sorryless

To Thine Own Self, Be Mellow

Sorryless64 Comments

If there’s one thing that flips my script, it’s someone harshing my mellow. In my last love thing, it happened just like that. She wrote a blog post in which she used the phrase (Harsh my mellow) in a curiously sardonic fashion. Curious because she knew it was my Zen place and yet she found it necessary to peddle the shit in an impudent middle finger to me. Sure, the gesture was little more than a passive/aggressive jab, but to me it was kryptonite on a platter. It wasn’t the reason for our Waterloo, just a sign that we had already set sail for the place.

So when I complain about the Block editor, it’s because the thing harshes a mellow I struggle to hold onto every single day. I understand this makes me cranky and temperamental and maybe even unreasonable to the dynamics of a relationship, in this case, writing. Thing is, why is it wrong to hold to such a thing? Why should I feel like I’m the one at fault for simply crushing on a method and wanting to keep it status quo?

The status quo is a vastly underrated neighborhood. It gets the shit beaten out of it by progress only because technology is changing the world every couple months. Adapting means you either get down with the next gen sexy or you find yourself staying home on Saturday night. And that’s cool, to a point.

But to paraphrase a Billy Joel standard, as it pertains to Block Editor, don’t go changing to try and fleece me, When the website mavens from San Fran felt like it was time to banish the old in favor of a brand spanking new ride, they shouldn’t make peeps feel old in the process. That shit harshes my mellow, man!

The search for peace of mind comes from a less simple time in my life, made less simple by yours truly. It was a low down dirty existence of a past, inside of which the only thing that mattered when push began shoving me off the edge was that indefinable construct that my brain could nestle inside of. There had to be something that mattered. I mean . . really mattered. 

The mellow is a conduit for me, the intersection of creativity and peace of mind, the latter of which is a priceless commodity. It’s just one of those things that I consider sacred, in a world where sacred things would get turned down if they applied for a loan.

Personally, I think the plushest flowers grow best when the garden is arcane.

64 thoughts on “To Thine Own Self, Be Mellow”

  1. B,

    I hear you. Loud and clear.

    I don’t understand why the people that be in the big and solitary house that is WordPress feel the need to take away the simple when they bring in the “new and exciting and supposedly easier and better and blah blah blah”. Is it so difficult to keep the option of the original platform while still introducing the “new and improved” to those who wish it?

    There will always be the ones who are down for the latest fashions. Just like there are those who choose the classics – knowing they never go out of style.

    And just so you know “harshing your mellow” is the coolest phrase.

    Q

    Liked by 2 people

  2. You are my hero! You stand up and speak the truth to those who are perhaps too dense to understand it. The younger generation believes new is good when what was working was the old. It was working well, it had been tried and tested and found to be true. It wasn’t broken and they decided toss it aside for something shiny and new. That’s what children do.

    Liked by 2 people

    • Pam

      What annoys me isn’t the format, it’s the way WP went about it. New formats come and go, but they shouldn’t make users who ain’t digging on it out in the cold. No need.

      Progress has steamrolled so many good things, so many things that worked. I ask you, in a world that used to have milk delivered right to our front door in glass bottles . . and rotary phones that never died . . how was progress a better idea than that? Now we can get Walmart to deliver that milk, late and sour. And we buy a new cell phone every couple years.

      You’re right, it IS what children do.

      Liked by 2 people

  3. We have become a throwaway society. It’s cheaper to buy a new than to fix old and that is so very sad. Things that were built in the past last significantly longer. Look at our buildings…

    Liked by 2 people

  4. Simplicity is a beautiful thing. I’d love to go back to the days when we had two types of M & Ms, instead of the 732 options we have now.

    Sometimes “progress” is the complete opposite, particularly in tech land. It’s interesting, some of the other changes WP has made over the last 5-10 years have bothered me far more than the change to the Block Editor. Much smaller in scope, but more problematic for me. I recently created a new blog on WP for the first time in a few years. I don’t know when it happened, but the set up of a blog is about 3000% more difficult than it ever used to be. It’s like trying to learn a foreign language now.

    Liked by 2 people

  7. The Block Editor is the quickest way for HBO words to start flying around my space. After trying it a couple of times, I learned how to restore the Classic Editor and will hang on to it until they pry it from my cold dead hands (or at least until I reach the end of my paid subscription-whichever comes first). The genius Happiness Coaches just couldn’t seem to convince the powers to be that most people hate that new platform. Maybe when people stop posting (or abandoning blogging altogether) and WP’s advertising stream starts to take a hit, will there be something that makes better sense than harshing on the mellow.

    Liked by 2 people

    • I couldn’t agree more, Monika.

      Once again, the HBO words come easily for me. I say fuck the Block and Imma keep with Classic until it’s outta sight or costs too much to make it sensible.

      I can tell those Happiness coaches were to stick the Block. . .

      Liked by 2 people

  8. I accepted the fact that the change was coming, and that the Classic editor was on life support. I think about Windows 7 – there comes a point when Microsoft no longer wants to support it. So … when I started the new blog, I knew it was the time to convert. No – it wasn’t painless – but I keep it simple … so that’s my way of minimizing the harshness of my mellow. Well done, sir.

    Liked by 2 people

  9. In some respects I’m a progressive and adaptable. In others, I really, really need to see some evidence that New=Better. Most of the time, it’s just not there. Feeling your pain, brother.

    Liked by 2 people

  11. I still use the Classic Editor! Although, there is rigamarole involved.

    I had a mean aunt that I had to live with for several years.
    She took all of our toys away the day after Christmas. She said they were in the basement. We weren’t allowed to go in the basement, on fear of the wooden spoon.

    Somehow I equate this to WP taking away technology that I am comfy with.

    Blockhead Editor
    Covid
    Sprained Ankle
    What next?

    Liked by 1 person

  12. OH!!!
    I forgot to add, between Covid and Sprained ankle;
    Construction at the intersection I live at. Yes, they are relining the sewers, and reconfiguring the cool kitsch 5 corners. SAD! & loud!
    OMG. It sounds like Godzilla vs that 3 headed monster thing for 9 hours a day. They’ve been breaking cement for 3 weeks. There’s a sewer sucker out there … well …
    also various stenches coming up the drains, from solvents to something that smells like I wish the solvents were back.
    SO, I’m in lockdown with a sprained ankle, enjoying a symphony of horror.
    Oh well, it will all be over in the summer of 2022!

    Liked by 1 person

      • Oh, at least they went home at 6, and I had the night for peace… Now that they have massive holes in the road, when they go home they put giant slabs of metal over the holes.
        So, when cars drive over, they make this cement/metal ..bang bang…. bimf/bimf.
        All night, then around 5:00 am the traffic picks up and …. I think I’m losing my hair from it all.

        Liked by 1 person

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