social media

Why I’m Deleting Apps and Returning My Phone To Just Being a Phone

~ ChanAtkins ~ 5 Comments

And how I will still maintain an online author presence

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Do you remember when you got your first mobile phone? I guess everyone does. I was twenty, it was 1998 and my friends had collectively bought me one for my birthday. I hadn’t expressed any longing for one – at that point it was still relatively rare for people to have one – but some of my friends had had phones for a while and they wanted me to join in. It was a nice gift. A chunky little pay-as-you-go Nokia.

It was a novelty to start with. Kind of fun to send a text or get a phone call. They couldn’t connect to the internet and most of us hadn’t even started using the web yet. We had no need to. Those early phones could not take photos either. They had chunky push buttons and you had to pay for cool ring-tones.

We were innocent in our acceptance of them. We had no idea where it would all lead; how much easier it would make our lives, how addicted we would become.

Back then, we didn’t take them everywhere with us. It was still entirely acceptable not to own one. We all still had landlines and still knew the numbers of our loved ones by heart. Twenty-seven years later we are slowly waking up to the fact that our phones, and what we now have on them, are addictive. We are slowly waking up to the fact that giving a smart phone to a child can be extremely detrimental to their mental health.

Ten, twenty years from now, where will we be? Will we see phones and contracts with health warnings on them like we do with alcohol and tobacco? There is a push among some countries, and within many schools and parenting communities to limit the use of smartphones for young people and there is a growing movement of people who want to disconnect from the hold their phone has on them.

And I’m one of them.

I’ve been wanting to do something about it for some time. The way my phone took over my life was slow, insidious. It’s not until you look back and remember how it was that you see how far it has come. I wasn’t interested in mobile phones to start with. Like I said, my friends bought me my first one. I remember my first camera phone. It would have been around 2004 because I recall trying to take photos of my two young daughters with it. Every photo was blurry because they couldn’t sit still.

I’ve never been that impressed by phones. I always had this one friend that got really excited about them and was always upgrading and talking about the next big thing, but I was never in a hurry to upgrade mine. Every phone I’ve ever had I’ve kept until it eventually died. Camera phones were soon all the rage and before long the cameras were actually good. Phones also had torches and calculators on them now.

My friends connected to the internet with their phones years before I did. I was still getting my head around the internet itself back in 2007 when we got our first family laptop.

I didn’t get Facebook until around 2009 and the only reason I did was because a mum at school was telling me about her virtual farm. At the time we were renting a very small house with a very small garden and I didn’t have much room to grow things. A virtual farm sounded fun and it was, so I joined Facebook just to play Farmville!

I soon got lured in by connecting with friends, old and new. I soon started following various pages that connected to my interests. At this point I still had a rubbish camera phone and was using an actual camera connected to the laptop to upload photos.

Fast forward to when my fourth child was born in 2014, and everything had changed. I now had apps on my phone. Facebook and Instagram and my email account. I now had various author pages I needed to update each day. I could buy straight from Amazon using my phone. I could take cute photos of my newborn and upload them instantly to my socials.

I was now addicted to my phone.

I didn’t realise it at first, of course. I took it everywhere with me just like everyone else. It was a source of comfort and safety, peace of mind. Phone boxes have become scarce. No one can remember anyone’s numbers anymore and if you break down in the middle of nowhere you are going to need a phone.

But without me knowing, an addiction had formed.

An addiction that started as soon as I woke up in the morning and the very first thing I did was check my phone. I’d then settle down with my breakfast and check it again, this time answering any messages on Facebook Messenger, text, or WhatsApp. Then I’d check TimeHop. Followed by Facebook and Instagram notifications which inevitably led to me scrolling mindlessly for far too long. I’d break the scrolling to check the news. Not on the TV like the old days – on my phone. Then I’d check my emails. All before getting dressed.

Once I’d got dressed and woke the kids up and completed a few other morning chores, I was right back on my phone again, this time with a coffee on the go. Checking those apps again. Scrolling again. Quite often getting angry or depressed again.

And that’s how the day would carry on. In between work, travel and household chores, I would check my phone. I didn’t even know what I was checking for but it had become such a habit that I didn’t notice it at first. My hand moving towards my phone all the time, almost of its own accord.

