Memories Vol. 2

It was 08:30 on a typical work day. I came into the facility, passed through the three locked doors, set my stuff down at my desk, then headed up to the front desk to see what mayhem popped up overnight. While reading and triaging the tickets that were filed by the tenants at dinner last night and that morning the tenant emergency call system went active.

The receptionist couldn’t hear the tenant, nor the smoke alarm (unit alarm was cross tied on purpose) so off I ran to her room. The door was still locked, but this is why they used a master key and using mine I entered.

“Lacey? Lacey?!” I kept calling her name as I entered and found her somewhat limp, naked, form sitting on the floor beside her bed. She looked at me, fear filling her face, a terror that told me so much as I had seen that expression many times before. The emergency system was still active, I told the receptionist to call an ambulance stat, and I sat down on the floor beside Lacey.

“What happened?”

“I tried to get out of bed and slid down again. Maura, can you hold me? I’m scared.”

I put my arm around her shoulders.

“Maura, I mean really hold me? I know what’s happening, and I know I’m going to Hell because I can already smell it, and I see a red ring around everything.”

I knew by the look on her face, the sounds in her voice, that yes she was near the end. I lifted her into my lap, and held her close.

“Lacey, I don’t think you are going to Hell.”

Lacey proceeded through gasping breaths to divulge her sins, things she had probably kept inside her for decades came haltingly pouring out. I let her talk and I saw our administrator enter the room with a gasp that Lacey never heard.

“Lacey, be free of your sins, pass on to the lands beyond free of fear and shame, I hold no sin against you.”

She smiled, looked at me, gripped my arm then relaxed as her breathing ceased. I glanced at her clock, 08:47. A few minutes passed and the paramedics arrived. They lifted her from my lap, started to prepare for CPR until I told them she was DNR (Do Not Resuscitate). They laid her on her bed, marked paperwork DOA (Dead On Arrival).

“Maura, did you notice when she passed?”

I gave them the time of death, explained everything except her list of sins, and went through the same questions again with the county police. I ended up spending most of my morning with Lacey as the police can’t leave without a coroner’s release number, and being the person who found her I had chain of custody for her mortal shell. Once the coroner’s release was issued, her funeral home of record was called, and twenty minutes later they arrived. I walked with her to the pick up van, and said my good bye to a dear friend I had known for ten years.

Later that afternoon her family came to gather and secure a few things from her unit, and met me in the administrator’s office. They were overjoyed that I was the one who was there as she always lit up when she talked about me so they knew she was not alone and with a friend. I let them know that in the end she passed peacefully, and relaxed. I didn’t tell them about her terror. Didn’t tell them of her sins. All they needed to know was in the end she passed peacefully.

A few days later I was talking to my Priest and explained what happened. How I heard her sins, and what I told her.

“Maura, you did just fine. You were there, you let her speak, and you passed final unction as should have been. There was no priest there, and your actions are covered in Cannon Law, rest, let her sins pass from your mind and know she is now with God”

That memory will always haunt me even 20 years out, it is just as vivid, and if I smell her perfume the memory returns as if it happened just this morning.

Maura out

Memories vol 1

Those that have known me for more than a while will also know that I worked as a maintenance supervisor in a retirement home for 25 years. A quarter century of working with people who averaged 87 years of age. A quarter century of becoming friends and in some cases closer than family with the tenants. I was in their homes regularly, I knew them, I knew their histories, I knew their families, I held their grand, great or even great-great grand babies. The dark side of all this is that about every six weeks I’d also find one of my friends passed away or in the process of passing, usually in their bed, sometimes in their recliner, occasionally laying on their davenport, and rarely in the bathroom–where I worked maintenance was the first responders as we had no nursing staff on site.

