I am so absolutely god damn tired.

I have blog burnout. Actually, I think it is life burnout.

So, first off, I am just going to post this here now and likely delete it soon. To the perhaps five people who actually read this blog and don’t know this already, but I got my first short story published. This was the most gratifying thing that happened in an otherwise shitty year. It all happened rather randomly: an internet rando started following this blog (likely just to promote his own and not because he reads this fucking thing), and he had recently posted that he was looking for submissions for his press. So I sent over the story I was most proud of, and he got back to me saying he wanted it in record time. So you would do both of us a kindness if you hoped over to Dead Star Press and buy a copy.

As of this writing, if you live in Europe, the shipping cost for the book may be pretty high. But you are supporting a smaller press and an upstart author.

Second point: I have burnout.

I have blog burnout. I try to use this blog as a place where I write things that interest me. This is what I assumed is the intended purpose of blogs. But it seems like that is something that happens over on twitter, the place where thought and nuance are dying. WordPress doesn’t seem to have any social media left to it, save for the spammers who come here to shill their own shitty blogs. If you want to get a lot of views on WordPress, all you have to do is put a title on your blog post with a word du jour, and idiots trying to sell the same buzzword will give that post some traction.

For funsies, you can then change the name of the post to make them look like the assholes they are:

This all led me to ask myself a very important question: Is WordPress garbage? I’ve cynically remarked a few times here that no one is reading this… but… Is anyone actually reading this? When I started doing this I didn’t actually have the notion of an audience in mind. But I am now getting to the point where, if one isn’t going to manifest, wouldn’t my time be better spend elsewhere?

It’s one hell of a thought. Lately I have been thinking about abandoning the blog entirely. Meh. We will see.

But generally speaking, I have a bit of the life burnout as well. 2022 has seen me principally be involved with one massive hunt for a new job. I will drop the statistics here once I get a job, but let’s just say that the overall experience has not been any kind of fun. So far in 2022, the world seems to be opening back up after the pandemic, or at least it seems to have for everyone but me. I still feel like I am sat waiting for something to happen.

So, that is about it for now. Let’s see how the rest of the damn year pans out.