People I was

In which our Hero hasn’t done anything yet but decides lemonade is good when all you have is goats

It’s interesting to me to see the surge to and equally the recoil from Prosebox. I’d be very curious to hear thoughts from anyone who has opinions to share. Some people obviously love it. Some people seem to hate it in almost equal measure. I think Simple Mind deserves great credit for creating it and for feeding the monster, it’s so much more than it was at the start.

I have an odd complaint about it, which is that the site is cold. I don’t know if I’d accept that as feedback from anybody using my system, especially on something that’s specifically designed to be social but there you have it. Something about the site, could be strangeness, could be my missing favourites, could be the colour of the buttons, or the font or whatever, but I don’t feel drawn to it. I don’t feel the pressure at the faucet, the drive, the relentless need to write.

Although, I suppose I could make a pretty good case that I don’t feel that relentless need to write at all, these days, or I’d probably be writing about more interesting things than the website I’m not using. Then again, not using it is a theme I can use, clever me. Because in trying to figure out what to write about, I started to think about what I used to write about and that lead me to think about other things I used to do.

I’ve done some interesting things, enough to be generally pleased with the reach of my life. Except that these days, some of those interesting things aren’t last year or “a few years ago” but “a decade ago” which is long enough to safely say that it’s almost a different life. I used to draw, I used to write fiction, I used to take pictures, I used to travel… And now I don’t really do much.

I work, and I recover from work. I still read a lot. Just finished a bunch of short stories by… uhh.. Paolo Bacigalupi. Hang on, looking it up. Okay, yeah, that was right. And a bit of a “history” of where Twitter came from, called “Hatching Twitter.” Wait, that’s an aside.

I work, and I recover from work. There’s a lot of consuming media, and not a lot of accomplishment. Moonbeam asked me if I’ve lived a meaningful life and I think that I can say that I have, exploring, growing, adventuring, but not lately. I’m not upset about it because life includes the parts between sweeps week and the season finale cliff hangers, so as long as I don’t stop doing things, this is just an interstitial and I can live with that.

Nothing says I only have to live with it, though. I can do things. I can change things.

That’s why I feel good about the cleaning I did at the top of the year. I feel like it was getting my off my ass and moving again. So far I’ve kept stuff off my floor, and put clothes away. It’s only a week, but the new goal is daily action rather than letting things build up as much as I did. I want to get back to writing. Anything will do, even stupid boring entries on OD till I hit upon something worth writing (and presumably worth reading). When I was sitting up with the girls in the smallest hours of the New Year, they asked me to tell them a story so they could just listen to my voice and I thought about the fact that I don’t make stories anymore. Mouse mentioned the Romanza I posted here aeons ago, rereading a copy I don’t recall having sent her.

I know I’ve got a whole mess of things I need to do. I need to get my corporate books caught up. I need to do my taxes, that’s coming up very soon. I need to get a job because this one is crumbling out from under me. But I think I may need to do this too. To spend a little time getting some stuff out of my head. Could be I’m crazy though.

Well, no. We knew I was crazy. Could be I’m feeling a little masochistic.