TLDR: I moved my blog to Wordpress, but was unable to move my RSS feed. I know, I suck, I just put everyone through this a month ago. Please resubscribe. Here is the new RSS feed link.

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For the better part of the past decade, I've self-hosted my blog on Wordpress. Sure, I dabbled here and there with just about every blogging platform under the sun, but Wordpress was my home.

Over the years, Wordpress evolved and I didn't. I like writing in a basic text box. I don't want to bother with creating blocks and dragging stuff around the screen. That sucked when the early Web 1.0 apps did it, and it still sucks to me today. Then again, maybe I'm just too lazy or stubborn to learn how to do it.

Part of the appeal of hosting my own Wordpress is I'm my own master. I'm not reliant on anyone else to provide me with the tools I want, nor to protect my data.

Over the past year or two, I branched out. I was frustrated with the minor inconveniences Wordpress and self-hosting created, so I dabbled with a variety of IndieWeb platforms. My blog made appearances on Micro.blog, Listed.to, BearBlog, and Scribbles while I experimented on the side with Ghost, Pika, Haven, and a few others.

Part of the appeal of the IndieWeb was finding an online community that valued the same things I did. A better internet. A place where people are treated fairly and platforms weren't created to exploit the user. It felt good to give to these platforms/developers, because they were creating the type of products I wanted to use without the massive greed and corruption of Big Tech.

Sadly, once I found myself engrossed in a few of the communities, I realized that it wasn't all that different from the Big Tech sites. Extremists still had the loudest voices, too many people spent time complaining about politics, and all that goodwill and talk about a better internet, truly didn't mean much. It was just another tag line.

This week, I was reminded why self-hosting is so important. Without it, you truly are at the mercy of others. I don't like that. It isn't good for me, and honestly, I think I'm done supporting IndieWeb projects for the time being.

So, I made the move back to Wordpress. This time I managed to ensure my blog links would match what I had on Scribbles, so no link should be broken. However, I was unable to move my RSS feed over. And I can hear you now, "Dammit Brandon, get your shit together. I just had up to update my RSS feed like a month ago." I know, I know… I wish I was more talented to make it so you didn't have to resubscribe, but I'm not. I apologize for the inconvenience. If it's any consolation, I'm pretty sure I'm never leaving Wordpress again.

Here is the new RSS feed link.

My Granny's Recipes blog will remain on Scribbles, as well as a new mini project I'm working on called Seeking Calmness. It will be a collection of photos, quotes, and short ideas related to finding more peace in my life. Scribbles is the perfect platform for this type of site, and I think it'll give me a nice little outlet to share photos and short posts without cluttering up my main blog.

This site is going to need some work. I have to manually upload all the images and clean up my posts. I've gone through the past month's posts and fixed them, but if you look into the archives you may see markdown links or photos that aren't responsive to the browser. This will all be fixed in due time. I may also change up the theme, but that won't matter unless you visit the actual site.

I appreciate your patience and understanding. We are always learning and adapting, and this is just the latest lesson in my life. 

I love history. It was always my favorite subject in school, and I really enjoy a good history book and museum. But I've been limited to studying United States history for most of my life.

I guess, the rest of the world just felt so far away, and their history even further away. I struggled to connect. So, I stuck to what I knew, which was our very brief history here in the United States.

[Side note: This is a bit strange to admit, but even though I’ve been able to track my genealogy back to Europe (England mostly) it never occurred to me that European history is my history too. I’ve been so blinded by my identity as an American that I forgot that I’m not truly from here. At least not when you look back across several centuries.

I think because our country is so young we tend to think that everything begins in 1776 which is ludicrous. It’s not like my family appeared on the Mayflower and we were always Americans.]

The past few years have made it difficult to be a fan of history here in the States. Political beliefs have slathered shame over pretty much anything that has happened outside of the past decade (well and most of the things within the past decade) and people have made a lot of accusations and assessments without having much of a knowledge base. We as a country seem to struggle with looking at the past without bringing current ideology and judgements with it, so both sides of the political spectrum use it to push their agendas without really knowing what they are talking about. It's frustrating.

A few months ago, I had this random thought... "Are we Rome? Can I learn from reading about the downfall of Rome and apply what happened there to us?" So, I decided to start digging and learning a bit about The Roman Empire.

It didn't take long for me to realize that no, the United States is not Rome, and OMG Roman History is super friggin cool!

I started off with a few reddit threads before watching a four-hour Mary Beard documentary and then moving onto The History of Rome podcast. I assumed this would be a fleeting interest, but I keep coming back to it. There is something that is just so enticing about Rome and, well... world history. It's new to me and exciting.