If we were watching a TV programme and adverts came on, I’d pick up my phone. If a programme was a bit dull, I’d look at my phone. Waiting in the car to pick my son up from school, I’d check my phone.

In recent years it began to annoy me.

We can all agree that the entire world had gone to shit and who knows how much worse its going to get. Checking my phone now caused me to feel utter despair. Utter helplessness. My phone was making me angry and sad. Looking at my phone was constantly ruining my day.

And then there is how instantly contactable they make you. If you’ve got a few apps on there, anyone can ping you a message or tag you in something at any time, day or night. I would groan at the messages. Groan at the emails. Roll my eyes at the notifications and the things people send you for no reason. I’d constantly sneer at people’s feeds and posts. Constantly feel annoyed by people, by the world, by everything.

Yet I couldn’t stop looking!

Doing something even though you know it is causing you harm? If that’s not addiction, I don’t know what else.

Something had to change. I read The Way Home by Mark Boyle just before Christmas and it tapped into everything that was frustrating me about the modern world. I don’t think my family would let me run away to live in a cabin in the woods with no technology, but reading that book made me long for a more simple life again.

At first I tried not looking at my phone so much. Every time my hand reached for it, I would tune into what I was doing and stop myself. More often than not I would have already opened an app and started scrolling though before I remembered I was trying to wean myself off.

I’d force myself away mid-scroll, but the itch to return was still there. Fear of missing out, I suppose. Plus the ingrained habit of constantly reading and seeing what everyone else is up to at every moment of the day, and me sharing what I’m doing, thinking and feeling. At some point we stopped talking to people in real life and started sharing our private lives across social media.

Social media has become increasingly toxic. It’s not a nice place to be. The majority of these platforms are owned by pretty despicable people with pretty deplorable morals. They can also change the game any time they like. Despite being billionaires, they want you to pay for ads to boost your posts. Visibility for author pages is constantly dwindling unless you can afford to pay. And then there’s AI slop and the enshittification of the entire internet…

I think that’s what did it for me in the end.

I left Twitter and joined Bluesky. I’ve upped my game on Substack, while trying to remain busy on Medium and here on my blog. None of these apps are on my phone.

Next came the culling. I did it when I was feeling angry; when I was thinking about Zuckerberg caving to Trump who thinks right-wingers are unfairly fact-checked on Facebook; when I was thinking about Spotify donating to Trump and being terrible for the music industry, when I was fed up of people messaging me, tagging me, sending me things.

So, I did it. First Facebook Messenger from my phone, followed a few days later by Facebook itself and Spotify. It’s a start.

I thought it would be hard. I thought losing all my playlists would sting. I thought not constantly knowing what’s happening on Facebook would worry me, but in the end it hurt far less than I had anticipated. Snip. Gone.

Now every time I reach for my phone I almost instantly put it back down because there is far less to check or get sucked into. I still have Instagram for the moment. That’s because it’s an author page linked to my Facebook author page, so if I post book related stuff there it will automatically show up on my author page on Facebook without me having to go on Facebook. My plan is to delete both if my followers and engagement on Bluesky and Substack overtake my followers on Facebook.

People can only message me now if they have my phone number! It’s bliss. And I still have plenty of time in the morning and/or evening to ‘check’ Facebook on my laptop, and to post to Substack and Bluesky.

It’s a start! I hope to go further. I’d like to make my phone just a phone again, but it’s not easy when you have books to sell. And it’s not easy weaning yourself off such an entrenched addiction!

My phone no longer has the same hold over me. I can’t doom scroll anymore. I can read the news, or not. I can check Instagram and post book stuff, or not. That’s about it.

It feels good. Like freedom. Like sanity!

I also have a lot more time for other things. Instead of scrolling on my phone, I pick up a book instead or get more writing done. I’ve started planting seeds for the garden and I am slowly redecorating our entire house. I don’t think I’d have time for all this if I was as addicted to my phone as I was…

How about you? Does your phone control your life? Could you live without it? Are there a few apps you could delete? Do you think we are starting to see a backlash against social media platforms?

Social Media Fatigue, AI Slop and the Enshittification of the Internet

~ ChanAtkins ~ 5 Comments

I’ve Had Enough – But Where Do We Go From Here?

Image by TyliJura from Pixabay

I learnt a new word this week: enshittification.

