beautiful Field Notes memo books I mentioned above, and wanting to share it with other people. This is where I would have posted it to a microblog, if I had one. I don't have one now. I let my micro.blog subscription expire a month or two ago. I didn't want to write a short post about it on this journal either. So then the next logical choice would be to share it on social media. But I didn't want to get on Facebook just to share a link to something that is not a post from one of my sites. Which is why I think having a dedicated microblog can be one way to avoid having to use social media.
Anyway, what I ended up doing was to write it down on my journal. Then as you can see in this post, I'm sharing it as part of a weeknotes post. I think this scratches the itch of wanting to share something, while still being able to do it without resorting to social media. I call that a win for notebooks and blogs.
I'm getting new suspension parts installed on the Speed3. Since my tires are almost worn out, I'm also getting new tires to go along with the new suspension parts.
This time I'm going with Yokohama Advan Sport A/S+ in 225/40/18 for the Speed3. I've never tried Yokohama tires before, so this will be interesting.
The current tires on my Speed3 are Cooper Zeon RS3-G1s. And they were not bad at all. I actually like them a lot. Great bang for the buck ultra high-performance all season tires. The only reason I didn't go with the same tires is because the shop where I'm getting my suspension and tires installed, doesn't sell Cooper Tires.
Music knows neither area, time nor language.
~ From the description of Gregorian Voices
Which is why music is considered a universal language.
Also, those Gregorian Voices work surprisingly well as ambient sounds when writing code.
Just realized that my Hyvor Talk free plan allows comments to be added to multiple websites. So, I added one to this journal and to my other sites as well.
I previously was okay with not having comments on a journal. And I still think that as the owner of the website, you are free to choose whether you want to add a comments system or not.
As for me and this journal, my mindset has changed after a year of posting on here. I realized that without giving readers an easy way to comment on my posts, I'm not giving myself the opportunity to be corrected, to be challenged, to find a new perspective, to learn. Without comments, it is almost like I'm posting into an echo chamber.
So, a comments system has been added. Whether or not I get comments, that's up to the readers.
This week I've been getting the urge to play Fallout 4 once again. So, I was on YouTube trying to find some tips on how to enjoy Fallout 4 on a second play-through. I ran into this video talking about how to make Fallout 4 endless re-playable. It was informative and hilarious at the same time. If you've already finished the main story line, you'll probably enjoy this one.
Tags: #Weeknotes #Blogging #Comments #Mazdaspeed3 #Spirituality