Occasionally I’ll assemble some mostly unrelated odds and ends of thoughts to share here.

Do you prefer different genres in what you view versus what you read? I watch shows about space and police or detective work with my husband, or superhero movies with my sons. I enjoy them, but I rarely read books on those topics. I like classics and movies made from them, but I usually indulge in those shows when Jim is not home. But occasionally I’ll ask him to watch one with me.
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For years, those who write on the Internet have been advised to use shorter paragraphs and lots of white space. We’re told that those who read online like to be able to skim and find main points. They’re supposedly turned off by dense paragraphs.

But lately I’ve seen examples that seem to take that instruction too far. I’ve seen several posts lately that are made up of one-sentences paragraphs. I find that hard to read. It looks more like a list. Paragraphs group sentences around a single topic. But a list of single sentences looks like random thoughts strung together.

On the other hand, I read several blogs that use long paragraphs, and they have plenty of followers and views. I think content trumps form.
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One of those phrases that rubs me the wrong way is, “If I can do it, you can, too.” I know it is meant as an encouragement. It’s saying, “I’m just an ordinary person, and I did it. So go ahead and try–it doesn’t take any special skills.”

But we can’t all do everything everyone else can do. We have different gifts, talents, motivations, personalities, time constraints.

I haven’t come up with an alternative though. Any ideas?
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For people who post videos and podcasts, I love when they include the transcripts. I am much more likely to read than watch or listen.
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So far, I have not used a Large Language Model AI like Chat GPT. I’ve read some legitimate uses of them, and I may look into them at some point. I don’t have time for the learning curve involved just now. But mostly, I don’t want to outsource my thinking. When I write something and have to revise it several times, my brain is working and I am processing as I go.

I’ve already experienced some thinking damage from that just from spell checkers (which are a smaller form of AI). I used to be a pretty good speller. But I’ve relied on spell check so much that I often don’t recognize misspelled words, can’t think of the right way to spell words I should know, and don’t catch the misuse of homonyms, which spell check also misses.

I also don’t like that AI seems to be pushed on us everywhere. Even Facebook offers to make up an AI-generated comment for us. Pretty soon, we can just let our AI bots do the talking. 🙂
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Tim Challies wrote a post a few weeks ago saying that we can often get by with a smaller house than we think we need. He’s right. Thinking about his post inspired mine on No Perfect Homes Here.

But there’s a flip side to that thought.

When my husband was anticipating retirement, I expected that we’d probably have to downsize. Two factors prevented that. One, he took advantage of lower interest rates to refinanced our mortgage a few years earlier. And, two, the housing market went crazy.

Our house now is valued at twice what we bought it for. That sounds nice, except that, if we sold it, we’d have to look for another place that costs just as much.

My youngest son bought his first house a couple of years ago. Though his house is about a third the square footage of ours, his house payment is the same amount.

So financially, it makes more sense for us to stay put for now than to pay as much money for less house.

One advantage, though, is that we bought this house with aging in mind. Our two previous homes were split-levels, and I was beginning to have knee problems then. We specifically looked for a house with no stairs when we moved here.

Another advantage is that when people come from out of town to visit us, we have plenty of space to put them. We have an official guest room, plus futons in two other rooms that make into beds. Visitors save money by not getting hotel rooms, and we have more visiting time with them.
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This Facebook post made me laugh:

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On a final note, I don’t usually post on Mondays, but I’ll have a special announcement on July 27. 🙂