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Towards a More Personal and Productive Journal

Over the last couple of years, the amount of updating I’ve done in this space has been limited both in quantity and in content.  There were some things I was going through that I really didn’t want to talk about in public, and as a result, I ended up no talking about anything much at all.

This distresses me for a number of reasons.  I really value the community of friends I have here, and I feel I was drifting out of touch as a result of not being as “plugged in” here.  The trouble is that inertia is difficult to overcome.  Having been away so long, it somehow feels disingenuous to just pick up again without noting that I was away and it becomes easier and easier to just put it off.

I’m entering the second half of my fourtieth year.  I feel slightly restless.  I am not content with myself.  I crave change, growth, and transformation.  My soul is hungry for connections both old and new.

All of this to say…I intend to write more often here.  I cannot say about what.  Whatever interests me.  When I started this journal in 2001, I expected it to be an essay platform more than a personal journal.  Over the years, it has been both, but of late it has been neither.  So consider this a rededication.  Some of what I write here may be simply personal reflections and meditations, reports of my weekend, or other triviality, but it’s better than just a random link every couple of days without any original content.

I also hope to recommit to my politics blog, which after a noble attempt to launch fell quickly silent, mostly due to my inability to keep up with the information inflow that allowed me to write at the level I wanted.  I’m hoping to begin writing there again as well, and I’m pondering my old ambitions to something in the field of journalism, though I’m not yet sure what form that will take.

Of all the things I’ve done in my life, writing and music have given me the most satisfaction.  Time to elevate those two pursuits back to the top of my priority list.  That way, I am convinced, lies happiness.

LiveJournal auto-post

[EDIT: I’m Not Really Sure what the autopost thing is actually for, but it IS amusing.)

QTOD:

“Middle age is when you’re faced with a choice between two evils, and you choose the one that will let you get home by 9:30.” I really have nothing interesting to say right now, aside from being very amused by this icon, which I made from today’s Sinfest.

It’s not untrue, though. If you made a list of names.

Thanks so much to Alan Thiesen, Alexa Klettner, Angie and Brittany, Blake Hodgetts, Chris Croughton, Chris Mangum, The Contabile Fortean concom, Dave Alway, Dave Weingart, Debbie Ohi, DJ Bass, Erica Neely, Greg and Maya McMullen, Gwen Knighton and Joe Raftery, Jessica Prett, Jonathan Lennox and Merav Hoffman, Joshua Kronengold, Katy Dröge, Leah Smith, Lisa Ellis, Margaret Middleton, Marilisa Valtazanou, Marion Beet, Mary Bertke, Mary Crowell, Maya Amis, Bruce Adhelsohn and family, Mia Sherman, Mich Sampson, Ny Martin, Paul Estin, Phil and Lissa Allcock, The Quinze concom, Rick Hewitt, Rika Körte, Robert and Janet Maughan, Seanan McGuire, Shaya, Sherman Dorn, Terence Chua, and Valarie Housden…

And most especially thanks to our dear Naomi, who conceived of this crazy project and made it happen.

We have the bestest friends.

State of the Molehill

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
–William Butler Yeats

This latest round in LJ Drama makes me profoundly sad.

That is all.

METAPOST: My weird brain

I really have posted very little of substance here recently. I know the reason for this, but I’m a little unsure sometimes why that reasons exists.

If you looked at my surroundings, you’d be hard pressed to describe me as super-organized. My work areas tend to accumulate clutter until I cannot stand it, leading to a massive and exhausting cleaning ritual. I’m good at remembering important things, like what kind of chocolate my sweeties have said they like, but very bad at remembering things like “what you said five minutes ago”. Once I get really focused on something, whether it’s a work project or a computer game or a conversation, I’m get locked in, but assent that, my attention tends to wander to whatever is most shiny at that moment.

One way I *am* very peculiar about organization is this journal. If I know I want to talk about something I did, and I don’t get around to it, it will block other things from getting posted as well. I find it very hard to just post about last weekend when I still have an entry to write about the weekend before last. Right now, here’s what’s been happening, as of the beginning of February:

1. Unifinshed report on D’Zenove and my trip to England.
3. joyeuse13‘s Mardi Gras party.
4. Our trip to California, including

a) flight out with danea and spending the night at cahdla‘s house
b) Driving up to Grass Valley to visit kitanzi‘s father and stepmom, and our trip to the Sutter’s Mill site.
c) Consonance

5. hejira2006‘s visit, including our first ever trip to the Georgia Aquarium.
6. bedlamhouse and ladyat‘s St Patrick’s Day gig.
7. Gaming night at spambrian and eponasr‘s house
8. Ben Wakeman’s show at Eddie’s Attic
9. Our trip over to Athens to visit vila_resthal‘s to see his stepdaughter M. who was visiting from NM.

Plus I still owe people both questions and answers in the interview meme.

