Since I’m attempting to inform people as to why they need a website, and offering my help for them to do that, I need to keep my skills up to date. So I’ve been re-studying HTML and CSS to make sure that if need be, I can still build a site from scratch or make any adjustments that need to be made in the CMS. In the breaks I’ve been reading El Monte by Lydia Cabrera since it has been recently translated to English.
I’ve been advised by a patron to take some time out from this and take better care of myself. I tend to get a little obsessive when I’m studying something, especially when it’s connected to my barely existing professional life as a webmaster. He sensed that I’d been neglecting myself a bit, and I have. So I looked into the budget and ordered myself a couple of things I really need for my back, and I’m hoping to get to Hamei Tveria soon to have a few moments without gravity. I haven’t been there since before the pandemic.
My hair is growing back. It’s a bit more slow on the right than the left side, but I am grateful not to be completely bald. Don’t get me wrong, I could rock being bald, but it’s nice to have some hair left. I shed or had to let go all but 10 of my dreadlocks during the steroids time. I have some baby ones growing in the back, but for now the front has to stay loose.
I’m staying as positive as possible, which means keeping balance. I make lemonade from the lemons, but I understand that if it was only sweet it would just be sugar water. The lemons give it a real flavor.
Truthfully, I understand that my skills are no longer needed. Everyone who isn’t a nerd like me is totally reliant on social media, and as much as I would like to think it’s because they don’t know why they need a website, it seems since that is the case, they really don’t. They are really happier letting an algorithm render them invisible. They would rather eat that invisibility and take whatever comes with some billionaire’s whimsy than to pay someone to build them a consistent audience.
I can’t compete with “free”.
So I’m helping my family and friends, who also by the way don’t think a web presence is worth paying for, but who are trying to help me feel less useless. I honestly don’t think things will change unless or until all the centralized social media starts mass banning non “whites”. People will have to be kicked off to leave the plantation or at least reduce their dependency on it.
These are my lemons: watching the slow train wreck, car by car, of ideas dying in the womb because people don’t know the value of marketing.
If I was younger, I’d pack on some certifications and go work for the people who do. So that’s the point of my writing all this. I have no regrets. I have a roof over my head and food on the table even though business is incredibly slow. I just think it’s worth saying that things have changed, and I’ve accepted it. I’m studying for me and for my family and friends. I’m the community nerd. That has to be enough.
