I have returned from a really quite amazing morris dance ale, that is an annual gathering of morris dancers that I’ve been going to every year for the past 7 years. Wow.

I think I survived this one in better shape that I have the past few ones. I’m in slightly better shape. I’m utterly comfortable in these situations. The organization of the event was a) not my responsibility, and b) amazing. Everything worked and worked perfectly, and I had a blast.

Having said that, I don’t have much of a voice left from too much singing, but also probably most importantly calling dances, and I have a bum knee.¹

I also have a lot of really great stories, snippets, and memories that I want to collect in a longer post, as I remember and collect them. Keep your eyes peeled.

I also got a call back about what would be an ideal job. Day long interview next week. Rock. More details as they prevail. I’ve got slacks and a good jacket. I’m debating a tie. This would be really good.

Stay tuned. Regular posting resumes soon.

I just wanted to post a little note.

First of all I want to thank you all for the birthday notes. It’s great to hear from you, and it was great to hear from so many of you. Thanks.

I’m out of town, and likely completely out of touch starting tomorrow morning blindingly early until Monday afternoon/evening. I’ll be at this, and it’s an event that I never take a computer to, so I won’t have anything meaningful to say to you until then.

I’ll probably be harping on this for a while, but I put out a call on the twitter (with an offer of a beer, in compensation) for “Virginia Woolf Steampunk” stories. This is either for deritive Woolf fiction with a steam punk flare; or with better luck, Woolf as the heroine of a steampunk story. My friend Sam Tung posted the first, on facebook, I think though it was close, but Miss Violet had a good one as well.

I’d love to hear more of these stories folks… Keep them coming. Maybe we can do a collection?

Anyway… Have a good memorial day, and even though I plan to have a blast at my thing, I’ll confess to being a little jealous of the folks who are going to WisCon and Balticon. Enjoy, and I want full reports folks.

Overheard this past week:

“I think because queers (guys specifically) mostly don’t get a chance to be teenagers--with the flirting and the sex experimentation and what not--when they’re actually teenagers, we spend a lot of time after we’re teenagers fumbling through our love lives acting like teenagers even though we know it’s not right, because we have to get it out someway,” I declared. My discussions with C. about of our romantic woes often began with broad decelerations about sociological phenomena.

Strangely this was comforting.

“I don’t think it’s a queer, thing--I sort of feel like I’m in the same place. I think that’s how everyone who was nonsexual in high school deals with their twenties,” she asserted. C. is often right about these things, but I don’t have to like it. I propose some theory of the nature of queer life, and she asserts that it’s more universal; almost always true, but far less exciting/original that way.

“Remember how I used to call you ‘almost queer,’ and you used to laugh at me for being absurd?”

“Yes.”

“This is what I meant.” I stare, but there’s probably a twinkle in my eye. She laughs, and I feel relieved, Making C. laugh is something I donate a lot of energy to.

“It’s like we all have teenager to get out of our systems--” C. begins.

“--and it takes forever because we know we should be beyond it by now.” I finish.

“Imagine how awesome we’d be now if we got laid in high school.” C laments.

Now I’m laughing, “I think it probably has less to do with the sex and more to do more with the flirting and crushing and all that good old trial and error romance stuff that folks do when they’re young.”

“Probably.” C. says after a moment. “So, speaking of what did our mututal crush say to you this time.”

“The usual,” I say, and roll my eyes. “G-d, I wonder how did I seem so together when we were in college,”

“Eh, it’s not him is it?” C. is uncanny.

“Ok you can stop being psychic now.”

And I wonder why there are entire journals devoted to queer studies sometimes. Actually come to think about it, I’m sort of writing a paper on this subject. I like how even in my absence from academe, where I’m trying to relax and refresh as much as possible so I can build new connections and foundations when I get back to it in a few months/weeks, everything still seems to be connected.

Also while this conversation reflects--more or less--an actual conversation, it’s a format (albiet with more science fictional elements) that I’m playing with for a new project that I’ll probably launch sometime this summer. Does the ultra short, potentially serial, format appeal?

I mentioned last week that I had been thinking about getting a new set of headphones for my birthday, but I managed to fix the cord on my old headphones in a spectacular sort of way, and came to the conclusion that I only have one head, and didn’t need two sets of headphones.

