Slacking, Tubing, Toking and Slo-iking.

It's probably the AuDHD in me but I'm getting behind with everything I'm doing.

Time to sort it out. Today I will, probably (the spring is springing and it's dry), stay indoors and do some work around creating a diary to stop me falling behind so much.

I'm pretty sure I've got my patch notes from my longer walks jotted down but not the many shorter walks I've taken. So some data will be lost :( but it's important we don't beat ourselves up about dropping data or falling behind write ups because that's the dark place that leads to things not being done at all. Stay positive.

While we're mining this vein of positivity I'm probably going to do a course recommended by the dole on Social Media marketing and that meant I kickstarted the Youtube channel to support this blog a little earlier than planned but also a TikTok account. TikTok is weird isn't it. Completely algorithm led and so easy to abuse if you're a bad faith actor. Which is obviously what has happened in many cases leading to some very toxic holes. I fully expect that not to improve under the new ownership but it's going to be required for the course so I thought I'd get a head start. There are a few interesting people on there doing positive natural content that isn't obviously selling junk so I guess there are still niches on there that aren't toxic. We'll see.

The software I wrote for the Hack For Humanity Jam (which is one of the things I've got to write up) came in at 14th place. I will write it up properly at some point but basically it's a sort of Mastodon for citizen scientists animals and plants on their patch and sharing the data with the world in a distributed federated way. Because it's part of ActivityPub you can subscribe on things like Mastodon (or even Blue Sky but I haven't checked) or boost sightings to followers on different social media. I think it has potential and is going to be one of the things I do going forward when health keeps me in doors.

I think the final point to bring up is health. My knees are, to put it in strictly medical terms, fucked at the moment. I really thought it was rolling around in frost fixing the car but they are really taking a long time to recover so I'm having to come to terms that I won't be walking the distance I used to and have to slow down but the first thing I did when slowing down was remembering how I used to chill out a lot more on walks when I was younger and had more time and that's how I used to experience some of the cool stuff I saw. I'd rush from place to place but chill when I arrived and things would just happen.

This change helps me remember what I'm doing. I'm going out for an intentional walk that doesn't want to feel intentional and slow hiking is exactly that sort of thing. So these days I'm going to be stomping around a lot less and stopping a lot more frequently and in an odd turn of events taking the sort of short form videos that do well on TikTok is exactly the sort of thing that makes you slow down and see the world differently.

I've got a half written blog and youtube script about this intentional walking in the slow hike vein in the pipeline.

So lots to come. Mostly me getting ducks lined up until I have something resembling a routine to stop me wandering off and taking photo's of ducks and not doing anything with them :)

Some of the active social media profiles because updating the website theme is on the agenda and has been for weeks :)

TikTok @naturepunk

YouTube @NaturePunkz

Loops @NaturePunk

Mastodon @naturepunk