My wife bought me a workbook for my birthday to overcome procrastination and increase productivity.

First exercise was to think about the prompt for 5 minutes before responding to it. 5 minutes later I had forgotten all about the prompt.

I should probably have started with the book about adult ADHD...

"How it started" and "How it's going". Lol.

It's almost like an AI generated image where the sprinkles are reminiscent of "maple leaves"... 😂

I accepted a promotion to the Manager of IT Security for the company I work for a week ago this past Friday.

I was and am happy about it, I feel that it's a milestone career move and I wanted to share the announcement with my professional peers but when I thought about it for a half of a second, I didn't want to post it on LinkedIn.

As a compliance analyst, I was targeted enough by sales folks who mine LinkedIn for leads and I really didn't want to trigger more of it, but it's got me questioning if having a LinkedIn profile is even worth it any more.

For over two years, I've been off of mainstream social media. I've stripped all the posts and pictures from Facebook, I've downloaded all of my Twitter posts and closed my account. I've never used Instagram and Tik Tok was a read only experience for a month or so before it got popular. It was one of the best decisions of my adult life. I don't miss it, I don't miss the negativity or the emotions it created and I'm quite comfortable communicating with the much smaller group of people who have maintained contact outside of those platforms. I have fewer social interactions, but every single one of them is far more meaningful and real than anything I ever experienced on Twitter.

Circling back to LinkedIn, I've had some professional interactions that have held value, I've maintained contact with some folks who would have normally drifted off to the ether, but I'm left with the question of whether the value I get from LinkedIn is worth the hassle of the cold calls and the sales pitches.

I understand that the families of sales folks need to eat too, but I'm of the mindset that I generally don't want to be a member of a group that would have as one, if you're reaching out to me to sell me something, I really don't think I'm interested in it. If I'm interested in something, I'm going to call you about it.

Maybe I'm just too old and set in my ways to think about things like this differently, and maybe I'm a holdover from the 90s, when it took effort to build a relationship with someone and that relationship was how you decided where to spend your budget. Either way, sometimes I just want to get my thoughts out of my brain and into my eyes for a change of view...

"High taxes, Liberalism, Socialism, Progressivism, Wokeness and DEI" shouts old man at clouds.

American buys Canadian company, then complains that Canadians aren't Americans...

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1kfmaio/gamestop_canada_has_been_sold_to_canadian/

#elbowsup

I don't like to go online and put this kind of negativity out there, but sometimes it is so hard to remember that there *are* good things that have happened interspersed with all of the bullshit that life sends your way.

In the past three weeks,
- I've had to put $4000 worth of work into the Jeep (that much I had planned for, it's just not a small chunk of change)
- my manager retired so I've taken on his workload at work on top of my own.
- the water heater sprung a slow leak and needed replaced but we had to go for over a week without hot water.
- I tripped over the bigger dog while chasing after the other one and fractured one wrist while causing nerve damage in the other making both hands mostly useless
- separately, my wife fell and broke her elbow ( copycat, I know, right?)

To top it off, we just got around to doing the first load of laundry since the water heater was replaced and it turns out that the install guys pulled the drain hose for the washer out of the drain pipe it's supposed to be in and never put it back in. So when the washer drained, it drained on the floor instead of into the drain pipe so we've spent the last two hours cleaning up the water in the basement, and I'm certain that the installers aren't going to do anything about the water that soaked into the flooring in my bedroom.

It's just been a bit of a month...