Writing, With Guys Named Dave

Another 37, Day 4

This is harder than it looks.

I remember that, about doing regular blog posts. Aside from the fact that a 500-1000 word post takes about 90 time as long to write as it does to read, it’s surprisingly difficult to find something to say. Normally I’m not comfortable with just rambling out whatever is on my mind. I realize a lot of my blog posts amount to that anyway, but I at least try to make them about something. I don’t just sit down at a keyboard and write whatever comes to mind. That feels pointless, as if somehow blogging about my  deliberately uninformed theories for how they manage to squeeze all that air into a compressed air canister is so much better.

But this is harder than it looks. Why is that? I spend most of my time thinking about or, on those occasions that I can get someone to listen, talking about the kinds of pointless-but-interesting things that so characterize existence for the modern overeducated and under-utilized denizen of the developed world. Which is a term I hate, by the way, because it implies that we are somehow finished, while the developing world hasn’t gotten to our state of completion yet.

Maybe it comes from a desire to actually be a good writer. I’m not saying that everyone who blogs doesn’t have that desire. I’m just saying a lot of people who blog aren’t focused on craft, and wouldn’t cringe at, say, that last sentence I wrote, or consider taking it out. I did cringe, and I am considering its removal, but then the two sentences after it wouldn’t make as much sense, and I’m fonder of them. Except for that use of the word “fonder.”

There’s a big difference between actual stream of consciousness and a structured article that has the appears of stream of consciousness. They look similar, but one is rambling, and the other is, or at least can be, art. This, right here, this is actual stream of consciousness. It’s something that I usually avoid because I think it’s less compelling and it doesn’t take as much effort as a writer. Like anything else, if you want to improve as a writer your practice has to be not just extensive but deliberate. Just writing words down isn’t going to make you much better.

It can be pretty hard to identify the difference between the two. Some writers telegraph it more than others. Some Dave Barry articles are written to sound like he’s just saying funny things as they come to mind. But the embedded structure and writing techniques are obvious if you even kind of know what to look for. On the other hand, if David Sedaris’s technique is something other than pounding on a keyboard on the way to the kitchen to indulge in some late-night chicken wings, I sure as hell can’t tell. Which is not necessarily a condemnation of Sedaris work. But writing like that, funny or engaging or otherwise, looks a lot like a Jackson Pollock.

I’m sure a lot of that is jealousy on my part. I don’t have the skillset or the patience to write something like Game of Thrones, but I could write about getting nervous about going to the dentist with my boyfriend. Although I suspect my wife would have a few questions.

But that’s the point. Just because I think I could write like David Sedaris doesn’t mean that I could match his success even if I had all of the same opportunities. I couldn’t necessarily hit those exact notes of humor and relatability. I might publish a million words and never strike the same chord in my readers that allows him to make a living over dissing the way his father treated him when he was a kid. I definitely couldn’t do it if I continue to rely on clichés like “strike a chord.” Jesus Christ, what was I thinking?

Writing always looks easy because we all know how to do it. Most of us couldn’t even start to build a microprocessor or translate that as-yet untranslated Aristophanes play about cheese balls. But we can put sentences together. It’s part of why so many people think they could be great actors or football stars. It’s doesn’t look out of reach because the basic elements are accessible. Because every dreamer can perform the easy version of those tasks, and so it makes sense that with a little elbow grease they could perform the hard version. I don’t know if there’s as much of a gap between “See Dick Run” and Infinite Jest as there is between legos and a microprocessor, but I know that you won’t have a serious idea of how many rockets you’re going to have to attach to your skateboard to leap over that ramp until you actually sit down and start jesting.

Because, after all, this is harder than it looks. Which is why, sometimes, for my own sanity, I just have to sit down and blog.

Compelling Evidence for the Nonexistence of the Universe, Prologue, Part 1

Prologue: Why Gardening Doesn’t Scale

Part 1

Hello, Dendrite. The words came into my head as I stood there in the slightly grimy lobby of the office building, the memory of a voice. A smooth, female voice. Only this memory sproinged in there like a smooth, female jack-in-the-box. I never got used to that, and it might have been neat if it didn’t inevitably mean I was in for a very, very bad day.

“Axon,” I said, “fuck me with a spoon.”

There’s a game you can play with your friends and enemies that will tell you absolutely everything you need to know about them. In its original form it was developed by ecstatic mystics in the region that would later be called Sumer once people started to pile up rocks and call it civilization. In its modern form, it goes like this:

“If you could have one low-level superpower, what would it be?”

