ROOPHLOCH 2021 round up
-----------------------

The third ever Remote Off-Grid Outdoor Phlogging Challenge has come to
a close.  As per past years, I have compiled a list[1] of all the
qualifying entries I am aware of.  If I have missed your ROOPHLOCH
post, please let me know via email!

This was the quietest ROOPHLOCH yet.  In fact, the trend of annual
halvings of participants continued!  There were 16 posts made in 2019,
8 in 2020, and only 4 in 2021.  There's now nobody who has
participated in every single instance of the event (dokuja and jynx
could, previously, boast this).  I, myself, cannot really say anything
about this as I once again failed to participate in my own challenge.
I am suitably shame-faced, let me assure you.

As October rolled around and I checked in on my now habitually and
powerfully neglected email account and found only four emails with
"ROOPHLOCH" in the subject it made me a little sad and, when I
considered this in the context of my own persistent lack of interest
in motivation in just about anything internet related for the past few
months (I'll write more about this, at some point.  On the off chance
anybody has been worried, I am fine.  I have spent most of my free
time and energy reading books printed on paper, listening to music on
CD tape, and building little medium wave receivers to play around with
when the sun goes down, and I've been largely content with this life),
I honestly thought that perhaps the time was right to throw in the
towel.

Then I went and actually read those emails, and then I read the
ROOPHLOCH posts themselves, and my spirit was lifted.  Okay, we lost
participants, including our "regulars".  But let's look on the
brighter side: everybody who participated this year was a first time
participant.  People thanked me for putting the event on and told me
they were looking forward to next year.  There's life in this thing
yet.  Hell, after reading dear Shufei's inaugural post[2] there's more
life in *me*, with respect to computing and the internet, than there
has been in months.

So, we'll do this again, in 2022.  Please look forward to it.

[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/1/~solderpunk/roophloch/2021
[2] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~shufei/phlog/20210910-Life-ROOPHLOCH-Howdy.txt