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Fat Tuesday Today!

It's that time of the year again, but with a twist! I'm now gluten-free, and though we did find a couple cafés that that served such alternative semlor, we made our own instead. I had a RAW-food semla this weekend, courtesy of my sister (that was interesting), but today it was time for the real deal, as depicted below.

Fat Tuesday Today!

I actually bought a semla last year, since we didn't get around to making any of our own in time. Maybe because it was three weeks earlier into the New Year and we hadn't really settled in yet? Maybe.

I was trying to avoid gluten last year too, but made an exception for this one day, ran over to the nearest café and waited in line an hour long time to buy my bread, before I biked home in a frenzy and savored it by the screen with a cold glass of apple cider. It was delicious. It was sweet and fluffy and soft, and honestly a lot better than this year's.

Oats don't really compare to wheat, huh. This one was a bit dry, and salt, and compact - but the almonds, honey and mountain of cream softened it up a bit. I think next year we'll try a different recipe... or maybe buy one, once again. It's a special day after all.

But hey, that's not to say it wasn't delicious! It just didn't compare to the bread I'm used to. A couple do remain for future day savoring, and I shall savor those to their fullest.

Happy Fat Tuesday y'all. And that's fat as in cream - you don't need to gain weight to celebrate.

Musicalish #166

Some new, old and creative music y'all! Have fun.

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Plutonia Credits

Has anybody posted this before? It's pretty much the same as the interactive DOOM 2 enemy credits, just with a different background texture. Just in case no, have a go...

Zombieman

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Ball Breaker Bowling

I went bowling today! I got some of these,

The Strikes

and a few of these!

The Spares

Also some of these odd ones,

The Circles

and unfortunately also these.

The Dashes

It was at this place:

Ball Breaker Promo

5 games. 658 points. 131 average. 160 tops. Though some were a close call I won 'em all. :) Good times. If you want to see the holy sheet you'll find it here.

Fun fact: one of the bowling balls I played with was actually broken. It had a forth crater drilled into one side. Apparently it still worked OK.

The Last Blog?

Apparently I wasn't done with my introspectives in last night's week's post, because even after I pushed that publish button and powered down the PC the ponderings kept tumbling down my tembles. I jotted them down in a notebook as well as I could until sleep took over.

I'm not sure I'm nearing a midlife crisis, or a blogging crisis, but it's probably a bit of both. I don't feel like it's a crisis at all per say, but like it could be. Like I've been teetering on the brink of it before, but always fell down the soft side. Like something needs to change. Like, I'm actually quite happy at the time of writing, but more so because I'm tackling the topic than because I'm consistently happy.

Anyway: I'm not a teen any longer, and this blog has been running since I was, for 13 years. Unlucky number, I know, and that's a lot of years in Internet time. That's just one year less than I was when I started this blog, and over the years both of us have changed greatly. We've grown and evolved and become equally uncontrollable and hard to manage.

I feel like I'm nearing a point where I really need to sort things out, and decide what I'm going to do with my life, and since the site's a big part of my life it's along for the ride whatever the verdict is. Shutting it down isn't an option, so the question is: what do I do with it? Do I keep blogging? Do I stop and move on, and leave it be as an archive of my old life? Is this a remnant of my old life, or is this the part of me that I need to keep nurturing, and growing, and turn into my new life?

Lately work's taking over, but I'm happier blogging than I am working. This is the kind of work I wouldn't mind spending more time on, and yet I can't imagine this being work. Like: bill-paying stuff. Full-time stuff. A responsibility and commitment to continually keep at it.

There's a lot to do here if I'm to do all that needs doing. There's a lot I like doing linked to this site too - but there's not time for everything. It's not just the weekly blogs. It's blogs. Overall. And not just that but all the other content forms I've saved up and fiddled with over the years.

Should I focus on writing? Writing spontaneously might make me want to write more, but do I want to spend my life writing? I've been honing this craft half-assedly for over a decade. Is it time to hone it whole-assedly from now on? Is this my time as a writer? Or... designer? Or lyricist? Or artist? Ace of all trades; master of none? Do I put in more time on the site, or less? And what content should I focus on?

I didn't have a plan from the beginning, and as time's passed I've simply expanded my focus rather than center it. What's the answer? Since I haven't figured it out yet I suppose this is going to be one more run-on post... and a continual topic at the teetering point of tackling until I figure it out.

I'm not applying Hemmingway's advice at all. I'm still as much of a rebel now as I was ten years ago. I don't want to live a normal life. I don't even want to write normally. I don't want to do just one thing either. Most of all I don't want to spend my days in an office cubicle saving up for a pension that I might never get to enjoy, when I could be having the best days of my life right now, and yet ironically that is exactly what I am doing now. Both at my day job and at home, when I'm doing this.