Like all useful truths it’s been discovered a bunch of times, by many people, some much dumber than others. That one was created by my friends in high school. But it works. For example, if someone spends the half hour after you ask the question debating about what precisely counts as a “low level” superpower, you know they are a socially challenged over thinker who will either die in a basement or make a billion dollars and shame everyone at their 20 year high school reunion. That particular friend is not, incidentally, a billionaire. Another friend in that same group always chose “weaponized urination,” which requires no additional explanation.

If, on the other hand, the person answers by reaching over to a wilted flower, touching it, and making it bloom into full, vibrant life, it tells you three things:

1. That person likes to show off.
2. They are confident and satisfied with their lot, since the power they would choose is the one they actually have.
3. You’ve just met someone with superpowers, and you’re probably going to have to rethink everything you believe about the universe.

My power was called the Boned Reset, and although it sounds like something surgeons do, it’s much better than that. It meant that in that moment when you realize you are totally, utterly boned, you can go back a few seconds and not do the stupid thing you just did which resulted in your currently hard-penetrated predicament. Like when you hear yourself say, “put it all on black,” or, “yeah, I can probably put a ladder there,” or “your sister didn’t do it like that.” Or you make eye contact from across the crowded mall with the ninja assassin sent from the future to kill you before you become the Prime Minister of the First World Government, and it causes her to recognize you.

I don’t know what my answer tells you about me. To be honest I’ve never really thought about it. These days, my life has a lot of Boned Moments. Except I’m older and more sophisticated, and I don’t have to worry about getting overheard by a teacher, or a librarian, or that judgmental end-of-days fundamentalist lady who ran the 24 hour diner with the galvanized pancakes. So I don’t say boned. I say fucked. Most of the time I know I’m about to be fucked because of two words, spoken in my head, by that smooth female voice.

Hello, Dendrite.

“Axon,” I said out loud, even though I didn’t have to. “Fuck me with a spoon.”

“Excuse me?” said the desk receptionist in front of me. Because I was in an office building in the middle of the day, full of respectable people doing respectable things. “Did you just say,” she lowered her voice and looked around conspiratorially, “fuck me with a spoon?”

“Yes, I did,” I said. “I did say that. Sorry, it wasn’t aimed at you. You don’t have to…fuck me with a spoon…” I trailed off. Probably should have stopped talking a few seconds earlier, there.

Yeah, probably, said Axon in my head.

“Is Axon there?” said Decker standing next to me, in a voice that sounded a lot like Axon’s, only, you know, real. “Fan-fucking-tastic! Maybe this isn’t going to be a waste of time after all. Now I’m actually glad I put my bra on.” She fiddled with the strap under her shirt.

“Excuse me?” asked the receptionist with a look that wouldn’t take much to explode from ‘puzzled’ into ‘flabbergasted,’ and from there right on to ‘calling the cops.’ . “Why did you say you were here, again?”

“Yes,” I said, “Sorry, we are here to deliver this package to Mr…Same Urethra? Mr. Sigmund Thor-all? Can you tell me where I can find him?”

“Mr. Sigmurethra, yes,” said the receptionist, recovering her composure now that she had an explanation that hypothetically had a form associated with it. “His office is on the third floor. But I can make sure he gets the parcel.”

Except, that’s not really why you are there, said Axon.

“Except that’s not really why we’re here,” said Decker. She pulled out a piece of gum and popped in her mouth. “I thought this place felt weird. Did it seem slimy on the way in to you? I thought I saw some slime.”

“Quiet,” I said out of the side of my mouth to both of them. Then I turned back to the receptionist. I tried to look for a name tag or plate so that I could call her by name, but there wasn’t anything like that. This place was too classy for that. Or she didn’t have a name; that was also a possibility. “Yeah, see, we kind of need to deliver the package directly to him. He needs to sign for it.”

“That’s not really how we do things,” said the receptionist.

“Yeah, but, I mean, we’ve got to do it that way,” I said. “I know that’s awkward if that’s not your policy. But we have to do it. For legal reasons. See? It says it right here. Signature of Recipient Required.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I’m going to have to call this up.”

You’re going to have to hurry it along, said Axon. We don’t have long before catastrophic failure.

“What the fuck does that mean?”I groaned, again out loud.

