It's the sixth of September already, somehow. Summer finally feels as though it's at an end, with the temperature outside right now a chilly +9C°, and the overcast sky a slate pewter with a biting wind. This is my absolute favourite kind of weather—no worries of sunburn and heatstroke. Of course, this is merely temporary, as we're going to reach a sunny high of +23C° on Wednesday. But for now, the chill is kind.

All the swaying leaves and foliage are still green—I can't help but question if they were still green this late into the season last year. I feel as though I should be seeing the yellowing blondes surrounded by the darker evergreen pines.

What's for certain, though, is that the overnight frost will consume any remains of tended gardens. This is an unavoidable loss in the northern prairies. You grow for as long as the warmth will forgive. The harvest is usually small, especially compared to the home gardens eastward in British Columbia.

In gardens, flowers bloom, and there's a silly-but-nice concept online called bloomscrolling, which is the act of focusing your online experience towards positive, uplifting and inspiring content. It falls into the broader online aesthetic movement of hopecore.

And I pause to think about my own garden—well, my digital garden (I haven't lived somewhere with enough space and soil for a real garden in a while). I want to take stock of all that I should be grateful for, and ensure I'm focusing myself on positive, uplifting inspiration more than anything else.

I probably need a different term for this, because I don't just mean a single project, but rather everything I have and everything I do. My parcel of Internet that I've been tending to. But more importantly, what have I been neglecting and lacking? Like many developers, I find starting new projects and ambitions more compelling than maintaining what I already have.

So, this is more of a public, personal review for myself of what I have, what I need to be doing, what I need to be doing less of, and what I need to admit to myself I need to shelve because I already have too many seedlings sprouting to take care of.

If you're interested in seeing the behind-the-scenes of things, or the current state of my running projects, then this might be of interest for you. Otherwise, this is a ledger purely for myself that I am publishing for the sake of transparency and honesty (and, really, to give me yet another blog post, let's be real).

The Main Garden

My centre is Brennan.day, where I write my near-daily essays, host my slash pages, display my active accounts, and enjoy tinkering and adding functionality for fun. I syndicate my essays to Medium.com and paywall my work there to make a living.

I write at least 750 words every day on 750words.com and currently have a 565-day streak! I have an archive of my digital journal there starting from 2011, and have written +1,300,000 words in that time.

I'm the webmaster for the transformative works archive fanfiction.lol, a fork of Archive of Our Own, which currently has over 300 users and over 400 works! This is self-hosted on my homelab.

I write and publish poetry on BKpoetry.com, my longstanding Tumblr account that has over 17,000 followers. My independently published chapbooks are available for purchase on Gumroad. Through my public writing, I've been writing enough material for my next publication, but I haven't started on the formatting, layout, etc. for that yet.

Social Media

Regarding social media, I do a bit of microblogging on Mastodon, and then keep up POSSE syndication of sharing my posts on my Bluesky, LinkedIn, and Medium's Mastodon instance. Feel free to follow or connect with me on these platforms if you use them, but note that I'm mostly just syndicating.

I also typically browse more indie places, like the 32-bit Café, Ctrl+Shift+3, Pillowfort, and Bubbles.town on a daily basis to keep up with the IndieWeb. I've written about these platforms in more detail previously if you're curious. I'm also a proud member of omg.lol and use its services often. I'm also always on IRC via Halloy.

Programming

Regarding my coding projects, I'm active on GitLab, Codeberg, Source.tube and reluctantly GitHub. I keep track of my coding with Wakatime, and some of my technical articles are on dev.to. I recently updated my portfolio to show off my projects.

I have a backup of my main site synced weekly on Neocities and a script that mirrors every page in my sitemap.xml to the Wayback Machine.

Scholarship

Regarding scholarship, I have accounts set up on ResearchGate, ORCID, and Google Scholar. I was also recently added to Rogue Scholar. Sadly, my publication was rejected for an ISSN, as "personal blogs and personal web sites are not eligible for ISSN assignment."

Reaching Me

While there are many different ways to reach me, the best is always going to be email: mail@brennanbrown.ca

What Needs Tending

There are things I want to tend more. I've dropped off on my online diary and behind-the-scenes writing on Dreamwidth, but that's mostly been because I've been so busy with blogging each day in August. I have more wiggle room, now. I also want to be more active on my Tilde accounts and Gemini capsule.

There's also my professional portfolio at BrennanBrown.ca, and it's pretty much fine, albeit out of date. Same with my digital CV. I think I'm fine with these being in more of a maintenance mode.

Good Prunes

There have been intentional prunes I'm happy with. Quitting corporate social media has been wonderful. I no longer have to worry about syndicating my work to Threads or Instagram the way I do to Bluesky and Mastodon. Nor do I have the constant temptation of numerous endless scrolling feeds.