I've always found comfort in history. Whether it was hearing stories from my grandmother about the Great Depression or just looking at what early settlers did in the West, there is something about seeing how people survived in the past that gives me hope for the present. And I'm a guy who doesn't usually have much hope for anything. I think that is what attracts me to the past.

Despite having spent quite a few hours studying Roman History, I feel like I know maybe .0001% of what happened. It's so expansive and vast, and I'm very much a novice.

Feeling connected to history is what really does it for me, but unfortunately there is very little Roman history for me to explore in the United States. It looks like if I go to New York, I might could see some cool stuff at the Met, and I know the North Carolina Museum of Art has a few nice pieces I've seen before, but that isn't really the same. I wanted to take it a step further, and that’s when I stumbled onto ancient coins.

I assumed old coins would be thousands of dollars. I never took into consideration the massive amount minted and just how affordable some of them could be. So, I started lurking on r/AncientCoins and trying to learn a bit about them. Much like Roman History, this is a new interest that I have zero knowledge about so I took it slow and realized it would take years for me to fully get a grip on this.

Not wanting to wait years, I took some advice from the folks on r/AncientCoins and decided to visit VCoins, a trusted coin online store to find an affordable and nice coin to display. Just something to get my feet wet and see if this is a hobby I want to explore further while still connecting me to the past. I mean, the idea that I could hold a coin that was minted and used thousands of years ago just about breaks my brain.

After a bit of research, I decided to go with a nice coin from Constantine's era, 307-337 AD. I found a nice, clean camp gate of Constantine I. It cost me thirty dollars, looks fantastic, and is a great starter piece.

Not many coins look this good for this price, and that was part of the appeal. I wanted a common coin that looks good and doesn't break the bank. I'm not sure if this will lead to a new hobby or not, but I'm excited to own my own little piece of Roman history. I held the coin in my hand and I realized this is the oldest thing made my another human that I’ve ever held. It was awe inspiring. Sadly, my wife just rolled her eyes. 🤣

I had a bit of a rough week. My job has been taking advantage of me. It seems like daily, more gets added to my plate and less gets taken off. Friday was particularly tough, and when I got home, I laid down in bed with my MacBook and I clicked on a blog post that featured some movie titles. I thought those links would take me to IMDB, but instead I found myself routed to YouTube, where I got the "Disable your ad block message" on all four tabs. I saw red.

It was too much. Sure, I could have used Invidious or Brave or whatever work around, but I was just over it. I logged into my Google account, and I deleted my remaining services (Drive and Blogger). I had two email addresses I still needed to change from my Gmail, so I changed them and then deleted my entire Google Account. Then I finally, officially de-Googled, after twenty years or so. I'm done with Google and if I need YouTube (and I'm going out of my way to not need it) I'll use Invidious.

I hadn't deleted my Facebook/Instagram account, so I logged in and closed them out. Then yesterday when Spotify raised the prices again, I told my wife I'd move her playlists over to Apple Music and I cancelled Spotify.

I'm sure feeling taken advantage of at work is spilling over some, but I'm just really sick of all the stupidity going on. It doesn't fit in with my quest for a simple life and I'm happy to press the delete key on all of it.

One of the more difficult spots for me right now is Mastodon. After years of being off or not engaging in social media, I finally found a nice group of folks to hang out with online. But despite all my filters, the political content is seeping through, and I'm just not interested in that. Then, one of the people I follow sort of got railroaded and shamed because of a blog post, and that's the type of stuff I avoid social media over. Now, I'm in a spot where I want to move Mastodon Instances, and I'm just wondering if it’s time to delete that too. I've looked into using Masto.host and just hosting my own little Instance, but I'm not sure if I want to spend the $6 a month.

I'm starting to miss my super quiet blog where I just chatted with folks over email. I just don't think I'm cut out for the modern internet.

The movie Perfect Days is still resonating with me, and I've seriously been trying to cultivate a more peaceful life. I'm putting in a good twenty minutes a day meditating and I'm looking to cut any sort of drama and BS out of my life. Sadly, that means a lot of the internet.

I'm not doing anything drastic right now, but I'm going to take a few days to try to imagine what the internet looks like in a more peaceful existence. Whatever parts of the internet frustrate me or piss me off, are getting the axe. 

I’ve realized the Fediverse has the same issues as the rest of social media. It’s just made up of different people still pushing agendas. You can change the tools all you want, but you can’t change people.