“It just means I need to contact security upstairs, sir,” said the receptionist, “and we would appreciate if you would watch your language. This is a professional environment.”

“Sorry,” I said, looking sheepish.

“What did Axon say?” asked Decker. “Do we have to hurry? Is the package a bomb or something?”

“A bomb?” said the receptionist, her eyes widening. She said it loudly, and people passing through the lobby looked over at us.

“No, of course not!” I said, speaking so the whole room could hear. “No bomb here! Just a run of the mill package. Office supplies.”

Is it a bomb? I asked Axon in my head.

Good question. I’ll check on that. Meanwhile, get your ass upstairs. You’ve got fourteen minutes to get in, get this done, and get out of there.

“I’m still going to have to call this up,” said the receptionist.

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. “We’ll just wait over there. Decker, come on, let’s wait over there.”

I hurried over to a corner where there were no people. Decker followed.

“What’s up?” Decker asked, chewing her gum. “Are we going to blow this place up? Can I take the receptionist with us? She’s kind of cute.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Whatever it is we have fourteen minutes.”

Thirteen minutes, said Axon. And that’s going down, not up. In case you forgot how time works.

“Fuck,” I said. “Thirteen. We’ve got to get upstairs.”

Decker nodded. “Go. Do your thing. It should work on these people, right? Are they people?”

Will it work? I asked Axon.

The fuck should I know? I can’t do all the heavy lifting, Dendrite.

“I have no idea,” I said.

Decker nodded again. She took the gum out of her mouth and wadded it under a nearby table with determination. “Go. Get this done.” She grinned that huge, terrifying grin of hers. “I’ll distract everyone.”

She reached into her backpack, took out a ski mask, and pulled it over her head. Then she reached in and pulled out something that was not at all obviously a water pistol, as long as you didn’t notice the duct tape laid across the bottom to keep it from leaking.

“Holy shitshow,” I said. “They’ve already seen our faces!”

“They might not be people,” she said. “Besides, I’m black and you’re Middle Eastern. All they’ll remember is Halle Berry and some random terrorist sticking up the place.” And before I could say anything else, before I could tell her how terrible an idea this was, or much she did not look like Halle Berry, she stormed over to the reception desk, waived the gun in the air, and screamed in a horrific British accent, “Everybody be cool this is a robbery!”

There was a collective gasp and a few screams as all gazes were sucked into the black hole of her personality. She was exactly like this at parties.

Just get through this, I thought. Just get through this, and there will be tacos.

Spoken like a true badass, said Axon.

I didn’t respond, because that would have been a stalling tactic. Stalling sounded about as good as a chili dog and an orgasm just about then, but it would make me just as unlikely to want to go to work afterwards. I took a very deep breath, held it, and sprinted towards the stairwell.

Next Bit

Queen Anne’s Lace

 

Another 37, Day Two

“Kids, wake up. I have a great idea.”

My dad was a morning person, and he just didn’t get that there was never a good reason for waking up. Sometimes there was a good reason for being up, but that came later. Somehow he expected us to be enthusiastic. My brother was better at that than I was, but not much. My mother was, if anything, worse, which I loved because she understood. But she wasn’t there, this particular morning. She couldn’t have been, because this was about her.

Once we were awake enough to care, dad explained what we were doing. It was a good idea. A really good idea. Perfect. That’s how we ended up on the strip of tattered grass in the median on the highway just outside of Pier 1 Imports. And along other weathered, neglected patches of greenery usually only traversed by kids jaywalking across traffic, or work men in orange vests and just the wrong among of stubble on their perpetually surly faces. But the patch outside of Pier 1 was the best. A diamond mine.

And we were searching for diamonds, rare and precious, uncut and indistinguishable from common rocks unless your eye was equally rare, and you knew how to spot that which was precious. We were spice hunters, sailing to the places on the map marked with dragons, looking for the nutmeg trees but harvesting only the mace. We were in the wilds of the South Jersey suburbs, and we were searching for Queen Anne’s Lace.

“What’s Queen Anne’s Lace?” I remember asking my father once.

“It’s a weed,” he told me, “but don’t tell your mother.”

“Maya, what’s Queen Anne’s Lace?” I asked her. I called her Maya, because I liked to play with words, and because “mom” and “mommy” were too prosaic, and she was too special to my child’s eyes.

“A flower,” she said, in that far off voice she sometimes had, the voice sprinkled with faerie dust. “The most beautiful flower in the world.”

