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When I catch a wave and ride it to shore...it feels like catching a piece of heaven.

If you wanna surf like the locals, you must be “kinda broke”, dedicating productive hours to surfing rather than making actual money.

I found this awesome merchandise design on Behance as part of my, well, refreshers for graphic design. Coincidentally, I used to own a Landyachtz board – though I never learned to skate.

After two tries on the devil of a thing, I sprained my knee. It took about a year before I was able to run again. Even now, my knees don't feel “brand new.”

Good times.

Discouraged and traumatized, I let other people use and abuse the board. I essentially gave it away and took it to the spot where I used to surf and let all the locals have fun with it. Presently, it's in the custody of my SO. He might teach me to actually ride it, or I could just accept my own defeat.

I spent about 250USD for the complete setup. Paris trucks, Formula 5 wheels, Momentum bearings. I wanted to learn how to longboard dance. Sadly, I just sucked.

I didn't even know how to ride a bike.

So you could only imagine what I took upon myself when I decided to try surfing. I didn't skate, I didn't swim, and yet somehow I had the confidence to plant both feet on a board, on a moving wave, in waters where I could basically die.

I've wiped out a lot.

It's like upgrading yourself from illiterate to poet.

But I somehow had to learn how to surf. Or at least immerse myself in the surfing culture or atmosphere. The beach/tropical vibe helped me find the hues and colors that I couldn't find on land.

It was a newfound paradise, a discovery of some hidden corner of my soul. And as someone who never took a sport seriously before, my passion consumed all of me — mentally, physically, emotionally. Not before long, I started to plan my life around surfing. I decided to get married to my surfboard.

When I'm sitting in the lineup, waiting for a wave, it feels like I'm in the right place on earth. It's where I'm supposed to be. Like, heck, I was born for this.

And when I catch a wave and ride it to shore...it feels like catching a piece of heaven.

Writing these words is seriously making me reconsider my priorities.

Now I'm asking myself: do I really want to have children, get married, or should I just skip all the parenthood thing, just like how my SO turned his back on unplanned kids — so I could go surfing?

I can't even say that I've mastered surfing at this point. Sure, I can paddle out, sometimes I catch waves, but I'm not yet at the level where it's more fun than it is torturous.

In my last trip, I even broke down and cried because I sucked.

I need months of extensive experience, still.

If I got pregnant, had to tend to an infant, be a mother and also work for a living, well, there might not ever be enough time for surfing.

Popular literature like this attempts to draw a more positive, friendly picture, but does it apply to all mothers? The article is applicable to white western women, the financially and politically fortunate, who could afford personal trainers and babysitters. Not all mothers have the luxury of maintaining a hobby while also providing for a child.

Even if a woman is a time management genius, the costs of surfing — constant supply of wax, board maintenance, accessories, travel expenses — or any sport/hobby for that matter, remains secondary to the costs of raising a child and maintaining a household.

And more often than not, we make just enough to survive everyday life. Welcome to the Philippines, where labor is cheap as fuck. Where the government expects a family of five to survive on ~10USD a day.

No wonder some people quit surfing after starting a family. Money either goes to hobbies or to day-to-day existence.

In the lineup, you find these people:

• rich tourists who don't know shit about surfing and are only there for vacation / they usually get beginner surfing lessons for the pictures
• middle class people who earn just a little more money than necessary for survival, and so could afford to go surfing once in a while / they're not necessarily newbies but they will never be as good as locals
• locals who are poor AF
• foreigners who have bought a piece of land
• foreigners who actually know how to surf
• really rich locals who owns the resort or some establishment in the place, but not really good still because they have to tend to business / they're rare

If you wanna surf like the locals, you must be “kinda broke”, dedicating productive hours to surfing rather than making actual money. Unless you come from a rich family or have passive income sources, you just gotta be broke. You will end up broke. At least that's how it goes in my country.

Or you could be a unicorn with an actual job that pays well and still find time to surf a few times in a week. If you live in the rural areas where the surf is, it's a challenge, because again, cheap af labor in the Philippines. It gets cheaper in the rural areas.

And when you got cheap rates plus little time to work because you wanna go surfing on most days, you just have to say hello to poverty.

You gotta learn to live on less and have as little baggage as possible. To keep you light and buoyant. So you can be flexible and focus on the thing you love the most but doesn't get you paid.

And that's why my surfer beau is broke. And has rolled over on his kids. But heck, he's a free man and catches more waves than anyone in the lineup.

It would appear that there's plenty of thinking for me to do. For myself. For what I really want in life. If I really want to go surfing. If I even want to take on something really expensive and self-consuming such as family life.

Choices, they're not easy to make. I'll see if I finally got pregnant in the next two weeks and take it from there.

This poll by the lead Mastodon developer seems to mean he is open to add some formatting and users want it: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/102125096955948360

As an ex-Google+ user this makes me happy. Maybe some day we'll get circles and collections as well :–)

Filed under #fediverse #googleplus #socialnetworking and #mastodon

The internet is allegedly a fast, voluminous space, but in fact that's only in a collective sense, i.e. a bunch of people might create something for you to consume at around the same time.

