I hope this blog post finds you well

I've spent the last several months accomplishing nothing. It's not that I don't do anything; it's just that I spend all my time undoing what I did before. I tinker with keyboards, replacing red switches with yellow switches, only to go back to red the next day. I decide to build a home server, and flip back and forth between Unraid, Ubuntu Server, or Open Media Vault. Or maybe I should run it all on the cheap VPS I bought during one of my 3 a.m. insomnia shopping sprees. Or maybe I should just use the VPS to host a Pangolin tunnel.

I'm constantly reinstalling and uninstalling Linux distros on my laptop—Ubuntu, Bluefin, Aurora, Arch—and switching between GNOME, Hyprland, and KDE. I never make backups of anything, so I’m constantly typing docker compose up -d or nvim .config/hypr/hyprland.conf over and over again to recreate what was set up and working just fine the day before. And then the next day, I’ll delete everything and start all over.

Even reading books and watching movies, the two things that I used to love doing, the things that both relax me and help keep my mind sharp, have turned into a series of pointless decisions. Do I want to use the default Kobo reader, KOReader, Plato? Do I want to save articles on Pocket or Wallabag? What about Readeck or Hoarder? Do I want to save the articles from FreshRSS, Miniflux, or Inoreader? Maybe I need to buy an Android-based e-reader—or even a color e-ink Android reader? I've bought both options, only to return them to Amazon the next day. And when it comes to watching movies, do I want to watch on Kodi or use an Android TV app? Should I use the remote that came with the TV, or can I configure a $8.99 universal remote to more efficiently adjust the volume. Do I want my good soundbar on my good TV downstairs or do I want it in Movie Dungeon? Should I move the good TV to the Movie Dungeon, even though it would probably mean replacing the TV wall mount? These are the things I spend all day thinking about. I don’t exercise, I don’t cook, I don’t go to bed on time. I just eat half a box of wheat thins while I wait for a hard drive to reformat.

I keep tinkering and tweaking, undoing and redoing, fiddling and unfiddling, always working on something, but accomplishing nothing, constantly going back to where I was the day before. But today, something happened. Today, I actually finished something. I finished the book I started in August. I sat down in my gazebo at a campsite in the southern Georgia wilderness, near the edges of the Okefenokee Swamp, and read the final 30% of the book. It felt pretty good. Now I just have to see if I can keep in up when I’m back at home, surrounded by tempting Siren song of tiny keyboards waiting to be configured. But first, I think I’ll reinstall Bluefin on my laptop.