Month: July 2022

Writing For Myself: Issues.

~ Taran ~ 2 Comments

NSB Aug 25 2014I’ve been looking into self-publishing, and other ways to write the things that I want and make a bit of cash on the side. Certainly, it’s not a way to get rich since we all can’t be bestselling authors, but it’s a way to do what I enjoy and derive some income. I know people who are on Substack, who are on Medium, etc, but all of those sites are dependent on Stripe.com, which doesn’t work well with being in the Caribbean unless you start incorporate in the United States. That seems like a ridiculous step, really. And given Stripe.com is the default for WordPress.com for accepting revenue, and my sites are on WordPress.com, it’s even sillier. Not that PayPal is much better. They are good enough in countries they support, but really, they suck outside of them, and with the issues I have had in PayPal in the past with them just deciding to lock an account for no reason and then unlock it without explanation… well, you can see how that would be a problem.

The Caribbean has had many writers of value out there, published, etc, so the problem is not the content in the Caribbean. It’s that the Caribbean is not getting a fair shake.

I am not ashamed to say that the acquaintances I have on social media do not seem to read, or share. Facebook algorithms presently have me in account restriction because I had uploaded a parody video that got their algorithm hot and sweaty, which in turn means my posts there aren’t highlighted at the top.

So Facebook is useless.

What does one do? Well, I’m not sure yet, but I know I’ll keep writing and working on the book. Maybe I’ll just self-publish and let the public sandpaper it into shape.

Still, it makes one think about the disparity caused by the way that the entire Internet socioeconomic ecosystem works, and what feeds the artificial intelligences that they are training online. That isn’t too far from technocolonialism.

Thus, a challenge. Something I’ll continue working on.

Restarting and Reimagining.

~ Taran ~ Leave a comment

Mayaro Sunrise 2016

KnowProSE.com has been my core domain for roughly 20 years, probably more like 22, but I’m uncertain and don’t care to check. In that period it has morphed, it has been many things, and at the core of it my personal evolution and it’s evolution grew to become an issue. I even thought last year that I would finally put it to rest, instead working on RealityFragments.com, but only recently have I been working consistently on that site.

Much has changed. For a while, these past few months, I had ideas on rebuilding the site in Python to do some really cool stuff, but while I do enjoy the coding, and I do enjoy the ideas, I think I was getting a bit ahead of myself.

Something happened, though, that got me back to this and addressing the site. I encountered a like minded person with similar challenges, and in listening to her and her accomplishments, she’s figuring out what to do. That is something I know about, the reinvention of myself as I have moved from one place to another, from one interest to another… and so I told her on the phone yesterday, “Maybe the trick isn’t figuring out what you should do based on what you have done but instead figuring out what you’re going to do in the future.” Something to that effect. She thought it was profound, or said as much, and I sat there thinking it was high time to take my own advice.

How do we move forward? The Internet has turned most of my accomplishments into detritus, with people with megaphones talking about their accomplishments in print, while the accomplishments I have made over the years- decades- have had their pixels recycled. I just wrote a little about that in WorldChangin‘, but it’s a bit bigger than that one example. Companies I have worked for are gone, closed or bought out, websites that I have written on have disappeared, and everything I have done seems to be like sand through one’s fingers. It’s all been meaningless, one might think, but that’s not true at all.

I’m still here, and I’m more than the sum of what I have done. Part of this is my own doing. I don’t self promote, instead thinking that my works should stand on their own. This particular naivete is something I think I will stand by because it’s not about me except for one thing: I’d like to think, in some way, that what I did helps move the world to a better place. I have tried. I will continue to try. I don’t want the limelight, and I never have – and when I had it, I didn’t capitalize on it as so many have. I suppose my narcissism gene was malnourished in my youth.

Then there’s the practicality: Income is a bit of a necessity. It doesn’t need to be much, but with the world going as it is, a positive flow is necessary.

So what does this mean? I’m not sure. What I do know is that I need to work things out, including KnowProSE.com. I have been working on a book, but who hasn’t?

Here, I think, I’ll focus on the more professional parts of myself, while RealityFragments.com will be where I fiddle and play.

And maybe, just maybe, something will work out. Expect daily updates again, for there is much to write about.