Enough About Interesting, Let's Talk About Me
It's my intent to write something new, here, every day this year.
By something new, I mean fiction or poetry or song lyric - hopefully more than just a smart-ass off the cuff topical comment or celebrity memorial haiku, though there will still be those at times as well. By something new, I mean something complete in itself, even if it's short. (Anyway, sometimes short writing is the very best of the craft.)
I won't always post it the day-of. Yesterday, I was down a particularly annoying rabbit hole and didn't post anything new. This is that post. The other 364 days of the year, the something-new will probably not be some non-fictional thing about my own personal life, because that's not really what I intend to use this LJ for (and it never really was the intent from the start), but for Rabbit Hole Day the exceptions become the rules - this is some new fiction on Rabbit Hole Day, by which I mean non-fiction not-on the day.
When it comes down to it, I miss being a writer. I used to write a lot more and I've really felt the lack of it in every other part of my life the last few years. Work (the day job, that is) and family have necessitated much greater attention than was the case years ago.
At the same time, some other aspects of writing itself (specifically, of writing comics for publication) lost much of the fiery energy I once had. Creating superhero comics at one of the big publishers is like any other kind of sausage-making: it can really destroy your appetite for something you once thought was delicious. I have enormous respect for my friends and peers in the industry who continue to come up with material month after month and yet still love reading and writing comics. Every time I find myself feeling nostalgic, and start thinking about seriously pitching into DC again, one of my friends will run afoul of some sort or another of the worst bullshit that is par for the course - scheduling failures, crucial talent flakes, editorial conflict, crossover committee madness, the endless endless bitchery of the internet - and I feel sudden relief that I'm not doing that anymore.
Yeah, I've still got lots of comics in me, I think. Can't say for sure where they'll get written or when they'll happen, but for now I'm just getting back into the writing mindset more than I have been.
Meanwhile, somewhere in there, you know, my totally amazing wife and I had a couple of daughters.
Liana, now four years and change, is into The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, WALL-E, and the Super Friends. Also, Curious George and Yo Gabba Gabba.
She's been practicing some reading/writing by playing Scribblenauts on the Nintendo DS. She's also learning to swim once a week. She knows how to get around on my iPhone and is starting to figure out the more general application/mouse experience of "real" computers.
The topics that typically dominate her attention are: how old she and all her friends are; who can pick who else up bodily; plot elements of her favorite stories; and metaphysical questions about God.
Whenever possible, I jot down the things she says on her Twitter feed.
Alexandra, at four months, is not yet old enough to tell us to stop putting little hats with animal ears on her.
She finally started sleeping through the night at about ten weeks; the quality of her sleep at night is definitely related to how well she naps during the day. We have tampered with this process once so far, to our enormous regret.
She looks as much like C. did as a baby, as Liana looked like me. This, it turns out, has a direct and quite noticeable impact on how much patience one has with the grueling exhaustion that a newborn dishes out to you. But eventually, everyone starts to figure out how to make it all work together - the grown-ups, the baby, and her big sister - and things smooth out.
She does not yet have a Twitter feed. (All the ones I thought of so far have already been taken.)
At the outset of this particular post, I intended to get into a bunch of other subjects, but at this point I think instead I'll hit a quick round-up of a couple more things and then get the hell out of Dodge.
I've been working out pretty regularly this year. Biking, some light weight training. When it starts to get warmer, swimming. I have goals, and tools for tracking. Which means, me being me, there will be charts and graphs in the near future. Because anything worth doing, is worth doing in a spreadsheet.
We (Apple) announced the tablet yesterday, about which I have lots and lots of thoughts - none of which you need to hear, really, because you already have some sort of opinion (which I am unlikely to change) or you don't give a shit (so why should I waste your time). But I will say this: Watching the user interactivity on the iPad (and iPhone), I am reminded of something that happened more than thirty years ago. My late father had bought me a slide rule when I was about, oh, five or so, but I had only barely begun to learn how it worked when one day, instead, he came home and plunked down a brown brick. It was a four-functional electronic calculator, made by TI I think, that had cost some hundreds of dollars. "This is what you're going to learn math on," he said, "because in another ten years, this is going to do more math than any slide rule, and it will cost ten dollars and fit in your pocket." I have more or less that same experience watching Liana navigate around on my phone: her and Alexandra's experience of "computer" (whatever that means anymore) interaction is going to be as different from mine as my experience of mathematical calculation has been from my father's.
Almost every day, I wish he was still alive to see these things.
Anyway, that's enough about me for this year. There will be other Liana-and-Alexandra posts from time to time, and topical crap and memorial haikus when I am moved (no Salinger one comes to mind), but mostly what I want to do here this year is Write Something New Every Day. Which means something *else* new today, since this is actually yesterday's post.
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For consideration: No idea what yet, which is what I like about it