KJ

I have posted about my love of videoblogger Jay Smooth before. He's probably best known on the Internets for his famous video on how to tell people they sound racist, which I expect most of you have seen before (but if not you should go watch it right now). Recently, he gave a follow-up TED talk at Hampshire College, and it is very excellent.



There's also a transcript on his site, here. But if you are video-enabled, watching the whole thing is very worth your time.

renay asked me to craft a soundtrack for daily life.

( With video accompaniment! )

30 Days of... Project! Complete list of questions / Ask a question on LJ or on DW.

First, this song has been stuck in my head for a week, and I see no reason why I should have to face that alone. "Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain, why is he climbing a mountain?"

Okay, now that's out of the way. Time to talk January writing goals. With a chart! Yay, charts.

Because I'm started counting substantial journal entries and certain kinds of writing for work toward the wordcount goal, I consider a "writing day" to be a day I've worked on fic. This means that a day spent editing can count, even if I don't get any net words out of it. But if I only write an LJ entry, and/or do substantial writing for work, it doesn't count as a writing day.

Days written: 26/31
Words written: 15,831
Words of fic written: 8,609
Stories worked on: 5
Stories posted: 1

( To save your flists, the chart is behind the cut. )

I didn't have any specific goals this month besides writing as many days as possible, and I think I did okay with that. I do wish I had published more; on the other hand, I did get two stories into beta, including the next chapter of "Aftermath"! Which is probably the most exciting thing that could have happened this month. I'm a little behind the pace for getyourwordsout, but not by very much, less than a thousand words. A few good days could catch me up.

On the other hand, February is not getting off to a great start -- only two days in, and I've already missed one. That's the danger with sending stories to beta: I find myself waiting instead of writing. So I need to train myself not to do that. It's not like I don't have other projects to work on! That said, let's have some goals.

1. Write at least six days per week.

2. Finish and post at least two stories from the Alphabet Fic Meme.

3. Make substantial progress on Chapter 5 of "Aftermath".

4. Write at least one story for either ff_fortnightly or halfamoon.

Ambitious, but doable. At least, I hope it's doable...

Every time I watch or listen to vlogger Jay Smooth, I fall in love with him a little more. I mostly know him from his commentaries on race and culture, but today I stumbled across this video about creativity, blockage, and procrastination:

I'm sure there are people who wake up every day confident that everyone wants to look at their face and listen to them talk, but I'm not one of those people. When I'm in the groove, and getting work done, and feeling like I'm making the connection with you guys out there... it feels natural to keep showing up and maintaining that connection. But if I go too long without putting work in, and it feels like that connection is broken, there's a little voice inside my head that starts playing tricks on me, and starts trying to convince me that the connection was never really there.

And I think this is true for most creative people, that we each have a little hater that lives inside our heads, and tries to set up traps for us.

Wow, does this resonate. We all have that, right? The voice in your brain that whispers to you, that says "You're not good enough; no one cares about your work; why are you even bothering?" on a near-endless loop. And I agree that it's especially a problem when I haven't been writing, or posting -- it breeds more insecurity, which gives the little hater more to feed on, and so I feel even more insecure, and the cycle continues. So the question is, how to shut the little hater down, or to keep her from piping up in the first place? I have no answer today. But I think it's an excellent question.

Check out the follow-up video, too.

Also, thanks so much to everyone for your kind words yesterday and earlier today. I appreciate them all so much. *hugs all around*

As you might expect, the election has been much on my mind lately. Despite promising myself I wouldn't go crazy with poll tracking, I find myself at Five Thirty-Eight at least once a day, as well as Slate, and the New York Times map (although that one is surprisingly slow to update -- they haven't changed it since October 3rd). I know way more about various Senate races than ever before, and watching the swing states (and not so swing states, hello Indiana!) slowly grow more and more blue has been quite cheering, although I'm not officially optimistic yet. I've seen too many Democrats yank defeat from the jaws of victory to really let myself be too hopeful.

Closer to home, I'm more worried. Not about any particular candidates -- no Senate or Governor's races this year, and I live in Nancy Pelosi's district, which is just about as blue as it gets. No, my worry is in the realm of propositions. Proposition 8, to be exact: the proposition that would un-do the legalization of same-sex marriage in California. It's been down in the polls for a month, but the Yes on 8 team has a huge war chest, and they're starting to run ads -- nasty ads, ads full of lies, but despite that (or perhaps because of it) powerful ads. And so the measure is starting to gain. Not above 50% yet, but close. In comparison, the No on 8 ads are fairly bland, presumably in hopes of offending as few people as possible, but I'm not sure they're at all effective. Especially not in comparison to this one by an independent group:



Now, who knows; maybe this approach would turn off the moderates, the people who aren't so convinced this gay marriage thing isn't just a little bit icky. But maybe it would make them laugh, and then it would make them think. An approach worth trying? Maybe. No matter what, it's gonna be a nailbiter.

In other political news, I recently learned that John Hodgman has a blog, which does make the world seem a little brighter.