December 2023 & End of Year Thoughts

the (unseen) reader, 2023

01 - For the beginning of December, I had the brilliant idea of walking the Brooklyn Bridge on a weekday after 10am and it was hell. More people than anyone can handle plus street vendors took half the bridge so that made it even more crowded. Then there were these photo booths where you stand on a pedal that spins and a camera twirls around you and take shots - I don't know who thought that up but it's like the silliest thing I ever saw. And forget biking, there's no room but below the bridge there is a specific bike lane which I guess it's why there were no cyclist on the bridge. I was exhausted by the crowd and only made it pass one of the arches and turned back. It used to be more pleasant and yeah, there was a crowd but there was only people, not this circus mall. I don't think I'll walk it again anytime soon.

02 - I wanted to change the whole look of my blog but I ended up changing the header and to a darker background so not much changes. The header is only slightly new-ish. I also updated my bookmarks, writings and artworks pages. (I don't think I ever explained why the girl is wearing a rabbit-ear hair accessory. Rabbit is my zodiac Chinese sign so I'm kind of attach to rabbits and bunnies in general. Sometimes there is explanations for the things I do and other times it's all nonsense.) Go here to see all the past headers for this blog.

previous header

03 - I finally figured out why I can't sign into Blogger in other people's blogs to comment. (FYI, I use a Mac and Firefox browser.) This had been annoying me for months and it's why I haven't been commenting on blogs that only allowed Blogger users to comment. (I did occasionally use Chrome to comment but I hate that browser. Safari had the same issue as Firefox). This issue has to do with cookies. If you turn on Enhanced Tracking Protection (which blocks cookies), you can't sign in but if you turn it off, you can. I don't know how it got changed. I never changed the settings to Firefox but Firefox did force me to keep updating about a million times a week so who knew how things got changed. I don't know if I can blame google for this but after they changed the spam filter, commenting has been a mess. I don't really know much about tracking but it seems to be a bad thing but I guess if I want to comment on Blogger blogs, I'll have to allow it and turn off the tracking protection. Go here to learn how to turn off tracking protection in Firefox and over here to learn about browser tracking.

message I get when I can't sign into Blogger to comment

    Also, I had to turned off (actually hide as there is no off) comments on my old blog because Blogger keeps marking comments that are already published as spam. What's the point of this? It wasn't doing that for a while and then it suddenly decided to do it. What is this randomness of actively creating problems for Blogger users? Do google just schedule these things now and just so users can have something to complain about?

04 - I almost forgot I had finished this year's A-Z Challenge but I'm quitting A-Z altogether after this year. I really like the challenge because it challenges me to be a more active blogger but now I find the challenge more work than fun so I quit. I was thinking of doing the challenge next year with favorite past challenge posts but I gave up that idea. (Go here to check my 2023 A-Z posts, the links are at the end of the post.)

05 - This has been a short reading year for me. That is, for about three months, I barely read. I don't call this a reading slump, it's more like a reading pause or something like it. I've been a reader almost all my life and this is really the only time I have ever not read continuously. I do wonder if my love for reading is fading but I don't like to speculate too much on it because there will always be books to entice me to read so that's that.

06 - My kindle accidentally fell to the floor. Okay, I might have been slightly involved in that little incident. Now it won't download books correctly but after a restart or two, it's working again. (This is why I think the kindle is created to be a self-sustaining dummy because after every restart, it keeps carrying on as if nothing is wrong.) But now it keeps changing book covers to other book covers so that I had accidentally deleted downloads thinking they're duplicates. This duplicate cover error had been around even before my kindle fell to the floor. The issue had been gone for a while so I have no idea why it suddenly appear again. I have expected my kindle to last at least 5 or more years before getting a new one (I had it for a little over 3 years). I don't want to say I hate my kindle but my love for it is slowly dying, just like my kindle.

07 - 2023 was an okay year. I think as long as I can blog (aka complain about things), it means I'm actually doing stuff and not sitting around all day doing nothing but actually I probably did sit around all day doing nothing because I'm a lazy couch potato. I don't remember how I spent most of my time but I'm sure I did a lot screen staring.
    My creativity and activity this year was at a all time low, almost like I barely did anything. But I'm not going to make goals to draw more or write more or read more or blog more or do more because I couldn't really do them anyway. I think as long as I'm still around, it's all good. At least, I'm not actively reading the news and worrying about the world ending (I kind of did that a few times already.) Nothing too horrible had happened to me so I can say 2023 is or was a good year. Let's end at that.

How was your December and your overall 2023? I hope 2024 will be good to you.