If you work the math you can see I found 216 friends (reality is 227) after they left this mortal world for their next adventures. These experiences are how I can now turn off emotion, walk away from people I care deeply for, and disconnect from life when things get too rough. It also means that I have memories that haunt me and will always haunt me until I too go to my next adventure. There is no clean break when you compartmentalize death, caring, and love. The death of a loved one always leaves a mark in your psyche, a wound that never fully heals, and being with someone during their final moments can be both terrifying, and a special bond that never breaks as you become tied to that moment for the rest of your own life.

I have been away from that job long enough now that periodically I will post under “Memories vol. __” I won’t post anything identifying about people I found or the sometimes gruesome details of finding them, but there were a few that touched me in such a deep way that I do wish to share them.

Maura out

"Thanks for the memory, until we meet again."

--Song by Leo Robin & Ralph Rainger

Sung by Bob Hope

Social media updates

     Time for a random periodic rundown on how my social media presence is going since it has been a bit.  Also I’m going to note things I have noticed on each platform as I use them.  Note that the easiest places to find me are on X/twitter and Instagram.

X

Currently 1369 followers with me following 900 169,000 posts

I do follow several accounts that do not follow me back as I appreciate their content.  My feed is full of people with Phd’s so it can be very informative.  I don’t care about people’s political affiliations so long as they are not trolls.  I have very astute lawyers, astrophysicists, sex-workers, stay at home parents, blue collar workers, and a few truck drivers.

I briefly broke the 1,400 follower mark for a time and my follower count has slowly drifted since to where it is now mostly stable.

I noticed a minor drop-off when I walked away from Jobe, and I assume it was misinformed mutuals listening to her spin.  (Yes she is known to go back through channels and tell people not to talk to certain people.  It is an isolation tactic and I feel it is also a way to keep mutuals from discussing her and comparing notes on her.)

Before the name changed to X I consistently had views in the hundreds for each post and low end six to ten likes.  I was also in the process of having a verified account as support had reached out to me.  

Since the change it is obvious the platform has become “pay to play” and the algorithm reflects this.  My post views are usually in the single digits and likes if I am lucky are one or two.

Hate accounts against LGBT issues have increased and reporting hate speech is about as effective as putting the report on a sticky note then in a paper shredder.  I have a thick skin but I do report people calling for the death of groups or posting pictures that are only meant to ridicule a group such as trans-women. We all know that not all Male to Female transitions are flattering, but no one should be trying to humiliate a person for who they are.

Blue Sky

60 followers 54 following 371 posts

Okay, this platform is invite only–I think that still applies.  The platform seems to be all politics all the time.  I have followed mutuals from twitter over there and some have flowed back but not all.  I did get a surprise follow from someone I highly respect and I follow on twitter and it made me very happy as she is very discerning in who she follows.

Overall I don’t lurk much there because as I said it seems to be all politics over there, and like “new twitter” there is no real engagement.

Clapper

434 followers 4 following 50 posts

Clapper is a short video platform a la TikTok.  This is the only platform where I am consistently seeing my follower count increase regularly.  The algorithm is okay, but it also does not try to default to your closest server location.  Content on politics tends to be United States right of center and leftists tend to get roasted.  I post the same videos across platforms and average 700 views per video and likes vary from six to hundreds.

The big issue with it is you have to generate your video externally then upload for best video control.  If you upload a saved version from another platform their system flags it as having a watermark and won’t push it into the feed.

Instagram

170 followers 40 following 868 posts

At this point probably a good way to find and reach me.

Views are low and if I’m lucky on a good day I’ll get three likes.

The algorithm seems to be weighted toward large accounts but has worked out that I like redheads though 😁

Facebook

0 followers 0 following

I use this for Market-Place, otherwise I wouldn’t have it.  I have coworkers current and former blocked on this as I don’t need the drama.  The only reason it exists is because Instagram insisted I had to have it.

YouTube 

84 Subscribers 54 posts total

I have no idea how this algorithm works and am highly suspicious it doesn’t.  Some videos get zero views while some shorts get seven thousand views.  I can’t see who is subscribed to me either to work out what appeals to viewers.  The platform nags me to pay for premium, and interrupts with the most inappropriate commercials (hard rock commercial in the middle of a Native American Flute video)  No rhyme or reason on how this platform works and like the last woman in my life the goalposts keep moving.  

