Report: Totally unacceptable.
I can't say as though I'm pleased with how this week has gone, but I'm optimistic. I don't know if it was that I burned out, if I got hit by the dysthymia, or both (I think it's likely that even if I burned out, the dysthymia would have come in as a consequence) but I'm taking steps to address the former just in case (even if I never burn out I'm still wearing a little thin) and the latter... Well, I'm managing there, I suppose. I need to do better keeping track of my lows if I'm going to figure out the pattern that I'm currently under and anticipate my depressive episodes before they happen, like I was able to do on my mission.
I have high hopes for the next week and for the next few months. I will be finishing Perfect Engine by the end of next week and have a good deal figured out for my planned YA novel Fox Sense and Circumstances. I'm also working on nutshells and outlines for eighteen short stories that I will be writing in February. I should get anywhere from 18,000 to 54,000 words (or even more) from these and have a total of twenty-five short stories written and being submitted here, there, and everywhere. After that I'll take the month off from writing stories for market (with the exception of Fox) and focus on outlining and writing stories for the blog, which won't be anywhere near as much of a hassle for me. Even if I write another 50,000 words for the blog in March it'll be with the intention of producing a backlog so that, come April, I can go back to focusing on short stories for the market and not worry about the blog.
With any luck, by April I'll have also completed a few chapters of Unlikely, a Harry Potter fanfiction that's been slowly developing in my head and is almost fully sketched-out at this point. Fanfiction won't be something that I'll ever be able to sell, of course, but it's a different kind of writing, almost but not quite like what I do for many of my Lovecraftian stories. In that way it's kind of a sabbatical in its own right, and it has the added benefit of having a ready audience from the beginning. There's more than one author that I can think of who built a writing career from a fanbase that was developed while writing fanfiction.
My comparative mythology book is nearing completion. I can't say for sure but I hope that it'll be done by the end of January. There's far less to be done now than there once was, so it's getting there. Definitely getting there.
There's a possibility that I'll be dropping this blog at least for the time being. I've made a friend who has expressed an interest in teaming up, and while I like many things about this blog the fact is that I need to be pragmatic. It may be my own little corner of the interweb but it's practically a haunted house. A living, growing thing, to be sure, but its halls are only occasionally wandered by a living soul, which makes its continued vitality off-putting to me in some ways. Like talking to the darkness when no-one's there. Of course you must build it before they come, but in the meantime it feels awfully creepy at times and I will welcome the opportunity to move to a better-read blog if that will indeed work out for both myself and the blog's current writer.
But I don't know for sure. Like I said, just a possibility.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Thursday, January 16, 2014
The ethics of AdBlock
I googled "AdBlock ethic" a few minutes ago as a joke, just to see what would pop up before I wrote this post. I was surprised (though I don't see how, honestly) to find that there were quite a few results. 241,000, exactly. This post by Andrew Taylor is especially good.
I didn't start thinking about this issue because of posts like that, though. It started with good old 4chan of all places (once upon a time I would have been surprised, but I've been on /tg/ for many years now). Moot mentioned, again and again, how blocking ads was hurting 4chan. Ads were how 4chan supported itself, and if you blocked the ads then 4chan was left dead in the water.
Started thinking.
Read Moot again, a different time, a different post.
Kept thinking.
Went to Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, read some comics, read about Patreon and why Zach Weiner is so happy about it. Among other things, he won't have to worry about people blocking his ads anymore.
Thought a little harder.
And I have to say, at the end of my thinking, that I think I've thought up a solution. For myself, anyway. You have different concerns and a different chair that you're sitting in. But I do think that where there is a site which I enjoy, which has ads, then I should look at those ads. Some people pay a fee for internet access based on how much they download, including ads. I can see why they would use AdBlock, but I'm not one of them. On the other hand, my computer isn't very fast, and there are too many ads out there that take up too much of my computer's attention.
I'm going to go with a middle ground approach for now. If your site is one that I enjoy, then I will add it to the whitelist. If it is not, then its ads will be blocked. Its ads probably won't be relevant anyway. I'm looking at it as though ad impressions and clicks were a product you were trying to sell, and your website was your means of making me want to buy. If you hook me, I will buy, but if I am merely passing through your website, unimpressed and uninterested in returning, then I neither need nor want the extra delay that my computer will suffer from running your ads.
When I have a faster computer, I will reevaluate. I'll have a different chair to sit in then.
As for me and my house (blogs), there will be no ads here. No pop-ups, no banners, no nothing. I hope that we will get to a point where AdBlock is as relevant as dinosaur repellent (or that dinosaur repellent becomes as relevant as AdBlock is, which would totally awesome) and I intend to not delay that day.
