First Post!

I first started blogging when I was a teenager. I don't want to talk too much about how long ago that was because the amount of time that has passed since then is alarming.

I stopped in my 20s because I changed. I decided that didn't really like talking about my personal life online anymore. It felt self absorbed and needless and I realized that everything I had to say had been said by someone else already.

I am now in my late 30s and my opinion hasn't exactly changed, but recently I've sort of been feeling the need to write a few things down, maybe connect with likeminded people, and just not overthink it too much.

The good news is that one of the domains I used for blogging for quite some time - lifeasrose.ca - has been sitting around for many years collecting dust, but still under the ownership of yours truly. Continuity!

I still want to keep my personal life reasonably private, but I think just ramblings about hobbies and interests and whatever other topic comes to mind is fair game.

With the rise of social media, bloggers thinned out a fair bit.

With the rise of AI, human-created content has also begun to get displaced.

The internet is starting to feel a bit like it is sliding into dead internet territory. (also AHH I did not know Shrimp Jesus was a thing until I just visited that wikipedia page. Cannot unsee.)

I can promise what I write will be 100% raw unpolished human thoughts. I won't even ask an LLM to help me clean it up. Not that I'm against LLMs as a tool! I even used chatgpt to help generate some images for this blog.

But text wise, I'd like this blog to be 100% authentic and that means it has to come from my own fingertips.

Topics you can expect:

• Tech stuff. I've been a software developer for the last forever years so I'll probably talk about this stuff sometimes. It's something I'm passionate about in general, not just as a job. But also I get a bit burnt out on it since I do it all day for work so I'm not sure how much I'll write about it. We'll see!
• Online Payments. This is something I have become very interested in within the last 5 years because I do it for work and I'm a freak who gets excited about my job apparently. But similar to tech, I may be a bit tired of it being my day-to-day to write about it TOO often.
• Dogs and dog training. I have been a total dog nut since I was a kid and took a huge interest in dog training as a hobby, as well as various dog sports in my 20's with my beloved Lab-Rottie cross, Betsy. This hobby has taken a bit of a backseat in the last few years thanks to a growing family that has taken up a lot of my personal time, but it's still a passion that I want to return to.
• Books. I like to read, maybe I'll talk about books sometimes.
• Gardening. I suck at gardening but I like the idea of it and I have been doing a bit of dabbling recently.
• Sustainability, environmental stuff. I have a lot of room to grow in terms of reducing my carbon footprint (... does that mean I have room to shrink?) but I'd like to share my journey as I grow/shrink.
• Local things. I live on Vancouver Island. I'll probably write about life here sometimes.
• ??? Misc stuff that I don't even know yet.

I'm mostly left leaning. Maybe entirely left leaning... I try to be non judgmental and open minded and kind and all that good stuff. I'm definitely not perfect, I definitely change my mind sometimes, I will probably regret some posts and feel embarrassed that I wrote them.

If this sounds like it might interest you then great! I'll try to tag the various topics with specific category tags so you can focus in on the topics you like best.

If this sounds like a huge snorefest, no worries, I'd probably feel the same way if I were you. Feel free to close the browser tab, move on from this moment, and live your best life (also why are you still reading this if that's how you feel, I thought you would have closed the tab 12 paragraphs ago)

See you soon!