Exercising Freedom

A first writing at Writers Cafe

It's going to take me a while to get used to these categories. I just flagged this as an essay because they don't really have what I want. This is something more like a journal.

I usually write over at DeviantArt and I will continue to do so, but I just felt like writing somewhere different today.

I was telling my dad that I searched my own name the other day to see where I might pop up first, and oddly the second search result was Substack! ... why Substack? After which my dad recommended I try this website or writing.com.

Back to the topic of Substack...

I made an account there years ago just to see what it's like, and I posted one "writing", basically a journal entry just like this one, and it seems I set up a mailing list for an upcoming sci-fi book I was working on - but never actually posted any chapters.

And yet my Substack account comes up as a top result on search engines?

I guess that means Substack has more money for marketing.

No big deal, anyway.

My first impression of this site's writing interface is not extremely good. The font is too small. I can appreciate how some people think things look smarter when they are smaller, but this is an illusion, and it is also a way of thinking which belongs back in the 90's.

"I like 12 pt font. I am super cool."

No... you are not... cool. You are annoying.

The reason that smaller text sometimes looks smarter or more interesting is because it seems as though more detail is being squeezed into a small space. Like a higher resolution image. But this is merely an illusion. The amount of text you see is the amount of text you get. In the end it makes no difference aesthetically speaking. Instead of trying to look smart like that, you could spend more time choosing a good font.

Is this website even using a font? Or is this just the default browser font.

I'm starting to think I don't want to know the answer to that. Nevermind.

But actually this could work out perfectly for me. The idea behind my writing these days is NOT to get attention, NOT to go somewhere popular, NOT to worry about art and design and interfaces and all the rest... but just to write.

So this might just be perfect actually. I can zoom the webpage in a bit and see my own writing just fine.

--

-- Image of Jupiter from NASA --

I just uploaded that image as a test. It worked! Or at least if you see it - that means it worked. We'll have to wait and see what happens after I click submit.

That's an image of Jupiter from NASA's most recent telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope.

It's really a beautiful image. I love how the poles are glowing. And the detail of the layers of clouds look something like a marble. The site of this image also conjures the concept of how small we are in the universe. I am lazy to look up the number, but Jupiter is something like a hundred times bigger than Earth -- ok I had to look it up -- it's actually 11x bigger! But that still means you could fit 100 Earth's inside Jupiter easily, and that's really very big!

Now add that to the fact that those stripes you see are actually wind currents blowing gasses around the planet at mega speeds, speeds which would destroy everything on Earth like a giant planet destroying tornado - and now you can meditate on that for a minute and realize how small and weak and defenseless we are in the universe.

But we take everything for granted.

-- -- --

Well this has been an amusing diversion. I have enjoyed it well enough. I suppose I will come back and write again another time.

After experimenting with the other sites I will decide which one to start posting my sci-fi chapters in.

If you're interesting in learning more you can click my profile and find my website I guess. Or just type it into a search bar if you can remember it -- it's super super long -- 

bschu.net

Wow! See how long that is?

You'll probably only get the first couple letters before you forget the rest and have to come back to see what the remaining letters are.

Although to be honest, schu is not very common if you don't know anything German. It's a common German syllable pronounced "shoe". And the beginning of my name "Schumacker" which literally means "one who makes shoes".

They might not have been very creative with names in ancient times, but they sure were practical.