it feels cool to be strong

I’ve been doing triathlons for 18mo and I continue to increase the intensity of the training, which enables the longer races, the surface “impressive” part. And it is! But the point of it all is the regular training and physical work, which will just keep me a little healthier for a little longer, for the more “preventable” stuff. Maybe. The races are the reward! The work, like so many things, is practically unrelated to the visible effect of the training.

And it becomes a true pleasure! Every day but Thursday I get a workout in (usually) before I begin my day, and the energy ya get, ironically, from expending a LOT, is now something I mentally and emotionally depend on for my workday.

A field of dahlias under a beautiful morning sky, cloudy enough to catch a lot of golden rays

Instead of writing about tech on Saturdays, I’ll post one picture a week. This was from the Dahlia Fest in Canby, OR, where I did a 5k as a kind of run test, and I exceeded my hopes and I’m very proud of myself. And god aren’t these gorgeous!!!!!

I recently started up a new game of Hollow Knight. I’ve got hundreds of hours in this game so I don’t expect to be surprised, and yet! it is still a genuine surprise at how good the movement feels, and knowing (mostly) the story, seeing the breadcrumbs laid down at various points has a really different tone and meaning. Truly I think it is the best of its genre.

I have heard some complaints, some save points are too far away from bosses, but I can only think of one where it’s more than a couple rooms away, which imo serves as a good refresher for your motions and actions, as well as a way to slurp up some more juice for later actions. The complaints I do think are valid are related to needing to use charms to auto pick up money.. that should just be in the game, I agree.

Kinda Daily Themes

I mentioned this idea the other day and I think it’s solid. It would be nice if there are some rules and limiters on this so it doesn’t feel like it will go on forever. Longer than tweets, shorter than a couple paragraphs, about ONE thing. And I’ll tag them too, like “#daily-physical” or something that makes sense later. No Sundays for sure!

Monday: Triathlon/other physical training

Tuesday: Community, togetherness, maybe queer topics

Wednesday: pick a blog/art post from a friend

Thursday: Books I love and/or am reading

Friday: Games, video/tabletop/board/other

Saturday: Tech? Maybe? Feel the least strong about this topic possibility! Edit, nah we’ll just do a weekly photo

Just so ya know, I’m keeping a list of pals and people to follow who are doing their own thing over at a subpage, Friends & To Watch, and you should probably check them out too! I’m not gonna add twitter/mastodon/bluesky, because I don’t think I’m interested in those formats any more.

I’ll assemble some kind of RSS at some point but that day is not today and I don’t want to lose track of who is up to fun things before cohost officially closes down 😢 we’ll see if I eulogize it, others will probably have done so more eloquently than I. But it has been really important to me and to many others, and it’s a truly massive shame that it is going away.

Life theme blogging?

I wonder if I could pick topics for days’ blogs, like Tuesdays I talk about my triathlon training, some other days on video games, other days on tech, on community, on books, on what my friends various internet presences say they’re up to? That might be a structure I could stick to. That’s six right there. Like, every day but Sunday. Ok, I’ll try to figure out an order and make this the next post!

I started up a new game of Hollow Knight, and I’m taking it kinda slow, as in not trying to do some 5h completion or anything, but merrily rolling along this wonderful experience of a game. I have extremely minor gripes about the base game and all told find it to be a basically perfect game altogether.

Hit the gym this morning for a low-HR spin ride and thought I’d read the Courtney Milan book in my library app at the moment, but instead I just watched Eurovision 2024 performance videos and got weepy with multiple dudes around me, oops.

This is Alyona Alyona and Jerry Heil representing Ukraine this year. Tell me this doesn’t give you chills to watch!! And uh if you want any more Eurovision reccs please god please ask https://youtu.be/tu5Lh4ZF0DY?feature=shared

What’s next?

Lots of folks on cohost saying that the site really helped them genuinely heal from the most toxic aspects of, let’s say, capitalized social media. Chasing the numbers, the reward, the engagement, all the while less and less able to actually commune with people. I feel this too! Christine Love of [Love Conquers All Games](https://loveconquersallgam.es/) put it best when she said,

this was a great experiment on if social media could be not poison, and now that I’ve realized what it’s like when it’s not, I don’t want to go back to the poison.

I have a bluesky account, of course I’m camping wholemilk there, but I found it to be all of the most antisocial, divisive, screeching parts of twitter with literally zero of the joy or the people, just Being Guys*. I still have my twitter account but I don’t intend to ever use it, just change the password every now and again.

*people

I think this is a good space, but man it really is limited. I just don’t really see folks following me here. Maybe if I can get rss going on here, which is probably not difficult!

Another part of me is wondering about maybe finally getting into some neocities things and communities and webrings, and yes, rss! I plan to give [this post about getting started with neocities](https://cohost.org/nomnomnami/post/5322918-let-me-tell-you-abou) another close read and then maybe giving it a whirl, maybe even bringing this (top tier) domain over there.

Cohost is shutting down :'(

I guess I have a landing place, kinda, but things are just so one-way here! Every GREAT once in a while I’ll get responses but mostly the account-based commenting barrier is too high, imo, and this is pretty off the shelf WordPress so I don’t really see that changing. Nevertheless I’ll be using this going forward for my microbloggin’ needs. I don’t really see wanting to give my data n shit to any of the other SM sites.

Say hi if you’re here from cohost??