Mixing It Up

We need to do something different.  We need to try out different options.  We need to try new styles and do new things.  Maybe I need to come up with different ways to integrate 3D printing into things.  We are getting in a trough or a rut on Instagram and TikTok and we're not seeing any growth and a good friend who has been quite successful made that suggestion. 

I think he's right.   But I'm struggling to figure out what to do.  For YouTube I can create lots of long format content.  I have it in my head, I just need to make it so.   For Instagram and TikTok we're limited by time and I'm trying to come up with ways I can be creative within the short, one-minute timeframe.  Or possibly we need to do shorter videos.  Maybe I need to be in them more and talk about things and be a "personality" or rather show my personality.  My husband says I have a hard time doing that, and he's not wrong.  This whole adventure into social media has been less than comfortable. 

So I'm thinking about it while my printers are all off and I'm working on other things.  If I hadn't gotten a good bit ahead I wouldn't have been able to have the printers off for four days.  It's getting close to when I'll need to turn them back on, but I can keep working for a while longer and hopefully I'll get enough done that I can step back into 3D printing and perhaps have some ideas on how I can reach a different audience than the one we've already connected with.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son is almost a teenager from a sleep perspective.  He's only eleven but he slept today until after noon.  I can only imagine the hours into the afternoon he'll sleep once he hits the full teenage years. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has a friend coming over tomorrow.  She has been collecting Easter eggs so they can have an egg hunt tomorrow.  She so loves hide and seek games, especially when they involve prizes. 

Cancre Sore Times Two

My son came and told me he had a cancre sore today.   He gets them from time to time and I was expecting something fairly large because the last time he resorted to telling me about the one he had it had gotten quite large.   I wasn't expecting it to be so close to his lip and so very large.   He must have bit his lip and it developed from the wound. 

I have some medication that they hated the first time and then they saw the benefit of the terrible taste and awful burning sensation for thirty seconds: because it chemically cauterizes the wound creating a seal over the sore so that you are out of pain and the sore has an opportunity to heal underneath for a day or two before the skin comes off.   

My daughter came in later tonight and said, "mom, I have a cancre sore too."   She has rarely had them, so I was not expecting a large sore also on her bottom inner lip.   She and my son both sat very still and let the medication work it's burning magic.   They both felt better minutes later, even if the taste was rather bitter until they rinsed out their mouths. 

On the whole, my children don't have this happen often.   It seems "often" because it's happened more than twice, but as I think about it now, neither has chronic issues with cancre sores, which is a relief. 

Taking Notes Again

My son said something today as I was driving him home from school that I thought was very interesting.  He had an insight into something at the time and it impressed me that he had seen through a situation and had summed it up in such a concise way.  

Tonight as I sit here at the computer to write up the day's happenings I of course can't remember what it was that he said.  For years I would get my phone out and take a few words to jog my memory when it would be blog posting time later in the day. 

And for years that worked well for me.   So why did I stop?   I'm not sure.   I do fairly well summarizing something in our children's lives each day, but I could do a much better job. 

I shall redouble my efforts!

I like that saying.   Is that quadrupling your efforts?  If you're re-doubling them?  I've never really known. I shall quadruple my efforts doesn't sound nearly as good though. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son got home and started a new puzzle.  This one is a wooden fox-shaped puzzle with special pieces in it that are. recognizable shapes.  We had to tell him it was time to stop and go to bed.   Once he starts doing things other than screens and can get his mind refocused he has a good time doing other activities.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter helped open a package from my friend Echo from Canada.   Her name is not an online nickname or alias, her mother named her Echo.   Echo makes soaps and bath bombs and she sent us a big box packed with all sorts of wonderful things that my daughter got to open up and smell.   The children can't wait to have a bath to try them out.   I said they couldn't use all the bath bombs at once.   To which my daughter said, "aw, Mom!" 

Failure

I think I bad job of managing everything going on.   I get yelled at for not getting one thing done so I work on the one thing.  Then I hear there is another thing I need to do, only I'm trying to do the one thing I was working that I need to work on.   I get tired and I hurt so I lie down.   But I get back up and work late.   I don't think I'm being lazy; I work about as much as I can on things. 

But today I realized I didn't have the right priorities, so I'm making some changes.    I'm trying to put some things higher up so that when I'm out of energy or I need to lie down to get away from the pain for a while, when I get back up, at least I can feel like I was working on the things that are the most important.   

And those things include my children.   When I say "work" they are part of that.   I got the word ,"work" from the Montessori method, which my children always said.   They would be doing "work" at school, which just meant a thing they were playing or learning.   A lot of what I do is work, but my children are not.

The Big Boy Update:  My son hasn't liked me lately.  He doesn't like it when I tell him no more negative words.   He's gotten so cross at me that he doesn't want to talk to me.   I guess I make him angry.   Tonight though, he was nice after I told him he couldn't listen to an audio book at dinner.   He decided to work on a puzzle in the dining room and after weeks and weeks of it sitting out, he finished it all by himself.   He didn't know (or hadn't paid attention) that I got him a fox puzzle for Christmas.   He said he's like to do it together.  It's not a big puzzle, but it would be really nice to do it with him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I think my daughter is angry at me a lot of the time too.   Not always, but today I think she was just not happy.   After dinner she was nice enough.   I was helping her clean up her room.  She wanted to read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe to me.   I love that book.  I'd gladly listen to her read that any day. 