Maya could talk about flowers for hours. With the voice of an expert, and the passion of a poet describing her children. Whenever spring bloomed she spoke of nasturtiums and hydrangea and bleeding hearts, how they grew, what they needed, their personality quirks and their deepest fears. She had a story about every one.

“Impatiens are the most dramatic of all flowers,” she used to say. “When you haven’t watered them they sag and droop,” here, she would sag and droop her arms down herself. “’Water us!’ they say. ‘Water us or we’ll die!’ And then when you water them they spring up and spread out, and say, ‘Look at us! Aren’t we beautiful?’”

I never understood beauty. Not really. I understood ideas, words, the wild, frayed colors and sounds at the edges of abstract imagination. But not pure beauty, purely for it’s own sake. Sometimes I’m staggered by it, but even then I over think it. I try to tell a story, but sometimes you don’t need a story. Sometimes beauty is wine, and a story just waters it down.

Both of my parents were artists, but for my dad beauty did something. The most passionate I ever saw him was talking about some scientific breakthrough, or some revelation about how things worked. For Maya beauty just was. Powerful and intense and meaningless in the most meaningful of ways. I never understood beauty, all by itself, and that means I never understood perfection. I never touched it. But she did. To her it was everywhere.

“Do you think we have enough?” Dad asked. We looked in the back of the Suburban. It was full of clods of dirt pulled up from the ground, a dozen flowers and their accompanying roots. It was a hot day, and my brother and I were both dirty and sweaty, and neither of us had realized we were going to have to give up our Saturday for this. We looked at each other. We looked at the flowers. We both agreed; we didn’t have enough. Time to get back to work.

You couldn’t buy Queen Anne’s Lace. Of course you couldn’t. It was a weed. It grew wherever no one paid anyone pluck it up and make things more presentable. Did that make it more beautiful? I heard once that most people who visit the Louvre only look at the Mona Lisa and then leave. What other works of transcendental beauty line those halls, that everyone walks past? And what might be growing in the cracks between the pavement just outside, torn up by the gardener every morning, that could be just as beautiful?

As a teacher, Maya would sometimes get into arguments with other teachers about some of the students. The bad kids. The ones who spoke too often and too harshly, just so someone would see them. Maya loved them, not just because she could love everyone, but individually. For who they were. For the way they flowered. Other people saw weeds; she saw Queen Anne’s Lace.

Her face when she came home to see the flowerbed full of white flowers was as wondrous as we could hope for. More wondrous than you are probably imagining, because she had no filters in moments like this. She was always everyone’s favorite person on Christmas Morning, because you could hand her a present, watch her open a bottle of the kind of $4 perfume little kids think makes a fantastic gift, and watch her explode into joy. She might not like the present, she might never use it, but her joy was utterly genuine, because the moment was genuine. Because the act of giving her a gift filled it with magic, to her. You could hand her a package of weeds, but she always opened Queen Anne’s Lace.

She ran up and hugged us and exclaimed and bubbled over with joy. It must have been Mother’s Day, because her birthday would have been too cold. But I don’t remember what day it was. I don’t remember the details. I just remember her face. I’ll always remember her face.

I have no idea if all of this is entirely too sentimental. But sometimes you have to not care about that kind of thing. Sometimes you just have to blossom when someone waters you, and declare to all of the world that you are beautiful. Sometimes you have to tell the woman who raised you that she’s amazing, that she taught you about beauty and love and art. And about how, sometimes, there aren’t any weeds. There’s only Queen Anne’s Lace.

Some Very Short Stories

 

To kick off Another 37, some very short stories! These are always fun to write, but man, I’m rusty. This used to be so easy.

 

Press Release

The Singular Shaving Company would like to categorically denounce allegations of safety violations among any of our products. We assure the public that the Singular line of electric razors deliver the smooth, frictionless shave and external follicular elimination due to a our patented sonic vibration process, as described in our published material.* Contrary to rumors, we chose the name Singular due to this unique process, and any similarity to any cosmological phenomenon is pure coincidence. The suggestion that the tragic collapse of the South Amerton Walmart in Texas was due to a containment breach in the casing of our electric razors is both ludicrous and, quite frankly, insulting, and indicative of the unfortunate and sensationalist nature of the modern media in this country. We further assure both consumers and investors that the Singular Shaving Company will continue to be dedicated to quality, innovation, and safety, and every one of our products, facilities, and business practices are in full compliance with all local ordinances, federal statutes, and laws of physics.

