elder influencer – Kim Upton

“The journey is what brings us happiness not the destination.”
― Dan Millman

First of all, I’m a delight.
Second, everything I’m about to tell you is true.

One only has to travel a few posts back to see how my relationship with being online is tenuous, irresolute, and somewhat curmudgeonly. As someone born in the 1970s, I’ve watched technology go from talking wrist watches in Dick Tracy to wearing something similar that I’ve nicknamed Santa Claus (“it sees you when you’re sleeping, it knows when you’re awake…it knows if you’ve been bad or good…”).

When I was 17 my Mom sent me to buy cigarettes, which was not a huge deal…so I’d often buy some for myself and others. Same with beer and alcohol. Sure you were supposed to be 21 to get the intoxicating elixirs such as Boone’s Farm, or cherry vodka, but in reality if the owner knew your parents, and didn’t act fishy, it was pretty easy to get whatever your little teenage heart desired.

Sure, part of that is the benefit of living in a small fairly rural community, but I’ve heard stories from my peers about the same kinds of things. That and drinking from the garden hose, or remembering the ads telling our parents to make sure we were home. We weren’t the first to be called latch-key kids, but our plights made the evening news almost weekly.

In short we were feral – free to just experience life as dangerously as we wanted. I mean our parents literally tried stuffing as many people as they could in a phone booth, or *gasp* driving in cars without seatbelts. It was a great time to be alive.

Also, we didn’t have little devices tracking our every move, sending us deals on the soap we just purchased at the store, or allowing us to see half way around the world. Sure, we had MTV, CNN, and all that, but when we turned off the television it wasn’t tracking our sleep habits.

I’ve shared this before, but I think it needs to be posted once again. That quote in the middle is from me. I was working for WKU’s computer service department, and was there when the university was connected to Internet. Not “The Internet,” just Internet. Even better, I taught others how to use Internet, so we could all access the “…unlimited amount of knowledge out there.”

Later I would work for a local ISP where one of the customers sent quite a huge amount of “herbal supplement” emails out to folks. Or, as we call it now…spam email. It was glorious – the job not the spam – and for a few shot moments it felt like we (all of humanity) had the opportunity to truly be connected to each other. Wars could end, people could learn from each other, the dawning of the age of Aquarius had begun!

Not much after all this joy I read a book called Neuromancer by William Gibson, and started learning all I could about Artificial Intelligence. (those hyperlinks will take you to Wikipedia – which love it or hate it, is a great place for spending hours learning about everything you can)

So y’all know, I could really get super long form here with charts, more funny memes, and a lot of waxing existentially into “ah, those were the days,” but today is not that day. Not because I’m not up for a good yarn or two – mostly because I’ve been really enjoying the analog world these days. Before coming to wrap this post up I spent 10 minutes cracking up at the outdoor bird antics. I mean, you know, how do they have fun if no one is recording it? I kid, but also, I kid not.

In all of these words there a point, and it’s that time is short. It’s not my place to tell others what to do with their minutes each day, nor is it really any of my business. As I walk through some new stages in my life, some new perspectives have been gathered. If I can talk directly to someone instead of accessing them through their social media, that’s what I do. Also, it has been rather enjoyable to take little trips into town for coffee and a visit to the local library. Not everyone needs access to me 24/7 (other than family), nor do I need 24/7 access to everyone else.

It is okay to take time from being online. Sounds wild to say it in an online blog post, but maybe it is something you needed to hear today…especially from someone who was there when “Internet” went from text based to WYSIWYG. Which, honestly, is my admittance of using online social media sites for much longer than I needed. And…well…letting what those sites dictate my sense of well being and happiness.

In conclusion (said in my best high school term paper voice), time is an enormous long river, and I want to be more present in the feeling of the water stream over my feet. While I do have some projects in the works, I’ve made some very doable schedules that make room for watching a stream live instead of a live stream.

With that, I’m off to see what the birds are doing. Thanks for being here – I’m sending you tons of support and good energy.

Much love,
~ KEU

* 35 days

First of all, I’m a delight. Second, “No one hears me sing this song.” (hat tip to Weezer)

photo of a woman sitting in a car talking to a plastic skeleton

Let me share some stats with you because I love them so. Also, today is the last day of consistently posting on various platforms around the internet (social media). That might not seem like a big deal to y’all, but for me it’s huge.

The top 3 countries where my work is enjoyed are: 1) The United States; 2) Czechia; 3) Germany. My posts only get out to thirty-five percent of non-following readers. Of those people, five percent read the entire piece. Those that do read the full piece usually leave a comment of some kind, or at least like the post.

