I go by Ditch and I'm just an internet entity like you.
I'm going to Gen Con this year. This'll be my first real time at a convention, and the first time for a long time I've been out of the city. I'm hyped.
This site and blog was originally going to be focused on how much I hate my city; Baltimore. I was going to actually make a full hit piece documentary about it on YouTube. I had two nights in a hotel downtown and freed up a ton of data on my phone. I picked some key locations that people insist are must-go if you're stupid enough to come here.
Most of them were dead, places I grew up going to, no suprise but they weren't just dead, they were abandoned, it was a wasteland. It felt like I was in the post-apocolyptic D.C from Fallout 3. The hatred I had was replaced with depression. That's when I came up with the term Terminal Nostalgia, it's what killed this city. Older people will talk about Baltimore like it's still the 70s, they'll talk about The Block like it's still an active red light district and not one diner, one strip club, and an army of junkies. They'll reccomend tourists visit bars that haven't been around in decades. That could just be chalked up to people thinking back to the "good ol' days" or local historians being historians, but it's actually having detrimental effect to the city. Modernatization is the only way this place would be worth living in, but now it feels like paying full price for second best. Actually second best if you're lucky. Because people acting like it's still its golden age, back when the "Charm" of Charm City wasn't ironic, and the "grit" wasn't literal, we're doomed to squalor, and Baltimorons revel in their squalor. They take delight pretending that it's "just like The Wire", laughing about their rat infestation, sucking down Natty Bohs and rooting for their mediocre sports teams while people who actually want to live in civilization can't get a place to shop or hang out that's not a 2 hour drive, or even half decent internet, medical care, entertainment. Don't think I exclude myself, I was like that too, I thought it was funny living in a John Waters film. Now seeing all the jokes about our crime and detritus are like watching special needs children smearing themselves with there own feces for attention.
I'll leave them to it. Everything I do now is to get away from this tumor. I know their worse places in the world, like maybe Mogadishu or Pyongyang, but the fact that I need to make that comparison says a lot. That includes this rambling little blog post. This is the last thing I'll say about how deplorable Baltimore is. Terminal Nostalgia should be something positive, and there's nothing harmful about trying to revive the old internet, I won't be holding back anyone's progress by revisiting Web1.0
I'm one month alcohol free today. I don't usually tell people because I don't need the congratulations and support people think that entails. It's not like I dragged myself out of rock bottom or I was living like Ben from Leaving Las Vegas. In my 20s that was the case, but now I can say I can quit whenever I want. The AA people would disagree, but I don't care one iota what that antiquated cult has say. I'm still considering getting a chip though.
So I got a free Fitbit as part of a research program I'm in, it's pretty neat. It'll help me count calories so I can hopefully gain weight for once in my life.
One thing that was irritating though is the "food plan" option doesn't support weight gain, which reminded me of how hard it was in the early 00s to get weight gain advice through the internet, all the results would be for weight loss and the ones for what you wanted would be body building forums and fitness blogs full of broscience. 4chan's /fit/ was the best option, and when 4chan is your best option you've got problems. Things are slightly better now, but not by much.
My current method is just make up my calorie deficit with protein shakes, I do not want to be a skeleton all my life
Better late than never, eh? Journaling has been good for me over the years but I never keep at it, hopefully this will keep me on track while I gain more HTML and CSS experience.
To do: