A little late to the party, but I finally watched Shiny Happy People, the documentary series about the Duggar family and the fundamentalist Christian religious world they inhabit.
I have So Many Thoughts, as someone very familiar with this world circa 2004-2016. I hope to share my in-depth perspective soon, but for now I’ll just say this:
We need a LOT more “exvangelical” documentaries. We need more people telling their story. We need these stories represented in art, literature, and cinema. Given the #spirituality dimension we see in American #politics today, it has never been more important.
(Parting thought: we need to hold media accountable for promoting fundamentalism or at least giving it a pass. The Duggars should never have been given a national mainstream TV platform. TLC/Discovery should be ashamed of themselves.)
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Stay in the Loop
Look, I get it. You already subscribe to too many newsletters. So much to keep up with. But guess what? I only send out a newsletter once a week. And if you‘re feeling curious, peruse the Creator Class archive. You might find something that resonates with you! It’s a great way to stay current with what I’m publishing, and newsletter recipients always get some extra insight just for them. So what are you waiting for? Let’s roll!
I set a goal for myself at the beginning of this year to write a blog post every day. I am pleased to inform you that this very post marks the final post in my first third of the year 2025. I suppose it would have made more sense to mark the milestone of finishing up Q1 (Jan-Mar), but honestly, I forgot. 😅
Plus I actually started this habit in early December last year as a trial run, so I’m really coming up on finishing month five of the experiment. But who’s counting? (Me. I’m counting. 😂)
I have to say, I feel pretty self-satisfied at reaching this milestone. Although I did cover up one mishap…let’s just say I might have accidentally blown past the midnight deadline and backdated a post. But my lips are sealed. You’ll never know which one…
I wish I could say the twinge of panic right at the start of sitting down and #writing something has gone away. But it has certainly dulled. I’ve done this enough times to know there’s always something worthwhile to talk about. And I feel like I’ve truly grown in my ability to think on my feet, so to speak. Jared White, Ace Reporter. Imagine me furiously typing away on a mechanical keyboard, clackity-clack, having to bang out yet another salacious article at the last minute before going to press. Yeah, I can’t either. I’m of the generation which never subscribed to an actual newspaper…
Blogs 4 Life! 🙌
Anyway, I’m rambling now. One third down. Two thirds to go. Thank you and good night…
You’ll never feel right unless you’re doing what you can to stop them.
You’re coming home to yourself.
Incredible, incredible stuff.
As I wrote back in March, I consider Star Wars: Andor to be one of the best #scifi#tvshows of all time. Three episodes into the second season, and that continues to be the case. The above speech right at the start of S2E1 by Cassian Andor himself is sheer brilliance. I take these words to heart in my own time.
You know those sorts of conversations you have with old friends when you get together after a long absence and you just talk and talk and talk for hours upon hours about a great many things both lofty and lowly and everything in between?
I’m grateful to have had several of those conversations over the past few days. And it’s given me much food for thought. Good friends help stimulate your imagination in ways you didn’t anticipate, or perhaps reinforce vague ideas you were wary of ruminating on too much in a vacuum. And perhaps most of all, they help you feel less alone in this world.
Value such relationships. They are all too rare, too fleeting.
I realize I didn’t mention much about what I’m doing for work as I live the #NomadLifestyle. I’m doing the same thing I’ve already been doing for years, #freelancing as a software developer for my boutique web studio Whitefusion.
Working on the go isn’t anything new for me. I had gone on short “digital nomad” excursions on a regular basis long before hitting the road full-time. It’s been a matter for pride for me that I can work in almost any conceivable environment. I’ve worked in:
Planes
Trains
Automobiles
Parks
Mountaintops
Libraries
Boats
Steps Behind a Building
Coworking Spaces
Cafés
Pubs
AirBnBs
Hotels
Grocery Stores
Beaches
Churches
Conventions
Next to a Creek
Athletic Clubs
And Yes, Home Offices
In a certain sense, that last option is the least appealing to me which is why I never fully resonated with the concept Work From Home. For me, Remote Work has always had little real overlap per se with WFH. I could literally head into an office every day and “work a 9 to 5” — and yet it’s remote work. In fact, I’ve done exactly that at times when I’ve had a membership or even a dedicated desk at a particular coworking space.
Remote work and also being a digital nomad to me simply means that nobody is dictating the how of my getting the job done. They simply evaluate the merits of the outcome. Whether that outcome was obtained because I did some work at an office desk or because I did some work in a yurt in the middle of the woods is completely beside the point. I’m very thankful I’m able to make a living—challenging certainly in this crazy Tech Industry season we’re in—as a remote worker.