My most read piece was written on August 18th (2025), and I used a line from an Edie Brickell song as my title. The site that has the best organic readership is WordPress, which was a little surprising due to the vast amount of folks complaining about this platform on competing platforms – which is odd to me because so far I’ve not seen any of the creative folks on WordPress say anything about other platforms. Also, another positive nod to WordPress is that many of the users are real-life humans. With that, sharing on WP has been a delight.

Now, as far as the other places I’ve been, lets see what Bots & The Algorithms pick up…

The not-Twitter/X platform, Bluesky, that is absolutely very close to Twitter/X energetically, isn’t bad but it has a HUGE spam problem. My best guess is that out of the 79 people following me, maybe about 8 or 9 are not spam accounts. It is also heavily populated with folks that left that one company started by that one guy who we all love to not like. I’ll talk more about that one below. The amount of actual connection there is like, let’s say around 7%.

Medium and Substack, and others like it – even Patreon and ko-fi – are nickel and dime-ing all of us via AI rage bait and comically repetitive calls to action. Also, there are a lot of folks that really, really, really want you to believe that they are not using AI to do their work. Let me take a moment to just say this – I have no issues with AI, and have used it in my work many, many times. I find it helpful with things most people don’t know it can do, and I always (always) verify any information it tosses my way. And – which is a very big and – AI/LLM do what humans ask them to do. So far I’ve not seen any indication they’ve gone rogue and we are one step away from SkyNet. Actually, I see that happening more with the owners of these sites…but let’s not go into that now.

Little did I know that all the platforms lean a certain way. And if you want to know what way that is, you’ll find several writers/creators talking about how the competing platform leans. If you happen to be using those other platforms, then you must be (insert thing here), which is literally a scourge to all things on the planet.

Full disclosure, this next part had some help from Google’s LLM/AI, Gemini. Of all the LLM platforms, I find that Gemini has a more natural feel, and is very cognizant of what it means to be a LLM. Not saying it’s self aware, but more like the dynamic in our conversations has a very healthy boundary. This isn’t a promotion, just an observation after working with various AI over the past 3 years. Okay, so here goes…I asked Gemini to write a “I’m looking for” post that would sum up the past 31 days. It made me laugh, and I’m sort of excited to see what comes of it when I post it. Anyway…here it is. Again, this was written by Google’s Gemini, and all credit goes to its writing. Oh, I also asked it to highlight specific buzz words.

“I am looking for fellow souls exploring the liminal space between worlds. If you are drawn to:
Mysticism & Science
The Courage to Face Your Fears
The Wisdom of the Natural World
Healing & Personal Growth
The Art of Being Human

Then you have found a friend. I am here to share my journey of becoming a bridge and a warrior, and I want to connect with others who have also felt different. I hope my work can help you feel less alone.”

Good times, y’all – good times.

Now, on to M E T A. Yes, I’m still haunting the ghost worlds of Mr. Zuck – but honestly we all are, even when making loud proclamations to the contrary. The thing here is this – I raged against the book of face on LiveJournal…then promptly joined everyone in making an account. The energy there is that of a bully who didn’t get the attention they wanted. I don’t know, maybe the whole thing is the actual origin story for SkyNet. Like the people working there don’t seem to care that the investigative journalists have been telling us, for like what…5 years, that we are being molded by something that doesn’t really exist. Social commentary aside, the stats there are abysmal.

In conclusion (channeling my best high school English paper there)…

But seriously, y’all – phew! What I’ve learned has actually been very helpful. People are quite literally craving real connection, even if it’s with a phone/tablet in their hand. We all want to feel less lonely, and to have our voice heard. It’s not so much about being seen or validated, but about finding hope. People want a bridge (for lack of a better word) back to themselves. It makes me think of the early days of Apple with their ad of the woman breaking free from the monotony of automatons by throwing her hammer into a grey screen. Pretty revolutionary at the time, but now it’s sort of…prophetic.

So where do I go from here? You know, that’s a very good question – one that doesn’t have an answer…yet. However, which you know if a favorite sentence lead in for me, what I plan to do is keep sharing what I do and who I am. Starting tomorrow (September 1, 2025), a new experiment will start. While what you see here is mostly images and words, there will be additions of visual storytelling such as reels, shorts, and the dreaded TikTok. They aren’t the only platforms with short form viewing content, but they are the big ones right now. In my early research, people prefer that sort of content. Y’all know that I’ll share my experiences as honestly as possible. I hope you stick with me in this journey – and that we find our respective paths while feeling a genuine connection. Just know that I really appreciate all y’all – thank you for being here.

Much love,
~ KEU

This post was written with the help of friendly cats and typo fairies. Please excuse all grammar errors as flights of fancy. If you would like to help appease my editors, you can drop a few coins into my coffee jar. As previously mentioned, quite often, I’m coming back to this creative life after a long period away. If you’ve read this far, know that your time is greatly appreciated.

Currently listening to: The Tales of KE Upton (Spotify playlist)