Downtime Time

This entry isn’t about anything that I’ve done recently. 😐

It’s more about what I do when I’ve got nothing to do, or what I do when I don’t want to be doing anything. 😏 I’m referring to TikTok. And I’ll admit, when I first downloaded the app a few months ago I didn’t see how I could ever get interested in it enough to really use it… 🤔 but after doing some searches for stuff that I actually wanted to see on there, it quickly started learning how to feed me the right type of videos that would keep me hanging around in the app. 🙂 So much so that I even started making my own.

And I know that I’m not using it like most people do, mainly because I’m 48 years old and TikTok feels like an app made for teenagers with ADHD. 😅 But even over the past three months, maybe because of all of the media coverage the app has gotten, I’ve noticed the age range of users getting a whole lot wider. And the app is getting better at showing stuff posted by older farts to other older farts… 😏 so even compared to just a few months ago, it feels more welcoming and usable to me.

But as you can see from some of my thumbnails above, my content is currently pretty cat heavy. That’s because I didn’t plan to make hardly any of them. 🤷🏻‍♂️ I just keep the phone handy, since these two critters are always doing something amusing in one way or another, and I’ll just end up posting the stuff that I originally recorded just for me and Gen, Dad, or Cassi. I’ve gotten better at adding a little extra editing… using stickers or voice captions or whatever to make them a little more appealing… but that’s actually what makes it such an effective time-killer during down times.

Since my “content” isn’t recorded with internet strangers in mind, it really hasn’t gotten much traction though. 😞 Each video gets around 150 – 200 views before it just kinda stops. But I did notice – like in the recent video of Maven wandering around being weird – even though that video has less than 200 views, it has over 40 “likes” on it. 😃

That’s a pretty remarkable ratio, so I feel like if the app would ever start feeding my videos to others in any meaningful way, I know that at least a few of them could catch people’s attention. 😳 Heh… but, like on Twitter when one of my tweets gets a thousand likes and retweeted hundreds of times, I’m not really sure I want more attention than what I’m already getting. 😅 I just like makin’ them. Maybe one of these days I’ll try to do some duets or harmonies with someone… 🤔

Optimistic Stalling

I’m just about ready to start working on some of my to-do list tasks, but I wanted to take a few more minutes to stall… 😏 and this seemed like a good place to do that. I just slept like shit, haven’t felt great all morning, but by conserving my energy and not totally dwelling on what I’m gonna have to do all day – I think I’m gonna be able to bounce back pretty effectively for the rest of this evening. 🤷🏻‍♂️🤞🏻

I think I’ve psyched myself up successfully due to picking only the “fun” stuff out of the whole list… 🤨 at least for tonight. The stuff where I know it’ll let me go to sleep tonight, feeling better for having completed whatever I complete. 🙂 Actually, I’ve had five or six growing “piles” of various paperwork that have been sitting around the living room… and it was all basically organized, at least in stacks, so I never tackled them further…

• “Medicare Stuff” Pile
• “Workers Comp Stuff” Pile
• “Court Stuff” Pile
• “Investment / Estate / Health Planning” Pile
• Misc “I’ll get to it soon.” Pile
• “Notebooks / Journals / Office Supplies” Pile

But after dragging all that shit to the bedroom a few days ago, and working through probably half of it while I sat there in bed at 3am, it should be easy to wrap it all up tonight. 😊 And it all just happens to be stuff that will reward me with a feeling of accomplishment, like I actually “did something” for a change… 🤔 because, technically, I suppose most of it really is important stuff.

So yeah, I’ve got my to-do list already chopped up into dozens of teeny, manageable pieces for this weekend… and that’s the best way for me to tackle it. Not looking at the whole of what I want to get done, but knocking it out little bits at a time in a way that it won’t a) hurt my neck/shoulder, or b) suck all of my energy away. 🙂 Trying to keep a little in reserves, just in case I wanna leave the house for anything.

Okay, enough stalling I suppose. Oh, wait… here’s some more cat stuff. 😊😸😾

Poor Maggie… still trying to figure out how to get Maven to “play” but they just haven’t quite gotten there yet. The “instant submission” was an odd tactic, eh? 😄

EDIT: Something wasn’t sitting right with me when it came to the fonts I have been using now for months and months, so I made some slight adjustments. It may look a little weird to you for a moment, and the paragraphs of old posts may not end as neatly as I originally crafted them to… but yeah, just a slight refresh, in case your brain noticed. I feel like it’ll make it a bit easier to read now maybe, w/ the slightly larger, wider spaced font. 🙂🤷🏻‍♂️

Energy Boost

As I mentioned in the past couple of entries, I am getting some stuff done around the house… heh… it’s just at a much slower pace than anticipated. It’s all good though – it’s not like I’ve got some sort of housework schedule or chart that’s keeping track of me. 🙂🤷🏻‍♂️ Plus, while taking a break today, after flipping the recently-ignored box on its side… the beasts suddenly regained interest in it. Added a little bit of catnip to make the afternoon more entertaining for them and me both. 😊 I love seeing Maven w/ energy like this…

