Been a Bit

 I'll keep this short.  I became an official Californian in August of '25.  I've been in sort of limbo and not really putting any roots down because I thought I'd be off to somewhere else sometime soon.  

I got a job, start soon.  Great opportunity that will be challenging.  Right on time as I was getting depleted on all fronts.  

I don't know what is going to happen, with the world, my son, with me, with my aging parents, my job.  Biblically I'm counselled to not borrow worry from the future because today has enough trouble of it's own.

If you knew me you would know that would be tough for me, to just stay focused on the immediate, especially if variables are at play that aren't set that will affect future courses of action dramatically.

I'll say this, during this time "off the line" I've had a lot of time to process things.  I think it is the last bit of the old life passing.  I'll always be sad about things that happened over the last really 12 years.  I think this really is a new chapter starting.  And reasons to look back, beyond for reference points, will be few.

This will always make me sad.  There are memories of my past life in Arizona, being married, the places I lived, the people I knew...there are aspects of all that I miss.  I guess it should be expected, if things are meaningful there should be loss felt when they are gone.  

I'm in a good space now.  I think I will let the old life lay and move on.  I think I mainly miss my pets, I'm down to one faithful dog.  I miss what could have been.  But I understand there is not could have now. 

So onward and upward, once again.  This time it is different.  I can feel it.  God has been working.  I love Arizona, the desert, the thunderstorms.  Always was a magical place for me.  Always I think I will consider Arizona my home state.  Visiting Northern Arizona though, it has a lot of ghost.  I don't need them around.  Phoenix is too hot. Coast too expensive.  Midwest too close to my ex and too far from my ailing parents.  Closer to my son but he is going to be with me most of the year soon.  I go crazy plugging variables. Ponders for another day.  And I think God with this new job is going to solve a lot of questions for me about my future.  

Pray for me.  I think I got an idea what the next six months is going to look like.  Beyond that, not even worth thinking about with all the variables at play globally and with the people I know.  It will get sorted.  Until then I gotta a job, a dog, and beaches to walk, around the people I care about the most (though I still have good friends in AZ I miss).  

Let's Go!

AI Art Space Rant

Minor rant:

I reengaged on Twitter/X mainly to follow trends in AI/AI art.  I've seen a lot of people come and go in that space.  

The ones with the biggest followings ARE NOT necessarily the best.  They seem to be able to master the art of self promotion better than others.  

Most aren't bad, just not necessarily producing top tier stuff.  Yet they remain while others have faded. 

And I smile as I say creatively above, as it is prompt mastery, which is a real skill, but let's face it kids the AI models are the real creatives.  You just contract them with an outline of your creative vision but the AI does the work.  You are a prompter at some level of competence, and yes there is an art to that as well, but not even near on a scale of what the models do creatively for you.

And yes, there are some ai artist that are very creative and have big followings as they should.  But many...

1) Learned a few prompts, and use those over and over and over again just altering the scene slightly.  They aren't pushing out their knowledge of prompting and the particular quirks with different models as much as they could, instead just sticking to what has worked for them and reiterating.  That is a choice and it is fine, but I like to see creative explorations of a variety of topics/models/styles.  

2) Form little groups that self congratulate each other continually.

These first too just bum me out slightly, but this third group saddens me.

3) The "look what I can do" group, that actually does produce some amazing stuff (mainly video at this point).  But then you analyze what they did, and they might have burned through 100 bucks or more on credits to get there.  This is a divergence between those tools available to peeps that have big bucks and lesser tools available to those who don't.  It is a natural thing that happens in every human endeavor pretty much.  I don't know why it bums me out in the AI space more than other spaces...maybe jealousy?  

As someone who believes in meritocracy it is a little frustrating to peeps who do bad arse stuff fade or remain less seen. 

I'm not here to try to limit what people do.  I've pushed a lot of slop in my time, not trying to limit others from doing the same (even though our definitions of slop might vary).  I just worry more and more peeps with good stuff getting lost in the noise and those who have circled their wagons in little echo chambers blowing smoke of how good they are to each other.   