With regards to the journey I’m currently on, I definitely have to manage some logistics at times around where I’ll be able to find a decent cell signal or Wi-Fi. Starbucks has certainly saved my butt now and again. I ended up joining the “Sip Club” at Panera Bread which has also been very helpful when I’m in major urban centers. Independent coffee shops in all sorts of out-of-the-way places are always a blessing. Some nicer grocery stores with seating have also worked wonders. And any chance I get, I always seek out a local library. They are truly treasures of the common good and rare examples of public spaces open to all.
But sometimes I’ve simply sat in my car seat with a little attachment that fits over the steering wheel to provide me with a “desk” for my laptop while using my iPhone’s Personal Hotspot feature. T-Mobile has been pretty good to me a decent amount of the time.
I could greatly level up my “off-grid” work opportunities if I purchased Starlink, but do I want to hand a single penny over to Space Karen? Aw HELL naw! So I make do.
I have my scars, you have yours
Don’t let them take your power
Don’t leave it alone in the final hours
They’ll take your soul, they’ll take your power
Unless you stand up and take it back
Try to see the future and get mad
It’s slipping through your fingers, you don’t have what you had
You don’t have much time to get it back
In the midnight hour, they’ll slam the door
Make you forget what you were fighting for
Put you back in your place, they’ll shut you down
You better learn how to fight, you better say it out loud
I’m in the midst of #writing my first travelogue installment to publish here on the blog since I embarked on the #NomadLifestyle, and I’m quickly realizing I don’t really have any template, any “grid” to follow. I’m generally so used to consuming (and occasionally making!) travel vlogs, and let’s face it, video is a very good medium to show off travel & adventure.
Yet there’s a longstanding tradition of people spending time on the road and then writing about it. Unfortunately I can’t say I am sophisticated enough to have read much of it.
I suppose I could search the web for what other people have written, and copy that. However I worry that in doing so, I’ll end up simply trying to sound like those other people. I’m very protective of my own voice in this matter. There’s a reason I haven’t been filming any travel vlogs in this season. I did think about it a lot. In the end, I decided it would diminish my experience—and add a great deal of stress to the situation—if I were swallowed up in the need to focus on how to film my travels…and how people would receive it.
I have no interest in becoming “a professional YouTuber”—and in fact I have a bit of a critique lurking in my brain somewhere with regard to the class dynamics between attractive Millennials showing off a glamorous world-traveling lifestyle vs. the very real fact that sometimes you’re sharing space in a parking lot or a public restroom with people who are very much down on their luck and by no means feeling glam.
Hence my travelogue will be frank, honest, raw, and hopefully enjoyable for the most part. I make no guarantees. This isn’t a performance for me, nor is it a career. This is my actual life I’m living. You’ll get a taste of the bad and the good alike. Make of it what you will! 😅
I have always had the greatest respect for people who are deeply passionate about something esoteric.
I don’t even personally need to care about what they care about. I’ll admire them anyway just for their passion. I once knew someone who was passionate about the fine art of making reeds for bagpipes. He didn’t even play bagpipes very well, but he was a hell of a reed maker. It had never occurred to me there could be a person out there who doesn’t really play the bagpipes yet cares about how to make bagpipe reeds.
What a strange passion to have right? And yet I would never dream of wading into a heated conversation about the best way to make a bagpipe reed, or how to form the shape of a bellows, or what type of leather to use for a strap, and say “calm down, it’s only just a…”
How disrespectful. How rude. How ignorant.
My rule of thumb: never walk up to a master of their craft and tell them what they should or should not be concerned about when it relates to their craft. It only serves to illustrate the poverty of your own mind.
A very close second to this is when people come along and say, in so many words, nobody cares how the sausage is made. This comes up in programming circles all the time for some odd reason. “No user cares” how XYZ language/tool/framework/library/technique was employed in the production of this app, supposedly. They just care if it works to meet their perceived end goal.
People will care about your craft because it’s your job to make them care.
Me, I care deeply about how other people make the things that I use. I may not understand much of what they say about how they build what they build, how they design what they design. It doesn’t matter! The point is that I respect their craft. I respect their ingenuity and unique #creativity.
I care about what they care about because I admire how much they care about it.
The road is a lover
You never recover
Not now or any time soon
My head starts to spin
When I think where I’ve been
Playin’ twin to an old fiddle tune, oh
As the wind chases after the moon