I came across it in an article and it struck such a chord I looked it up. Wikipedia describes it as: “Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a pattern in which online products and services decline in quality. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.”

And wow, doesn’t that just sum up the late stage of capitalism we are in right now? Late stage capitalism = end of the world, if you’re feeling really gloomy.

But in all seriousness, it kind of adds up to that, doesn’t it? As the above quote explains, huge companies, the elite, the ultra rich, the CEOs and shareholders, the governments, the rulers and the polluters are paying no heed whatsoever to the plight of the world, the natural environment or human suffering. It’s as if they can see the burning end coming and are trying to hoard as much wealth and security as possible in preparation for when end days really arrive. They’ll be fine in their bunkers while everything collapses around the rest of us.

But let’s go back to my new favourite word. I’d been feeling this way about social media for some time. I even wrote a poem on Medium about it and I’ve posted it at the end just for fun. I recently read a book called The Way Home by Mark Boyle, which is about one man shunning the modern world and technology to live in a self-made cabin in the woods and survive by himself. By the time I’d devoured it I wanted to do the exact same thing myself. I soon realised I couldn’t, of course. You need money to buy land and be left alone. Plus, how could I sell my books or get paid for my writing if I gave up technology? I am trapped. We are all trapped.

That depressed me but I decided to fight back by cutting down my use of tech. I’ve started leaving my phone behind, for example. No, I don’t mean when I leave the house, I don’t have the guts for that yet, but I mean when I move from room to room. Yes, like a lot of us, that’s how glued to my phone I normally am. It’s always in my back pocket. It’s an addiction, let’s be honest.

But it’s an addiction that we all seem to hate and grumble about constantly. Twitter, now known as X, has seen a huge exodus to rival Bluesky in response to Elon Musk’s support for Trump. That includes me, by the way. Facebook has just announced they’re getting rid of the fact-checking facility. So, in the name of free speech, we’ll now be subjected to a tidal wave of lies and misinformation, not to mention hate speech and more political interference from certain wealthy quarters.

Facebook has been declining for some time too and I can see it soon going the same way as X. It is my intention to start building my content up on other platforms from now on.

Medium was a lifeline for a while. In a few months I’ll have been on there for two years and for the majority of that time it has surpassed my expectations. It’s paid me for my writing, rewarded me for my words, made me feel appreciated and valued. But then AI came along and ruined it all. These days Medium is fast becoming another platform I need but actively loathe going on.

All right, it’s not that bad yet. I’m getting good at spotting, blocking and reporting the huge amount of spammers, scammers and bots that now stalk it, but it’s still depressing, not to mention time consuming to have to do this. Reads, views and earnings are down for everyone. People are leaving in droves. It’s becoming impossible to determine what is human written and what is AI generated and Medium didn’t seem to be doing anything to discourage the barrage of AI slop, until today that is. I’ve just edited this blog post and luckily before I published it, because Medium have just emailed its subscribers updating them on their approach to AI slop, spammers and scammers.

I felt a huge sense of relief reading the email. They do seem to be very much aware of the frustrations we’ve been having, even down to the generic ‘nice’ or ‘good’ or ‘follow me’ comments we get on our articles from people who have not read them. The rules for Medium are clearly presented as follows, and anyone who breaks them is being suspended and/or removed. Yay!

  • creating multiple accounts to engage with yourself and generate earnings
  • using responses solely to drive attention to your stories with the intention of creating reciprocal earnings
  • writing responses, clapping, following, or highlighting solely to generate earnings
  • using AI-generated content to earn money for stories and responses in the Partner Program

I don’t know where writers go from here. I sometimes feel like our time is running short. Why will anyone hire a real human writer if they can get AI to do the job for them? Stories, poems, essays, articles, copy, ghost-writing, you name it, AI can do it.

And it was already hard enough for writers, both trad published and indie. Hard and getting harder. So, what do we do? Where do we go?

Well, we don’t give up, that’s for sure. We seek out better places. For me, that means returning humbly to the safety of my blog. I am now adding my blog link to every piece I publish on Medium and since joining Bluesky, I am also cross-posting my blog pieces to there. My blog is mine and I control it. That’s something to value these days and I predict the humble blog will see a rise in popularity and usage in the next few years as writers turn away from the enshittification of social media platforms.

