Nonsequitur Life

February.

January is always such a slog, but February has far too much baggage attached to it. Mech.

At the beginning of the week, I opened the bedroom blinds and thought, why do things look so…orange-y? The sun was shining for the first time in…weeks? And it came back every day all week long. It’s been a nice change from all the gray and brown.

I mean, it’s still completely brown out there because there is zero snow on the ground. Collectively, we’ve probably had three whole inches of snow since it first fell at the end of October (and that’s being generous), and then it hit fifty degrees this week and now it’s all gone. Last year ended up being the third snowiest winter on record and this year…nah. Just not going to bother, I guess. It’s only the start of February so we still have plenty of time to get dumped on by a string of blizzards, but there’s nothing in the current forecast.

But it’s okay guys, climate change isn’t real.

Anyway.

I saw a post recently by someone talking about Facebook memories reminding her about the random-ass status updates she used to post. She was equal parts amused and horrified by the nonsense, but nostalgic for a time on the internet when people just posted whatever they were thinking and weren’t constantly fighting for influencer clout with posts curated within an inch of their life. You know, when the internet was still fun, instead of the festering pool of thinly veiled threats and grandiose proclamations of misinformation. She conceded that being that prone to oversharing now would probably be so much worse…but what if…?

I quit actively using social media platforms a long time ago. It wasn’t fun anymore so I didn’t see much point in it. I still skim a few heavily curated lists of my own making on Twitter and I still scroll the explore page on Instagram for the critter pictures, but it generally ends with me just shutting down my browser in a fit of I HATE PEOPLE. I can only block so many godawful accounts before my head is threatening to explode (or Instagram just won’t let me block anymore accounts until enough time has passed). I miss having fun on those platforms, but that ship sailed ages ago.

When all of the Shiny! New! Alternatives! to Twitter were gaining traction (and now nobody seems to talk about anymore), I set up an account on a couple of them and then shoved the site bookmarks in a folder never to be visited again. I’ve spent a lot of time debating whether or not I actually want to start over someplace else. As of right now, the idea of picking up another platform that is only going to devolve into the same miserable cesspool as the others just doesn’t appeal to me. The account is there but I’m not likely to use it.

But I still miss having a dumping ground for my inane one-off thoughts and useless in-the-moment observations.

I mean…I do realize that this blog is exactly that, but at the same time…it’s not the same.

I need my own antisocial media feed.

Things I Would Post on Social Media if I Still Used Social Media.

Formatting a new blog post every time I have a single useless thought to share is more effort than I can realistically maintain. Don’t ask me how I know that. And while this blog is full of useless thoughts, filling it up with one-line posts just feels dumb. At best right now, I periodically dump thoughts into Evernote thinking I’ll do something with them eventually, but we all know how that kind of story usually goes.

I just really miss the days when the Fail Whale and random p0rn bots were the biggest concerns to contend with.

Jinx and I are sliding into a Fall Out Boy groove again. I was struck once again how so many of their lyrics are so stupidly fitting to Wicked White and the Ryan and Hallie plotline. After all it was Fourth of July that made me stop cold and start swearing at my computer when I realized it could very well be the anthem of those two characters. (So much to the point I wrote a lyric by lyric comparison because that damn story has consumed my brain and tested me more than any other project on record. Yes, even Ben and Marina.)

Get out of my head, Pete.

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Top 10 Most Played Artists for January 2024…

1.) The Killers … 490 plays

2.) Panic! At the Disco … 458 plays

3.) Fall Out Boy … 162 plays

4.) Patrick Stump … 84 plays

5.) Chicago … 70 plays

6.) Sara Bareilles … 56 plays

7.) Darren Criss … 51 plays

8.) Billy Joel … 45 plays

9.) Matchbox Twenty … 38 plays

10.) The Young Veins … 32 plays

Honorable mention: Nine Days, Train, The Fray, Brandon Flowers, Tonic, Matt Nathanson, The Monkees, O.A.R., Avicii, Ingram Hill

Total of 1,748 plays of 568 tracks from 137 albums by 47 artists.

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Hold Me Like a Grudge Fall Out Boy