I gave up on Medium a few days ago. My revenues were going down to where I was actually losing money this month. It was getting to where it was no longer enjoyable. I feel for anyone who using blogging, vlogging, social media, etc. as their primary source of income. I bet for every Mr. Beast, there’s thousands of people no one will ever hear of.

A friend of mine has been really cold and distant for the last several months. We’ve been friends since we were teenagers. This isn’t her normal. I once suggested she seek medical help. She became so angry I thought she was going to end the friendship. So I let it drop. But she just gets darker and more despondent with each passing month. She has plenty of time to post memes and videos to Facebook. But she almost never responds to anyone who writes to her, not just me. Getting her to return texts is damn near impossible. And she NEVER answers her phone. Something’s definitely wrong. When she does text, it’s to complain about her job, the homeless in her city, the state of the world, etc. It was discouraging for a long time. Now it’s just irritating.

I recently got some in home health help. Through the state, I have a lady come in a couple times a week to do some cleaning, laundry, help putting away groceries, etc. We also keep each other company. She and I are getting to be kind of friends. She’s almost 60 years old and widowed. She’s been encouraging me to socialize more online. She knows I like gaming and is encouraging me to get involved in online gaming chats and forums. I don’t usually do online gaming against other people.

I started doing some online gaming against other people in free games on my PS5 like Monopoly. I bought NCAA Football 25 a couple days ago. I’m thinking about getting involved in some online tournaments. Nebraska is my favorite team. My dad is a University of Nebraska alum, as are several of my cousins. My favorite PS5 games are still Cyberpunk 2077 and Skyrim. I beat Cyberpunk 2077 earlier this summer. I got a second game going trying out different things. Took me two years to beat it the first time. But I didn’t play the entire time I was in physical rehab.

My brother recently bought a Tesla with self-driving capabilities. It’s mainly his wife’s commuter car. She rented a Tesla while on a business trip. Fell in love with Tesla right on the spot. My brother made a couple road trips with the Tesla. Said of the four motels he stayed out on that trip, two of them offered free charging with a night’s stay. He’s almost giddy that something like this became a reality within our lifetime. I often joke to his 13-year-old son that he won’t need to get his drivers’ license if he really doesn’t want to.

When I was still quite active on Facebook, I joked to one of my futurist groups that I wanted to ride in a self-driving EV with my robot best friend, smoking a marijuana cigar while riding past a police station on my 60th birthday. That would be in 2040. Heck, now it’s looking like that fantasy will become possible by 2030. Especially since I read an article last week stating that Tesla wants to start selling it’s Optimus humanoid robots starting in 2026. We’ve come a long way when it was just You Tube videos of cats riding on Roomba machines.

Now that my experiment with putting most of my writings on Medium has failed, I’m concentrating on longer posts on Word Press. The money was nice while it lasted.