January River

I’ve been getting back into social media a bit and that’s been fun…starting to see more posts about what people are doing in their lives, which was the whole point of Facebook et. al., IMO. There’s a little more “ad” content or stuff shared from content creators across all platforms, but it’s mostly entertaining so I don’t mind. I’m noticing that hateful/angry posts are significantly reduced as well, which is a nice change.

I mentioned that I’ve been playing around with some creative ideas, and I’m sharing one of them now:

January River

I want to make things. Art stuff. Music, fiction, painting, photography, poetry, spoken word, whatever. I want an outlet for my creativity. I want to create, not just consume. And I want people to consume my stuff and hopefully like it or find it worthwhile.

So that’s why I created January-River.net. It’s separate from this site because I wanted a little separation from who I am and what I do personally and professionally as Mark Dalius, and to maintain some privacy as I try to promote my stuff. I’m talking about it and linking to it from here because I’m hoping that people I know as Mark will go there and check it out. (I won’t be doing the reverse.)

I’ve also created social media accounts for January River on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. While a lot of what I’m creating is written, I’ve been posting readings as Reels or other video content. So if I friend or follow you as January River, or if you see posts from January, that’s why. It’s the same type of stuff you’d have seen created and promoted by Mark Dalius in the past, so I hope you won’t mind.

Also: no, the plan is not to create things that are controversial or potentially offensive. And no, it’s not a secret alias e.g. “Richard Bachman”. It’s a side project and a performing name/persona.

The site is set to update with new content every Tuesday right now. Please check it out and tell me what you think! If you do happen to enjoy the new content, also please share it around.

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Zhuzh

That’s apparently how you spell it, BTW.

I don’t put a lot of pictures of Olivia online. I don’t mind if people share photos that she’s in, and it’s not that I’ll never put stuff up or blur out her face but…

If you look at my posting history on Facebook (which is mostly where I’ve posted in the past because I’m OLD and a cusp Gen-X who sometimes identifies as more Millennial), you’ll see a significant decline in frequency that starts somewhere after the 2016 election and gets even steeper after Olivia was born. I think that matches up with a) the general trend towards more hostile online interactions on key forums that spiked up at that time, b) my desire not to go overboard on just posting pics of my kiddo as a sort of personal identity, and c) wanting to protect her privacy to a reasonable degree and give her some control over where her image has been/will be shared as she gets older. I’m not at all embarrassed to share things like me being silly, and I have enormous pride in who she is and what’s she’s accomplished so far in just becoming a functional human being. But I do want to temper it a bit.

For what it’s worth, I have definitely also noticed that I get much higher interest and engagement when I post a “cute kid picture” as opposed to me doing a thing or sharing an opinion. I’m reminded of the time I played some original music at a show, but started playing the opening riff from Sweet Home Alabama between songs and people rushed in to hear; people like what they like, and this is also why there are so many pictures of cats.

So yeah, gonna post this kind (or this “kid” as autocorrect just suggested) of stuff now and then but in moderation.

Also, going through my old FB posts reminded me that I did start working on that “Snaptional Stories” thing for a bit, and maybe there’s some stuff there worth exploring. Even just as a story prompt concept.

Well, anyway. Have a great day out there on the internet!

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content

I started writing a long-winded article about content production and the early internet and my life and then realized, the point of creating is to create. I’ve actually been doing a fair amount of that lately. Not quite ready to share yet. But, it feels good to make stuff.

I guess the next part is to put that stuff where people can see it. I’ve done that already, interestingly enough…not hard if you know where to look. I’ll add some more hints when I’m ready to do a little more promotion. For now, if you’ve found anything, I hope you like.

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cleanup

A few months back, I decided to retire this for good, and I put up a black page with some pictures of cats and a hidden link to homestarrunner.com. And a few days ago, I decided to put it back up.

I had a few interesting moments trying to reinstall WordPress, followed by briefly thinking that all the old content was gone because I hadn’t backed things up properly. Fortunately, I figured that part out, and managed to re-add the missing image from the header as well.

Also, as it turns out, when you abandon your blog on the Internet for a few years, the rats move in. So, after deleting ~3000 spam posts about gambling and a handful of comments, I think everything is sort of cleaned up.

I’m doing a lot of different stuff right now, and I’ll write about some of it here. In the meantime, if you happen to be here, welcome back, and enjoy all the old content. Most of it should work. I was surprised that I didn’t have more images here, but don’t be surprised if there are some broken links here and there.

Enjoy!

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Try, try again.

Be seeing you.

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It wouldn’t be the first time.

It probably won’t be the last…

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It might be time…

…to start again. Press reset.

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Does this still work?

Does anything, anymore…?

