Commonplace : March 2020
Stop acting small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion. - Rumi
February was a lot
There is a lot going on in the world right now, but you’ve read enough about it elsewhere. I’ve nothing to add to any of the conversations, so for now, I look backward at how the last month went as I’m already hip-deep in the new one.
My book came out and I also prepped the new issue of Luna Station Quarterly. That’s two big chunks of publishing work in one month. Of course that wasn’t all I did.
I also prepped and ran an LSQ staff meeting, organized the hiring process for more staff, and had a huge mental load at my day job where I’m learning new things every day.
But guess what? I wouldn’t really change any of it.
My book and the LSQ issue have both been well-received. My day job work is challenging me and I’m rising to meet it. I live in a nice place where I can do this work in peace and quiet. In short, I’m grateful and not complaining.
I am a bit tired, though, so I hope you’ll forgive me for being less than insightful in this space this month. I hope to make up for that by sharing some very insightful quotes and links below.
As spring begins to take over the land that has sat fallow and brown this winter, I look forward to the renewal it brings. May you find a little of that yourself in the coming weeks. I’ll see you all again in April.
Wisdom & Websites
“Notice what you notice.” — Martha Beck
Paper sizes - All of the paper sizes standardly available. A massive help for those of us who still play with print.
computering is like magic not because that belief makes me feel like a superior wizard, but in the sense that if it would only be practiced by old wise women in the woods, all of us would be better off. - jakob
How to read more - This advice may be obvious, but sometimes I need obvious presented in a new way.
“How we spend our time is how we spend our days. How we spend our days is how our life goes. How our life goes determines whether we thought it was worth living.” - Keith Yamashita
This to That - CONNECT ALL THE THINGS TO ALL THE OTHER THINGS
“One of the biggest lies of our age is that stories of ghosts and fairies and witches have nothing meaningful to say to us. Myth is a conscious act of rebellion against the dark forces conspiring to destroy nature, imagination and the human spirit. Re-enchantment is resistance.” - Boze Herrington
Favorite Reads Of The Month
An app can be a home-cooked meal
This messaging app I built for, and with, my family, it won’t change unless we want it to change. There will be no sudden redesign, no flood of ads, no pivot to chase a userbase inscrutable to us. It might go away at some point, but that will be our decision, too. What is this feeling? Independence? Security? Sovereignty? Is it simply… the feeling of being home?
This is probably one of the most influential things I've read in the last year at least.
The Definition of Community – David Spinks
People often criticize companies for calling their customers a community. The question isn’t whether or not their customers are a community. They are. The question is whether or not the shared identity is meaningful to them.
This could easily be a companion piece to the above.
I Love David Lynch’s Dune in Spite of Its Faults | Tor.com
But there’s another, less easy answer, and one that I think gets to the heart of why I love Lynch’s Dune so much. All of the elements of the film that grate on critics, from the near-constant voiceovers to the unexplained powers of the Mentats and Bene Gesserit, are near and dear to me, because they made sense to my 8-year-old, Star Wars-loving self. More than that, Dune gave me a world in which everything was not guaranteed to turn out all right—something to temper the almost relentless optimism of Star Wars.
I'm with the author on pretty much everything here.
Status Update
Currently Reading: I recently packed my goodreads current list with volumes I want to pick up and read bits of throughout the year. You can find that list here.
I just finished reading The Wicked + The Divine series by Keiron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie and highly recommend it.
Currently Listening: I've been picking up things that are not new, but new to me. Right now Company of Thieves is being put on regularly. Death Valley Girls and Diet Cig recently caught my attention as well.
I also had a resurgence of affection for The Band. I will have to talk about this somewhere soon.
Currently Working On: Lots of LSQ staffing stuff and prepping to put together our second "best of" anthology. In the back of my mind there are programming projects, though I'm finding myself too mentally tired outside of the day job to handle more code.