But are they the people whose content you really look forward to consuming?

Well, that still occurs at a pace closer to snail.

Because we're still closer to snail.

So, yeah, I can travel to a bunch of online places in separate tabs, and I guess I should be all holyyeahwow about that, but it's sort of like a whole lot of toad when you were hoping for prince/princess.

Tromsø!

Well technically I got to Tromsø yesterday at about half 5. I ended up getting the coach the whole way as it was a coach ride and 2 ferries and only cut out 30 or so km.

I'm staying at the Tromsø activities hostel for 2 nights before heading on, yesterday I went to burger king for tea as I was starving and needed some hot food, then I went for a walk around the harbour for a bit. It's a really lovely place, lots of fancy ships and apartments.

Today I went out to the Tromsø museum which had a nice park aswell. I'm just back at the hostel now for lunch before I decide what to go off and do for the rest of the day. I'm thinking of going out for food again, I don't think it's in the budget but places like this are few and far between.

My next leg of the journey takes me out to the Lofoten islands where I'll have to catch a lot of ferries. I'm debating if I should cut some of the north journey a bit short so I can spend some more time down south enjoying some city's and warmth, the only issue is if I get the train from Bodo the next stop is Trondheim so it cuts out about 800km. Then I could cycle from Bergen to Stavanger, so about 300km and do some detours down south. I think I'll wait and see how Lofoten is and decide then.

Does it still count if I do the distance but not the whole country?

I've created the most amazing breakthrough in sneaking around behind others despite being right out in the open. It's a Lua utility that puts the terminal in “raw” mode, then intercepts all keystrokes, pushing them to a file, but putting on the screen characters from a completely different file, the latter occurring at the same speed of typing, i.e. it looks as though I'm typing what's in that other file.

Does that make sense? It's kind of a weird thing to describe..

So, while you're reading what I actually typed, what appeared on my screen as I typed was this:

#! /usr/bin/env lua if not arg[1] then print('missing url') os.exit() end local curl =

and so on because I had pointed the utility to a file containing some Lua code. (I could also have pointed it to a URL from which to get its “replacement text” (thank you, cURL!).)

It takes a little getting used to, and of course one makes mistakes invisible mistakes along the way, so a bit of editing is required later – when prying eyes aren't so dearly near.

But I think it's nearly as cool as Mountain Dew and Doritos combined.

Super still day outdoors at the moment, something between mist and rain gently following gravity's advice.

Work begins in less than eight minutes. It's not a super difficult job, though. In fact, it's the best job I ever had. But I can get bored with it. That's the hardest part, really.

But that's often true of life in general.

More importantly, I've no idea how I'm going to get this Barry Manilow song out of my head.

Delar en dikt/välsignelse från en av mina favoritpoeter John O’Donohue. Jag har lyssnat på den många gånger sen jag fick mitt cancerbesked. Det finns saker där som öppnar vida rymder, men också saker som stör och utmanar. Perspektiv jag inte vet hur jag ska ställa mig till. Här är den, läs/lyssna och begrunda.

Blessing for a friend, on the arrival of illness John O’Donohue

Now is the time of dark invitation Beyond a frontier that you did not expect; Abruptly, your old life seems distant.

You barely noticed how each day opened A path through fields never questioned, Yet expected deep down to hold treasure. Now your time on earth becomes full of threat; Before your eyes your future shrinks.

You lived absorbed in the day to day, So continuous with everything around you, That you could forget you were separate;

Now this dark companion has come between you, Distances have opened in your eyes, You feel that against your will A stranger has married your heart.

Nothing before has made you Feel so isolated and lost.

When the reverberations of shock subside in you, May grace come to restore you to balance. May it shape a new space in your heart To embrace this illness as a teacher Who has come to open your life to new worlds.

May you find in yourself A courageous hospitality Towards what is difficult, Painful and unknown.

May you use this illness As a lantern to illuminate The new qualities that will emerge in you.

May the fragile harvesting of this slow light Help you to release whatever has become false in you. May you trust this light to clear a path Through all the fog of old unease and anxiety Until you feel arising within you a tranquility Profound enough to call the storm to stillness.

May you find the wisdom to listen to your illness: Ask it why it came? Why it chose your friendship? Where it wants to take you? What it wants you to know? What quality of space it wants to create in you? What you need to learn to become more fully yourself That your presence may shine in the world.

May you keep faith with your body, Learning to see it as a holy sanctuary Which can bring this night-wound gradually Towards the healing and freedom of dawn.

May you be granted the courage and vision To work through passivity and self-pity, To see the beauty you can harvest From the riches of this dark invitation.

May you learn to receive it graciously, And promise to learn swiftly That it may leave you newborn, Willing to dedicate your time to birth.

Truth is, I just wanted to be alone and sleep.

Last night I didn't come to work as I wasn't feeling like it. For the first time, I did it – I didn't suck it up. I respected myself as a mortal being.

