Category: Journal

A short list of things that have amused me today: A Facebook writing thread where someone referred to their graveyard of unfinished projects, and I’m so tempted to write a blog post titled “All Writers are Necromancers” The email sign-off “With Kindness,” which seems like an aspiration act in 2020. The emerging wave of apocalypse marketing showing up in my social media feed, advising me to transfer all my assets into Gold and Diamonds (I’m, like, dude, your targeting is off-base…) Folks starting to ponder their two-week lockdown reads. My cat trying to play with the cat in the mirror. Not Quite The End Of The World Just Yet having a weird, print-only resurgence of sales over the last four weeks. In less amusing news, this twitter thread from SFWA president Mary Robinette Kowall is worth a read: I’ve run big events a few time in the past, working for both profits and non-profits, and I’ve got a lot of

I winnowed my inbox down to nothing yesterday, and the damn thing crept up to 19 overnight. Unfortunately, my email program has decided to play silly buggers and refuses to delete anything unless I mirror the inbox from my phone and do everything in basic HTML Fortunately, Gmail has a “my internet is ass and I’m basically on dailup” version of its interface for just this situation. But it makes me wonder what folks will actually do in Australia in the unlikely event we do get locked down on a two-week quarantine. Our internet is vaguely shit at the best of times–last year, we could tell when new episodes of Game of Thrones started because our connection ground to a halt. I do not think it’s built for the number of folks who may be asked to telecommute, entertain themselves, and generally search out important information if a mass lockdown actually happens. It almost makes my pile of unread books

On our first morning in Adelaide, my beloved sent me out to the local market to procure us some breakfast. “Grab some fruit and hommus,” they suggested, “we’ll avoid the exorbitant buffet charge.” And lo, I went forth and acquired grapes and pears and hummus from the local Romeo’s market. And, because I am me and they were weird as fuck, I brought back a terrifying tray of Jam Donuts which appeared to be a regular cinnamon donut cut in half so the cream and jam could be piped in. The weirdest damned approach to a jam donut I’ve ever seen. I cannot see any way it would be less effort than the usual way, but it definitely caught my attention. In any case, today is a regroup day. Inbox is sitting at 89, which is at least 83 emails over my comfort zone, and I’d like to winnow that down after finishing the day’s wordcount.

I often joke about treating my phone and bullet journal as externalised parts of my memory, treating it like a new phenomenon. Truth is, it’s been a habit ever since I first got bookshelves, where there’s always a short chunk of shelf space given over to references for projects I’m working on. Case in point, a short stretch of books that have inspired sections of the thesis or upcoming blog posts:

I woke at sunrise this morning, courtesy of the cat attacking my feet and then ruthlessly demanding attention for twenty minutes. She spent a good chunk of last night stalking a gecko, and I suspect she failed to capture it going by this morning’s behaviour. I would be mad at her, but there’s 40 emails in my inbox and things that need editing, so it’s not like getting up early is a bad thing…

One of the weird things about living in the twenty-first century is having these incredibly powerful, multi-purpose microcomputers in our pockets that don’t necessarily turn off the way you expect. Ergo, you occasionally find weird photographs on your feed: blurred images snapped as the phone gets slid into the pocket; or snapshots taken while trying to set up the phone to navigate with GPS. I like to think they’re glimpses of another universe, one that makes less sense than our own, trying to get out.

I’ve been watching a motorized scooter helmet migrate around the neighbourhood for the last few weeks. It started out in the neighbour’s yard, moved to a spot behind another neighbour’s rubbish bins, and now exists in the liminal space beside the trainline that the public can’t access. My guess is that it will stay there until the next round of track work, or somebody needs it bad enough to jump the high fence and recover it. The days are long and hot here in Australia. Two states are basically on fire courtesy of the Summer bushfires. Our government has largely shirked the issue, as treating bushfires like this as serious seems to suggest that they may be wrong on issues of climate change. I keep thinking of a quote from a recent news article over on the ABC: “If anything, this Government is more ideologically driven than Abbott. They want to win the culture wars they see in education, in

When my dad passed away in March, he left behind a whole bunch of post-its. Parkinsons disease tends to affect levels of dopamine in the brain, which in turn generates various impulsive and compulsive behaviors as to ease anxiety. Having enough post-its was a big thing for Dad, to the point where he accumulated more than he’d ever actually need at the late stage of his life. Mum passed them on to me, on the logic that I’d be most likely to need them over the day-to-day course of life. Reader, I now have a metric buttload of Post-Its. In fact, it’s possible I’m set for the next decade of my life. And it turns out I don’t use them anywhere near as often as I thought.

Everything on my reminder board focuses on dates back in November, and even then I lost track of half the things I needed reminding of in the back half of the month. It’s been four and a half weeks since I last worked on fiction projects. My brain is inciting a rebellion against this focus on one project until it’s finished approach I’ve been trialing.

There are currently 38 unread emails sitting in my inbox, a component part of 86 emails left in the inbox overall. The oldest dates back to September 12th and I barely remember September at this point. My comfort zone is keeping the unread email under 10, and not leaving things in the inbox at all. The drinks coaster on my desk is starting to feel appropriate.

When I started my PhD they gave me a cubicle at university, ostensibly a quiet place to work and store books and be close to research tools. I’ve done a few tours in the post-grad world and they’re almost never that–put enough postgrads into a room looking to procrastinate, and the distractions will come thick and fast. My little work space was relatively heavy with distractions, so I worked from home a lot of the time. All my stuff was already there, and there weren’t so may distractions. Last week, I got the news that my post-grad desk was being relocated to a bank of cubicles on the top floor. A slightly larger space, less of a thoroughfare, and with about three times the number of post-grads around. Fewer people who went through their initial study at the same time that I did, though, which means I’m largely a stranger who can wander in and just…work. Not sure whether that