Daily Check-In #4 + funny cat video

It’s Friday! Have a funny cat video. You deserve it!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ycromSr6PY&w=420&h=315]

How did I do on my writing goals yesterday?

  • I did find another two sites I can query or pitch to.
  • I did not look for any content farm sites.
  • I did search Mechanical Turk for writing HITs; found none.
  • I didn’t work on my novel.
  • I didn’t keep track of interesting articles.

I did apply for a non-writing job I found on Craigslist. Also made another $10 doing surveys on MTurk. And I found three technical writer positions late in the day; I’ll apply for those, after doing some research. The descriptions for the technical writer jobs all mention UML, and DMD; I have no idea what those are.

Must make some time to work on the novel today. Also, I’d like to post something here that isn’t just a daily check-in. And it’s time to hustle and submit stories to the sites I’ve found.

“Hustle” is such a great word. I thank my friend Tristan J. Tarwater for that word.

Daily Check-In #3

How did I do yesterday on my writing goals?

  • I did not look for more sites to send my freelance articles.
  • I did not look for any content farm sites.
  • I did search Mechanical Turk for writing HITs. Didn’t find any but I did a couple bucks worth of surveys.
  • I didn’t work on my novel at all.
  • I didn’t keep track of interesting articles online.

I did fill out my Contently site a bit more last night, including some links to some product descriptions I wrote for Mturk last year. I wasn’t sure they’d still be on the web, but I searched and found them. I saved a bunch of them as PDFs for my own records. Sure, it’s mind-numbing marketing copy but it’s still writing I got paid for.

How many days will I write “I did not work on my novel at all.” until I shame myself into working on my novel? Maybe the third time’s the charm! The day’s not over yet!

Daily Check-In #2

I’m numbering this Daily Check-In but I didn’t number the previous one. I’m whacky.

How did I do on my daily writing goals yesterday?

  • I did find two sites that accept freelance work.
  • I did not search for, nor find, any content-farm sites.
  • I did search Mechanical Turk for writing-related HITs and found none.
  • I didn’t work on my novel at all.
  • I did keep track of interesting stories; I saved 4 links.

 

In fact, I submitted some clippings and wrote a writing-specific resume and submitted it to an editor, which took me literally all day because I was anxious about it. But I did, in fact, do it. Finding and saving clippings of my favorite posts took about an hour; and I did it at the bar, because the beer helped quiet that voice in the back of my head.

It was interesting reading back over old posts here. I wrote a lot. And I wrote well, although now, reading back over some of my posts, I can see what I would change. That’s a topic for a post on its own, though.

I also looked into how other writers keep track of their clippings, going as far as setting up my profile at clippings.me and Contently. Feels odd linking to posts here and at Tumblr but that’s what I’ll have to do until I’m published elsewhere, I suppose.

Today’s plans: polish at least one story for submission to the other site I found, work on the novel, add links to my clippings.me and Contently profiles. Maybe a blog post here. I have already searched Mturk and completed a HIT or two.

Daily Check-in

How did I do yesterday on this week’s goals?

  • I haven’t (yet) found sites that accept freelance writing.
  • I haven’t (yet) found content farm sites.
  • I did search Mechanical Turk yesterday for writing HITs; found none.
  • I didn’t work on the novel at all.
  • I didn’t keep track of interesting stories.

I did write a 500+ word post yesterday morning. Also, I had a mandatory meeting, which took some time to take the bus downtown and back again, so that took a chunk out of my afternoon. And I also applied for two different part-time jobs.

I’m not giving up, though. I’m building habits. Today will be better.

Thinking about thoughts

This is a random walk on a specific topic. It’s not a well-researched educational article. I wanted to make that clear right away. I may add links to articles that support what I’m saying but I do not claim to be an expert. In fact, if you have more information, please feel free to correct me or send a link my way.

A topic I’ve thought about, and more lately, is thinking. Specifically, consciousness. The most recent line of thought started because lately I’ve been tracking my sleep and my dreams, keeping a dream journal. One morning last week, I woke up and my immediate thought was about how I could tell the difference between the previous moment, when I was sleeping and dreaming, and the next moment, when I was awake. There was a difference, but not one I could articulate. Everyone knows that they’re not the same mental state, but nobody really knows why or how.

Much research has been done on consciousness. We can measure activity in the brain and tell the difference between sleeping, dreaming, and wide awake by looking at an MRI or an EEG, but, again, why do we do them? Why do we need to dream? How does consciousness work? How does the brain (or whatever is generating it) make consciousness? Do other animals have this type of brain state, or are we alone? 

We don’t even really know how anesthesia works, in fact. We can apply it to someone, and they lose consciousness and become insensitive to pain, but all the autonomic body responses, like breathing or heartbeat, continue, much like in sleep (except for the insensitivity to pain bit). How is an anesthetic state different from consciousness or sleeping? What is being shut down?