I didn't start thinking about this issue because of posts like that, though. It started with good old 4chan of all places (once upon a time I would have been surprised, but I've been on /tg/ for many years now). Moot mentioned, again and again, how blocking ads was hurting 4chan. Ads were how 4chan supported itself, and if you blocked the ads then 4chan was left dead in the water.
Started thinking.
Read Moot again, a different time, a different post.
Kept thinking.
Went to Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, read some comics, read about Patreon and why Zach Weiner is so happy about it. Among other things, he won't have to worry about people blocking his ads anymore.
Thought a little harder.
And I have to say, at the end of my thinking, that I think I've thought up a solution. For myself, anyway. You have different concerns and a different chair that you're sitting in. But I do think that where there is a site which I enjoy, which has ads, then I should look at those ads. Some people pay a fee for internet access based on how much they download, including ads. I can see why they would use AdBlock, but I'm not one of them. On the other hand, my computer isn't very fast, and there are too many ads out there that take up too much of my computer's attention.
I'm going to go with a middle ground approach for now. If your site is one that I enjoy, then I will add it to the whitelist. If it is not, then its ads will be blocked. Its ads probably won't be relevant anyway. I'm looking at it as though ad impressions and clicks were a product you were trying to sell, and your website was your means of making me want to buy. If you hook me, I will buy, but if I am merely passing through your website, unimpressed and uninterested in returning, then I neither need nor want the extra delay that my computer will suffer from running your ads.
When I have a faster computer, I will reevaluate. I'll have a different chair to sit in then.
As for me and my house (blogs), there will be no ads here. No pop-ups, no banners, no nothing. I hope that we will get to a point where AdBlock is as relevant as dinosaur repellent (or that dinosaur repellent becomes as relevant as AdBlock is, which would totally awesome) and I intend to not delay that day.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Making progress
Besides a brief scare when I realized that I had rather botched putting my recent submissions in proper Standard Manuscript Format (turns out that maybe there are some things that I should double-check after going two or three years without using at all), I think that everything is going pretty well.
My PDF on comparative mythology is growing and getting closer to completion. I should have all but one of the appendices done by tomorrow, and then I'll go back to the main text and finish it up in a process that should take three or four days. Then I'll write the introduction, finish the final appendix, and clean it up, all of which should take no more than two days. So if I can actually stick to that... then I should be done with this by the end of the 17th.
I made a few submissions to different magazines yesterday, and I'm feeling pretty good about it all. I originally intended to submit Finding Ginny to Pedestal Magazine but they just barely closed submissions. I consider it a good sign that I didn't feel any worry over switching to Strange Horizons. It's a slightly higher-paying market which makes it more intimidating, but I think that Finding Ginny can hold its own there.
By far the biggest problem that I have right now is the lack of reading time. It's a problem that is entirely self-created: Even though I know that reading is essential to improving my own work it's still difficult to get out of the "reading is a recreational activity" mindset and not feel guilty for reading when there are Other Things to do. Besides reading from the evergrowing stacks of books in my room I also need to read (and review!) stories online, participate in communities, and read blogs (especially those related to productivity and/or writing).
My PDF on comparative mythology is growing and getting closer to completion. I should have all but one of the appendices done by tomorrow, and then I'll go back to the main text and finish it up in a process that should take three or four days. Then I'll write the introduction, finish the final appendix, and clean it up, all of which should take no more than two days. So if I can actually stick to that... then I should be done with this by the end of the 17th.
I made a few submissions to different magazines yesterday, and I'm feeling pretty good about it all. I originally intended to submit Finding Ginny to Pedestal Magazine but they just barely closed submissions. I consider it a good sign that I didn't feel any worry over switching to Strange Horizons. It's a slightly higher-paying market which makes it more intimidating, but I think that Finding Ginny can hold its own there.
By far the biggest problem that I have right now is the lack of reading time. It's a problem that is entirely self-created: Even though I know that reading is essential to improving my own work it's still difficult to get out of the "reading is a recreational activity" mindset and not feel guilty for reading when there are Other Things to do. Besides reading from the evergrowing stacks of books in my room I also need to read (and review!) stories online, participate in communities, and read blogs (especially those related to productivity and/or writing).
Monday, January 6, 2014
Gratitude
People often remember to be thankful for the big things, like their children or having food on the table. And when they think to be thankful for the little things, they think about their mother's sense of humor or the way that their friend is always able to sit down for five minutes when they need to Talk.
