It's good to see you. I'd like to jot down some notes.
First, once the holiday months passed, work became a lot slower. Typically in retail grocery this happens every year. Business picks up again in spring and summer. The holiday period was so intense this year that I'm glad to see less hours across the board. That doesn't sit well with the other employees though, who are counting on 40+ hours every week to make ends meet. But once April comes around the bend everybody will be working a lot more again and making more money.
Second, the most exciting thing that has happened is the developments around A.I. I've been especially into A.I. art. I started doing A.I. art the first month the art generators came out and I've really taken to it. I've tried all the best ones but the one I've taken to the most is Stable Diffusion 2.1 version, using BlueWillow on Discord and Magespace. I would like to use more Midjourney and Dall E2 but those cost $10/month.
With Stable Diffusion I can practice a lot of prompts to keep tweaking my art styles without paying money. I don't know if there's a path along the road where I can change my knowledge into money, but for now it's been a big thing for me because it's something I can do solo and its using new, cutting-edge technology.
One of the best things ever about doing A.I. art is that I learned that I have a good eye, I can tell good art when I see it. On top of that, the prompts work by text, so depending on how much you know, or potentially could know, you can create almost anything, endlessly.
Third, I've kept up with a lot of reading. Tonight I did a lot of reading reading the news. The big story is that Trump has finally been indicted.
I've read seven books so far this year: Will and Ariel Durant's Rosseau and Revolution [history], Will and Ariel Durant's The Age of Voltaire [history], Anna LindenWaller's A Memory Called Empire [scifi], Anna LindenWaller's A Desolation Called Peace [scifi], Babel by R.F. Kuang [steampunk], Rite of Passage by Alexi Panshin [scifi], and Tales From A Thousand and One Nights by N.J. Dawood [canon].
I've also still been practicing reading in Spanish and occasionally Italian and French when I have the time. One of my goals for the year is to read the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. I bought a copy at a library book sale for a dollar and it's a handsome hardcover edition.
Life seems to have slowed down for me in many respects. Most of my friends have moved far away, driven by what they think will be more happiness if they go somewhere else. Others we've simply broken up and went our separate ways because of personal problems between us or their lives just simply fell apart.
Even though some of my friends were extremely toxic when we spent too much time together I still feel for them and hope they go on to greener pastures. But I only know too well that just by moving from one situation to another, it does not simply make all the bad stuff go away. In fact, through my own experience I've learned that it's mostly worse when you think you can run from your problems and think things will be better. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, as they say.
That being said, I wish them all the best. But the reality of the matter is that life is tough, for all of us, and we can't run from our problems, and magically everything will be better. This isn't anime or video games or Hulu TV.
I've tried to make the most out of my new lack of a social life by reading more, getting more rest, continuing to play and practice instruments, working on ai art, and music, using chatbots for ai art prompts, writing more, being more creative. As time goes on, I realize more and more that I have to be a creative and keep creating.
image ai generated