Currently if you intend to monetize here you have to join the “Partner program” and have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the previous year, both of these are major hurdles that mean smaller creators won’t make a cent off of their work.  As an example I would need every single follower from my twitter account to subscribe to my YouTube channel just to meet the subscriber minimum 😳  I would not be surprised if it starts seeing significant user and creator fall off if a viable copy of its pre Alphabet ownership is created.

Maura's Soap Box (You don’t need a link as you are already here)

Views are fairly consistent across the board.  Posts typically get 30 to 40 views…yep that’s it.  I can tell at a glance if a follower with a larger platform re-posts or interacts with a notifying post as the count can jump to 80 or 90 with my best having 279 views.

Comments don’t happen on the posts; I’m not sure if that is a setting I have wrong on my end or if no one sees a need to.

Linkedin 

13 followers 1 connection

I honestly don’t get on this much, seems too full of ads for me.  Trying to stay professional, not push my brand etc makes it feel forced.

Mastodon 

30 Followers 27 following 679 posts

A twitter clone but due to the distributed server set up it is clunky.  It does have its own stand alone app which helps and I try to cross post there but it’s easy to forget.  Over all the interface is good and it has a lot of twitter users that abandoned ship when it became X

Post News

A blog and twitter loved each other very much and nine months later Post was born…yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

Very left leaning, with some socialist tendencies mixed in.  The algorithm is totally broken, but favors pushing new stuff out to whoever is currently logged in.

It has no stand alone app, so you have to establish a shortcut via a browser to access it…needless to say if you clear the cookies you have to login all over again

Telegram

3 followers

This is by default an encrypted message platform.  It does allow file sharing as well as text, gifs, pictures, and video.  Mostly I use it to share large files with my kids quickly.

I do post pretty much everything I post on twitter there plus I can be a bit more…open on some things more like on my blog.

Threads by Instagram

96 followers

Being one of the very first to accept the invite to this attempt at a twitter clone–like beta testing first–I can review it fairly easily.

The app does not tell you who you are following easily nor how many you are following or how many posts you have.

If you want to see where all the “that never happened” posts went from twitter then this is the app for you!  Seriously it is more of an app for pathological liars than I have ever seen.  It is slowly cleaning up as twitter did during its first few years though.

Politics tends to be left to leftist with not too many centrists.

It does have a growing meme community as well–the Heinlein society being really good.

TikTok

268 followers 148 following 172 posts

Highest number of views is 943, average is in the 700s up until the first ban hit and the algorithm changed.  Now if no one interacts within the first few dozen views the system stops pushing the video out entirely.

Ai has pretty much flooded the system, and supposedly the admins are trying to stop the influx of Ai generated issues–ironically they use Ai to do most of the moderation tasks.  There is also a huge issue with content being recorded, mixed to a split screen, or just reposted under similarly named accounts.  The thieves' goal is to grab viral content and monetize it for as long as they can.

I have been given the ability to rate footnotes on videos now, so sort of a moderator I guess? 🤔  It is neat to be able to down vote nonsense footnotes though.

Lemon 8

Following 35 followers 16

A derivative of and owned by tik tok, that I have not used much.  Its setup is like Instagram, but directly posting a video from tik tok will sometimes end up with the sound being muted due to copyright even though you were just fine on the parent platform even if the parent app is where the sound came from.

Overall I don’t recommend using it as it isn’t worth the trouble.

 

All said and done things are anywhere from stable to growing slowly. A PR rep I know says I am entering the range where things should start seeing growth picking up again though. The big thing I am trying to do for now is post daily on each platform. I'm hoping to get more content rolling as well as I get back into working on the shop. Maybe this time next year theses numbers will be better than rookie numbers. 

Maura out