Just Another Day

 To be honest, I forget the day I was married.  I know the date, just forget the year.  It was either '07 or '08.  I don't put too much thought into it.  Now, because it ended, it is just another day. 

 

Momentum over Heroics. God help me Please!

Since May I've kind of been fooling around unemployed.  I have my son for the summers so I have spent time with him and lived with relatives to save money.  I proclaimed I would start a business, but...sigh...I've been just f'ing around, sending a few resumes out, market isn't as bad as I thought but haven't sealed the deal on anything.  

Well, the fooling around part starting to get bad.  Relatives clashing with my son, me starting to get a little depressed at me not doing much, I even sort of checked out.  Money starting to be a problem, ex doing crazy stuff that affects me and my son.  The mini paradise vacation (my relatives live in a nice area, on many foggy days I have whole beaches mostly to myself) is starting to sour.  I'm also a little bummed that I was 15 minutes ahead of most on LLMS/AI two years ago, but that advantage is long gone, with most techies up to speed on AI now, so my selling point is mostly gone.

So, time to ramp up the engines.  No big promises to myself other than to just point at being productive and getting something going.  Limited metrics, just momentum starting now.

Momentum over phantom promises of doing great things right away.  Momentum over Heroics. Just being consistent, building small things, proofs of concepts, hello worlds with new tech, and I think excitement and catching a concept that I like and expanding upon is what will happen.  

I also need to keep in mind that proven 100% God got me the last few jobs I had.  Sure, I had the skills and experience to get me in the door, but no more than other people.  He can do that again, if He choses.  God is probably just waiting for me...nudging me with both good and bad things, to get serious, so He can show me what He will do next.

If it is just me, I'll flounder, most likely just not do much.  But God is in the equation, if I let Him.

Let's see what God does.  I also have to remember though that I have been a real stinker, and God is under no obligation to do anything for me.  But ultimately, Jesus is my only hope.  Always has been, always will be.  So I hope Jesus does something, as without Him, I will go into the spiral I absolutely fear is coming.  Please intervene on my behalf again Jesus, so I can provide for my son, not feel completely worthless in this world, and maybe have a little fun here and there during the trials that will never go away.  

Lot of Emotion

 A lot of emotions running through me.

• Back where I grew up, I didn't leave on a high note, it some ways it seems like I'm just picking up where I left off, only it is better.
• Starting to think a bit about what I left behind in AZ.  I realize I was not happy there, but not sure where I'm supposed to go next.
• I think my soul is moving on from the past few years finally, but there is a tiny bit of resistance still, and deep sadness that surfaces every now and then.  I think this is more final processing though, giving up what was as what comes is about to emerge.
• I'm not stressed too much about jobs and money, which is strange.  

Disengaged

So, I thought I was in much better shape mentally than I thought.  Temp move is complete, now I am quasi homeless.  All my stuff is gone except the bare minimum (no real loss).  I'm living with some relatives, stock pilling money until my job goes away in a few weeks.  My son is with me, and his Mom still is having continual problems so he will be with me for awhile, which is great in most ways as I love him and would rather have him with me.

But something unexpected happened.  I sort of checked out.  I went into the digital ether, and kind of quit doing everything I should be doing.  My job, after letting me know I was weighed in the scales and found not good enough to continue, now means nothing to me other than just a trudge that I must get through and a paycheck I need.  I have ZERO desire to be there anymore.  To me it represents the past.  A lot of stress about what will come next, and I just sort of went into my room, shut the door, and goofed off online in very negative and unproductive ways when I have mountains of other things I could be doing.

Well, as much as I would LOVE to keep doing that, I can't.  So today I'm going to attempt to reengage with live.  My priorities now will be.