But I don't earn a penny off of this. No ads. No donations. I did try both, half-assedly as usual, but I never earned enough for a payout with adsense, and I never received a donation through the well-hidden donation button either. I thought about doing something about that, like putting it on the front page, but pride came in the way. I can do this for free, because this is my passion. So I took down the ads, and kept paying for hosting, and looking back I'm not sure if it was worth it.

Sure it was... right? If you know me you know I'm pretty business-minded, but I put my craft first and foremost, and I don't like ads myself so I won't push them on anyone else. If you're wondering about the hidden donation page it's right here. Now without the donation button.

Even passionate people need to get paid though. Even they need food and toothpaste. I might've started this without any such intentions - I started this because it was fun, and it was my vent to the world, but I do envy those who found a niche, exploited it, and made their blogs mainstream. With the amount of time I've poured into this I could've been there too, but I chose a different path. The one that doesn't go anywhere. I mean: the longer path. The better path. That of learning and slooow wisdom. I hope so, and I hope I get some new insight soon, because the time's nigh. To choose. My future. The blog, or my life.

Or make the blog my life. You know.

It does sounds a bit drastic, but looking back, I never really had time for both, and I can't keep this up forever. It's not just one or the other of course. It's more complex than that, and if I streamlined this to be just an outlet, that could work too. It seems I seek to find a viable solution and make it work, unwilling to sacrifice any of that which I've worked to build up so far. An impossible compromise.

Just to be clear: this isn't the last blog. I'm just pondering. Wandering through my mind, wondering when the yonder ends. It wasn't my intention to start with clickbait titles where I've always been honest, witty or summarative. Is it time to go with the times, or time to get the Times going around me? I don't know. I'll keep pondering. For better or worse, the time of change is coming. Lots, and lots of spare change. And as usual you won't know what to do with it, because paying only with spare change is sort of awkward, and so you collect even more, but eventually you know you are going to have to spend some of that change!

Wait, I'll turn the clickbait title around before I end this: This is going to be the last blog. When Internet crumbles; when the final advocates of free speech are locked up as fanatics, and our opinions worth less than the tethered ground on which we stand - our stepping stones sinking remnants of a civilization that could've been great: then this will be the last one standing. The last haven of free speech. The last opinion that matters. The last voice that yearns to be heard. The last whisper that fades away in the rustling wind. The last cough, as our collective life force sputters and dies and creativity is but a token of a bygone time.

The short-lived era of mankind is over. Humanity falls, and soon there's no sign we ever were. There's no life with a mind to dig up our fossil remnants and study our creed. Mother Earth is free again. Our cities crumble and plants flourish in their dust. The skies are blue, the hills are green, and the world is wonderful. The Last Blog... is no more.

Week 8 - The Last Week

These weeks really do pass too fast.

Am I starting to sound repetitive yet? I feel repetitive.

I did do a couple of interesting things this week, but didn't post about them when I did, and as time passed they grew less inspiring to write about. Instead, as the week comes to an end I delve into the obligatory weekly blog, conjuring the routine and rushed up summary of weekly does and events as always.

It does serve certain purpose having an ongoing overview of my life, on a weekly basis. It's something I might derive useful insights from in the future, as might anyone else following these rambles, but at the same time it's a chore, and since it feels that way it serves less purpose. It's gone from being an extensive recollection of events to something just to keep going. To keep writing. To keep the tradition alive. From something that summed up the week with introspective, accomplishments and optimisms, to just a repeat of old routine over and over.

I've been going with these weekly posts almost every week since 2013, as well as back in 2008. In the beginning it felt like a good way to get organized, but eventually started feeling more like an obsession, and the focus moved from a new week! to another week... I stuck to it even when I didn't feel like it, though I think it started feeling conclusively outplayed some time last year. I tested swapping out the Week ## - Title format to simply titles for a few weeks, but that didn't change the fact that they were still weekly posts. They just made them harder to differentiate from normal posts - which might've been what I wanted to make them then, but I fell back to the old routine and kept going.

Even as I write this I feel compelled to write this like the routine weekly post. It sticks. I want to say that I spent most of today watching music videos, and how I've played out the remaining episodes of DOOM again, and am on my way through the second game today. I was planning to take on TNT after that, but I'm growing bored. The levels of the second game are often erratic and open, without the linear design that makes it easy to find the exit. I end up beating the bad guys as best as I can, and then just clip my way through walls in search for the way out, at which point the journey loses it's appeal. When I beat it like this it won't be beating it for real, and if I'm playing it just to play it through as it's supposed to be played - something I'm honestly not sure I've done with any other than the original three episodes, albeit many times over with those, it feels like a lost cause. Why play a game if it isn't fun?

