Today’s Daily Stoic writing prompt: Can I resist giving into haters–and hating them in return?

In the immortal words of Taylor Swift, “shake it off.” Because haters gotta hate.

This is assuming the hate is targeted at me, and is of the petty, non-illegal sort, where not allowing them to live “rent free in my head,” as a friend once put it, is the way to ensure they don’t suck away all of my oxygen. I don’t hate these people. After an initial shock, I usually find them to be just sad. Kindness really does make you feel an awful lot better.

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I’ve now posted every day to this blog for 341 straight days.

What I haven’t done as much of recently is post to Facebook.

I’ve become more and more disillusioned with it. When I see friends and favourite writers (such as Jim Wright) banned for multiple days for ridiculous reasons (many of them not even remotely offensive), either because algorithms or random fash are reporting them, while at the same time absolute cesspool COVID-denying or alt-right promoting drivel is allowed to continue unchecked, much of the pleasure I once took in the site is quickly eroding away. I’m getting that fix now increasingly on Discord servers, along with a little bit of Reddit and Instagram. I’m staying on FB primarily to follow friends that still share things there, as well as for group memberships and events.

(Yes, Discord. I discovered it as a platform for voice chat for RPGs, and am now a member of servers for a variety of interests. On one of them, I am a good 30 years older (at least!) than many of the members.)

I decided around the time I started this blog that I no longer wanted to use FB as a platform for anything more than short comments and updates. And I’m not alone.

Like Jim Wright, who is now falling back to his blog for his daily commentary, more and more of the authors and others I follow are doing the same. I’ve just bookmarked Stonekettle Station, so it can go into my daily reading rotation. I’ve signed up for daily emails from Heather Cox Richards and James Fell so I won’t miss their content due to the vagaries of the algorithms. And if one of them should fall victim to a ban, I can thumb my nose cheerfully at FB and still read their thoughts.

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For the first time in over two years, I am prepping to run archery at an event. I’ve packed the bows (both mine and the loaner equipment), the pieces of cardboard to use for targets, and we have the range setup kit out. I’ve got the stuff for my fun shoots and standard target faces. This is going to be a low-key shoot, so I’m not overly stressing about it. Weather looks good.

I also found that the moths had made friends with my thrown weapons satchel. It’s up in the laundry. It didn’t look like it had suffered any real amount of actual damage, but there are areas where they’ve obviously been.

Sunday is my two concerts-in-one-day experience, which I am sharing with a friend. The last of the mystery Shaw quartet performances in the morning; Niagara Symphony in the afternoon (a free concert). And I just saw the program and my jaw dropped. The Mozart is my favourite Mozart symphony, no. 35. And the Beethoven is also my favourite symphony of his, no. 7. Wow.