…so I said, not tonight, honey; my rhoids are raging. I’m waiting for a cushion seat for my rower. Enough said.

OMG, I was reading one of my posts from Jul 10, 2022:

Nurture This You …

It’s wonderful; I have so much content that when I go back to review it, it feels new and relatable, and I have a brief “Jesus! I can’t believe I wrote that!” moment. Which I absolutely love!

You know what else I relearned lately? I always start with lots of info, then I slowly whittle it down. I thought that only happened with work stuff, but I noticed it when doing IRL art and reorging my homepage – I was finally ready to reduce the amount of stuff there.

It took awhile but I got the feeling, “this is too much.” And after that, I was able to easily go from 28 items to 5, maybe 6. I also added a caption link for the category, which looks way cleaner. Yay me!

I watched a work-related video this week, and a few comments stuck with me.

– Where do you add value to the world?

– Win with humility.
– Treat people right.

– …[create] something phenomenal and durable?

– Most people will not do the hard thing. Go do the right, hard thing.

– Don’t be mediocre.

You should already know how I feel about mediocrity. From my 2020 journal entry AKA lyric essay: (see the Thursday Aug 6 post – back then I made so many of these I started combining the entries.)

Sun Aug 2 to Sat Aug 8 – Journal Entry

Mediocrity bugs me as much as incompetence does. And the fact that people are alright with being either or both boggles my mind. AND the fact that others put up with it … I don’t even know what else to say.

…Nobody gets out of bed, stretches and says, “It’s a beautiful day to be mediocre!” [or maybe lots of people do]

sam

And also here, where I think I was pissed with Apple from 2023.

Heavy Sigh

My Book Life

And also, between IngramSpark and Amazon, I could remain an Indie publisher forever. I didn’t know that was a thing. BTW, I have two other books in the lineup- by the end of 2026, I should have:

1. The Troll and the Ballerina – Published but under review on Amazon and ready for distribution on IngramSpark
   • Got my proofs from IngramSpark today. YAY!!! The colours inside aren’t as vibrant as Amazon’s proofs, and the cover feels different;
   • I might forgo the proofs in the future, since I’m using the same files for both and I have a sense of what they look like, but that probably won’t happen. I’ll be paranoid and have to see for myself
2. Kai (final title pending) – Published on Amazon and ready for distribution on IngramSpark
3. Two other manuscripts written, but I might not finish the layout before the end of the year

Another book I want to create at some point is one where I mine old posts/images, etc., and put them in a book with newer stuff, too. I got the idea after reading Glorious and/or Free: The True History of Canada by The Beaverton. I don’t like the feel of the paper, although I get why they used it, but I love the layout.

War Crimes Gift Shop and Tyrant Tiers

For future prize and store stuff, I have to put my tyrants into tiers. Of the 12 tyrants I’ve done:

• Platinum
  • Joseph Stalin
  • Hirohito / Emperor Shōwa
  • Pol Pot
• Gold
  • Idi Amin Dada
  • Benito Mussolini
  • Muammar Gaddafi
• Silver
  • Nicolae Ceaușescu
  • Francisco Franco
  • Saparmurat Niyazov
• Bronze
  • Jorge Rafael Videla
  • Ilse Koch
  • Jeffrey Lundgren

These tiers are based on the estimated death toll, but I might change it up, maybe based on cult of personality + length of reign. I’ll create a matrix and see what falls out.

Right now, based on death toll, our next tyrant may be in the Platinum or Gold tier.

Listening to Part II (On the Run) by JayBey, and I can’t see me dying in a shootout for anybody; most likely me and my partner will go out in a blaze of heart disease. lol. No, we won’t; we’ll take care of our bodies, inside and out.

How’s life? Evil Dead Burn is out. I might go see it this weekend.

Also on the agenda, I’m gonna make a page for my books. Not sure how I want it to look yet, but we’ll see.

I don’t know how to make drawing practice as regular as my writing just yet. I was going through my old sketchbooks just to remind myself of the possibilities.

Fri Jul 10

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