That Old Curveball | scribbling damselfly

social networking overload

Croatia is, well, it's partially booked, and the rest of it is planned. That totally counts as progress. I'm going to be seeing Zagreb, the UNESCO listed Plitvice Lakes, and the Dalmatian coast. This strikes me as a most excellent way of spending some time.

This weekend I also managed to book my flights to America for WFC 2011. Yet more progress!

In more ephemeral progress, I've also been pondering the thornsome dilemma that is social media. There is, quite simply, too much of it.

I like blogging for the fact that it's my website, and my voice, and I like the space you get in blog posts, both writing them and reading them. Conversely, I like Twitter for its immediacy, and for its ephemeral, thrown-off nature. I don't like Facebook — too much noise to signal, and the platform makes it impossible to filter content from chatter. I have a Goodreads account, but I can't remember the last time I found time to log in. I'm on Google+, which I like better than Facebook if only for its more easily-accessible privacy and filtering utilities, but it does feel like yet another platform I'm supposed to keep up with. Yet another platform where I have to face the dilemma of whether I cross-post, and commit the sin of forcing people who are following me on more than the one platform to trawl through duplicate content, or whether I strive to come up with original content for just this platform…

It's frustrating, because I enjoy the interaction, but the time consumption and the fragmented concentration is simply too draining.

So I am hereby giving myself permission to say that two social media platforms is my limit. For now that's my blog, and twitter. I'll still lurk on the other platforms, but I won't be logging in unless they demand my attention.

I think this also counts as progress.

18 July 2011 @ 20:24 | 9 Comments

we interrupt this silence for a brief message

I read somewhere once that it was terribly poor form to start a blog post with an apology for the silence. Now, whenever I feel I've let one too many days slip by without blogging, I'm paralysed for how to start, since apparently I can't start with an apology.

On such quibbling social anxieties my world turns.

Anyrate, at the risk of being passé, apologies for the silence. Life threw the pterosaur's family a bit of a curve ball, and I've been required offline lately. In fact, I'm currently stealing a quiet moment in the sewing room to dash this off from my phone (how did I ever live without the Internet on my phone?).

First, FREE STUFF!

There's an interview of me up at the blog of the fabulous Rowena, where I mostly talk about The Binding books, but also talk a little bit about other topics. There's also a chance to win a free copy of both Shadow Queen and Shadow Bound, simply by commenting. So if you've always wanted to read the books and never got around to it, head on over and leave a comment. Or, if you've already read the books but can think of someone who might enjoy them, send them linkwards!

Second, only partial self-promotion:

I came across a link to Gnod's Literature Map in my tweetstream. (If you'd like the link that led me there, it was via Publisher's Weekly, which link contains a brief explanation of how it works.)

It's an awesome idea for finding the next book to read, since us authors write so slowly and you readers read so swiftly!

Of course, since I am but a little Australian fledgeling, my name is not recognised in the literature map yet — so if you do happen to head over there, help a girl out by searching for me and, when the site displays the "I don't know this author", click the offered link to confirm I exist.

And while you're at it, add in some unknown antipodean authors like Rowena Cory Daniells, or Tansy Raynor Roberts, or Jo Anderton, or Karen Healey, to name but a handful. I've added them myself, but the site needs more than a single vote to believe it.

And now, I really must get back to the fray, so I leave you with 8 prehistoric creatures from your nightmares, to which the pterosaur would like me to add a ninth: YOUR SKULL, DEB.

3 July 2011 @ 15:42 |

beware of the dog

The other day, on learning that I write and have a couple of published books to my name, a new acquaintance asked me, "How do you fit it all in?"

Here's the thing: I don't. I really don't.

My flat hasn't seen more than a cursory clean in months; the only reason it's survived such neglect is because I'm not there for more than a few hours at a time to create any serious detritus. My kitchen sink is permanently full of dishes. My friends are always prodding me with a gentle reminder that it's been more than a couple of days since I last saw them, it's been weeks. (Thank all that's sacred that I have patient, understanding, forgiving friends.) On a good day I'm running on an hour less sleep than I need. I barely cook, because it takes too long for too little gain, and my grocery expeditions consist of little more than ensuring I have sufficient milk and bread to keep from starving.

Pretty glamorous, eh?

When I indulge in social activities, sleep and wordcount drop by the wayside. When the dayjob floods me with applications, sleep and wordcount drop by the wayside. When I take the time to get the sleep I need to function like a normal human being, friends and wordcount drop by the wayside. When I take the time to truly write, friends and work drop by the wayside.

Most of the time, if I'm ultra-organised, and skimp a bit each on my friends and my sleep (and a lot on my housework), I can balance everything. Sorta. Kinda.

Sometimes, life throws me a hefty curve-ball. And when my routine gets ripped out from under me — which has been pretty much a constant feature of 2010 — it takes a lot to regain my balance.

2 December 2010 @ 19:05 |

because certainty is a false prize

Last weekend I took a leap of faith.

It's been eating at me all week long, and I've only just realised that the reason I'm edgy, and angry, and wanting to lash out, is because I've been feeling vulnerable and stupid.

There was something I was waiting to do — waiting for the right time, the right moment. There were good reasons to wait, every reason to wait and none not to, and I'd promised myself I would do just that.

But last weekend, on the spur of the moment, I changed my mind.

I've decided I refuse to regret this.

Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out. Because certainty is a false goal.

24 September 2010 @ 14:40 |

then posh spice got on my tram

Internets, let me tell you about my morning. Because do you know what happened this morning? The world got its crazy on, that's what happened.

Hands up who remembers Mr LOOK! BALLOONS!?

