For the last week my wife and I have been working really hard to get our house ready for sale.  I’ve posted some pictures of our home here so if you are interested let me know at akantor at gmail dot com.

When I use Twitter I shift back and forth between two ways of doing it.

1) I tweet whatever comes into my head. This results in a lot of content, a few gems, but mainly mediocre tweets. I do this because it helps get my creative mind working. I find that my brain works like an avalanche. Once even the smallest ideas start dropping a flood of ideas will follow close behind. The problem however is that the good stuff gets buried in with there with the bad stuff so it can easily get missed. It is up to my followers to read everything to see the one or two good things in there. If they get fed up with me they’ll just unfollow me, which sucks.

2) Save up, post less and only the good stuff. This is self explanatory but it can make me get totally stalled out and not post anything.  As my own harshest critic I often don’t feel anything is good enough to post.

Right now I’m stuck on thinking that everything I post is crap and therefore I can’t post anything. It’ll pass, it always does, but for now I’ll just write ‘em and erase ‘em just as quickly.

How do you do it?

This is a picture of me on my wedding day.

Look at that smiling face. So young. So naive. I was just starting out on my journey of life. No kids. No plans for kids. Just me and my wife taking on the world, drinking wine, traveling, living and loving.

Who knew in just a few short years I would become this sad tired punching bag.

Any Questions?

You can keep your fancy alarms.

My window sill is protected by Gundam.

WriteRoom is an amazing app. If you don’t know, it’s a text editor that blanks out your entire screen to black so you can focus on your words, not on your Gmail notifier, Tweetie icon, or iChat conversation. Just you, and your thoughts.

The default setup for WriteRoom is green text and a black screen, similar to what a terminal window looks like. It’s simple and in theory, beautiful. In practice, it’s disconcerting, and here’s why. I have a glossy screen on my MacBook Pro, as I am sure lots of people do. This glossy screen, in bright light, is reflective. Fire up WriteRoom and you have a mirror. I was trying to write a blog post today and all I could see was… me staring at my inability to write.  I tried to not notice myself, but there I was, mocking me. I tried changing the color to grey, and to white but neither worked. Once I closed WriteRoom I had no trouble continuing.

If you are interested in learning more about WriteRoom and exploring the depths of your soul in the blacker than black void please visit their website here.

The other day, while grocery shopping I went and got the bread.

My wife looked at the bag of bread and asked “Is that the best date? Did you check all the bags?”

I replied, “Of course.” Because, I did actually check all the bags (this time).

She said, “Even the ones on the other side?”

I said, “yes.”

A few minutes later, from a few isles over, there she was, going through the bread, checking the dates.  Luckily, she looked up to see me, hands out at my sides in the “wtf stance” to which she smiled an unspoken, “yeah, I didn’t believe you” smile.

They make me obsessively check Favstar.
They are my source of validation.
They are also my source of frequent self doubt.
I hate stars.

Before I knew anything of stars I used Twitter like everyone else. I posted updates about what I was doing and I tried to keep it light and humorous. In order to tweet about family and work I created a second account called @littleoeuf with which I could anonymously say what I wanted. I had that account for about 8 months but only gained about 50 followers. I didn’t understand why at the time but I think now it was because I wasn’t starring other people’s posts.

It was after I closed the @littleoeuf account that someone introduced to the world of stars. Since then I have been hooked. Here’s the pattern, post an update, check Favstar a few hundred times (repeat). I am obsessed with what people think of my posts. I am elated when someone stars something I intended to be funny, confused when someone stars something benign and saddened when no one stars anything for hours.

I don’t like this feeling and I need to break this pattern. I have decided that I am not going to stop staring posts that I think are awesome and I am also not going to stop using Favstar to find funny new people to follow. What I am going to do however is stop looking at my own Favstar page. It will take massive amounts of willpower but I think it’s something I need to do before I go crazy.

What do you think of stars?

I’ve linked to this because I don’t want to move any of this content to Tumblr. But I still want to have it available, reason unknown.

It was time.

My old blog felt, dusty and old… oh yeah, it sucked too.

Like my switch to Apple this just feels right.

I doubt this will make me famous, or rich, or get my wife to, ahem… nevermind. But it should at least be akin to getting Guitar Hero.  I played that every night for weeks and it was good.  If switching to Tumblr gets me off my ass, even if just for a few weeks then I guess it’s all win.

Plus, all the cool kids are doing it.