I’m on Substack but need to up my game. I’m still working out how best to use it, because although it is tempting to repost Medium and blog pieces there, this seems a bit dull. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll use it to serialise my next book? I’m not sure. At the moment I’m just using it for my newsletter and I’ve only posted two so far, so there is work to be done.

Bluesky so far is mostly a breath of fresh air. We’ll see though. I’ll definitely be posting there more often and if it takes off along with Substack, then I predict I’ll use Instagram and Facebook far less.

That’s my way of handling it anyway. We can’t give up, that’s for sure. Though I truly felt like it when I was told by one of the kids in my writing clubs this week that their teacher had been showing them how to use AI to write stories. They all thought this was wonderful while I was horrified. They couldn’t understand my horror so I changed the subject. They’re too young for me to rant at but I wanted to ask them what they thought would happen to me teaching them writing, if they could use AI to do the same thing? I’d be out of a job, surely?

I also wanted to ask them if they didn’t see it as cheating, because I do. We’ve got this far without AI churning out stories and poems for us. Why are we so quick to hand our imagination over to huge nameless companies? And yes I know that tools such as Grammarly and even the spell check function on Word are technically AI, but, and you can fight me on this, using a tool to check your spelling and grammar, is not the same as using a tool to form a sentence or a paragraph for you.

It frustrates me. Writing should be hard! It should take your blood sweat and tears! It should enrage and frustrate you because once you get through that and figure it out for yourself, it will excite and thrill you. Can you say the same thing about AI? I doubt it. When you are praised for a piece of writing, can you really take the credit? Can you really feel proud?

Pride. Imagination. Working through those humps and blocks. Thrashing out ideas. Rearranging sentences. Cutting out repetitive words. Are we really going to let AI do the hard work for us?

Well, I’m not.

I’m a writer and I write and I will continue to do so even if things continue to get harder.

What are your thoughts on all this? I’d love to know so feel free to drop a comment…

Sick Of Social Media

I’m sick of social media
it makes me feel sick
dehydrated, disconnected
draining my empathy
til all that I can see
is how I don’t want to be
so please don’t message me
don’t chase me up
don’t hound me down
don’t send me a reel
or assume my time is yours to steal
don’t leave me a voice-note
don’t tell me how to vote
don’t message me a random link
and expect me to click it
don’t pretend to know anyone
don’t pretend you are having fun
don’t say things to strangers online
that would get you battered in real life
don’t send thoughts and prayers
don’t pretend that you care
or that your sympathy isn’t reserved
for some countries more than others
don’t ask me to follow you
don’t assume I want to know you
don’t offer me a service
or expect me to want this
don’t assume I am interested
or that your life has me invested
I’m sick of social media
it is making me sick
dehydrated, disconnected
blunting my sympathy
til all that I can see
is who I don’t want to be

My Experience On Medium So Far

~ ChanAtkins ~ 16 Comments

I first became aware of the writer’s platform, Medium, a few years back when an author I follow on Facebook started posting about it. This author would share pieces he had published on Medium and suggested it was a worthwhile platform for writers to invest in if they fancied getting paid for their work. At the time, I thought, good for you and moved on by. So often in this industry, authors are bombarded with ways to make money out of writing and it often becomes too much. There are only so many hours in a day, and most of us have full time day-jobs and families to contend with too.

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

Over the next few years I noticed a few other authors I respect had started publishing on Medium. They too often mentioned how good it was. Again, I thought, good for you, but I don’t have time. Too many books to write and promote and not enough hours in the day was my excuse.

Then, back in April, one of these authors messaged me privately to urge me to give it a go. He had just enjoyed one of my blog posts and pointed out that similar types of articles, essays and personal pieces could be making me money on Medium if I gave it a go. He told me he was on average earning around $200 a month which made a nice little side hustle and finally, I was intrigued. I decided to sign up and give it a go. I went all in, rejecting the free option for the paid one. You pay $5 a month to be a member on Medium and that gives you access to all the work published on there, plus it gives you a chance to apply for the partner programme. Being part of that, I was told, was how you eventually started earning money.