I've seen him around a couple of times since that apparently alarmingly magical morning. He's never been quite so enthused since, and I've always been busy, so mostly we've just wandered past each other with an acknowledging nod or smile. Personally, I've been quietly of the opinion that he's a habitual drug user and gets mildly, amusingly, loopy in the process.

Um … yeah, maybe not quite.

This morning I walked out my front door — shaking my head and wondering what all the commotion was about, who was energetic enough to be making a fuss at 8am? — to find Mr Balloons standing at the mouth of the driveway.

STARK NAKED.

Another neighbour was trying to coax him into going back inside, and waved urgently at me to indicate I should go back inside or get away NOW. I scampered back inside (since I clearly wasn't getting past him for a bit), and as I did so I could hear the lady in #1 on the phone. "Yes, he's just outside. Yes, he says he's fine, but he obviously needs to go to a psychiatric institution. Yes, naked. His mood changes are quite abrupt."

I decided to stake out my balcony as a proper vantage point while I waited for an opportune moment to hunt down a tram. Which is how I managed a birds-eye view of Mr Balloons chasing two young girls pell-mell down the street. I don't know whether he was running after them simply because they ran, or for other more alarming reasons, but he was certainly intent on the chase and the neighbour who'd previously been trying to talk him into going inside was alarmed enough to drop his groceries in the middle of the street and dash off on an intercepting course. Two minutes later (I presume the girls had reached their house, or otherwise vanished from view) he was placidly enjoying the feel of the grass underfoot and asking ingenuously if he could go and talk to that person over there?

I now think Mr Balloons' loopiness is caused, not by self-medicating, but rather by stopping his legal meds.

Blubber Boy (Regurgitator — Triple J Hottest 100 #3)

20 September 2010 @ 17:40 |

and her fingernails are painted new

Dear Internets,

I love you. In fact, it's fair to say I'm addicted to you. But — forgive me — I'm beginning to wonder whether even you are worth wading through the mires of the Australian telephone infrastructure system, not to mention all the accompanying so-called service providers feeding on its carcass.

Additionally, I cannot help but contemplate the irony that is the communications industry being the epitome of communications failure.

Regretfully
Me

Angela (Missy Higgins — On A Clear Night)

21 April 2009 @ 21:51 | 1 Comment

in brief

Objective: Drive. Until the battery is sufficiently charged.

Secondary Objective: Stickybeak around a few suburbs, to see if there's any I fall in love with.

Method: Me. Behind the wheel. Sharing the road with trams. At speed. (Praying I don't stall because there's no way this sucker is restarting short of a jumpstart at this point.)

Outcome: Thoroughly lost? ACHIEVED.

Dear Melbourne: Not big on informative road signs that can be seen at any speed faster than perambulatory, huh? No thanks, Me.

Also, let it be known that mothers are made of win. Mothers who insist you EAT THAT SCHNITZEL AND CHASE IT DOWN WITH GELATO NOW transcend even that.

24 March 2009 @ 7:47 | 4 Comments

it never rains but it pours

The signing sheets for Postscripts #18 have come and gone on their merry way and I can say this with certainty: I have no signature. Truly, every single one of those sheets is unique.

I am currently sitting in my car, which is at the moment a very expensive sculpture, on account of the battery going to sleep sometime in the past two weeks and now declining to emerge from its coma. Given that I need the car today in order to find a place to live, my previous plans having exploded in rather spectacular and last-minute fashion, I am, needless to say, a little peeved with life right about now. For values of a little roughly approximate to I think the world can just go ahead and burn, what do I care any more?

So, my apologies, but sporadic and unfocussed (and haphazardly abandoned) is going to be a feature of this site until life JUST SETTLES DOWN, DAMMIT.

In the meantime, have a snippet of awesome to entertain you: Predator X (link courtesy of splinister)

PS: Comments are not turned off, but please be aware that I may be a little distracted and unable to get around to answering any of them for a bit.

21 March 2009 @ 11:42 |

the leopard approacheth…

The reformat has hit a snag. Of the "machine won't boot at all any more" variety. Er…oops?

It was all going so well, until I made the apparently foolish mistake of updating the system drivers, as microsoft requested. I should have known better, eh? I didn't realise it was possible to achieve the blue screen of death on a fresh, uncorrupted install. Not only did I achieve the blue screen of death, I've taken it a step further and trapped the desktop in a pre-boot failing cycle. I suspect this is because XP triggered an automatic restart after installing one driver, not quite realising it had simultaneously moved on to installing the next driver and wasn't finished that yet.

So I have admitted defeat: a new computer it is.

And because I don't want to fight with Microsoft any more (Vista? No thanks!), and because I don't quite trust myself with Linux yet (I'd probably spend all my time tweaking system configurations instead of, you know, writing)… there is a brand new MacBook on her way to me.

21 December 2008 @ 11:45 | 9 Comments

back again (did you miss me?)

Apologies for the extended silence; it was unavoidable.

I've not been idle while I wasn't here, but madly revising a novel and crying out "What was I thinking?! No, really, can you read this sentence and make a guess at what I might have been thinking? It doesn't seem to have a verb in it, so it's not conveying much in the way of information"… well, it doesn't make for exciting micro-blogging, really.

One thing I did discover was that my camera has a sepia setting, among other customisable settings.¹ So of course I spent some time running around, taking photos on random settings. Naturally, a large percentage of these photos were of the cats.

Sometimes the delay on a digital camera gives you that perfect moment's capture

Max was a little (okay a lot) more boring, but gee sepia suits brown cats

Okay, I knew it had customisable settings. It just took me a while to find them. Little buggers were hidden. You know, beneath the MENU button. Who woulda thunk to look there? [↩]

3 December 2008 @ 6:52 |