Sunday, April 24, 2022
5:15 a.m. Room 1102, Phannu House
Mae Sot, Thailand
Another morning in which I feel very tired. Granted, it is just after five in the morning. But I went to bed at ten last night, which should have given me around seven hours of sleep. That should be enough to feel better than I feel right now. I’m struggling to wake up, yet it seems like I should feel fine.
I continue to be astonished at the specificity of dreams. I woke up out of a dream in which I was hanging out with two guys after work. They were coworkers, and in the dream, I just wanted to go home. But these two coworkers were also friends of mine, or at least friendly towards me, and one in particular wanted the three of us to hang out. This man was rather heavyset and had a thick, black moustache. This man went to a blank wall, took out a big magic marker or some other writing utensil and drew a large circle. Then he wrote his name and the word “light” at the bottom, inside the circle. He then turned to the two of us, and it was clear he was expecting us to write our names along with a word. I had no idea what he was expecting of me, and the two of them were astonished that I didn’t know about this tradition.
Apparently, it was common for three friends to use the words level, lore, and light to define their friendship. Each would claim one of those words. And the heavyset guy had chosen to write his name beside the word light. And now that it was our turn, we were expected to write our names along with either the word lore or the word level. We had to choose between them.
This turned into a big deal because the other guy kept delaying making his choice. He kept thinking and thinking, and it was clear that I couldn’t go home until we finished doing this. And I got more and more frustrated as this guy wouldn’t write down his name and choose a word. I finally turned to him and tried to make the choice for him, just so he would finally write something down. I tried to do this with flattery. I assumed that lore was a better word than level. And I told him that he should choose lore because he was so imaginative and he told great stories. And I said the word level suited me because I was such a logical and unemotional person. I was hoping that he would take the bait and write down lore and then I could write level, and then I could finally go home.
This went on for a seemingly long time, and I put a chair next to the wall so that this guy could climb on the chair and reach the circle to write his name. But he still delayed.
What I found interesting about the dream were the three words: level, lore, and light. I can understand dreams where big and exciting things happen in a general sense. I can understand dreams in which you are flying and soaring over mountaintops. But where does an idea like this come from? What part of my subconscious brain manufactured this tradition of three friends identifying with specific words? And where did the exact words level, lore, and light come from? It seems oddly specific. It feels real, not something invented.
I scheduled another YouTube video Premiere for last night, and I think it went quite well. This video was the fifth one in my Sukhothai Series, and it is about the day when I finally went into the Historical Park itself. I was feeling a bit uneasy about the length of the video, and I recorded an introduction in which I made it clear to people that the video was ninety minutes long. I just wanted to give people a warning about that, especially since YouTube doesn’t show the length of Premieres. When you watch a Premiere, you have no idea how long the video is. It feels like an oversight on their part not to include this information. In the introduction, I made light of the extreme length of the video, and I reassured people that I understood perfectly if they didn’t stick around for the whole thing. And I explained that I had inserted Chapters into the video so that later on, they could return to the video (after the Premiere) and jump ahead to whatever parts they missed. I ended up making the introduction relatively elaborate with inserted photographs and screenshots of the chapter headings and of all the thumbnails for the previous videos that were in the Sukhothai Series. That made recording, editing, and then uploading the introduction a longer process than I intended. And by the time I was finished, it was relatively late in the day, and I wondered if I should schedule the Premiere for Saturday night or delay it until Sunday night. It felt like it was better to delay, to give more lead time, but on impulse I set it for Saturday night anyway. I feel like I have a lot of videos to work through, and I don’t want to spread them out too much. It could take forever to post them all.
About twenty to thirty people tuned in to watch my video Premiere. The number of attendees stayed at roughly twenty-two for the entire ninety minutes of the video. Despite the extreme length of the video, I felt like it didn’t drag too terribly much. I actually enjoyed watching it myself. I don’t know what it would be like for other people, but I appeared to enjoy the sound of my own voice, and I happily watched the entire video while inserting the occasional comment into the chat window. I’m still not clear on how useful or welcome those comments are. It’s becoming more and more clear that people watching the video are not necessarily in sync. We can be minutes apart in terms of where we are in the video. Therefore, when I comment on something that is playing on the video right now, some people might have seen it already and others might not even have reached that point. So my comments might seem to be coming out of nowhere, too early, or too late.
Two people contributed to Planet Doug using the Super Chat and Super Sticker features. I understand better the difference between them now. A Super Sticker is simpler in that the person chooses an animated graphic to accompany their donation. Their name shows up in a large and colorful highlighted rectangle with the animated graphic on the right. The Super Chat feature allows the person to write a brief message inside that highlighted rectangle. And that’s the main difference. I also appeared to be able to reply directly to the person in a Super Sticker. But I couldn’t do that with a Super Chat. I don’t know why. One of my regular viewers from Malaysia sent 30 ringgit, which is about $7 US. And another viewer sent 5 euros, which is about $5.50. And in my world, that feels very generous. It’s 400 baht here in Thailand. And that can get me through a day or two of expenses.
At some point during the day yesterday, I became aware of another online platform similar to Patreon. This one is called Locals. And before I knew it, I had created a Planet Doug community on Locals. I was curious about how Locals worked, and to do that, I had to sign up and create an account. And then I could create a simple member account or I could go the more involved route of establishing an account as a creator with my own community. I chose to do that. I finished all the initial steps, and now my community is pending approval from the administrators. I doubt very much that I will develop my Locals Community into anything. I simply won’t have the time. But it doesn’t hurt to have a Locals account. I’m assuming that Patreon is the best way to go right now, and whatever time I have will be invested into developing Patreon.
Yesterday was also the day when I had to pay rent for the next month. I did some precalculations about what my total bill might be, and I was pretty close. I had to pay 3,500 baht for rent for the next month. That’s about $100 US. And then I had to pay about 1,500 baht for electricity to run the air conditioner. That’s about $44 US. And then I had to pay 200 baht for the water bill. And that’s about $6 US. My bill came to exactly 5,128 baht, or $151 US. I guess that isn’t bad for a month. Yet, it still felt like a lot as I was counting out the crisp 1,000-baht notes. It was nearly all the money I had in my wallet at the time. So I have to make another return trip to the ATM soon.
I’m awake early this morning largely because I have plans to go to the Sunday morning market at the bus station. I haven’t been there in a long time, and I think I will use this visit as an opportunity to do some snacking. I’m going to bring along a GoPro and see if I can track down five new snacks as part of a 5-Snack Challenge. I don’t know for sure that the Sunday morning market is even happening, but I think it is. If it works out, I hope to edit and post the video today as well. This is part of my ongoing efforts to try to make my social media activity more current. I don’t want long delays between doing something and then posting a video about it. I want it all to happen in real time if possible, or at least close to real time.