And the truth is that corporate social media has never given me significant metrics. These platforms are specifically designed to keep people on them, and it's documented that external linking is suppressed.

If people want to continue reading my work and contact me, I make that as easy as I can. Even if you don't remember my website, you can just Google me. That is one advantage to using my full name everywhere.

Dead Plants

There's a trend online of people posting their own "Museum of Failures" on social media, where people walk followers through exhibits, such as fumbling a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity or living fifteen years spent in a city they disliked, all presented as a self-aware highlight reel more than a confession.

In Vancouver, curator Eyvan Collins runs the Museum of Personal Failure, which puts actual objects on display at a mall. A dead aloe plant, an old wedding dress from a failed marriage, a rejection letter—paired with a handwritten explanation from whoever submitted it. It began as a way for Collins to process a bad breakup and ended up with enough material for a full exhibition.

Failure isn't something to bury—I emphatically agree there—but it's just as cynical to turn it into content, trying to reframe your flops into "exhibits" for engagement. What I'm trying to do here is just be honest and take stock. There are projects I've started, or wanted to start, which I admit haven't been working or been worked on. And this audit is where I'm honest with myself about what I'm actually doing and what I need to intentionally quit, rather than letting them continue to linger in an indefinite limbo of "oh yeah, I'll get to that when I have time, surely."

To start, I began Berry House before I started my independent publication Brennan.day, as I envisioned myself doing webdev work for a living rather than writing. But this hasn't been the case. While I put all the webdev projects I do under the Berry House name, I don't have any clientele, but I do try to help out people and do consultations pro bono when asked.

I also had the idea to do a public radio show and I got all the technical logistics set up for it, and I even migrated it from the costly DigitalOcean droplet to my self-hosted homelab; however, I still haven't actually done a radio show yet. This is due both to the amount of dedicated time it would take which I'm still spending on writing, and also just that I'm rather shy!

Related to that, while I'm proud of how I have been able to start and keep Folk.zone online, I'm thinking of shutting it down. I don't believe any of the services are being used, and they take up considerable computational power despite being unused.

Next, you'll notice there's a newsletter sign-up on my website via Buttondown, but I've never actually sent out a newsletter! I think this is a much lesser evil than sending a bunch of spam, but it is still a failure nonetheless. My original plan was to email via RSS, but that requires a premium account at $12CAD/month, and it really doesn't seem worth the expense. I would recommend using an RSS reader to keep up with my blog! While the newsletter is dormant right now, I think it would be good to sign up just in case something catastrophic happened to my site and email was the only way I could communicate that (but I'll also always have Mastodon, Bluesky, etc.)

Additionally, I was supposed to start Fireweed School this summer, but again I haven't had the time to dedicate to this, especially if I'm expecting people to pay for it. I absolutely recommend people join the Web Writers' Collective if they're interested in something like this, which I'm an organiser for!

I also announced awhile back that I was aiming to obtain a bachelors in computer science from the University of the People. While I completed my first semester, I realize I don't have the funds (even tuition-free) or (again) the time to dedicate myself to this. Instead, I will continue completing the still-existing MOOCs and use my public library card to continue using LinkedIn Learning free of charge!

Overall, there is a relief of narrowing my scope and focusing better on less. I need to stop biting off more than I can chew, that's for sure, but it's also fun throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Finally, I have been a total failure when it comes to the Toonie Club, as I haven't been putting out a members-only monthly newsletter. I haven't taken out any funds I've received from this on Patreon, and it's a low-cost amount, so I'm happy to give full refunds. If you'd like to continue being a supporter, please email me with what name and URL you'd like to be put on a publicly-displayed supporter wall that's going to be on my site (another perk I promised) and let me know if you'd like a virtual meeting for anything! Otherwise, going forward I'm going to make it more clear that your contributions will be more for ensuring I can continue my writing without a paywall, as well as my free coding projects and web services for everyone. Unlike the other failures, this affects other people, and so I take it a lot more seriously.

The Harvest

Frost arrives whether or not you figured out what's worth saving, there's no negotiation when the shock kills the plant. Maybe that's the lesson in all this counting. Choosing has to happen before the cold makes it for you. There are a lot of unknowns for me as winter approaches, but I do know that the scattered seedlings of my daily essays and archive are still growing. I've yet to take a step back and really appreciate or understand what this site and project are growing into, but it's so fun taking it day-by-day.

I'm grateful for the time, for the gloomy days where I can make a cup of green tea and watch the rain before it turns into sleet. For being able to look honestly at what's working and what isn't. I can breathe a sigh of relief fogging up near the open window.