Surprise

I ordered a dolly from Amazon, to help me with the misc packing up of stuff that I’ve been doing. Just needed something to help me more easily move around the boxes, tubs, furniture, or whatever… but it was just as nice to be able to get a big box for the kitties to play in. This is the first time since Maggie got here that I’ve been able to cut some holes into a big box like this and turn it into a “house” for them to mess around in. Glad to report that they both like it and even had some fun playing together. 😊

Purpose

Kind of a blah day today. Woke up late, weather is gray and bleh… still working on whatever my mood’s gonna be for the day. But this always makes my days better… making sure my kitties stay happy. 😊

Looks like Maven has about the same energy levels as me today, eh? 😏

Skipped A Day

I’ve been feeling decent today… and it could be because I slept most of the night Thursday night, most of the day Friday, and most of the night last night as well. 😳 It was so weird… I’d wake up, and kinda just go “nope” and lie back down and be back to sleep in like an hour or so. So then I’d be asleep for another few hours, wake up, “nope,” back to sleep, etc… for the better part of 36 hours. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Meh… who knows.

I did sleep a little longer than I wanted today, but eventually I got up and made myself go into town like I was planning the other day. 🙂 It’s been chilly but nice out, so I grabbed the 360 camera and ended up draining the battery after shooting five different “chunks” of the west side. After I get these uploaded, I think I’ll have at least ten 360 driving tour videos. 😯😃 Enough that I might go ahead and publish them along with the playlist that contains them.

If I don’t go ahead and publish them now, it’s honestly hard to say how many more videos I’d have to make before I’d feel like the project is done. 🤔 And the longer I keep those huge ass files on YouTube’s server, but set to private, the more I worry that they’re gonna be like “What the hell is this guy doing? Why keep these files if he’s not gonna share ’em with anyone. *DELETE*”

When I got back home, Maggie was ridiculously happy to see me. Every now and then she gets in these super needy moods, where she just can’t get enough attention… and where I seem to make her nuts by talking quietly to her. 😄 I swear sometimes it feels like she’s a half-second away from leaping up and eating my face. 😼😧 She’s probably just happy to see when I’m up and around more than usual, and just wants to take advantage of all the pettin’s she can get. Meanwhile, Maven’s still over by the couch, sawing logs. 😏

Woke Cookies

I knew that John Cooper (of Skillet) had a podcast, but I had never bothered to check it out for whatever reason. So I’m not sure what made me decide to keep watching when this one appeared in my feed and began to auto-play, but I’m glad that I did… because I agree with every single word that the man says here. The way that he’s always on the verge of laughter… you can feel how he’s just fed up with all of the bullshit. Whatever the less-hateful Christian cousin of the word “seething” is … heh … this would be that. 😏

Remember This 80’s Cop Show?

Before I knew that I was gonna have a rough time sleeping last night, I was clicking off a few early morning hours by watching the 80’s TV show “Hunter” on Amazon Prime Video. 🙂 And if you watched it way back when, I feel like you’d still like it today… especially the way that “retro” shows feel like more of an escape.

Starting with ep 01, the pilot, (which you can watch below) it’s ironic how the topic of that episode goes hand in hand with discussions being had around policing in the country today. 🤨😏 With a new, jerk-off type chief taking over the department, announcing all these policy changes… but of course our tough-guy cop, Sgt Rick Hunter, isn’t havin’ any of it. 😅 The way that “TV cops” acted back then… definitely a product of its time. Hell, certain people, even today, would be mad that anyone would admit they still like this show. 🤔😟

But the guy that plays Hunter has gotta be the good-lookin’est ugly dude I’ve even seen as a series leading man. (With a front-head that would make even a Batina jealous. 😄) I think I remember Dad mentioning back then that he was actually an ex-football player, so that kinda makes sense. 🏈🥴 And then the woman that plays his soon-to-be partner, Dee Dee McCall, is still smokin’ hot in this show… even by today’s standards. 😃🤤

They’ve got great chemistry, and both of them pull off their roles well… especially if he wasn’t even originally an actor. It would be easy for them to have gone too cheezy with it, but they figured out just the right way to play it. He’s rough, funny, blunt, charming, etc – and she’s a tough chick, but not too tough, kinda likes that Hunter isn’t immediately slobbering all over her… 😊😏🤷🏻‍♂️ I dunno, they just get on like you’d imagine a couple of experienced cops like them would get on together.

After the double-length pilot, the regular episodes do have that late-80’s “cop show” formula that you’d recognize in Knight Rider, The Fall Guy, Hart to Hart, CHiPs, The Equalizer, etc. But if you were a fan of any of those shows, you should take to this one straight away. 🙂 Oh, and I had forgotten until last night that he had an “awesome” catch phrase… “Works for me!” 🙄😆 It looks silly when it’s just typed out, but yeah, I remember more than a few friends (and, particularly, my cousin Jim) repeating that line all the time back in the day. 😏

Looks like FilmRise even has the whole series up on YouTube, if you’re interested in the distraction. 😃👍🏻

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EDIT: My phone was busy for about eight hours yesterday, between processing the 25 minutes worth of UHD, 360 degree video and then uploading it to YouTube, but I still haven’t gotten the kinks ironed out yet. Turns out that not one of the three videos would display as intended once they were on the site. Of course I’ll keep at it until I figure it out, once I’ve saved up some energy that is. Time for an attempt at a nap now though.