1. Jesus, getting right with God whom I let down, yet again.
2. My physical health.  I'm not good to anyone if I'm a mess and can't function.
3. My son.  I need to be there for him and not let my relatives fill that gap, as nice as it is.
4. My mental health.  I really hate that term, mental health, but I realize now that I'm suffering from burnout or demoralization, whatever you want to call it.  I'm in a very nice area now, even if I an jobless and broke in the near term, there are many things I can do being in nature and with my son, that can uplift my morale.  It will be important because I think this transitional phase between jobs, and possibly careers (more on that later) will have rough spots.
5. Family. One of the reasons I am with my relatives is they are old, and will not always be around.  I came here to spend time with the people I love, not run and hide from life in the digital haze.  So I need to prioritize spending time with them and engaging with them.
6. Work and finding the new gig.  Basically my attitude at work right now is phuck 'em.  This is wrong, as they are nice people, gave me a great opportunity, and because of my actions in my control, and some that were not, I didn't perform as well as I could.  They are making a logical decision to not try to fight to keep me around.  Maybe if I would have rallied when I heard I could have changed minds, but...I got other things going on, and I didn't.  The reality of it is this job is burnt and the bridge mostly destroyed.  So I will prioritize it last.  In its stead I will be doing soul searching about what I need to do the fight burnout, upskill, ponder side gigs to keep me going, and finding the next big gig if the side gigs don't sustain me.  
7. Continued minimalism and downsizing.  I still have a lot of tedious stuff to sort through, so I need to do that and slim things down to the absolute minimum.  The plan is still to expat, but I'm praying about that and we will see... Either way, I don't need a bunch of junk.  I have lost all my worldly wealth, so while I remain in this world I will be somewhat of a vagabond. I'm ok with that at his point.

Those are pretty much my marching orders, in priority.  Let's see what the next phase, after the smoke clears, brings.

Edit: Some additional guidelines to help me.

1. Set aside 8.5 hours for sleep.  This is life-ing 101, but for me this is hard.  Because of bad time management, I often skimp on sleep, which causes existing health concerns to get worse.  
2. Get my butt to church.  Does this do anything magical?  No.  I know the Bible says "No not forsake the gathering of the assembly" so it is an obedience issue.  Obedience is rewarded, probably by meeting fellow Christians that you can help encourage and they can help encourage you, assuming everything in the church is working right.
3. Stop eating so freaking much.  I have a few over eating issues.  1) I was pretty athletic in the past, and burned lots of calories in the day.  Now I'm a couch potato mostly, but I still eat like I'm an athlete. 2) When my sleep schedule is messed up, I eat for extra energy but the calories just go to fat. 
4. Learn how to manage time without distractions.  I'm essentially ADD at this point.  Sure, I could medicate, but I think it would be better to train my mind how to handle distractions without medication.  The key is to break things down to the smallest possible task possible, only focus on the next task in the queue, and learning how to stay in the queue and not wander out of it.
5. Walk, walk, walk.  Consider light weight lifting.
6. Upscale and build.  At least 10 hours a week starting next week, scaling to 30 if I'm unemployed for awhile.  

Moving On

 Pretty tripping being homeless (I over dramatize, I have a temp home).  I am out of my apartment and living almost rent free for up to six months to sock pile $ for whatever is coming next.

I've been so busy I haven't had time to really process these changes.  I got rid of about 90% of my stuff and plan to get rid of more so I will be down to less than 5% of my things.  In a digital world this is less of a big deal than in previous generations but still weird.  I like it though, tired of moving a bunch of stuff around since it seems I tend to move a lot.

Today is a big day for me at work.  It could be a disaster.  If it is, ah well.  I learned a bit.  Most importantly I learned what I don't know, which is just as important sometimes as knowing what you don't know and then focusing on learning that.  Sometimes there is whole swaths of knowledge that you never even knew that you were ignorant of.

God is at work doing things in my life and my immediate family's life.  Whatever bumps along the way, including moves, job losses, possible health issues, God has an eternal (and temporal) plan in store for me. I just gotta keep going, even when I fall, keep pushing ahead. 

"Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you."
(1 Peter 5:7)