I’m sure there was other stuff I would have talked about in there too, like exchanging CDs with serenejournal, my impressions of finally playing CivIV, and starting to look for a new place to live. But I’m not going to get around to any of that unless I finish number 1. And the longer I wait, the harder it is to catch up until I finally throw my hands up in the air and hit the rest button.

I’m not actually going to do that just yet. This is just a bit of naval-gazing.

Testing a new client

Since sdorn mentioned it, I thought I’d take a look at the Windows Live Writer.  So far, I can see where people who use multiple blog services would like it, but as a Livejournal client, it seems to be lacking a bit.

I may play with it a while, but I’m not so far thinking it’ll replace SeMagic. For one thing, it doesn’t seem to have the options for specific LJ stuff like current music, mood, or usericons.  Then again, I’ve only given it a cursory inspection.

EDIT: It doesn’t support LJ tags either. That doesn’t make it extremly useful in my mind for a Livejournal client. Too bad, it’s got a nice streamlined feel to it.

Journal stats

So, I saw this meme in tnatj‘s journal, where the object is just to record, here on New Year’s Day, your journal stats to present, so that (presumably) you can compare back to them next year.

Account type: Paid Account
Date created: 2001-06-22 11:31:42
Date updated: 2004-01-01 08:54:14, 2 minutes ago
Journal entries: 307
Comments: Posted: 1,863 – Received: 1,337

Looking on this, I’d like to see the number of entries, if not double, at least increase substantially. I keep making resolutions to write more, and then going two weeks at a time without, but I will make an effort. 🙂

Paid users can now cash in their unused invite codes

Now that invite codes have been obsoleted, you can now redeem your unused codes for $0.50 (US) each, good towards LJ services for yourself or others. See http://www.livejournal.com/community/lj_biz/205605.html for details.

When Memes Go Bad…

So the big buzz today is how the person who put together the “Secret Crush” meme is now offering to reveal the contents of zir database for a mere $4:

Who has a crush on autographedcat?
The below numbers indicate what sorta crushes autographedcat‘s friends have on him, as taken from the results of the original LJ Secret Crush Meme.
Questions? Please read the FAQ.
2 people have a Secret Crush on autographedcat.
3 people have a Public Crush on autographedcat.
1 people have an Ex-Crush on autographedcat.

How many people have a crush on you?

As I’ve commented elsewhere, I’m not entirely sure whether to be amused or disgusted. On the one hand, the person didn’t disclose when they collected this information that they would offer to release it to third parties. In fact, I don’t even recall if they indicated that the information would be stored. So there’s a certain amount of justification to feeling that somehow this person is doing something a bit underhanded to raise cash. And their FAQ makes them out to be a complete prat.

On the other hand, I just can’t quite manage to get all up in arms about it. I mean, when I took the meme in the first place, I didn’t really take it very seriously — no more than “What LOTR Character are you?” — and I don’t think anyone else did either. Anyone who’s really upset that this info might get disseminated needs a quick tutorial in “Not Giving Personal Information To Anonymous Parties On The Internet.”

So yeah, it’s wrong. But it’s wrong in a very small potatoes kind of way. I doubt if there’s enough low-self-esteem casualties desperate enough to pay for the names of their “secret crushes” to make the guy more than about a hundred bucks, so I don’t see any reason to expend too much energy in getting upset over it.

On the other hand, I admit that I am *curious* who the folks who listed me are. (Hey, i’m just as shallow as the next person! *G*) Don’t think I’m curious enough to spend four bucks, though. So let me know if you wanna.

Expanding my interests…

Well, not so much acquiring new ones (heaven forfend) as doing a better job of cataloging them.

Way back when I started this journal, I filled out the “Personal info” section and had my usual reaction to the “interests” question. My brain just locked up and refused to cooperate. Part of this is the problem being eccentric, eclectic, and having catholic tastes. Part of this is just that I generally HATE talking about myself. When someone says to me “So, tell me about yourself.”, my most articulate responses usually begin with the phrase, “Well, er…”

Still, there’s an awful lot of people on my friends list, and surely I have things in common with them, since they’re my friends, right? So why not let them help out?

I spent the morning taking a look at the interests of every one who is currently listed on my friends list. As I scanned those lists, I noted all the things they listed that were also an interest of mine. So now I have a much longer, much more accurate (though still hardly complete) list of interests in my profile. Yay me.

Those of you who have read this far wondering if I had a point — well, no, sorry. This post doesn’t even really have any good navel gazing. But I have said I want to post more often, so here’s a post. I’ll try and put something of substance in the next one, which I may write after lunch.

In the interest of catching up…

I know I’ve fallen behind here again, and I don’t mean to. As the length of the eventual post I’ll have to write gets longer, I tend to procrastinate more.

So, rather than write one very long post, I’m going to break it up into three or four over the next few days. This post contains nothing useful, other than my public announcement that I’ll be making others and thus embarrassing myself into actually writing. *g*

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