Author: Matthew Groff

  • New Blog Direction?

    So… I’m unemployed, and I have had some time to think over things, and choices, and mistakes I have made in my life. Sometimes obsess over them, but that only happens late at night when I try to fall asleep. What I have been rolling over in my head is if I want to change the direction of this blog.

    Right now, this blog is an exercise for me to work on telling stories in 250 words. It is also a place for me to write about other things that come into my head.

    With being unemployed, I started to think about trying to monetize my writing. For my three fans who aren’t relatives, then you know that I have made a grand total of $5 from my writing over the past 20 years. I don’t have a stellar track record, and with the fact that I have a WordPress.com site shows that I am most aggressive blogger.

    This would lead me to conclude that if I want to earn money from blogging, then I would need to put in more time and energy in the make of the blog, and that I will need to start writing about a specific subject. I have run enough art organizations that I know that what I am selling is a product, and for anyone to be interested in this product, you either have to be the best at it, or original in some way that no one can copy. It is a business after all.

    I am sitting on this, wondering if, or how I should move forward.

    I also know that in a business, you have to have a goal for it. That I can answer now. We need a new Mac Mini for our home to function as a server. That ballparks to $870. With the $5 I already earned; I just need to bring in another $865. That seams do-able.

  • Parenting: Going to the Doctor

    As we are trying to get ready for the school year, whatever it might be, we are attempting to behave as normal as possible, and that would be the annual pediatrician checkup before the Fall. Normally, this has never been an issue for the kid. To a degree, she sort of liked going to see the doctor. Both of the kid’s grandmas were nurses, and on my wife’s side of the family, there is a long history of working in the medical field. For that reason, the kid has grown up around lots of nurses and doctors.

    I made the appointment to the pediatrician, and let the kid know that it was something we would be doing, but she got very concerned.

    “Will I get a shot?” she asked me.

    I told her it was possible, and did the routine of “It will only hurt of a second,” and “I’ll be with you the whole time.”

    That didn’t work.

    For over a week I fielded questions about shots, medicine, and sharpe instruments that the doctor might use.

    I could feel the kid’s anxiety growing, and no matter how hard I tried, there didn’t seem to be anything I could say or do to make her feel better. It made me feel powerless, and insufficient as her father.

    All I can do is be with her, and encourage her to be strong.

  • Cancel the Election? Just asking…

    So… Trump told the world that we should cancel the 2020 election, and then added some question marks at the end to make it a suggestion, something to think about.

    The President of the United States is a freshman in his first philosophy class. You know the guy. The one who says something really offensive and off the wall, but when you call him on it, he tries to flip it back at you. “What’s wrong with asking a questions? I thought we were open minded here.” So you’re the jerk now.

    Our President is a teen-aged deep thinker.

    This is what happens when the troll culture of an AOL chat room from late 90’s lands in narcissist 70-year old’s brain.

    I remember seeing this shit in 1996 when some guy in Alt-Rock AOL chat room was like, “Nirvana was over as a band in 1992, so what Kurt killing himself a bad thing?”

    Everyone goes ape shit in the chat room.

    Then the guy responds, “I’m just asking a question, you’re the one who can’t handle a debate. I didn’t say Kurt should have killed himself…”

    That crap…

    And was it a joke? Because that will be the other line used. “He was joking. Can’t you take a joke?”

    Fuck man, this is exhausting.

    Is anyone else exhausted?

  • Election Delay? No, Trump is Trying to Distract You

    So, Trump wants to delay the election? I mean, that’s what he tweeted and, seems to me, that’s what everyone has been talking about for two days, right? But, he doesn’t have the authority to do that, and the Constitution won’t allow it, as there are specific dates which Congress and the President must be sworn in on. There is no way to change the election date.

    Trump is up to his old tricks of trying to distract, and change the conversation.

    If we are all talking about changing the election, then we aren’t talking about the huge drop in GDP. We aren’t talking about people about to lose their extra unemployment benefits. We aren’t talking about up to 30 million people facing eviction. We aren’t talking about Federal agents in the streets of Portland. We aren’t talking about BLM. We aren’t talking about Covid-19’s rising infection and death rates. And especially, we aren’t talking about John Lewis, a true American hero, who fought for justice, equality, and voting rights.

    There is so much going wrong, that we need to be focus and working for solutions.

    Don’t fall for the distraction.

     

  • Hydroxychloroquine News Story

    Hydroxychloroquine News Story

    It was just heartbreaking to see. I went on Facebook, and I saw that a good friend of mine from college had posted a pro hydroxychloroquine news story. There was no comment left, or request that we should, “read the article, and keep an open mind,” or any other phrase of have some sort of civil debate about this topic. Through they had left not a word of whether they believed hydroxychloroquine worked or not, it just broke my heart to see.

    Broke my heart because it caused me to fear the worst about them.  This was a person I went to college with, who I would describe as a person of above average intelligence, huge amount of compassion, determination, and not a person I would describe as easily fooled. This is also a person who would describe themselves as conservative, and a Christian, but in no way closed minded to people who are different from them.

    It broke my heart because it made me feel like they drank to Kool-Aid.

    I have friends that are 100% pro-Trump, and to them, there is nothing that he can do wrong. I know people who claim to be libertarians that will argue that you can’t force anyone to do anything, even if it would benefit the world. But these people have always been like that, so when they post Trump stuff, or argue that they will never wear a mask, it fits within their proclivity.

    It broke my heart because it means my old college friend has changed, and chosen to go down this path. They are choosing to believe something that has been proved not to work.