For me, public reading is the act of cataloging the things I’m reading, sometimes so I can find said things later and sometimes for the sake of those times once every year or two when I page back through posts to get a personal glimpse of what’s been going on, how I’ve changed or my thoughts have changed, ETC.

I think performance can come into play, (I’ve read x number of books or x number of words, for example), but it doesn’t have to.

Keeping track of these kinds of statistics can serve ths personal journey retracing purpose, or as documentation of competition.

I think that in order for performance to come into play, there have to be people to watch/witness the performance, and that brings up whether or not personal websites serve the same purpose as your typical social media profile.

For me, my personal website serves the purpose of a social media profile only to the extent that, if someone asks why I’m not posting on Twitter, Facebook, ETC. because they’re interested in what’s going on in my life, at which point I’ll direct them to my website.

But other than that, if people follow, that’s great, and I enjoy the bits of conversation that can happen as a result of the following. If they don’t, that’s fine too, and I’ll keep posting/logging things.

Someone needs to tell Stephen King that you cannot create lovable creatures like Billy Bumblers, spend several books making us fall in love with them, and then in the last book of the series have the demonic baby you created in the book before that eat one alive.

The Dark Tower series will definitely end up on the reread pile but this is definitely the absolutely weirdest most screwed up fantasy series I’ve ever read.

I know, it’s Stephen King, we should expect screwed up, but still.

I think education of others by people with disabilities is important. Not that we’re obligated to do it, but it’s more productive a lot of the time.

One thing we don’t seem to be discussing though, (and I hope we can), is burn-out among people with disabilities with regard to being educators.

People who aren’t expected to do their jobs every day of every minute of their lives, and they still suffer from burn-out.

I’m not saying education is our job, but lots of times it feels like one, and so I think maybe we should look at helping each other recognize burn-out, recognize when to take a break, and more importantly learn how to give ourselves permission to take a break, because these don’t seem to be things we’re talking about when it comes to advocacy and education.

And I suspect needing a break is where a lot of us are at.

The fight seems endless, and it’s hard to see impact when you’re in the thick of it.

Just something to consider.

The dictionary is caving and listing “literally” as meaning “actually”, “in effect” or “virtually” along with the original meaning and I completely resent this caving.

Militant wing of Toastmasters, rise up! (don’t tell me there isn’t a militant wing of Toastmasters I know there is you’all are just hiding it).

These days I don’t usually drink coffee past noon, but I’m going to make an exception for today because it’s cold outside.

Plus, the embargo has finally been lifted on my favorite peppermint mocha creamer and I haven’t had any of that today.

Right now I’m incredibly thankful for the radiator heat, and at the same time I think I totally get why people up here will open all the windows once it reaches 50. Compared to today, 50/55 was absolutely balmy yesterday.

We got our first flurries last Thursday and we’re supposed to get more today. That counts as the first technical snow if not the first impactful one.

And yeah, I can’t wait for the first one that sticks because there will be pictures of snowmen this year. I haven’t made a snowman since I was a kid and I’m really looking forward to it.

Current status: Hangry.

Really, really hangry.

We are having tacos, and they will be in my belly, but I’m thinking I might end up literally inhaling them because I am that hangry.

We started a new book, and this is book 149 of 150 in my challenge. After this one I’m not going to up the challenge any more this year so we can read slower or read less, mostly so we can read slower though.

I’ll talk more about books when I’m no longer hangry.

I agree with a lot of the posts I’m seeing from the Unfiltered Blind Tweets twitter account.

That said, I can’t get behind a single individual claiming to represent the views of every blind person.

It’s no different than the NFB claiming to be the voice of the nations blind, or anti-NFB people claiming to represent the views of blind people in opposition to the NFB.

And you’d never see this on Jewish Twitter, for example.

Any single individual claiming to post unfiltered Jewish tweets would be ratioed with a quickness because we’re all comfortable with the fact that there are a range of opinions and views on just about every issue, and we have a serious problem when someone else, (especially someone outside the community), attempts to speak for us or divide the community into good and bad Jews based on expressed opinions or actions of particular Jews.

See, for example, the frequent “What about Israel!” replies from the left any time a high-profile Jew expresses an opinion about any political subject, or Donald Trump’s label of “very disloyal” for Jews who don’t vote for him, which happens to be most of us.

We should be careful about who we allow to represent us, and the best representative we can have is ourselves, not someone whose primary goal is to acquire clicks, whether that’s the NFB, anti-NFB, or someone who’s using their voice to talk about what may be controversial topics they view as important.

OK, very late MicroMonday recommendation, but my friend Monica Plumlipstick has joined Micro.blog and she likes cooking and books and all sorts of fun things so give here a followo if you like meeting new people.

She’s made all the posts I’ve been putting out on Facebook regarding Micro.blog worth it.

Welcome Monica!