*See Our Ad in Parade Magazine

The Truth, On Faith

“First of all ma’am, I’d like to offer you my heartiest congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“No need to rest on formalities, here. We’re all in this together. You can call me Director.”

“Thank you, Director. I’m honored to be invited here. Only…”

“You don’t know why in the world you were asked to see the director of the National Security Agency on your first hour in office?”

“Right.”

“Now that you’ve been appointed Surgeon General, you need to be let in on a little secret about medical science. I’m going to shoot straight with you, here. There’s no easy way to break this to you. This is huge. As huge as it gets. Do you need a second?”

“With all due respect, Director, if I was thin skinned I’d never have made it this far. Just tell me, please.”

“Alright. Here it is. The entire field of medicine, from basic principles all the way up to the most complex biopharmaceuticals, are a lie. It’s all built on one and only one underlying method: the placebo effect.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Listen, I don’t expect you to buy this right off the bat. It’s going to take a while to sink in. But if you step through this door, I’d be happy to show you the definitive proof on the matter.”

“Wait, are you…?”

“I’m not. I’m not razzing you. This isn’t some kind of high-office hazing. I am telling you the God’s honest truth.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Wait a minute. Chemotherapy. Spinal microsurgery. Bloody intubation, for Christ’s sake! These are proven, demonstrable techniques that show immediate, repeatable results! There’s no way they can just be placebos!”

“That’s because medical schools are designed and carefully run to screen for psychic ability. It’s amazing how powerful the placebo effect can be when juiced up by a powerful psychic.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Do you need a drink?”

“You know what? I think that’s a very good idea.”

Balor’s Eye

Whoever wears Balor’s Eye is supposed to be unstoppable. Who can stand against a man who can destroy an army with a single glance? All my life I have sought this artifact, and now I have it. The culmination of my ambitions, I thought. A way to make my enemies suffer, and to guide the world towards perfection under my hand, as it should be. The Eye is supposed to be cursed. I’ve never believed in curses; a man makes his own luck in world. But now that I have the Eye, now that ultimate power is in my grasp, I am not so sure.

Belgulon the Great held the Eye, and he was unconquered for almost ten years. But he was felled by a single, lucky peasant with a throwing spear. King Charles XII of Sweden used it to defeat General Winter and successfully occupy Russia, a feat long thought impossible. But still he was killed by Rasputin’s Rebellion, despite the protection of his Eye. And who can forget Emperor Billy, who united the Three Sovereign States of North America under his flag, where they still rest today? Yet the Pan-American armies were still able to take him down with a sniper shot, and his kingdom has weakened until, today, it is practically a democracy.

Where was the Eye for these supposedly great men? I always thought them weak. I always thought them flawed. The only way to lose the Eye’s protection, its power, is to remove it from your person and allow it to touch the mortal dust of the earth. How could they allow that? But now that I have penetrated the secret location of its burial place, now that I have passed the Guardians of Stone and Storm, solved the Ten Thousand Deadly Riddles, now that I have plucked Balor’s Eye itself from the Eternal Tomb and I hold it in my scarred and withered fingers, I feel I understand these men, and perhaps forgive them their folly.

After all, how are you supposed to keep a monocle from falling off of your face during a tense moment? When you get all sweaty? Perhaps I should head back to my Hidden Library and search for the Lost Glue of Pegasus. Maybe that’ll do the trick.

Product Release

The Singular Shaving Company would like to categorically deny the recent rumors about the activities taking place in our production facilities. We acknowledge that the measurements of thermal spikes and tectonic activity from our Austin location have been verified and are valid. But to claim that the only possible source of these results is nuclear testing is to display a gross naivete about modern research and development techniques. That taken into account, we would like to further reassure the public by stating that we will no longer be utilizing these methods, as we have advanced the technology such that our desired results can now be achieved at much lower temperatures. In unrelated news, Singular is excited to use this moment of media exposure to announce the launch of our new product, Cool Fusion Shaving Gel.* This remarkable new gel will make our signature Frictionless Shave® even smoother than ever, and when used in conjunction with our new cordless battery-free electric razor, The Singular Complete, will ensure a complete effortless and sustainable shaving experience.

*See Our Ad in GQ

In The Rain

“Look for me in the rain.”

