So soon, probably during the end of this post or somewhere in tomorrow's post, I'm going to pass the half-million word mark on tychoish.com. This is a bit inflated because I incorporated the posts from tealart a couple of years ago, and some of that material includes quotes and links that I don't think should count toward the site's word count odometer. But there you have it, and in any case this is a milestone, that's worth commemorating.

There's a quote out there along the lines of "everyone has a million words of crap in them before they get to the good stuff." If we count the writing I do here, this means I'm getting close. If we count blog posts and academic writing, I think I'm probably well into the "good stuff." I suppose some of that is up to you.

I wrote a "journal"-type post about myself and what I was up to beyond what I blog about here (and a few of my posts since then have veered in that direction, alas). While these used to be the "easy posts" that I would just sort of blather out a year ago, [1] I don't feel like I miss them.

I'm doing well. I have a lot on my plate, and a lot of "loose ends" floating around that are causing some stress, but I really can't complain. Just for grins the things I'm working on right now:

  • Fiction Writing

  • Station Keeping, Season 2 (about 5 thousand more words to go).

  • The Novel, (half done, 4-5 more months till first draft; leaving 3 months for rewrites, and a podcast launch in August.)

  • Trailing Edge. (Hibernating. 3k more words, and then scores of edits).

  • Open Source Research

    I'm working on turning the research project that's been sort of sputtering along into something more coherent on a number of different levels. I'm not ready to announce this exactly but it involves:

    • Writing lots of emails. Lots of emails.
    • Turn a fairly linear paper into a wiki.
    • Collect a more complete bibliography file.
    • Website things
    • Get Critical Futures back on track.
  • Tychoish.com Redesign project. Not to mention writing for the site like I do.

  • Something for the open source project described above.

  • Life things

  • I probably have half a dozen small/midsized trips this year. Knitting things, dancing things, work things, science fiction things. That's a lot of stress there.

  • I'm going to be moving this summer.

  • For someone who views himself as being a shut-in mostly, I do a lot of stuff "out:" dancing 3 times a week, singing from time to time, and so forth.

  • Knitting things

  • The grandmother shawl, plus two other lace shawls in progress.

  • My Starmore cable sweater. I'm 20% done with it. That's not very much.

  • The color-work sweater that just needs another sleeve.

So that's what's on my plate. I really need to start knocking this stuff out.

Will this blog be around in another half million words? I figure that that means that I'd have to keep up doing this for another three or three and a half years, at my current rate. It could happen. It could definitely happen.

I'll see you on the other side.

[1]It was a dark time. I'm better now. Mostly.