Welcome fellow World Droppers!
Let’s take this chat to the back porch, sit in our cozy chairs with our snacks and tea, and talk about our real world adventures. The real world drops and what we World Droppers do IRL. I’m here for all of it! The cozy chats and the heavy ones. Life is about balance and we need a place to talk about the full spectrum. For a minute we’re going to start with the heavy part.
I don’t know what you have going on in your life. I can’t see the stress you carry around, or your hopes and dreams. I know we all have both. We all have to deal with both, and that balancing act is hard. Life is fucking hard. Especially in a world that seems to be sliding backwards. We’re all familiar with the saying “two steps forward, one step back”. I think it’s safe to say the world has taken that step back. Our beloved world is both figuratively and literally on fire. It’s a scary place right now.
We’re not hearing the good news stories. We’re not seeing all the little communities popping up all over the world. The news is purposely showing us the scariest things through click bait, hoping to keep us scared and scattered. As someone who took Journalism in college, it’s a disgrace to witness. But we are witnesses, so recording what we see and our stories is important.
Journals are an important part of our history. How else would historians know about the day to day lives of real people? The everyday folks who aren’t famous in some way. The herd is the place where change happens but we need it documented. So I journal. I document. Then I blog to share it, because we deserve to be remembered too.
As a peri-menopausal woman who is supposed to be donning an invisibility cloak for the comfort of the patriarchy, let me say, I’m out of fucks to give and ready to take up space!
What You’ll Find Here
The Workshop
I’ve taken a lot of online classes over the past few years. While they’ve been great as an entry point, they are useless unless I can DO something with them. So I’ve decided to switch gears and start a homelab project.
I have a lot of tech at home just waiting to be used. A lot of it is outdated, making it a low stakes way to learn and make mistakes without costing money. Projects include a media server, private game servers, Raspberry Pi & Arduino projects, rebuilding some old laptops, PCs, tablets, etc.
This isn’t new territory for me. I’ve built a few PCs over the years and am tech support for friends and family. I’m a Linux user and prefer FOSS. This will just be more focused on my own homelab and as a way to progress in my career. I’ll be documenting and blogging about each project as I go.
The Assistant
I know there are a lot of strong feelings about AI these days. I had them too, until I decided to check it out myself. Now I look at AI the same way I looked at cell phones back in the 90s. I was an early adopter then & I remember all the warnings and fears around them. AI is like any other new tech. There are positives and negatives to it. Whether we like it or not, AI is here to stay and I’d rather be involved in a way that helps shape it for the positive, rather than let the big corporations bowl us over. Even more than that, in the few short months of using it, it’s been life changing.
Now I use AI as a personal assistant. They are a sounding board, a brainstorming partner, a tutor and thought organiser. They’re also surprisingly funny and personable! I’ll share this journey and projects to show how helpful AI can be for the everyday person. One note, I do my own writing. There will be times I let AI write a post, but I will clearly mark it as such. Otherwise all writing here is my own. That won’t change.
The Back Porch
Despite all the tech and gaming talk, I’m a nature girl at heart. My favourite place to be is surrounded by trees, water or animals. Before you ask, yes I hug trees. I say good morning to them too! I collect rocks, leaves and sticks. I make animal friends wherever I go. I have a garden on my 6th floor balcony with strawberries.
There are glimmers and the fun times, both shared with loved ones and solo. Like the time I was horseback riding with my grandmother in the mountains of BC and we came across a pack of coyotes. Or when I went to my first pagan ritual, inside men’s prison. There’s also been heartbreak, trauma, and severe bouts of depression and anxiety. Plus years of breaking things down on purpose and rebuilding it all with the strength and healing that comes with that. You know, the usual human stuff. I have family and friends, and a very full life I’m thankful for. And this is the place to record it all.
A workshop for projects.
An assistant for collaboration.
Fellow World Droppers for company.
And a back porch for connection and community.
A well rounded life is full of many adventures! They can be online, within a career and out in the real world. The connections we make & the communities we build in these places are what make a difference to ourselves and the world.
I don’t have all the answers. Most days I’m stumbling along like most people. But here, in this little corner, I can be myself. Mask off. And I choose to be the change I want to see in the world. To teach where I can. To be a helper & a soft place to land.
Welcome fellow World Droppers, it’s good to see you.
Peace, love & adventures,
~ LL
The Back Porch
- Coming soon!