I have a similar sort of story from a few days ago…

The astute among you will notice that I’ve been at least a little interested in getting my act together to do a podcast for a while. I’ve done radio before, I’ve done some sound engineering, and it would be cool to bring these experiences together with my internet/blogging/reading fascination. I think it would let me interact with a larger/different audience, and it just seems like fun. I’ve also avoided doing a podcast for a long time because I’ve always felt that my poor old computer was too overburdened and the cheapish USB mics that been able to try out all sucked to my ear¹ I’d and a litany of other excuses.

Anyway, I thought I’d solved my problems with the discovery of this a pretty nifty digital audio recorder, with good mics, which makes up for what it lacks in ruggedness with versatility, and economy. I figured that if I didn’t really need to do anything other than upload the file with my computer it could handle it.

I should interject that at the moment, I’m most interested in doing a podcast in the school of cory doctorow, which is “turn on a mic, and record for 20 to 40 minutes and then post it on the internet.” Anyway, I thought a portable recorder would be the ideal situation for this sort of problem…

On a whim I hooked up the USB mic--that I had tried and failed to use for years--to the computer and…. Hot damn. It worked. Really well. This my friends, is why accepting for wool, books and tea, I don’t really get much new stuff. I always manage to make the old stuff work. Even if I do like toys.

So nix the portable option, I’ll--when I have time--and it’ll be a few weeks, I’ll probably begin putting together a podcast… Nothing formal, and at the moment it’s a second string project, but it’s on my mind, maybe it could be on yours as well.

So there’s this book of knitting patterns called “classic knits for real women”

I am naturally hesitant to get behind a book that’s pres<>upposes some notion of “real womanhood,” right? but this book has middle aged women on the cover which bodes well (white, admittedly, though it’s a British publication from a pretty rurally located company).¹

And the designs look to be simple, non-fashion designs, with a traditional edge, with good yarn, and what not: I think they’re using “real” in contrast to “couture fashion model,” which is a heart warming development.

On the one hand, the language kind of sucks, and on the other, I’m thinking rock on sweaters that people can wear.

Thoughts?

Hah. Today is my birthday. I seem to have made it through another year.

As an interesting side point, I think I got through 21 without using the privilege to buy buy alcohol at all, though I was carded to get into music venues and the like a few times. Just kinda funny.

It’s been a tough year, I’d say on the whole. The graduate school rejection--to mention nothing of the utterly painful application process. Some frustrating and long-lived knitting projects. Employment has been erratic and frustrating. The blog has been really fun, and while I did get back into writing this year, but I think both suffered as I was dealing with school crap. Having said that things are starting to look up.

But the great thing is that things are feeling more and more together. I’ve been writing a little, basically whenever I can get a free moment for the past week. I have a job at least till the end of August, and I have a long range plan that looks like it might just work. Can’t argue with that.

I think “Onward and Upward!” is particularly fitting in this circumstance.

For a long time I’ve dedicated a certain degree of energy in trying to looking older, because it’s useful, because it’s fun to pass, because I could. I suspect that uncovering all of the reasoning behind that one is beyond the scope of this entry. In any case.

I’ve realized, both by watching people out in the world, and by looking at the mirror, that for the first time in a long time, I basically look as old as I feel. I think. Actually as I type that I’m a little worried that I think I’m a bit younger than I am, because when I see people that I don’t know who are probably about my age in their natural habitat, I almost always feel younger.

In any case, I think it’s going to be a good year. It better be.

Hey everyone,

I hope this weekend finds you well. I’m still in the middle of the crazy busy period of my life. I suppose this is it’s way of finding balance. I haven’t written a journal post in a while so here goes…

1. I’ve been working a lot. Full time gainful employment, plus maybe as much as 8 hours at the yarn store (teaching and regular work). Also since there’s a big morris dancing gathering in a week I’ve been dancing one sort or another 4 times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday). It’s both really invigorating and tiring, and I hope that I can keep energy up.

2. I’ve applied for a job that would keep me here (not a bad thing, particularly given the job) and I really want it, though I’m not sure what my chances are. I’ve resolved to not pay much attention to job searching for at least two more weeks and any academic thing other than existing projects and possibly literature reading for at least another month.

