Forgive me while I get meta for a moment. I’ve been blogging at the Good Typist every week for at least eighteen years now, and over the last several months, I started to feel blah and uninspired. Changes to Blogspot made formatting frustrating, and I needed to refresh and update the look of the blog, but I didn’t want to contend with all of the headaches and fraught decisions involved in that. I didn’t want to phone it in, but I also didn’t have the mental energy to give it the makeover it so desperately needed. I have been considering for a long time moving to Substack, although at first, I thought it was more for the exiled intellectual dark web set than a humble blogger like me, who merely natters on about the minutiae of everyday life. Yesterday, I made the move and I cannot believe how fast and easy it was. Eighteen year’s worth of posts downloaded in under a minute, and they carried over very nicely! I’m definitely going to be in a learning curve with Substack for a while, but so far, I love it. It’s clean and simple and very easy to work with. It’s also very supportive and community orientated. I feel optimistic and reenergized.
Oddly enough, one of my offices at work recently moved, which was a huge, epic deal involving a special build-out and more than a little wailing and gnashing of teeth on my part over losing my old, venerated office where the program I run had been housed for over 30 years. But as much angst as I had about it, I have to admit, the new office is much better. It’s the right size for what the program has become post-COVID, it’s light and clean with beautiful new floors, and its crown jewel is a huge picture window with a gorgeous view—a Godsend after years ensconced in a windowless room I deemed “The Bat Cave.” Change is good.
I was strangely relieved and perhaps falsely flattered this week to be informed by Lyft that I earned the achievement of “5-Star Passenger.” Lyft became a sudden and prolific phenomenon in my life about a year and half ago with a major change to my job structure, and I was unsure about the proper etiquette for a long time. I kept my headphones off because I wasn’t sure if it was rude to wear headphones in a Lyft, I didn’t know how much small talk to make with the drivers, and I was always worried I would close the door too hard and it would be interpreted as slamming. Now I’m an old hat and slide confidently into the backseat, headphones firmly in place, and exchange the minimal greeting with the driver as my default. However, there are occasionally chatty drivers who like to talk, and I always engage with them. It makes the time go faster and I invariably learn something interesting, if not totally fascinating. Maybe the Chatty-Cathys pushed up my rating. Either way, I’m happy to hear that I’m not considered a door-slammer, a troublemaker, or a rude-nik.
Ya’ll know how I adore my farming simulators. I played Stardew Valley in the evenings after work for two years straight during COVID and it saved my mental and emotional health, but I have played it to death, and while I will go back to it someday, for now it rests in Good Typist gaming purgatory, along with No Place Like Home. I was on the hunt for a new farming sim and tried a few that didn’t work out before landing on Farm Together. I had been trying to avoid Farm Together because I thought it was only multi-player and I didn’t want to play with others. I am well past my World of Warcraft guild days, and I just wanted to be left alone to grow cucumbers and raise cute cartoon goats in peace. But it turns out there is a solo option. You can lock your farm to visitors and it doesn’t require friends to play. I played this way for a while before tentatively opening my farm to other players, and I almost had a heart attack when another player actually showed up on my farm. But I quickly learned the advantage of opening to players, mainly, that they do stuff for you and teach you things. This visitor rapidly built me a lavender garden, fixed my cow configuration for faster milk production, and advised me as to the value of hiring farmhands. Now I keep my farm open all of the time and I’m sad if a day goes by when no one visits. The bottom line is, I have another farming sim to bore you all about for the next six months. Lucky readers!
Here’s all the fun you’re missing out by not playing Farm Together and friending me:
You're welcome.
I really enjoyed it!