He's Finally Tired

I don't know how my husband does it.  He has energy when I have none.  He's not tired and keeps going and I can barely go on.   He stays up late and gets lots done and yes, I stay up late too, but I had a nap.   I don't know how he keeps going when I'm so tired.   He is amazing. 

We have a lot to do, that is true.  Such is the nature of social media.  You're not really creating content for the people who are watching your content, you're creating it for the algorithms who are sending people to your content.  Or at least that's what you're doing when you're building an audience.  Later, when you have an audience, you are then creating content that they expect, not necessarily the content you want to create, because you need to keep the audience and they are there for what they think you should be creating. 

That is a very cynical way to look at things, but it's reasonably realistic too.   That doesn't mean being a content creator isn't fun, it is just fun with rules that you didn't think you'd be playing against when you started the game.   Still, we have a very nice audience who is supportive and positive.  But we have that audience by virtue of the algorithms suggesting our content.   

Certainly, some of the audience we have is from word of mouth, or I suppose it would be word of link and tag.   But a lot really is from having our content suggested because the logic from the social media thinks certain types of people would like our content.   And they do a great job of that because there is no way we would have ever found ninety three thousand subscribers on YouTube otherwise.   I will never meet or even wave at across a vast canyon full of people that many individuals.   So it's working.  

But it's work.   And in order for the algorithms to think you're worthy of suggesting over many, many, many other content creators who also would like their content suggested, you need to post regularly, and be lucky, and a lot of other things.  But mostly just keep working. 

So we stay up late after the children get to bed.  Tonight I have said no later than 12:15AM!   I hope I can hold to that. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son was angry at me this morning.  I don't really know why, but he didn't speak to me in the car after we backed out of the driveway.   I hated having him go to school angry, but he didn't want to talk.  After school he's forgotten and I didn't bring it up. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is going to sing the National Anthem with her choir at a baseball game next month.  She is not happy about it because she doesn't know the song.  I told her she could learn it, like everything else, easily.   But for now she's totally against it. 

Technical Frustration

I've had a migraine on and off for two days, which is neither here nor there, what I'm frustrated about is the inability for us to get technical things working.  We have so much working that I shouldn't complain, but there are key things I need to have functioning properly in order for us to do the work we need to do and we just can't get them working. 

We've been each working on our own parts of the printer setup, which has so many pieces to it it is a positive to say that the printers are working, we have a location in which we now have them housed that can can be blocked out so that we can do long prints without light or other changes in the surrounding area affecting the appearance inside the location they're stored.  We can get into and out of the individual print location for two printers now with ease.  

We can send prints remotely from the computer, meaning we don't have to slice the model, store it on an SD card, walk over to the printer with the SD card and start the print.   We can send a model and start a print from the desk without having to get up.   We can watch the prints being printed on a web browser from anywhere and if something is going wrong, we can stop the print so the printer isn't damaged and filament isn't wasted.

There is a problem that is the last piece of the puzzle and that is we can't get the timelapse functionality working.   I can print a model and show the completed results, but seeing the model being printed in timelapse form is one of the most interesting and popular things we do.   People love them.   Getting quality timelapse videos requires that environmental control we have ready and waiting, but we can't get the timelapse itself to work. 

There have been so many issues along the way.  The current situation is we can start a timelapse.  We have the camera working too, which was a big part of the challenge.  When it is time to take a picture, the camera now takes a picture.   And all is well for the first layer.   But for some reason after that, no filament comes out of the nozzle.   It is the strangest error.  The print is going on as you would expect it to, but the filament isn't advancing.   Everything works until the first picture is taken, and then it just refuses to work.  

I've been holding off on starting prints on this new, huge printer my husband decided to buy, because we want to get exciting timelapse videos of models that are so large they take two, three or even four days to print.   I haven't started printing anything on the printer because if I do, we can't work on the timelapse problem until the very long print completes.   

Tonight I got frustrated and decided to just start something.  New models have been released that people are very excited to see.  My peers are printing them and running livestreams on TikTok and I'm doing nothing at all, for two weeks now, while we try to get this overall setup and recording worked out.   I'm at my wits end, as is my husband.  We'll get it, eventually, I hope. 

The Laundry Monster:  My son hates folding laundry.  He fought doing it for hours today.  It is exhausting to fight him on this.  But he never wins.  I wonder when he is going to get that he won't win and just do his laundry?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had friends over in the back yard today *and* a request to go over to Ashley's house.  She was so happy, friends to play with two days in a row.    She has a teacher workday tomorrow but I don't think anyone near her is off school as well so she will be home without peers tomorrow.  

Crummy

I still feel crummy.  Maybe it's the tooth.   I even watched a movie tonight, which is an indication of how I don't feel well because I don't usually sit still long enough to watch a movie. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son did not make the best choices today and struggled to have screen time without whining, wailing, cheating or getting screaming angry.  He made progress.   He is learning (ever so slowly) that disrespect and rash responses don't get him what he wants.  We don't want to keep him from screens all the time, but he has to earn them, not get them by default, something he still isn't grasping. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had a play date today.  Just having another friend in the house and hearing them run around screaming in happiness was so nice.   My daughter was so very happy to have a friend to spend time with.