I was considering Thankfulness yesterday, and my thoughts spiraled into reflections on what I want to be doing with my life. My highest priority is providing a good home for my wife and her menagerie. Then there’s writing. And now I have the opportunity to build an airplane of my own, something to keep me sharp as I cross into the latter half of my 60’s. My health is good, and there are years ahead of me.

But what I’m doing now is checking Twitter and Bluesky, and watching clips on YouTube. I haven’t worked seriously on my current novel in weeks. I haven’t flown in over a year because I don’t trust rental airplanes.

John Scalzi recently compared the different social media platforms to the different tables in the high school cafeteria: the tech nerd table, the popular girl table, and so on. To me, the essence of that comparison is not the tables but the cafeteria itself: noisy, discordant, and in the end unsatisfying. For every delicious tidbit, there are steaming pots of limp pasta and overcooked kidney beans. For every creative soul, there are busloads of dreary cultists and aimless sheep. Social media is nice for keeping up with the creators I know, but it invariably exposes a horrifying panorama of human drama, foolishness, and suffering.

So it’s time to focus on being the person I want to be. I’ll post here as interesting things happen in my life and announce them on Bluesky, but I won’t be present otherwise. I won’t delete the Twitter account, but this will be the last thing I put there.

The last novel didn’t sell, but the next one might. Building my own airplane will give me something I can trust because I know it inside and out. And it’s time to go downstairs and help Meg with Thanksgiving.