A Line in the Ash

In which our Hero tries to figure out how to test-stub for human

Sometimes I’m cognizant that my social skills have basic gaps that don’t occur to me until I notice a lapse.  Like, say, the place that was my home and the center of my identity was suddenly online again after a four year interregnum in the dark, you, Gentle Reader, instinctively introduce yourself, and I rail against the dying and then the undying of the light.

(sigh)

At the same time, I’m still paralyzed.  The backup systems where I blog are woefully inadequate.  ODClassic, as I am immediately choosing to call it, offered an XML export, which was remarkable because I don’t know how many people had any ability to parse it.  It’s also remarkable for completely failing to include the privacy flag on notes and the chapter marks.  Which means that I don’t really know what goes where past a certain point.

I’m not upset about it, but I find myself paralyzed. I can’t write here, not for real, without a backup.  It’s on the to-do list, but I suspect it will be less urgent than the bugs that get in the way of notes and editing.

So then what?

I still see others being human.  I still see that I might have slipped up on that point.

I started ODClassic after lurking for the first few months, so that I came to it with a pent up need to speak and the guileless manchild stupidity that left me unafraid of the empty edit box.  Now, with determination, I just feel like it’s a little weird to introduce myself when I’m not here yet.  But then, I’m hereish. Here and now.

So.

—

Hello, my name is Serin, and I’m an opendiarist. I think of myself as 50, and then remember that I’m 45, and then remember that I’m not quite there yet either.

Sad truth is that my life is not measurably different from The Darkness, so if you can remember anything about me from the last 10 years or so, it’s going to be true.

I’m older, of course.  Global warming has cause my scalp to rise and cover more and more of my hair.  I don’t think I’m noticeably greyer in the last four years. Health is okay.

I still read a tonne of sci-fi, and yes, still sometimes in the shower.  (grin)  Most of my dabbling is with code these days, though I’ve picked up a poorly served sketchbook these days, and I actually took a glass blowing class a few years ago, so that was fun.

I’m still a technology consultant, still working freelance at the same main client who emphasize their ambivalence about me in increasingly sharp ways.  My contract ends at the end of the year.  So perhaps by the time I decide I’m writing here for real, that story may be completely different.

(Or they’ll renew me at the last minute and the meat-grinder spins on around me)

Romantic life?  I think the traditional descriptor is “It’s complicated” except that it actually isn’t.  More just that I consider it private for now.

Family is good.  My parents are in good health, and the littles, my cousins that have starred in so many of my entries, are big now.  A few are married.  More have jobs.  The youngest of them, my baby, my Moonbeam, she’s finishing her degree this year.  I’m so proud of all of them.

I don’t really have hobbies anymore.  Truthfully, I never really adapted to the littles getting bigger, and they were the biggest trigger for me to take time to do *stuff.*

And my diary is broken.  Literally broken, the order of the import is broken where there’s two (or more) entries in a single day.  So I can’t back it up, and I can’t really trust it.

That’s me.