I won't dispute that they're little things, but if that's what we're going to term them then maybe we should also classify them as deep things. And in that case, why not have take a moment to be thankful for the shallow things, too? Yeah, they don't mean much, but they're still there and they're still nice.
I'm thankful for Jack's pizza. I'm thankful for Doctor Who. I'm thankful for Harry Potter fanfiction, and fanfiction in general, and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality in particular. I'm thankful for notebooks and pencils and my missionary planner that I've been able to adapt to civilian life, because it makes life a little bit simpler. I'm thankful for chocolate, and I'm thankful for Homestuck, and for pillows, and for the Animorphs series.
I want to say that I'm thankful for these things and for so many other little, shallow things that don't really matter, because even if they don't matter they're still there, and not being thankful for them doesn't mean that I'm wise. It just means that I'm ungrateful.
What are some of the shallow things that you're thankful for?
I won't dispute that they're little things, but if that's what we're going to term them then maybe we should also classify them as deep things. And in that case, why not have take a moment to be thankful for the shallow things, too? Yeah, they don't mean much, but they're still there and they're still nice.
I'm thankful for Jack's pizza. I'm thankful for Doctor Who. I'm thankful for Harry Potter fanfiction, and fanfiction in general, and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality in particular. I'm thankful for notebooks and pencils and my missionary planner that I've been able to adapt to civilian life, because it makes life a little bit simpler. I'm thankful for chocolate, and I'm thankful for Homestuck, and for pillows, and for the Animorphs series.
I want to say that I'm thankful for these things and for so many other little, shallow things that don't really matter, because even if they don't matter they're still there, and not being thankful for them doesn't mean that I'm wise. It just means that I'm ungrateful.
What are some of the shallow things that you're thankful for?
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Happy New Year!
Today I start two new projects. The first is a YA novel called Fox Sense and Circumstances. It's about a young girl who finds a friend in an abandoned, half-dead fairy who turns out to be more Cthulhu than Tinkerbell. But she accidentally ensnared him in a magical contract that's put him on a leash firmly in her hands, and if he wants to act as he pleases then he's going to have to convince her to let him.
In the meantime, they're going to have to deal with a group of straightedge wizards with white trench coats and cold iron straight razors. Her new friend is a walking nuclear bomb, and they aim to put him down like they thought that they did the first time.
So it'll be interesting. I really don't know what it's going to be like tomorrow. It's practically a fairy itself.
The other thing that I'm working on is the 30 Days to a Better Man project from The Art of Manliness.
Whenever it's relevant (there's no point to saying "Today I scheduled an appointment for a medical check-up!") I'll discuss what's gone on. Today was "Defining Your Core Values."
I decided to start with the initial list of suggestions that they offered. If there seemed to be a hole missing then I could fill it, but I thought that it would be mighty silly to spend a few hours working it out only to find that everything was right there on the list.
Right off the bat I could see some things to rule out. Control was a complex of mine, not a value. Assigning it as such would only make it harder to not be authoritarian and controlling. Same thing for Power. Fulfillment, Happiness, and Success both seemed like putting the cart before the horse. Unless you were understanding it as, say, financial success, all of these seemed more like the result of living in alignment with your core values.
Spirituality and Faith got folded into "God. Honesty and Integrity got folded into Truth. Marriage and Friends got folded into Family. My closest friends are family to me, and otherwise the Friends category isn't a core value for me. Education and Wisdom were folded into Knowledge. The former contributes to it, and wisdom is a kind of knowledge, not this thing that's totally distinct from it. Independence was folded into Freedom. Progress was folded into Growth.
With thirteen less options to choose from, I did what the article suggested and started pitting them against each other. For simplicity's sake I did it in alphabetical order, and this left me with Balance (over Adventure), Creativity (over Confidence), Forgiveness (over Fun), Kindness (over Humor), and Knowledge (over Peace of Mind, which I thought was an apt conflict), and Truth (over Strength).
There were a few conflicts that I couldn't resolve, and I saw that Reason needed to be folded into Knowledge, and both Financial Security and Self-reliance needed to be folded into Freedom.
From the fifteen possibilities remaining I narrowed it down to Knowledge, Discipline, Creativity, Freedom, God, Growth, Family, and Truth. I liked the rest, sure, but I couldn't include them in the Top 5.
But ohhhhh... Knowledge, that sneaky weasel. Hadn't I realized that prioritizing Knowledge was a Bad Road for me months ago? Apparently I was starting to forget, but I chopped it out readily enough. I liked it, but if it were endorsed by a Top 5 position then I might never fix the complex that that obsession had given me.
