An Intermission, Confession, and Announcement All Wrapped Up in One

The confession:

I was using an SEO plugin (a good one, so I’m not going to name names here, it wasn’t their fault) and it made me hate writing posts. If I wrote a short story or poem, it was “too short”, so it would nag me to make my posts longer. When I used non-standard English, it would “correct me” even when it was intentional. When I used academic language or my usual long, convoluted ADHD sentences with lots of aside, it scolded me for being too difficult to read. Sometimes the “extra” things it nagged me to do would take hours on top of the writing time.

And sure, some of that stuff probably made my writing better or easier to find, but it also made it generic and forced me to pad posts. Which I didn’t like. So I didn’t write. So I deleted it earlier this week, and now I’m here, figuratively naked, and this is “just me” writing. Hopefully, it’ll mean I write more often.

The Intermission:

I’m still working my way through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and am at the halfway point. I’ll finish, I promise. I’m writing it as a sort of “civics” text for people so that they can develop some critical thinking about human rights violations that have become commonplace in many parts of the world.

And the Announcement(s):

I’m going back to including poems, short stories, and miscellaneous things I find interesting here. Most of the time they do focus on human rights or mental health, but occasionally I veer into the fun, weird, or arcane (or some combination of the three). And I won’t be self-censoring those bits anymore.

Also, I’ve gone completely ad-free other than selling my own designs from my own shop. If you notice any artifacts of old 3rd party ads, please give me a heads-up. There are a lot of posts to go through to make sure automators didn’t add any code. I no longer have an Amazon Associate’s account, so clicking on those links just brings you to information about the book or item. It doesn’t pay me.

Thank you