For my update, my year+ long search for a fulltime job is finally at an end 😮‍💨 but as much as that’s a relief, I forgot how much time and energy fulltime work takes up!

But I’ve been keeping up my writing in small ways. I continue to collect ideas like a magpie collects shiny things, but I’ve started to do my writing in short snippets with whatever is available: a notepad when going on walks, in the form of essays or concept pieces on mastodon, or even on my phone using Fossify notes.

Though I still spend more time consuming media than producing it. Especially reading. I found that my reading speed has actually almost doubled since last year! (Though I’m still v slow.)

I’m pretty invested. It’s a real cocktail of strong personalities–makes for a real page turner!

I don’t know much about professional kitchens, but I love all the shop talk.

I’m usually such a “concept” writer/reader, it feels kind of novel to read something that doesn’t have a huge fantasy/sci-fi/horror/other twist built in, but just like a straight up interesting drama.

Yes to this when juxtaposed against consumerism.

Also don’t feel bad that you need more than sun and air to fulfill your basic needs. It’s not a sin to enjoy a falafel.

I’m so sorry. One of my neighbours is non-American MAGA as well, and without taking a hammer to my frontal lobe, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand how they see the world. They literally believe sci-fi fantasy shit about giants’ bones and “med beds” and cloning politicians.

Well I’ve heard all I need to. I knew Chomsky was kind of a prodigious jerk. He’s put out some good material in his time, but it sure doesn’t seem like he’s personally on the right side of of the child abuse “side” of the debate.

Sure it is. It’s a matter of the taste of the people in the movie theatre.

Nolan’s movies are just vehicles for Zimmer’s music.

Matter of taste. For my part, I don’t like watching movies with anyone who can’t carry a conversation while it’s happening. I love getting the live reactions and theories as the movie is still playing out.

This is partner. It’s like a tic. It’s actually amazing to watch. It’s like they become possessed by the spirit of cinema and start babbling about the most obscure trivia you’ve ever heard.

Fortunately, I love it.

I love that kind of stuff. Both me and my wife do it, then we theory craft. We try to guess twists before they’re revealed.

This obviously doesn’t work well without subtitles.

Conceptually, sure. But the last big setpiece made no sense from a visual perspective. I feel like you would need to show an overhead view of the map simultaneously, to actually keep track of what was happening.

From the link…

Microsoft provides the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that are crucial in empowering and accelerating Israel’s genocidal war on 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip.

Welcome to the writing club! For drafts or snippets, I can recommend https://pads.slrpnk.net/ for quickly sharing anything that is too long to fit in a comment. I’d love to proofread a new draft!

Sounds like you’ve got some great measurable goals there. I look forward to hearing your update next month. :)

I think that counts as a “hiatus” if only because if it doesn’t then I have a lot to answer for. :P

Speaking of, how are you all setup for writing?

I use neovim as well! I’ve been using vim for a long time, and I find the keybinding great for navigating prose ({} for jumping over paragraphs, () for sentences, etc). I’m experimenting with the following plugins: vim-pencil, limelight, goyo, as well as some others, unrelated to writing. Although personally I would recommend you be judicious about adding plugins to your .vimrc, because they can quickly get out of hand. I also use the kitty terminal for easy splitting of the view, as well as for the animated cursor_trail, which makes it easier to visually track the cursor jumping all over when you’re using vim motions. :)

Good luck with your writing. It’s great feeling the creative energies coming on, and then choosing how to direct them! :)

Good luck on your certification, and I totally agree–I love hearing everyone’s updates especially when I haven’t been able to do much myself. And of course, it makes me feel better feeling from other people who haven’t had the bandwidth to be creative this month, too. :)

Thank you so much. 🥰

That sounds so rewarding! I’m glad you had a good month, even if it wasn’t doing “traditional” writing. Good luck on Section B!

causing the pacing to feel somewhat meandering.

This is something I notice in a lot of fiction (books, movies, shows, etc; stories, in short). That “meandering” sense, which I dunno maybe it can work for really character-driver works, but either way it’s harder to the reader to hold their attention if things don’t seem to be happening in a cause-and-effect way that they can follow.

RE starting a new project, are you at the point with this one where you are getting lots of ideas for different projects? I get that a lot, anyway.

So exciting that your trilogy is well underway!

My goal… remains unchanged 🙈 I did some thinking about my story, but no real work (despite a friend even reaching out to offer to brainstorm with me!). Just in other personal news, though, I’ve really picked up my job search again–trying to find something full-time before the end of the year, and it looks like I might have found something in eduTech. 🤩 🎓 So fingers crossed there.

I’m hoping once I have a full-time income that I’ll be able to, like, really focus on relaxing / being creative during the evenings and weekends, rather than thinking about how I should be searching for a job. We’ll see!

Thanks for this. There are no perfect solutions in this world, and you’re right–it’s something. Maybe I can use what influence I have in this role to set up the next generation of tech workers to do better than we did.