With that out of the way I got it down to Creativity, Freedom, God, Family, and Truth.
Then I had to prioritize them in anticipation of conflicts between my values:
1. Truth
2. God
3. Family
4. Freedom
5. Creativity
I tried to view these in a Wu Xing kind of way. One value wasn't superior to another so much as it allowed another. Without Freedom I can't exercise my Creativity, so choosing Creativity in a conflict between them is only going to hurt it in the long run. Similarly, I can't have Freedom if Family isn't accounted for.
Truth comes before God because no matter how I try to get away from it what fills the "God" spot is ultimately going to a flawed conception. I don't know everything and I don't perfectly process and accept everything that I do know. What God is in this list is "My understanding of God and what God requires of me." Where it's right, it's still incomplete, and there are many things that I "know" about God that are totally wrong.
By putting Truth above "My understanding of God" I hope to ensure that I will never turn down the opportunity to update my knowledge of God because the information runs counter to what I think that I know right now. Without my chief priority being Truth, I'll only ever serve God-as-I-think-God-is and never God-as-God-is.
In the meantime, they're going to have to deal with a group of straightedge wizards with white trench coats and cold iron straight razors. Her new friend is a walking nuclear bomb, and they aim to put him down like they thought that they did the first time.
So it'll be interesting. I really don't know what it's going to be like tomorrow. It's practically a fairy itself.
The other thing that I'm working on is the 30 Days to a Better Man project from The Art of Manliness.
Whenever it's relevant (there's no point to saying "Today I scheduled an appointment for a medical check-up!") I'll discuss what's gone on. Today was "Defining Your Core Values."
I decided to start with the initial list of suggestions that they offered. If there seemed to be a hole missing then I could fill it, but I thought that it would be mighty silly to spend a few hours working it out only to find that everything was right there on the list.
Right off the bat I could see some things to rule out. Control was a complex of mine, not a value. Assigning it as such would only make it harder to not be authoritarian and controlling. Same thing for Power. Fulfillment, Happiness, and Success both seemed like putting the cart before the horse. Unless you were understanding it as, say, financial success, all of these seemed more like the result of living in alignment with your core values.
Spirituality and Faith got folded into "God. Honesty and Integrity got folded into Truth. Marriage and Friends got folded into Family. My closest friends are family to me, and otherwise the Friends category isn't a core value for me. Education and Wisdom were folded into Knowledge. The former contributes to it, and wisdom is a kind of knowledge, not this thing that's totally distinct from it. Independence was folded into Freedom. Progress was folded into Growth.
With thirteen less options to choose from, I did what the article suggested and started pitting them against each other. For simplicity's sake I did it in alphabetical order, and this left me with Balance (over Adventure), Creativity (over Confidence), Forgiveness (over Fun), Kindness (over Humor), and Knowledge (over Peace of Mind, which I thought was an apt conflict), and Truth (over Strength).
There were a few conflicts that I couldn't resolve, and I saw that Reason needed to be folded into Knowledge, and both Financial Security and Self-reliance needed to be folded into Freedom.
From the fifteen possibilities remaining I narrowed it down to Knowledge, Discipline, Creativity, Freedom, God, Growth, Family, and Truth. I liked the rest, sure, but I couldn't include them in the Top 5.
But ohhhhh... Knowledge, that sneaky weasel. Hadn't I realized that prioritizing Knowledge was a Bad Road for me months ago? Apparently I was starting to forget, but I chopped it out readily enough. I liked it, but if it were endorsed by a Top 5 position then I might never fix the complex that that obsession had given me.
With that out of the way I got it down to Creativity, Freedom, God, Family, and Truth.
Then I had to prioritize them in anticipation of conflicts between my values:
1. Truth
2. God
3. Family
4. Freedom
5. Creativity
I tried to view these in a Wu Xing kind of way. One value wasn't superior to another so much as it allowed another. Without Freedom I can't exercise my Creativity, so choosing Creativity in a conflict between them is only going to hurt it in the long run. Similarly, I can't have Freedom if Family isn't accounted for.
Truth comes before God because no matter how I try to get away from it what fills the "God" spot is ultimately going to a flawed conception. I don't know everything and I don't perfectly process and accept everything that I do know. What God is in this list is "My understanding of God and what God requires of me." Where it's right, it's still incomplete, and there are many things that I "know" about God that are totally wrong.
By putting Truth above "My understanding of God" I hope to ensure that I will never turn down the opportunity to update my knowledge of God because the information runs counter to what I think that I know right now. Without my chief priority being Truth, I'll only ever serve God-as-I-think-God-is and never God-as-God-is.
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