Blogging is a bit erratic at the moment. I’ve been a bit busy this past few days, deleting this, that and the other. I can’t believe how long it’s taking. It’s soul-destroying at times and time-consuming at other times. And it’s taking a looooooong time.
I started by deleting everything on my TickTick schedule. I don’t know why, but it suddenly started to delete recurring tasks once I’d clicked ‘today’s’ task as done. After a few days of trying to work out why it was doing it or what I was doing to cause it, I gave in and deleted everything.
I’m putting things back one by one, as I do them, on a daily basis. I just haven’t worked out my regular daily timings yet as I’ve decided to play things by ear and just do what I feel like doing when I feel like doing it and seeing where the energy is for each task.
Too often I was booking things in and then just moving them along, over and over again. Perhaps that had something to do with the recurring issue. If it carries on, now I’ve deleted everything and started again, I’m to let TickTick know and send them a screen recording. But I’ll see how it goes by doing everything from scratch again first.
I’m putting all the fixed things in first, like meal times and my dirty cuppa first thing in the morning. I also have some appointments already booked in. But things like the daily dog walk is happening when I feel like it.
The next big job is Facebook. ‘Is’ as it’s ongoing and is likely to take several weeks. Apparently they’ve been scraping our stuff for years, but they’ve only just put it in the terms and conditions because of a recent change in EU law.
I only set up my writing page in 2015, but that’s still 11 years’-worth of stuff. But because the bulk-delete doesn’t seem to work, it’s taking for ever. I’m having to delete each post one at a time, and even that is on a go-slow at the moment too. Perhaps we’re all doing it.
The first thing I did was remove the link to my website, then I removed the link to my link tree. Then I started to remove every single post, every single share, every single blog auto-post. I started by going backwards and I’ve just made it to the beginning of 2023. I started to come forwards when it got really slow, but I’ve only made it to 2018.
I had cause to nip over to Upwork the other day, only to see that they now have an AI button that switches to ‘on’ by default. Why do they default to ‘on’? We should be able to opt IN to these things, not be forced to opt OUT. I was able to switch it to ‘off’, but as soon as I can I’ll be closing down my Upwork account.
I closed down my Reedsy account, not because of AI-scraping but because I’ve had one job there in all the years I’ve had an account. I do get queries, but they’re usually for something that doesn’t even remotely interest me, like fan fiction. It’s unlikely I’ll know a fraction of the stuff these people know about the fiction they’re fanning anyway, so I don’t see the point in taking on work in that genre.
I’m gradually deleting all of my old emails too, as Yahoo has also jumped on the scraping bandwagon. I’m test-driving Thunderbird and Proton, but both want money so now I need to decide which is the best value for money for me.
I was forgetting to do things due to the calendar being out of action, so I created a Wee Note on my phone and made a to-do list. The first 2 items I’d already checked off, one of which was for a tax query the poet needed to make. The other was the dog’s monthly flea, tick and worm treatment.
He was having this on the last weekend of the month and the reminder was coming in from the vet a couple of weeks later. This month I forgot and was grateful of the reminder, but even then I still didn’t do it until the day after their text reminded me to do it. The reminder was useful and I’ll have to stick to when that comes in now, but at least I did it.
Today, I finally started to go down the rest of that list.
I paid an admin charge on my car insurance that was due because of our change of address. Plus the premium has gone up a bit due to us moving here.
I booked the dog in with the vet on Friday to have his annual jabs. We don’t usually bother with these, but the insurance requires it this time and it’s part of our veterinary surgery practice plan. Rufus was so expensive when his back went, the poet decided we were having the insurance this time.
I booked my car in with the garage because the air-con has run out again. They only filled it in August and they crawled all over it looking for a leak, but they couldn’t find anything so put some dye in instead, giving me until the end of October saying if it was going to run out again, it would run out by the end of October.
And I checked my new car insurance quote against last year’s. It’s gone up by more than £60, but when I queried it they said it had actually gone DOWN by £20. I checked again and, er, no it hadn’t. I guess they were inflating the current premium by whatever our new address has pushed it up by.
This is the second time I’ve had cause for concern with this particular broker. The first was when she only advised me of an admin charge for changing our address AFTER she’d already started to take down the new address. Surely she was supposed to warn me, or at least advise me, BEFORE she started to take down the new details. Now she’s claiming I paid £20 more last year than I did? Looks like ‘find new insurance broker’ is on the list between now and 5 November. I’ll find a new deal first, though, and then I’ll tell them why I’m leaving.
I was about to take the dog for a walk when the heavens opened. He won’t even go in the garden when it’s raining, so I’m damned if I’m taking him for a walk when it’s raining. I don’t mind the rain at all, but he can’t have it both ways! He’s also started to play up a bit on walks, so he’s only getting short lead walking at the moment too.
While I psyched myself up to take him, I thought I’d rattle off a quick blog post, especially as I’m not being very regular with the blog at the moment…
On the writing front, I’ve been researching writing horror stories in recent weeks, mostly because that’s what a lot of the open calls for submissions seem to be asking for. I’ve never been one for horror as it gives me nightmares at the best of times. But during my research I was interested to learn about both ‘folk’ horror and ‘cosy’ horror.
I didn’t know which books to read, though, as part of my research as many seem to be filled with erotica too – or porn as we say in our house – and I’m not interested in that either. And then I noticed that someone I’ve been following for a few years seems to be writing folk horror. He may not class it as folk horror, but it certainly looks like folk horror to me, and it looks ‘clean’ too.
So I bought the first book in his Witches of Woodville series, and I’m glad to say that, so far, I’m thoroughly enjoying it.
This post appears on Words Worth Writing and Medium.