3. I’m pretty resolved at the moment to work on this new fiction site/blog that I’m thinking about. I’ve begun sketching out plans, organizational details, thinking about names, and of course, doing some fiction writing. I’m sketching out a story set in a sort of “rear frontier” colony world. It’s sort of existential and dark and space opera-y in a very tychoish way. It’s going to be awesome, both the site (which will have all sorts of stuff on it,) and the story. I’m thinking about names and I have a good one, so with a little more time in development, I’m excited. That’s all.

4. Defiantly getting a new cat sometime the week after next. Maybe two. Probably two, actually. Cats are cool. Kittens are really cool.

5. I’ve been knitting all of about a row and a half a day on the sweater, it’s coming along. Pictures soon for sure, but it’s slow going, and at this point in my life where I’ve been writing more, and thinking about that, the knitting seems to take a back seat, which isn’t ideal, but it’s something that needs to be addressed.

Keeping busy is a good thing, I’m convinced. I think at this very instant, I’m a touch too busy, bit I know that this too will sort itself out--as all things do--and I’ll be in a good place.

Thanks for reading, and of course stay tuned.

With a title like the “Daily Grind,” I suspect you’re expecting a post about how I’m acclimating to my new 9-5 job. Wrong. I think this one is more about publishing schedules in new media, but, it’s probably a lot more connected than I want to think about.

I suppose first off, I should cop to the fact that I am totally guilty--when I know I’m going to be in crunch time--of writing entries in runs of six or so, and then posting them out one by one, so that the blog maintains a daily publication schedule, and I can put energy when it needs to go.

Second off, I should note that I’ve been listening to Jared Axelrod’s’s now daily (or almost compleatly daily, at least of ep ~60-70 where I am now) podcast “The Voice of Free Planet X.” I’ve been listening to VoFPX for a while, and I’ve always liked it (so if you don’t listen to it, you should it’s good stuff), but Jared’s said something interesting recently--by my frame--that I want to reflect upon.

Jared reported having some trouble keeping a weekly posting schedule, because it was something that you could put off if things got tight and still--more or less--keep your schedule. In contrast, you can’t really put off something that is supposed to happen daily more than a few hours or else you don’t meet the deadline. I’d also add that in a lot of cases as creators we say--at least to our selves--if it comes out weekly it has to represent a weeks worth of work, whereas if it comes out daily it represents--in most cases--proportionally less work, and just has to exist.

And the truth about writing, and creating--particularly on the internet--is that success is pretty random. Having a story, or a site, podcast, or a video that “works” and becomes popular is not the effect of some transcendental skill, and even a not incredibly strongly correlation to skill; but rather a function of the quantity of output. You got to keep putting things out, keep making things, and the more you make the more likely something is to really “make it.”

When blogs first started, everyone praised them because they made publishing online really easy. You wrote something and hit post. That was it. For the most part blogs (and other related media) succeed as we hit the post button more. And this corresponds to our reading style. It takes just as long to read a blog post with meticulously crafted prose as it does to read one that was written in the morning on half a cup of coffee. And the chances are, that posting frequently will lead to more success (where success equals audience size) because people will check regularly updated sites more often than sites that update less frequently.

As a result of this I’ve made the observation on a number of occasions, that while a firm and regular posting schedule will cement and stabilize a your audience/readership of plus or minus a few percent, you can’t “jump” levels simply by increasing volume of content generation.

So I guess there are a couple of threads to this argument the “schedules are good for audiences” and the “schedules are good for creation.” Having trounced the former sufficiently, lets move on to the later.

I think clearly we all work at different speeds, and we do different things, I think I do better with this kind of scheduling. It’s helped the blogging, for me, and projects like 365 Tomorrows, and Thing a Week, j.r. blackwell’s photos and so forth, all seem to be creative successes (and I suspect distribution-increasing successes as well.)

It’s just a hair brained idea at the moment, but I think it might be fun to start a project like this for the fiction writing that I’m not doing at the moment. A daily routine would have the effect of a) getting things out there. b) inspiring an increase in productivity, and writerly practice. Also, I think I’m likely as busy at the moment as I’m likely to be at any time in the next couple of years, and I think I feel like I’ve “got” the blogging rhythm down, and it’s time to add a new project. Just a thought, and I’m making no promises, that’s for sure. More musings in the future.

Onward and Upward!