To start with, I set up my profile and on the advice of my friend, wrote an ‘About Me’ article. This is apparently the best way to begin to get follows. Life took over after that and I neglected the site until a few months later. By now, I was aware that another author friend of mine was also doing well on Medium, making an average of £200 a month to supplement her other income streams. There are, of course, many writers making even more than that per month, and this knowledge gave me a new determination.

If you’re not aware of how Medium operates, I will try and break it down for you.

You can sign up to the free version, post anything you like and read other posts that don’t have a paywall in front of them. This is not a bad way to get started and get a feel for the place.

Or, like me, you can sign up to be a member. You can then start posting whatever you like. Poems, stories, flash fiction, articles, essays, personal pieces and more. You can post by yourself or you can submit to write for publications. Luckily for me, one of my friends was already an editor on several publications that were a good fit for me, so I joined all of those, read the submission rules and got started. The aim is to get to 100 followers, as that is one of the criteria for being accepted onto the partner programme, which will then enable you to get paid.

I found it really easy to get 100 followers. I started following, reading, commenting and clapping on other writer’s work and they would do the same for me. I found people were following me after reading and responding to my About Me piece, and again, whenever I posted something, I’d get a new little burst of followers. It was exciting and felt a lot more worthy of my time than other social media platforms. Plus, I was really enjoying following and reading the work from other writers!

Once I got my 100 followers, and had posted enough articles, I applied for the partner programme and got in. A month after that I got my first payment! I was thrilled to bits. It was for just under $3 so didn’t quite cover my membership fee, but it spurred me on. This was starting to look really doable. And I was enjoying it!

I still am. I think Medium is a great platform for all kinds of writers. I just got my second payment the other day and it was just over $8 dollars. Again, I was absolutely thrilled. I’ve made a little profit and covered my membership fee. I now feel even more determined to write and post more quality pieces to up my earnings again for next month. In fact, I now have a goal in mind of £200 a month. That would be a really nice extra income stream for writing things I would have written anyway.

If you are interested, here’s a short breakdown of the pros and cons I’ve found so far!

Pros

  • you can post anything, though of course there is guidance and some rules so make sure you read these first. Some writers only post poetry, some only political articles, some lifestyle pieces and so on. It’s totally up to you.
  • There is a publication for everything! I am currently a writer for 7 publications which gives me a good choice of who to submit it to whenever I write anything. Some of them are really niche, so you will definitely find one to suit your writing style and topics.
  • people are overwhelmingly positive and supportive. I’ve only had one critic on there which was a bit odd but we’ve unfollowed each other now. Everyone else has been absolutely lovely. Writers are keen to support each other as it increases the chance of the favour being returned
  • it’s like a co-operative of writers all helping each other and I love that!
  • editors can pick pieces to ‘boost’ which gives you even more visibility. This happened to me recently!
  • publications offer lots of prompts and challenges so you will never be without something to write about
  • Medium promotes the writers with ‘daily digest’ emails tailored to suit you. I try to read this every morning, a bit like reading a newspaper. I read as many as I can and clap and comment as much as I can too. It is a reciprocative platform so make sure you are helping out other authors too.
  • It’s super fast to gain genuine followers, unlike other social media sites!
  • You can get started by reusing old blog posts. Medium doesn’t mind if something has been published elsewhere before, but some of the publications do, so check first.
  • There are some very talented writers on there and I genuinely enjoy reading the Medium Digest each day!

Cons

  • It can be time consuming but I have managed to fit it in. In order to be supportive to others, you do need to follow, subscribe, clap, comment and share as much as you can. You can’t expect to help no one and still gain followers and views.
  • Like all internet platforms there are going to be some trolls, and some people who let you know they don’t like your writing, but overall, it is completely the opposite.
  • It leaves you with less content for your blog! I like to post on here weekly if I can, but it’s been less lately because every time I have an idea, I choose to put it on Medium instead!

That’s it. I can’t think of any other cons so far, but perhaps, further down the line I’ll feel differently. I think I will write an update post maybe six months from now and let you know how close I am to my payment goal and whether I have come across any other negative aspects to the site.

For now, I’d definitely recommend it. Facebook and Instagram have become such an echo chamber lately. Social media can be very depressing at times but so far, I am thoroughly enjoying being a part of the Medium community!