I am all alone in my apartment now and for the long months to come. I'd rather it be monotonous and boring than sad, lonely, or worse, depressing.

It's incredibly silent. I haven't turned on music. The whole place is a mess, a collage of eye sores, as I'm also in the process of moving out.

The last thing I would want on my shoulders was the additional burden of corporate work. So I called in sick. Told them I wasn't feeling well.

Truth is, I just wanted to be alone and sleep.

I stayed in bed all night, had trouble getting up in the morning, pretty much stayed in bed up till noon till I was hungry. I packed a few kitchen stuff. My eczema flared up, thanks to heat and dust. I took a bath.

Now I'm chilling on the mini couch. I don't really feel anything as of the moment. I've missed solitude and total privacy since my SO stayed over, but now I have them in abundance. I've spent hours checking random NSFW subs in Reddit.

Yawn.

I just wanna finish moving to my new apartment and feel like I actually have a life again. Or maybe I'll just stick to semi-existing and only being here in this world, really, for paychecks.

Writing and going on Reddit are pretty much the only things that are keeping me human.

I don't really have a facial expression right now. My heart feels like frosted glass. I want to be actually happy and excited about life but meh.

It's probably gonna be more meh when I get my period two weeks from now and conclude that I've been failing TTC for 4 cycles.

Guess we really can't always have what we want.

On the upside of being long distance from my partner, I somehow feel long distance from the baggage that comes with it.

Now I don't really care about his kids or ex anymore. They feel like characters from a far away, distant place.

And I kind of wanna keep it this way.

I'd rather not be swimming in bliss if it means not being in pain, too.

Feelings...are subjective...they are not proof... ...because we FEEL something is a certain way does not make it a fact.

We all live in our own bubbles of reality, sometimes our bubbles touch others but they keep us isolated...separate...safe...alone...depressed...alive...pick a description that fits.

I can not understand what someone in some other country is feeling, surviving, enjoying, thinking...we can empathize...but we are not them...you are not me.

I think that is what enables stigma, judgements on others...censure...abuse.

No one can claim to know my life, I can not claim to know theirs.

I've been contemplating upgrading my subscription to the Pro plan, mainly for the snap.as feature. The ability to upload photos would be great, but it is the possibility of using it to create a photo blog that has me interested.

A photo blog without the distraction of social media elements and ads seems very interesting to me. I don't want “like” buttons, or to a lesser extent comments. I just want a place to share photos. I guess what I'm really trying to do, is to find a way to stop sharing photos on Instagram and instead share photos on a place that I can control. I'm basically trying to find a way to stop wanting to use Instagram. I've been successful with quitting Facebook, but unfortunately Instagram still has a hold on me.

I don't know if it can be done with snap.as or even if there is value in doing so. If I share photos on my own photo blog, will other people even find the photos? But hold on, this thing where I say, “will other people even find it?” To me it sounds like I want people to find my photos. Why is that? Maybe so I can get likes? Sounds like I'm addicted to the likes I get on Instagram.

Part of the reason I like sharing on Instagram is because I find other people who share the same interests as me. The connection though is shallow, that is it all amounts to a “like”. What am I really getting out of that? Isn't it just some form of digital dopamine? Digital drugs? After they liked my photo, they most likely scrolled past it in less than 5 seconds. I know, because I do the same thing when I “like” other people's photos. I see the photo, I think it's nice, I double-tap to “like” it then I'm off scrolling once again to find another one to like. On and on I go like a mindless robot. Thankfully Instagram warns me when I've caught up on all the new photos on my feed, which is the main reason I tolerate Instagram's feed. When I see that warning, I somehow find the strength to stop scrolling.

When I sat down to write tonight, I didn't even know what to write. Turns out I just did a brain dump and the conclusion I'm seeing here is, I have some work to do because I'm still freaking addicted to Instagram.

#SocialMedia #Instagram

I am not who you thought I was I am a black lighter forgotten in the junk drawer,

a pack of coyotes at midnight when the neighborhood sleeps; all the options for hunger quietly watching at safe distances.

I am still the woman who made you see a God you used against me when morals and integrity became your weapons.

An option for your hunger I was

You are nothing more than a sunset days, months...seconds ago.

I think I wrote about this before but it is worth repeating: I no longer have any files/folders/documents/photos on the cloud. No Google Drive, iCloud, pCloud, DropBox, nada. I removed them because I firmly believe that the safest way to use cloud computing is to not use it at all and to keep as much as possible on local storage. Or, as much as needed. The only document I have on the cloud is a document intended for public download/consumption which is an e-book titled “Littered Thoughts” which is hosted on pCloud. This is not a personal document.

I have been going over the paperwork in my life, the files in my walk-in closet, the notebooks on my shelf, and I have been downsizing the amount of files/folders in REAL life as much as I have been in the digital world. It is always liberating to “free” yourself of unnecessary clutter.

I am going to keep at this until all I have is one(1) 128GB flash drive left with documents, and that is it. That includes IRL documents, as well (except my birth certificate + Social Security card).

So, let's do it!

Be back in a bit!