Disconnect

 One thing about me that I can't quite fix is how I always feel the need to keep different parts of my life separate. My personal life, my professional life, my hobby life, my online presences that vary depending on which social media site I'm using, etc...

Anybody who still follows me on Twitter (if you do... why?) can probably tell but I've strayed far from my days of using it for sports and I've never used it too much for cards to begin with.

Once upon a time I did talk about cards there but it was more in the context of "hey, look at this autograph I got" with the occasional "look at my newest pick-up!" tweet post. While I'm aware that being more involved with hobby Twitter has its benefits, it's still not for me.

I suppose one of the big draws is being part of a community where you can openly discuss the latest going-ons in the hobby and sports as a whole.

This seems fine in theory, but in execution it's total ass. At least for me.

See the problem with me is that my interests are cyclical. What that usually tends to mean is that when I begin to get bored with something, I'm likely to abandon it altogether. I might come back to it later, but for a while there's just total radio silence and nothing. Even more than that, I'm going to create a distance between me and anyone who keeps sending me reminders of whatever I just got bored of. Even if I know full well that they don't mean to.

The way my "Following" list has constantly shifted around these past few years is a reflection of how whenever I get fully bored, I'm just going to unfollow and lowkey cut people off outright.

Dick move I know.

Whatever other benefits the hobby on social media has probably wasn't something I was interested or ever even used anyway.

Mostly that's just because I'm older, slower and lazier.

As someone who was very active on Blowoutcards' forum back in 2012/early 2013, I am somewhat familiar with how negotiating with strangers for cards online goes. When the hobby was new to me and I had limited funds I was constantly wheeling and dealing because this was the best way to see what the hobby had to offer and also the most I could do within my means.

A decade later a lot of the hobby is played out to me, leading to a lot of my indifference towards it. Even in the event where if I find something I want, I just go straight to eBay and buy it outright. Spending money kinda stings but whatever, spending time and energy is a lot more draining.

There's also the fact that I've found this blog to be the best possible place for me to talk about the hobby. I control everything here after all, I set the topics I want to talk on here. I have a blogroll with what I consider to be my favorite blogs where I can easily choose which posts I want to read and pass on whatever I don't want to. It's a lot harder on social media where any little thing can potentially be amped up to 11 and shoved in your face to the point where you want to throw your phone out the window just to feel like you got rid of it. Or slightly worse is when news are slow and the latest going-ons are so boring that you feel there's no point to the community.

So yeah, I can't really say I regret swapping out people who talk about whatever the sports did wrong this time with attractive cosplayers at a time when Twitter's algorithm just keeps getting shittier and there's more of it.

All of this is also sort of what went through my head as I turned down njwv's invite for a Discord server for the hobby. I'm really sorry to Nick and whoever else is running what I'm sure is a nice community but on top of the stuff I mentioned above, I've been using Discord far too long for other interests for me to use it for sports and sports cards now.

I actually did join a pretty level headed and reasonable baseball community on Discord last summer as an experiment and I left after a month. There wasn't anything really wrong with the members there, no trolling, no real issues, I just plainly didn't want to stick around. I can't verbalize it, I just do not vibe with these communities. I'm keeping it to strictly video games, porn and anime on Discord. Also if you're wondering why I didn't ask Nick for an invite with his server to be the trial run, it's because it's a lot less awkward to just suddenly leave a server you didn't ask for an invite to in the first place.

And honestly, now that I think about how I just left the Blowoutcards forum for dead after I started this blog, it just kinda reinforces how I don't really like gatherings like that. Not online.

Actually not irl either. The crowds I'd see at card shows seemed like the only normal people were families.

In an age where it's a lot easier to feel lonelier than ever before, it's probably not wise for me to just be like this. Making barriers, dismantling bridges in silence, total abandonment for prolonged periods of time.

But I've been operating on a "just go where the wind blows" mindset for years now. I just usually try to keep things professional and on good enough terms to where connections can be picked up right up where we left off, but I'm not naive enough to think human relations aren't needlessly complex and that things will work out every time. It takes two to tango as they say.

Also I hope you enjoyed the unrelated scans of Colorado Rockies autographs. I didn't have anything to say about these so I stuffed them into this giant rambling session.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.