There are six seven luxuries in life:

– time
– health
– a quiet mind
– slow mornings
– ability to travel
– a house full of love
– to be close to the sea and to the mountains, as often as possible

“Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/17931-if-you-want-to-really-hurt-you-parents-and-you

Note: The full quote starts with “If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts…” I don’t think this is the most relevant part of the quote though, so I omitted it. :)

The following quote deeply resonated with me for some reason:

Don’t save good things for a mythical future “special occasion” that may never come. Don’t leave pretty journals blank for fear of ruining them with your words, sketches, and drawings. Don’t leave the nice wine on the rack to get corked.

Use the good things to make today the special occasion. When they come to clear your house when you’re dead, let them find full journals and empty bottles. Not the other way around.

(The bottles can be from fancy olive oil or something, if booze isn’t your thing. ;))”

— via (and with some little tweaks by me): @beecycling

The short answer to the question, “Is COPYTRACK a scam — or a plain fraud?” is yes — because…

…You need to read on about what happened to Ani in February this year when an email from (allegedly) COPYTRACK lawyers landed in her inbox. The entire email conversation with COPYTRACK is then described in great detail and you will learn a great deal about COPYTRACK’s shady practices.

To sum things up, it turns out that Ani has used in one of her blog posts an image representing a puzzle purse Valentine card from c. 1790 (!) that since many years is part of The Postal Museum’s collection (!) in London. A photograph of the puzzle card was taken by a museum photographer in 2011. A smaller copy of the card was used at some point by Ani in her blog — and after an inquiry addressed to the Postal Museum, it was then used even with an official permission.

Yet COPYTRACK tried to extort some money from Ani by using “legal threats” and pretending that they own the copyright for this puzzle card! Once COPYTRACK have learned that Ani is in touch with the Postal Museum’s Senior Archivist and the archivist assured Ani that the card is in the museum collection for a long time — and that she can use the card on her blog — COPYTRACK suddenly cut all communication and disappeared.

So be careful. If you receive an email from COPYTRACK and their “lawyers”, make a thorough investigation first — and do not send them them any money before making sure that their claims are valid!

I love the job that I do (I work mostly as editor these days).

But I am a bit tired lately (work, life, health… it’s many things) so when I saw this in my Duolingo today, I could instantly relate! :-)

The right edit would be, though:

Michel no quiere trabajar más. Él quiere unas vacaciones ahora.
(Michel doesn’t want to work more. He wants a vacation now.)

But, it’s only Duolingo. Now I’m back to editing my articles…

I agree with Arnold — here’s a short excerpt from his recent newsletter:

I have a theory.

When you don’t have a vision of the future, it’s easier to look back.

When you don’t have a vision, today doesn’t have much meaning because you don’t know why you’re here doing what you’re doing right now, and tomorrow is downright scary. Yesterday can seem nice and comfortable by comparison.

This is why, over and over again, I’m going to keep telling you to find your vision. […]

A vision gives you a reason to be here, doing whatever you’re doing. It makes you excited to wake up every day and keep moving forward. It gives life meaning.

Your vision can be to be the best teacher, nurse, doctor, firefighter, or electrician you can be. It can be to be the best dad, mom, or grandparent. It can be to be physically fit so that you’re there for your family as long as possible. It can be all of those things.

All that matters is that you think about it, you identify it, and you see it. Take some time today to sit down for a few minutes, figure out what your vision is, and then visualize yourself doing whatever it is you dream of. Play it like a movie in your head.

I guarantee you that movie is better than whatever was going on 50 years ago.

— Arnold Schwarzenegger

Lately, I am spending too much time on Twitter (https://twitter.com/@optimiced) & Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/@optimiced), checking the news💙💛 and watching funny cats videos 😺.

But mostly checking the news! I am also using Twitter for connecting with people, both professionally and personally, which is not often but when it happens, Good Things Happen™ — for example, I recently had excellent collaboration with @andybudd & many other fine people which resulted in new Smashing Magazine articles being made!

So, with the exception of some moderate amount of time for connecting and collaborating with real people, Twitter (mostly) takes a lot of my time and this time is not spent wisely. News, funny cats, etc. But it’s not only the news — Twitter is also becoming a bad place (since a certain person with lots of borrowed money acquired it, we all know who) and disinformation and Nazis started really proliferating on this platform. So I was thinking, maybe I need a break? Some kind of “digital detox” or “electronic social time-out”?

I also noticed that while I’m on Twitter, I read less books and serious articles. And am becoming more nervous — because of the news and the Nazis, of course!

So, a break? But what should I do if I stop appearing regularly on Twitter and Mastodon?

I am thinking of the following:
– Remove some dust from my blogs (https://www.optimiced.com/en/, https://www.optimiced.com/bg/). And yes, they provide RSS.
– Change/improve my blog theme, add/remove plugins, do some optimizations and some custom HTML/CSS/PHP.
– Blog occasionally from my phone!
– Start again using RSS to read other people’s blogs. (Can you recommend a good RSS reader btw? I am thinking Feedly.)
– Then help Ani (@molif) — new blog theme, optimizations, nice custom design touches, etc.

And finally…
…Do I plan to stop using Twitter/Mastodon completely? No. (Not for now, anyway.)

But I would like to reduce their use to the *bare minimum* for at least 2-3 weeks. (You can still message me/@ mention me but don’t expect an instant reply.)

It’s time for me regain some sanity. Or at least try to!

P.S. Initially I wanted to make a series of tweets, and then I thought, I have a blog, maybe I should start using it? 😋 And here it is.
But here’s also link to the short Twitter thread that I made: 📝 https://twitter.com/optimiced/status/1673358320118185987

P.P.S. And a short toot is also in order, methinks! :-)

I am trying to remove some cobwebs from my personal blog.

For now I keep using Twitter (@optimiced) but my idea is to start posting at least some of my content here. I am tired of “social” networks and their “algorithms” which shuffle and re-shuffle the things that my friends and acquaintances are posting.

And the next logical step would be to refresh my RSS reader and to start adding to it the RSS feeds of active blogs that I want to keep an eye on.

One step at a time! :-)