Succubus Substack Engaged

We’re going through some life changes again. In an effort to save more money, to preserve my sanity, and salvage what’s left of my eyesight, I’m scaling back my internet usage. I’ve been trying to do this for a few years, but old habits die hard.

I don’t want to have an internet connection at home anymore. I don’t like what it does to me. It turns me into a zombie-like addict. There are so many other things I should be doing instead. Also, I’d like to have that extra money every month. In spite of our American president saying that “We’re doing better than ever before!” things just keep getting more expensive. Ground beef was $2.50 per pound six years ago. Now, it’s $5. (And that’s CHEAP compared to the rest of the country.) Every town keeps jacking up property taxes. Utilities are more costly. None of these prices are ever going to come down, so something’s gotta give eventually.

That leads me to web hosting: I don’t want to maintain a website and forum anymore. It’s too much bother and too costly for what I get out of it. I kinda dread maintaining the thing, and that’ll be made even worse with my circumstances going forward. I can’t stay perpetually connected like I used to be.

So, here we are at Substack. Honestly, I didn’t expect to be here, but it’s already better than Wordpress. I can post for free. There doesn’t appear to be any obnoxious ads. People can properly subscribe to an email newsletter if they want. I like the formatting. It’s easy on my eyes. There are a myriad of ways to access the content, making it accessible for mobile users. Finally, I don’t have to mitigate Chinese bot swarms attacking the website every day.

Yes, I could get very comfortable here. I can be content to let the publishing whales subsidize my little niche.

I’m most sorry that I can’t continue to maintain the forum. There were a few people on there who seemed to enjoy using it. Hopefully, they can find themselves over here. It appears that Substack has a “chat” feature, which seemingly operates like a forum. Perhaps that’ll be good enough? Better than blog comments, anyway.

Catherine seems appreciative of the fact that I’m giving the computer less and less attention. She has no desire to take things away from me that I actually enjoy, but if there’s something genuinely hurting me - like an addiction - she does express tender concern over me.

I have a funny dream to share: I have this recurring dream where I’m constantly trying to leave my University. On this occasion, I was staying just one more night in the dormitories. Catherine was in the room, attempting to get a reaction out of me, or perhaps seeking intimacy, but I blew her off and went to sleep. Not long after, I woke up to find that my succubus had taken off. In her place, on the bed across from me was… my bicycle: All the steel tubing that WAS my bicycle, neatly stacked and freshly cut with what seemed to be a reciprocating saw of some kind. “The crazy bitch cut up my bike!”

I guess she doesn’t like me riding my bicycle in traffic very much.

But I like it! Come on! Look how cool I am, all decked out, riding my faithful steed through the snow.

Yeah, I guess it is dangerous. She’s probably bailed my blind-ass out on more than one occasion. Time to pull back and refocus on what’s important.

So, yeah. I’m going to let the meter run out on my .com domain, and then the hosting proper will run out next year. The old Wordpress site will be closed down sometime in November - plenty of time for those who want to get anything downloaded off of the forum. Maybe we could transplant those conversations over here? I’ll have to experiment. Either way, it’s going to be a lot less hell for me to deal with, finagling and squinting over a laptop down at the library. With Substack, I can just log on, copy, paste, post, and be done. We’ll let the super-nerds handle all the back-end chaos.