EverydayMe and WriterMe

I'm having an existential crisis. The imp in me wants to say it's all Mastodon's fault, but that would not be true. Mastodon is, however, where it's being played out.

Once upon a time, many, many years ago, I joined Mastodon. Well, nearly ten to be exact, well before the Musk pogroms drove people off X. Back then there were academics, gender fluid gamers and me. It was a sweet space, kind and gently coloured, and I quite miss it.

But that's nothing to do with my current situation. As Mastodon grew, its reach grew and my following numbers grew. Not being an influencer of any kind, I'm quite happy that I follow around twice as many people as follow me. And I've expanded my interest to the usual - politics, environment, FOSS, security and of course a smattering of SpursFanMisery. In other words EverydayMe, most of my real life.

About three years ago, as I was beginning, in my usual desultory fashion, to start to write again, properly, I opened another account on Bookstodon, for WriterMe. I'm connecting with other writers, sort of, and responding to prompts on there - I find prompts, wich come from a variety of sources, very effective at firing up the creative juices.

So I've kept WriterMe separate from EverydayMe for quite a while, and this has served me well in physical and online life. Well, sort of - quite a few WriterMe things turn up in EverydayMe Mastodon, as they do in physical life.

And recently WriterMe has become a more distinct and present part of EverydayMe. This is really recent. When I turned 65 and was able to give up having to work for money, I thought, "At last, I can write!" Older me now knows that realistically you're looking at 8 years after retirement to disentangle from the obligations of life before that actually happens. (I'm sure that people with more willpower than me would have managed it sooner.)

But now WriterMe is much more present than I have been in the past, so WriterMe and EverydayMe are much more intertwined. In fact, there is #Teaser A Book coming out soon. #MoreFollows about that at the appropriate time.

So I'm thinking would I amalgamate WriterMe and EverydayMe on Mastodon so I can look at everything all in one place. I started by thinking yes, that's a good idea, because I don't look at my WriterMe Mastodon instance nearly often enough.

But then a part of me thinks actually it's nice still having a safe place where I can look at writing stuff without my timeline being intruded upon by TrumpICEPutinClimateChangeStarmerDisaster. And of course the eternal angst of being a Spurs supporter.

So I'm going to fudge it. Leave it as it is at the moment. Perhaps exercise the discipline to make myself look at WriterMe Mastodon more often. But discipline has been a feature largely lacking from my make up for the first 73 years of my life, so the chance of it appearing now are quite minimal. On the other hand people of an advanced ago do take up things like weightlifting, so maybe there are possibilities for me too.