Notes to the Blogosphere from the Crankyverse
Writing
I'm writing this month. Slowly. At my own pace. The NaNoWriMo pile-on would be great for me if I weren't working, but I'm finally coming to accept my capacity issues and my stress threshhold (which is markedly lower than I used to allow myself, but the twitch I've developed in my right eye is finally making the point). Also? I'm once again being reminded that "No" is a word I need to take out and use more often. (Someone give me a bat please; I need to beat that particular lesson into my head finally and forever.)
Voting
Yes, I'll be voting.
SFWA
No, SFWA shouldn't have pursued its anti-piracy agenda without consulting the membership and doing more of its homework. (I read the Forum this morning and I'm just f*cking impatient with an organization where a lot of people bitch but few stand up to do the work. This may echo my experience with Other Nonprofits, but I currently stand mute on those issues, for my feelings are already known.) Let us not forget, however, that that's not its only function. There are people in this community who wouldn't be alive today without the SFWA Emergency Medical Fund. There are writers who'd still be being scammed by the Bauer Agency if not for Writer Beware. And there are writers who'd still be dealing with WotC's lousy bookkeeping and basic lack of understanding of authors' rights without SFWA audits. No organization is perfect. So a little balanced journalism on the subject of SFWA would be nice. You know. Every now and then. It just irritates me. If you want change, go get involved and then find a way to talk about the good work the organization does, not just its mistakes. I don't know why I'm feeling like I want to defend SFWA a little this morning; it's so in vogue to bash the organization. I'm swimming upstream. Lookit me: daredevil. [/end irony] And no, I won't be drawn into a debate about it.
Life
Trying to travel to alternate universes in daily life should be limited to doing it on the page. I make this mistake once every (wait, let me check) 15-17 years or so and I need to stop it. (Was that sufficiently obscure?)
Work
I'm losing my cubicle today. I'm being moved to a different building into a yawning cavern of a room with no partitions between the desks. It's a cold place that feels far more makeshift than my current desk situation. I don't like it. I'll have to find a way to make it liveable, but I'm not looking forward to it.
Good things
Speaking of balanced journalism, here are the good things:
Friends
I saw wonderful friends this weekend--ghost touring, brunching, partying and so on.
Room switcheroo
Our beloved snarke came over to help me shift stuff in the upstairs room in prep for painting this weekend. Another bookcase is empty and moved. Two others are nearly so. There's more painter's tape in the room. Waffling continues on the color choices. I'm leaning more toward the Blooming Marigold as one of my choices now, but I need something correspondingly tamer to balance it out; the Tomahawk won't do.
Books
I'm reading (don't laugh--wait, at least a couple of you won't) The Eugenics Wars, volume 1 by a friend and, frankly, geek that I am, enjoying the hell out of it. Yes, yes, it's an old Trek novel, but it's been sitting around staring at me (if you've seen the cover, you know what I'm talking about), so I decided it was time. It's a refreshing change from all the Terribly Serious Genre Reading I've been doing. Maybe that's the genre's problem. So much of it just isn't fun anymore. In the Forum, Spinrad talked about how to engage new readers. Maybe we should all stop taking ourselves so terribly seriously and lighten the hell up.
That's my rant for the morning. I'm to work.