It’s been a bit over a month and I’ve been busy, and… kinda processing my place in my work… in relation to what is currently the present societal situation.

I love my work. I’ve loved this work more than my 28-year career in media.

This past week, I was at a work conference. While taking a class toward a certification, I had a moment of clarity. And of purpose.

The class was about resilience and leadership and was very interactive. During a breakout group we were asked to discuss our most profound “mountaintop moment” and what it meant to each of us.

In the course of the conversation, I came to realize that everything I did in the previous career, the skills I learned, and all the rest, has led me to be doing the work I do, in this intense, heavily scrutinized, and contentious time.

It is maybe the first time in my (almost) 55 years that I have ever felt like my work IS my true life’s calling.

I’m feeling blessed to be part of a community of professionals with an incredible determination and sense of purpose, in spite of, or, maybe because of the challenges we face as a profession, and as a society, and as a nation.

What a great recharge of my focus and energy!

I’ve been following some great discussions about what can be done about the things that are happening…

1. #VOTE. In EVERY election. Primary, general, special, water district, school board, bond questions… whatever elections happen where you are. #PARTICIPATE. Need to register?
   
   Vote.gov is a one-stop place to get the info you need to register to vote in your state!
   
   And if you’re already registered, find out how you can help other people get registered!
   
2. #SERVE as a pollworker… different places have different names for this role, but it is a CRITICAL function in making democracy happen. Thousands of your fellow citizens give their time to help make sure everyone eligible gets to cast their ballot in a free, fair and transparent. If you’re skeptical about how the integrity of elections is maintained, serving as an election worker, pollworker, election judge, etc. is a great way to get an inside view of the processes.
   
   The people who do this critical work are your neighbors and co-workers and civic-minded citizens.
   
   Want to serve? https://www.eac.gov/help-america-vote
   
3. #LEARN. Many functions in elections are open, public processes, and election officials would LOVE for you to come and observe. Want to learn? https://www.eac.gov/voters

The links above are US government websites, but you can also learn more at these sites:

Your local or state election office. Search “election office” and your state, county, or municipality.

Vote.org

Ballotpedia.org

There are SO many elections happening this year. Get involved. Participate. VOTE. And help others do it too!

Democracy takes work and care and all of us.

I just passed 200 RSS feeds in NetNewsWire! I have a sense that was around my count back at the peak of RSS before social media exploded and reconfigured how we used the Internet.

Even before enshittification set in on the corporate social media sites, I liked the “curated by friends” aspect of it. And a lot of things I stumbled onto via Twitter (I joined FB much later) ended up getting the site’s RSS feed added to NNW.

I keep FB because I manage the page at work, but mostly do all of that through a third-party scheduling tool. I deleted my Twitter a couple of months ago… I honestly can’t remember, and don’t miss it.

Hey, so I’m testing a thing.

Did the thing work?

Maybe.

It’s cute, but now more than ever, as some are starting to pay attention to the current situation… please, for the love of all things good… use the proper names for people, places, parties, etc.

When you use goofy spellings, rude nicknames and the like, it is WAY harder for those who may be starting to awaken to what is happening to see critical thoughts that they may also share, but not quite know how to express or characterize it.

It’s really important to bring those folks into where we are now, and have been for a long time.

Community can save us.

I’m increasingly annoyed that there are tons of sites that have no RSS feed options, requiring either scraping tools or just not being able to follow said sites in my RSS reader.

Of course, this deprives some sites of traffic and eyeballs on paid advertising.

What’s RSS? https://aboutfeeds.com has a great explainer! The biggest benefit is you have 100% control of the content you see, without algorithms deciding what shows up in your feed. Click. Follow. Read. All in one place.

My partner only really knows the Internet where content comes through social platforms.

I’ve been more and more and more focused on more fully moving away from social media as a primary source of my media awareness. I’ve been reacquainting myself with RSS and rediscovering blogs and sources of knowledge I’d lost track of in those early days of social media when sharing with your connections meant they’d see it and could interact with it.

I have to keep Meta due to work obligations that have nothing to do with my mostly dormant personal profile there. However, X is gone and my social focus is on (increasingly Mastodon/ActivityPub) and Bluesky (ATProto)… but even then, and especially on Bluesky (though we do have more agency in our experience than the majors) it’s still an outside mediated feed outside of the specific accounts I’ve followed.

I’ve been working through changing that on both Mastodon and Bluesky, but hadn’t given thought to “newsletter” type content from Substack, Ghost, etc. Today I focused some energy on making sure newsletters I want to read, both paid and not, are in my RSS reader and not also hammering my email inbox.

Anyway, that was the nerdy part of a holiday/day-off. One more day off and then back to doing the things for money.

Just trying this out again with some config changes. Will it work or will it look stupid?

Love this photo from a Hawthorne Heights show a few years back, with a Duotone filter on it. Neat, huh?

Oh hey… here’s the official recipe for school pizza from USDA.

You know I’m going to make this someday! Now I just need to find Sealtest chocolate milk!

School Lunch Cheese Pizza from TastingHistory.com

It’s so amazing (MADDENING) the lack of reaction we’re observing from the people who swore an oath in the face of a branch of government going rogue.

Also: not at all surprised at the fecklessness.