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Snakebite

I’m out of breath when I reach the top of my alone place, afternoon sun baking me and my mind and the bike under the thin, useless shadows of the power lines and the towers; I want one last run–like a cop on the day before retirement, thumbing my nose at fate–the starter gun or whistle or whatever (I’ve only seen races in the bike magazines I read at the library) goes off above the imaginary crowd and I’m off too, big gear, bigger gear, biggest gear, toes tied to pedals, bombing to the bottom, hard metal frame clanging with every skittering rock, every empty puddle, brake, pedal, brake, pedal, brake and don’t break the bike, speedometer reading 22, 23.5 (light-speed, almost), into the final straightaway with the little bumps that I love to bunny-hop so much, just like in the magazines, first one, beautiful air—can you all see me flying?—second one even higher, then slowing, 19.5, then—why not?—one more, and I’m landing but something is wrong, the wheel turns funny and I’m sideways, and I know, I know that my tires are too low, too soft, and the ground and the rim pinch and puncture the tube as OH SHI not even time to swear I slam into the ground and slide, slide, and this is going to hurt, and I stop, stop, clutch my elbow, wrap it in my shirt, too afraid to see the tattered flesh and the tiny rocks I’ll have to dig out of my skin; home, please, I need somebody real to take me home, because I can’t patch a snakebite flat out here, and it’s three miles to walk.

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My Idea

There’s a story we like to tell about my middle brother, Matt, and the fact that he sometimes doesn’t like to do things if they weren’t his idea.

I’ll probably screw up the specifics, but it revolves around the fact that Harrisburg, PA, was the nearest authentic city to where we grew up. Sure, we had a shopping mall and McDonalds and KMart back home, but in Harrisburg, there were strange and unusual delights: a gargantuan store with aisles and aisles of GI Joes and Transformers and Nintendo games. Another that sold nothing but office supplies. And nearby, a restaurant that dealt in a new variety of cuisine called “Mexican”.

And it was nearly an hour drive, down a two-lane highway with a tendency for traffic to get backed up somewhere around Duncannon, where somebody had built a small scale model of the Statue of Liberty on a rock in the middle of the Susquehanna. Harrisburg trips were reserved for Christmas shopping and, rarely, birthdays, so, despite the arduous length, the fact that we’d usually come home with at least a small new toy made it worthwhile.

Dad probably went down there the most, given that his job occasionally made it necessary, but more so, there were electronics and stereo equipment stores in Harrisburg that had no equivalent in our backyard. On one of these trips, Dad asked Matt if he wanted to come along. There would definitely be lunch as part of the deal, and probably a visit to the hallowed halls of Toys-R-Us, and a pretty solid opportunity for the acquisition of a new ninja turtle.

Matt’s thing has always been that he likes to be in control. If he had come up with the plan–if he had said, “Hey Dad, I was thinking it would be fun for us to go to Harrisburg today, and you can look at computer stuff and then we can go look at toys”–it would have been fine. But it wasn’t, so he dug in his heels. He had plans. He was going to play in the sandbox, maybe ride his bike. He had a schedule. He had things to do and this impromptu trip was not on the timeline.

Dad sweetened the deal by promising a toy, bribing him outright, but that only made him more obstinate. There were tears, there was yelling. In the end, one person went to Harrisburg alone and the other went to his room, where he would have to make do without Sewer Swimmin’ Donatello.

I was at the periodontist yesterday, having a tooth removed–long story, but let me just say that if you grind your teeth or have a tendency to carry stress in your jaw, please, please get a grind guard before you end up cracking a perfectly good cavity-free molar right in half, just from repeated clenching over the years. And having the tooth out got me thinking about control, both real and perceived.

I made a point, before starting the procedure, to crack a few jokes with the doctor and his assistant…everything from complimenting the periodontist on his excellent hand-washing habits (there is, or was, a real problem with basic hand sanitizing amongst surgeons, believe it or not), to asking him not to freak me out by telling me the gory details of exactly what it was he was doing. “If I were fixing your computer, I’d probably skip the play-by-play,” I said. Some of it was the Atavan talking, but some of it was legitimate nervousness over the fact that I was about to put this other person very much in control of my life; if he wanted to do something nefarious, I’d be none the wiser, and certainly in no position to protest.

So I joked. When it came time to fill the gap in my jaw with processed bovine material–cow bone–I wondered aloud if I’d get “cow powers” such as cud-chewing, multiple stomachs, and the ability to sleep in fields. “I can fight crime as Moo-Man,” I said. They laughed.

Mentally, I put us on the same level. We weren’t, of course–he’s an accomplished medical professional with far more skill and experience than I. But I needed to feel, in some way, that I wasn’t surrendering to somebody else, wasn’t giving up control. Like the lion allowing the mouse to extract the thorn from his paw, I wasn’t abdicating my throne, but merely taking a brief leave of absence.

I do the same thing with my primary doctor. Sometimes, I do it with coworkers. It can have mixed results with superiors…not everybody wants you to be on the same level as them. In some situations, I have to keep that sense of control very much internalized.

On days when I don’t feel like going to work, I convince myself that I’m just going to swing by for a few hours, take care of a few things, then head home early. At the gym, I’m just going to bang out a quick run. I’m not going to make a complicated meal, but I might as well start the potatoes cooking, maybe preheat the oven, and I’ll make the call on fresh or frozen burritos a little later. In my own time. More often than not, the result is that I work a full day and then some, or get in a reasonable workout, or complete a substantial meal.

Ultimately, of course, I do have control…I don’t have to do any of those things, although I’ll reap the consequences if I don’t. The same went for my teeth. At the beginning of the appointment, the doctor asked if there was anything that would make me more comfortable with the upcoming procedure. “To not go through with it at all,” I joked. He laughed, said we could reschedule. “No, let’s just get it over with,” I said.

My idea.

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