12 Feb 2024
The internet can be a lot sometimes. I just open whatever and it overwhelms me with "hey! all of this stuff is happening! look at all this stuff!". Sometimes that kind of stimulation is what I'm looking for but other times I open apps and websites out of habit and just have my soul sucked straight out of my body. It's just too much sometimes. Especially when I'm dealing with a lot of things at once.
I'm currently in the middle of not having a car which, in the US, is kind of a problem if you want to get anywhere effeciently. I want to get a bike but there's almost no incentive to because it doesn't help me get anywhere. I would love to just bike to the nearest store, grab things, and have that be that but it just wouldn't work out. Actually, I'm thinking about it a little more now and it might actually work out? It wouldn't not work out. Hmm. I used to think I would need to drive the bike somewhere then ride from there but I guess if I'm not trying to go too far it would actually be somewhat practical for me? The problem is that if I want to go any further than the nearest store I have to get on a not particularly small road with no sidewalks or bike lanes. My other option is taking a probably dirt trail to the second nearest Walmart (ew). Actually I wonder if I can get anywhere else from that trail? It might take me several hours but it could be neat. I'll be looking into that later.
I kinda wonder how realistic it would be to use OpenStreetMap to work that out. I would guess it would be pretty okay but I don't know how accurately the trails around me are mapped. I guess there's only one way to find out and that's to try it and check it out. This year I want to do a lot of work on local OSM stuff. A good chunk of the neighborhoods around me don't have address numbers mapped and I would like to fix that. My strategy with OSM editing is to use only OSM when possible and see where the points of friction are for my use cases then fix them. The end goal is to get the local map in a state where I can get others to start switching to it instead of options that don't respect privacy like Google Maps. I'm not blind to the fact that it is full on painful at times though. I'd like to at least make it worth the pain for more people. Worst case I don't get anyone to switch but I've greatly improved the local map for those who do use it and I get to enjoy an interesting hobby along the way.
I'd like to get in the habit of doing this whole weblogging thing more often. Today social media was far too much for me but it shouldn't take something like that to push me to write something. This is far better for my brain than doomscrolling anyway. I also want to get into the habit of reading more but that will take a little more doing on my part. tl;dr trauma is not fun to work through. Oh, games too. I have a lot of games I want to play and I should really get better at actually playing them instead of just saying I'll get around to them.