Those were Ty’s last works to Tamika, before he disappeared into the mist that cool summer’s day. To get his frisbee back. Such a silly, tiny thing. Except Tamika knew it wasn’t that. She was only six, and even then she knew it wasn’t that.

Her twin brother had been quiet in the days before. Contemplative. She didn’t learn the word until years later, when Ms. Tracey used it to describe a passage in The Sun Also Rises to her calls. But once Tamika learned it she knew that was Ty. He had lost himself to something very deep, thoughts like mist that rises in an otherwise clear and warm summer and swallows you up, away from your sister. Away from your life.

“Look for me in the rain.” He said it as his form dissolved in her vision. He said it with a look back at her, and a smile. “Don’t worry,” said the smile. “I’ll be with you.” She knew he was leaving. That he had to leave. That something crawled up into his skull and nestled there, and it was so important that he had to chase after it, no matter what, no matter who, he left behind.

And so she looked. Everytime it rained, she looked. Most of the time she was the wild, playful, rambunctious girl she had always been. But the rain made her quiet. It made her contemplative.

“What are you doing?” Her mother would ask.

“Looking for Ty,” said Tamika. “He told me to.”

“Who’s Ty, honey?” Mama didn’t remember. No one remembered.

The years fell by like raindrops and Tamika never stopped looking. Never stopped searching. And she thought as she looked, about deeper things. Things she never would have thought about if she never sat down, leaned on her elbow, and stared. If she never stopped moving. Things that were so important, they were worth chasing after.

Tamika was old, now. The rain made her bones ache sometimes, but she didn’t care. She didn’t stare with desperation, anymore. Nor longing. Maybe she never had. He was out there, never very far away. Just a few feet away, past where the rain clouded vision, holding his frisbee. He found it.

She was almost done, now. It could have been an unremarkable life, if she’d never thought about it. If she’d never taken the time to be quiet, or realized there were deeper things. She was almost ready to go, now. To walk into the mist herself. She would leave people behind, but she was ready. So were they. They were ready to live without her. There would be sadness. There is always sadness. But there is wonder, too, in those things you can’t quite see. She would make sure they never stopped looking.

She would tell them, “Look for me in the rain.”

Final Release

The Singular Shaving Company would like to offer our condolences to all survivors of the recent calamity. In the interest of reconciliation, we officially take credit for the role that the Singular line of products has played in the devastation and assure what remains of the public that these unfortunate consequences were in large part unintended. However, at this time we will not be entertaining any motions of litigation or petitions for restitution, as no current infrastructure exists to enforce or regulate any such petitions. Anyone who objects to this position is free to lodge a complaint with our customer service division, most likely located in what remains of our central offices in Dallas. We urge those who are unsatisfied with this escalation pathway to remember are still in possession of the same technology that made Singular a product front runner, and that they are welcome to try to locate us and bring their complaints to us directly if they so choose. The Singular Shaving Company would also like to remind any potential customers or investors who may still have the technological capacity to receive this message that, as a cutting edge business leader with a background in innovation, we are well placed to assist in rebuilding or replacing those now missing societal elements that might prove mutually desirable. Thank you all for choosing Singular for all of your shaving needs.

Another 37

 

I’ve been writing. I really have. Working on a couple of novels that got stuck at the same word count, working on…worldbuilding for those same novels. Okay, mostly I’ve been doing stuff with those novels.

But I find I’m far too stuck inside my own head. Which is true of everyone all the time, I suppose, but there are ways to delude yourself that it’s not the case. Way back when that used to require human contact and sunlight. Thank god those days are over! We’re more sophisticated. We have blogging now.

And I miss blogging. And I miss writing about different things. And I miss the validation that comes from the systemically conveyed unspecified approval of strangers on the internet.

So here we go! Thirty-seven blog posts. I’ve done this before, but this time is going to be a little different. A little less intense, because:

1. I have a full time job now, and I didn’t then, and
2. My stomach hurts.

See. A numbered list. Do I still remember how to blog, or what?

The differences are going to be that I’m not going to do in every day for thirty-seven days. Instead I’m going to give myself up to three days off a week. I won’t necessarily take all three, but I can. The whole thing ends when I’m done with thirty-seven posts. There’s probably going to be a serial novel started in there somewhere, with once a week updates. Because I really want to do that.

So here we actually go! The whole thing (probably) starts tomorrow, with (probably) a micro-fiction post. I’ll see you there. Kind of?