If you want to follow me, I’ll gladly follow you back: @chantelleatkins_17828

How To Support The Author In Your Life

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

You know an author. A writer. One of those weird, probably quite awkward and introverted people who like to make up stories for a living. This author you know would absolutely love it if you were a fan of their books, if you read them, reviewed them, recommended or raved about them. Of course, they would, who wouldn’t? But let’s face it; that’s highly unrealistic and there are many reasons why an author’s close friends and family don’t do this. If you like this person though, there are other ways you can support them – but first lets get some common assumptions about authors out of the way.

One of the reasons you might think you can’t be of any help to them, is because of the assumption that they are making an actual living out of writing books. Unless they are one of those famous authors that everyone has heard of, and whose books get made into TV shows and movies, then you can almost certainly guarantee that they have an actual job. A proper job to pay the bills because there is no way in hell that selling their books pays the bills. The average annual wage of an author who has given up the day job is about £11,000, so you can see why so many carry on to work in various jobs to make ends meet.

You might also think they have a budget for marketing and advertising their books, because obviously, these things don’t come for free. In reality though, even traditionally published authors don’t get much help marketing their books. They have to do the bulk of it themselves, any way they can, just like indie authors do. And chances are, they don’t have any budget for this. Chances are, if they do fork out for paid adverts, blog tours, social media blasts, etc, they are doing it with money they really don’t have. Once they have paid for editing, proofreading and front covers, the indie author is already well out of pocket. Authors are not rich. Never have been.

All that aside, you can help support the author in your life in several, easy cost-free ways.

You don’t have to buy their book, read or review it – though obviously they would be over the moon if you did! It might not be your genre. You might not be much of a reader. You might not have time to read. You might be worried your author friend/relative is not very good – and it would be awkward if you discovered that by reading their book. You might think its all a silly waste of time. Either way, I’ll say it again, you don’t have to read their book just because you know them and it appears that this is generally the case with most authors. Since I started my own publishing journey back in 2013 I have constantly been told by other authors that their friends and family don’t support their writing. If I ask what they mean by this, I’ll be told a number of things; some writers have brutal people in their lives who tell them to their face that writing books is a waste of time, so they know full well not to count on these for any support when they are promoting a new book. But usually it’s simply that the friends and relatives don’t notice it or talk about it. They change the subject if the author mentions their books. They neglect to like, comment or share any of the authors posts. It’s a bizarre phenomenon and I never truly realised how many authors it effects until I started digging. I used to think it was just me but now I know it’s a bigger issue and it fascinates me.

Because let me tell you, if this author you know is your friend and/or your relative, they have noticed your lack of support and without a doubt it bothers them. They wrestle with it. Are they too in your face? Are they posting about their book too much? Are they annoying you? Have you read their work and scoffed at it? Do you secretly hate them? They will be thinking this!

To conclude, you don’t have to read or like their books. They probably write in a totally different genre to the one you read in, but you could really make a difference to their self-confidence, their reach, their visibility and yes maybe even their pocket if you supported them in other, smaller ways:

  • Like their posts – it helps them reach more people. It only takes a second to click ‘like’ and it will mean so much to them.
  • Comment on their posts – even a thumbs up or well done will be much appreciated and again, it will help the post reach more people.
  • Share the post! – Probably the most helpful thing you can do apart from reading and reviewing their books. You might not want to read it, but people you know might like it, or people they know! Share the post and see how far it can go. You could be making a huge difference and they will be forever grateful and less likely to give up on their dream.
  • Follow their page or other social media platforms -You could just follow one and again, the odd like, share or comment will help their page reach more possible readers.
  • Read and review the book – This need not cost you anything either. If money is really tight but you would still like to support your friend or relative, you could request a review copy for free and I can guarantee they will be delighted to gift it to you, especially if you leave a review afterwards. Or again, you could share pictures or links for the book to help them reach more readers.
  • Ask them about their book – the easiest and cheapest thing to do to support them. Authors love talking about the worlds and the characters they have created, so why not let them indulge from time to time? It might even be interesting!

So, there you have it. Easy, cheap or free ways to support the author in your life. I can promise you it will mean everything to them to know they can rely on your support. Writers tend to be quite insecure people and as we have already discussed, there is very little in way of financial reward, so to know your close friends and family are ready to jump in and help push your book when it’s released is just the best feeling ever.