I come up with silly plans sometimes.

I'm not sure why I thought it made sense to start a new account. Maybe because I wasn't sure what I wanted to be writing about and who (from my real life) might've known about my blog here. In the past, I did use it as my URL on some social media sites I'm no longer on. Then I remembered something I read or heard once: no one is thinking about you as much as you think they are. No one gives a crap about what I write here. If I need to get it out, I'm just going to do it.

I reblogged the one post that I did write on the new account I made up, @allthemsharks. I liked the name. It's a play on the band All Them Witches using the shark theme that I am so fond of. Mostly because my name rhymes with Shark. Pretty silly, huh?

So, I've given up on the idea of starting the new blog. It doesn't really make any sense. It's not like my posts to this blog get tons of engagement or anything, but I do have a few followers that have been around for years at this point and have commented here and there.

There's a lot on my mind recently, though, and I really think that trying to write out some of my thoughts would be a good exercise for me. Do you all feel like being a therapist? Just kidding!

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What I'm watching this morning: Reasons not to care about what others think

Reasons not to care about what others think:

1. You're giving away your power
2. It's beyond your control
3. It's a reflection of them - not you
4. You're not the center of the universe
5. It destroys authenticity
6. Life is too short
7. You know yourself best

This is a lesson I need to constantly remind myself of. Everyone is pretty much self-absorbed and not concerned about what others are doing. If left unchecked, I'll have myself convinced that everyone is analyzing and judging every single thing I do when that is simply not the case.

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Hey look, it's some photos I took!

I deleted my Instagram, which was pretty much the only big social media I had been using. It's kind of a long and boring story, but I thought I'd deleted my account a long time ago and got an email about logging back in, to discover that I'd only changed the username and abandoned it. Many people I know IRL were still following me there, so I used it as a way to kind of share some photos and see what others were up to. I got kind of tired of the ads, the spam accounts following me, the fakeness of all of it, the political stuff people share, etc. I'll include photos with my blog posts and get them out there that way. I just share photos with friends and family directly now, sporadically. It's a better experience than sharing on Instagram.

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Here's a photo I took as I was walking into work the other morning. My phone's camera kind of made it look a little more dramatic than it did in real life (they really process the photos now) but you kind of get the idea. It's nice to be able to go to work super early (5 am or so) and see the sun coming up. We're coming up on the longest day of year in this part of the world.

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Here's a photo I took on a walk with Stella T. Dog the other day. It looks like she was trying to make a silly face, but really it's just that I happened to snap the photo as she was blinking. It's probably strange to her how many photos I take while we're out on walks, but that's what I enjoy doing. She likes to smell everything along the route and I like to take photos of it. I guess we're both taking snapshots in a way.

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Here's more of an artsy one. It's from the same walk as the selfie with Stella. It's a baseball/softball field in the park, but I just wanted to capture the lights and the clouds. Then I gave it a black and white / noir effect. I like it!

All of these photos were taken by me using an iPhone 12 Pro

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I've been playing Splinterlands again

There have been some changes in the rewards system at Splinterlands and it's affected the rental market. As such, I am not earning nearly as munch from renting my cards out as I was just recently. And it's all been going down in fiat terms for quite some time. Nothing lasts forever, as they say. That's why I have a job! You can't count on the price of DEC (or anything like it) remaining high. At one point last year, it was possible for me to make several hundred dollars a day on the rentals. Now, it's just a couple of dollars a day.

So I'm playing my own cards again and I'm enjoying it. The way they've changed up the rewards, it's possible to earn a lot more by playing more.

That's my current progress for this season of Splinterlands. Because I didn't play at all last season, I started off not even in the Bronze league. As such, I'm getting pretty shabby rewards, but at least I'm getting more of the shabby rewards. I mainly get small amounts of DEC, potions, and common cards.

Next season, I should get much better rewards. As you can see, I'm in the Diamond League currently. I'm making an attempt at Champion League, but I haven't been able to attain that for quite some time. For better or worse, the new daily focus as opposed to the daily quest means that you can count on always being able to play a certain splinter. As such, you can rent out some powerful cards for just that splinter and increase your odds of winning.

This morning, I spent a bunch of time going through my cards and making sure I was renting out the right ones (and all of them) and didn't have any rented out that I should be using to play. It was long overdue. I've been keeping my days pretty full lately. I almost went into work today, but I talked myself out of it. Even though the overtime is nice and I can always use more money ()with the price of everything constantly rising), I also need some free time to just do whatever it is I want to do. We all need that, right?

If I don't get some me time, I end up like this demented shark:

😂

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Minimalist sharks

As I figure out my path forward as a single person, I'm trying to become more of a minimalist for a variety of reasons, including financial ones. When I consider things that I want to purchase, I try to remind myself that there are other ways I could spend those dollars that would be much more likely to be beneficial in the future. I'm trying to change my time preference, I guess. I'll value the future more than the present whenever possible. I'll try. No one is perfect, and there are times when I'll make exceptions. But for now, I'm forgoing buying furniture and things like that for my apartment to invest for the future instead. I foresee bleak times ahead for people who don't have some sort of plan to survive hyperinflation.

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Until next time!

That's all for this morning. Thanks if you happened to read all of this nonsense. If not, that's cool, too. It felt good just to write some things down. I'm caffeinated now and need to make some breakfast. My plans are to kind of clean up my house and relax today.

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Soundtrack

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Soundtrack to the writing of this blog post provided by All Them Witches without their knowledge. haha.