And that's about the point of this week's summary... or lack thereof. Why am I focusing on superficial accomplishments when there are so many more inspiring things that I could, and want, to do? That's why it feels like time just flies away. And does. If there's time over I make up trivial tasks to fill the gaps. Inconspicuous but highly irrelevant spin-off goals that get me nowhere, and in the long run don't do me much good. It's really about more than the blog, but the routine weekly posts feel like counterfuel to a lack of creative fire.

Of course there are exceptions. It would be more optimistic to mention that I went to a light therapy cafe this Monday - which was great, warm and rejuvenating, and that I spent most of Saturday on an unexpected trip to Värmdö. I thought about writing about the light therapy cafe the same day I went there, but time was in short supply and I thought I'd better leave it for the weekend. Yesterday I pondered posting about the other trip, and about the recent Cloudbleed incident that had me checking my passwords the whole weekend, but didn't, because why not post all of that at once. Now. In the summary.

If there was no later maybe I'd have written those posts right away, and with the details fresh in mind they'd have been ten times as good as if I'd recollect them now. Then again maybe I wouldn't get to writing them anyway, and without a weekly post like this you'd never have been the wiser what I'd been up to. But does that really matter? I feel like I'll want to write a blog about events that I appreciate, but if I play through a few episodes of DOOM in spontaneous obsession: what's that to you? I'm sure you'd rather read my impressions on the new game, which I summed up pretty well when I finished it a couple weeks back, but didn't get to posting since guess what? I tumbled back into my routines. The weekly posts that take up all that time, and the false accomplishments I make for myself so that I may collect them in this cage I've made for myself. If that is why.

Writing continuously might feel like a good thing - a routine accomplishment of content. Routine. Comfort zone. Same thing. Gotta get out of that zone to get in my zone and stay creative, so that's what I'm doing now. The blog in itself is it's own comfort zone of course, but I hope it's a larger zone. One where you can travel around and see new things, and be both comfortable and inspired at the same time.

Wait, I take that back. Routine and comfort zone is not the same thing. Is this blog a comfort zone? Is it a zone, and the routine a comfort? Only thing I know for certain is I find both comfort and calamity in my habits, and I'm a very habitual person. I also know that the longer it goes the harder it is to break a habit - especially the bad ones.

This might not class as your typical bad habit, but it's a time-consuming and unnecessary one. This car's pretty much out of gas at this point anyway. It's time for a brake. It's about time to stop doing things I've been doing too long and embark to the more inspiring ground: that of spontaneous and occasional writing, like how I used to do. Writings whenever inspiration strikes instead of the scheduled and omniscient ones. Or if spontaneity fails: writing with a goal.

I should probably let a bunch of other routines go the same way as these weekly posts, like the Musicalish ones, but they might still serve a purpose. I still have music videos I want to share, and posting them one at a time would flood the blog and leave you with little other content. Without the weeklies... will there be other content? I hope so. I'm pretty excited about letting go of this habit, and that seems like a good sign.

I haven't posted a thing on the blog since last week, which goes to show how far gone this thing is. I've written a few drafts, though, and rid myself of a few old ones too in a vain attempt at clearing out everything unfinished and feeling like I have it under control.

But control's not having a clean and empty post draft page: it's about being able to sit down with a blank text box when you have something to write about, and write the shit out of that text box then and there. That feels good. That's a feeling I've been starting to forget, but it's all coming back. Like riding a unicycle.

Here's a link to last week for the last time. If you want to skim through my life in a straight line in the future, you'll have to do so via the yearly archives, or the life category. There's no way to do both... yet, but until there's demand for it, that's one unnecessary project I'm not even starting with. And if this whole non-weekly thing doesn't work out as I expect it to... well then, better fuel the car and get driving again. There's always room for a follow-up post debunking my thoughts and theories in this one if they were all wrong.

Maybe I'm just leaving my new habits behind to jump back to my old ones: that of writing whenever I have things to write, and feeling like I have to write as soon as I do. And writing way too long posts because self-reflection keeps feeding you new realizations, making it difficult to find a suitable place to stop analyzing and just leave it be. If there was no more there wouldn't be more to write about after all, but for now I think I'll leave it here. Optimistically. And incredibly run-on.

I feel like I'm climbing onto new ground. Like something great is just waiting around the corner. A bit like I used to feel with each New Year... before I turned those into routine too. If getting rid of these weekly routine's is a boulder off my back, I'll push off the New Year Mountain next. Week 9, and all the other ones in line! It's time.

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