- What happens if you get caught picking your nose when you’re on Zoom?
- I know you pick your nose.
- Don’t lie.
- Hey, what’s up.
- Friday.
- Hard to develop the audience if you’re not consistently producing.
- I won’t make promises.
- Too easy to go unfulfilled and the cost sucks.
- I have been making lists in my notebook.
- For real.
- They’re mostly for me.
- It occurs to me I’m talking to myself.
- A list is a conversation with the other versions of me.
- Or the inside me?
- Anyway.
- This morning, I clicked on a Spotify playlist of new music from, or related to, artists I’ve followed.
- New Lamb of God.
- New Megadeth.
- New Royal & the Serpent.
- New Au/Ra.
- Anyway, played it.
- About five or six songs down, there was one called, “IT’S WORTH IT,” by Left on Red, whom I’ve never heard of.
- Soon as the vocals started, the singer said my name and then gave me like this whole positive affirmation message for like a minute and a half.
- And honestly, it was topically relevant given the existential week I’ve had.
- I found it fucking horrifying.
- Obviously AI based.
- Has to be, right?
- What in the fuck is Spotify listening to?
- My text messages?
- F the AI revolution.
- F the Administration taking away my rights.
- F you I won’t do what you tell me.
- I’m not making that up.
- I’m actually curious.
- If YOU listen to that song, will it plug in your name?
- Your mission, should you choose to accept it.
- You know how you can get your text messages in the browser window on your computer?
- I do that all the time.
- If you text me between 9 and 5, I’m answering with a proper keyboard.
- Yesterday, I answered texts all morning, and then I went to look up something on my phone …
- No phone.
- I searched the whole office.
- My desk.
- The floor.
- My bag.
- No phone.
- Did someone steal it out of my office while I was elsewhere?
- Did I drop it on the sidewalk?
- Panic, you know?
- That first moment.
- Motherfucking anxiety.
- Left it in the car.
- Two blocks and two stories away.
- Damn phone.
- I don’t even remember what I needed it for.
- Panic erased the task.
- But hey, didn’t lose my phone.
- Woooooo.
- I have a note that says, “Cheeto hands,” which I wrote down right before I went to the bathroom.
- Make sure you wash your hands before and after in that situation.
- Just sayin.
- What else …
- Song lyric of the week: “There’s nothing more American than starting a war.”
- A bunch of these are from last week, which means I no longer feel that urgency I did when I wrote them down.
- Saw this thing on Insta last week.
- They’ve added a new ‘vert: Otroverts.
- “They are not fueled by solitude and they are not energized by the spotlight. These individuals feel their best in the company of others, yet they don’t need constant chatter or the intensity of extroverted energy to thrive.”
- That’s closer.
- I believe we spend most of our time in one of the shorthand categories, but it’s situational.
- Sorry for the hopscotchery today.
- It’s Friday and I’m sitting in a webinar … that I sat through in person at a conference two years ago.
- Literally.
- Same two presenters.
- And it’s shit I do already anyway.
- It’s things like this that are driving me to the classroom.
- To teach.
- Taking my “How to teach at the College” class this month.
- Why get a grad degree if you’re not planning on teaching?
- Grad school, btw, is a helluva lot more interesting than undergrad.
- Okay, what else?
- If you followed the lists since April, you know what a headtrip I’ve been on.
- Daily Prednisone has ridden shotgun on the Eye for three years.
- I’ve been tapering since July.
- Took the last one yesterday.
- Now, we wait.
- There are “potential” side effects when disembarking from Train Pred.
- I got all of them.
- Might take a couple of months to get my body back.
- If ever.
- Knees weak, arms spaghetti.
- Or something.
- I have much empathy for long-term Pred users.
- How do you talk about a thing without it being a cry for sympathy?
- Anyway, the road to normal aging starts now!
- And maybe some PT.
- Wooooooo.
- Started reading A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny again.
- That’ll be three Octobers in a row.
- I don’t remember where I heard about the book, though I’m pretty sure I wrote it into a List for work.
- But I looked the book up on Reddit … or maybe that’s where I heard of it in the first place, and that’s where I learned there’s a whole community of people who love that book, and read it at a chapter-a-day pace every October.
- Which is easy because the chapters are named by date.
- It’s a good time.
- It’s like a macabre literary version of a dog cartoon.
- That’s a poor, poor description.
- Cause I need a nap.
- So about three weeks ago, I shared the draft of the Novel with a Librarian.
- And heard nothing.
- Wednesday, during my existential crisis, one of the haunting thoughts was about how bad the book is, how it’s not worth finishing, how I should let the dream die.
- For those playing the home game, Wednesday, for a lot of reasons, I was down in a hole.
- Do you understand how personal it is to share anything you’ve created with other people?
- Especially when you’ve tied so much of your identity to it.
- A Librarian.
- If the Librarian didn’t like it … well, I’d be fucked.
- They’re the book experts, you know?
- But I did hear back.
- And damn, talk about uplifting.
- Like a gift, really.
- Which brings me to this train of thought.
- Words have so much power.
- To uplift.
- To decimate.
- To inflict or incite or inspire.
- And we fling them around like bladed weapons, indifferent to their effects.
- I have 17 chapters left to go and a round of rewrites, but …
- It has to happen.
- Speaking of books …
- I preorder stuff on Kindle.
- Obviously.
- I have tiered authors.
- If I love them, I preorder hardbacks.
- If I really like them, I preorder Kindle (though I’m beginning to contemplate a way out of that environment since I don’t really “own” those books according to that rich asshole).
- The downside of preordering the ebooks … you’re apt to forget you bought them ahead of time.
- Probably I should make a calendar of preordered books, or what happened in September will happen again.
- I bought a book, The Society of Unknowable Objects by Gareth Brown on a Monday.
- And then … three more books showed up on my Kindle the next day.
- Or maybe it was two, and then another one the Tuesday after.
- Either way, too much money on books all at once.
- (Sorry, Dear.)
- The preorders:
- The Shattering Peace, by John Scalzi.
- To Clutch a Razor, by Veronica Roth.
- Thief of Night, by Holly Black.
- And then … Nm, man. I have a problem is what I’m saying.
- I prefer to think of it as being a Micro-Patron of artists.
- I’m supporting those brothers and sisters living the Dream.
- Yes, I’m procrastinating writing this List instead of the Book.
- The Book scares me.
- Goddammit.
- Before I get out of here, let’s go back to that Playlist.
- Writers are frequently asked whether they listen to music while they write.
- Stephen King does, for instance.
- My daughter does not (and yes, she’s officially started writing her passion project).
- I do.
- It just becomes something I need.
- I cannot abide a silence.
- Silence makes the ringing louder.
- It can be detrimental when you’re trying to give new music the attention it might deserve.
- Like, four or five songs played through and I heard nothing.
- They were on.
- I heard them not.
- Listen.
- Actively.
- With focus.
- It’ll change your life.
- I’m not sure if this is the record for List length.
- Gotta be close.
- Okay, one more thing.
- Facebook showed me a post from 11 years ago, my feet propped up on the back porch, a pint of DNR in my hand.
- Accompanying the picture, I talked about how great that Friday, Oct. 3 was with a temperature of 64 degrees.
- Time flies when you’re having fun, and all the things you want remain undone.
- Do not go gentle, gang.
- I’d pay for a proper October temperature about now.
- Sigh.
And On And On And On
skepticlysm 
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