Our understanding of consciousness is metaphorical at best. We can point to areas of the brain and say, “if that part stops working, we lose consciousness” but we’re not really sure why. We have tools like anesthesia that can shut it off temporarily but we don’t know why. We spend a third of our lives in an altered state that appears to be required for our continued existence, a state we appear to share with many other vertebrates on this planet, but, again, we don’t know why. 

The ambiguity is what leads many people to assume a paranormal or supernatural explanation for it: the soul or spirit is what makes us conscious, a non-physical thing that is made up of our experiences, thoughts, and personality. While I understand the impulse I do not think that is the answer; there are too many other more reasonable explanations. Sure, when I’m dreaming there’s a strong sense of being somewhere else, like I’ve travelled to a distant land or another dimension, but it’s entirely possible, and in fact quite likely, that it’s just another mental state created by my brain. In fact, if we had souls, non-physical supernatural energy fields that were permanent personalities without bodies, would it be possible to affect our basic personality traits via simple physical, chemical or electric changes, as we’ve found? No, the evidence I’ve seen suggests our personalities and consciousness are a result of physical structures and electro-chemical reactions. I understand your potential disappointment and disagreement; but I don’t share it.

The irony of me thinking about consciousness is delicious. 

Clearing my head

Man, I am so bad at naming things. Even posts. Ah, well.

I went to bed early last night. Tired in spite of myself. Didn’t much exercise and ate a big ol’ chocolate raspberry cupcake late in the day; I’m sure it was the sugar crash that did me in. I tried reading but my eyes just kept closing, and finally I turned off the light and drifted off to the sounds of my neighbors chatting on their patio. Longest day of the year and I spent most of it asleep.

I did, however, get this blog up and running, yesterday, and now I am committing to writing here daily. Should I set a word count? Nah. Just the habit is enough for now. I hope.

So that was yesterday. My dreams were interesting – oh, other people’s dreams aren’t interesting? You’re probably right. I do keep a simple dream journal but since dreams are based on personal symbology, they probably don’t mean much to other people. Suffice it to say that my dreams were out of the ordinary for me.

And then I was awake by 5:30 AM. How to spend my morning? I made my usual breakfast: coffee from beans I ground myself, three strips of uncured bacon, a raisin English muffin with butter, and two large organic vegetarian-fed scrambled eggs. Got the two eggs out then dropped the whole rest of the carton. Ugh. What a mess. The breakfast was good, though, after I cleaned things up.

Today’s plans: Sunday Parkways is in North Portland today so later I’ll ride up there. Maybe try to catch Ken and his kids if they’re around, or Chaz, or Terry and Yukari. I have vague plans to have a gaming night tonight with Terry and Russ, which will probably involve more biking. And in-between, I’ve got nothing but time. Maybe watch the season finale of Orphan Black. Maybe work on the novel. Maybe do some research to start freelance writing.

I need to set concrete goals, so here’s my freelance writing goals for this week:

  • Find 3-5 good websites where my style of writing is a good fit and get an actual person’s email address.
  • Find 3-5 “content farm” sites and start writing.
  • Check Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for writing HITs I can do daily.
  • Work on the novel for at least an hour a day
  • Keep track of stories that interest me daily
  • Blog about how successful I am at all of the above each morning

That should get me started and it’s easy enough that I’m not overwhelming myself, at least I don’t think. I know what I have to do. Now I have to do it.

 

Poke around

I’m leaving this post stickied until the end of the day Friday 27 June. Scroll down for new content.

If you notice broken links, or missing images, or anything wonky, comment below or use the Contact page or otherwise let me know.

I can’t decide if I should clear out all the old posts and repost the ones that are good, or leave all the old content here for people to discover. If you have an opinion either way, share it. I worry about appearing “unprofessional” (whatever that means). On the other hand, it’s fun to go back and see how I’ve changed. For instance, I’d never use a phrase like “stupid boy project” these days because projects aren’t gender-specific.

I know I’ll be changing the format around. I want a sidebar on the left side, and I will be adding search and favorited posts and whatnot. Be prepared for changes.

Hello again (tech reminiscing)

Man, it’s been so long since I’ve had to fiddle around with a blog. A long time ago (late 2004), I just used Blogger to publish to my little Mac mini, which sat in my living room and did all my web hosting, despite it not being technically allowed by Comcast, my internet provider. I got away with it for years. Sometimes, rarely, my home IP address would change and I’d have to update DNS, but mostly it just worked.

In hindsight, it wasn’t all that easy, actually. I had to know about DNS, for example, and I had to configure my home network to allow things like web traffic, and I had to run Apache and PHP on my Mac mini. But once it was up and running, I could write daily, post it where anyone on the ‘net could see it, and get comments.

I had to move off Blogger in 2010 because they removed the option to publish to external web hosts. It seemed like a big deal at the time; I wanted to control as much of my online presence as possible. Then I got distracted by all the various options, after toying with WordPress for a while. My main mental obstacle was being able to move over all my old posts, along with the comments. It was the comments that were the most important part to me. No matter what export tool I used, the comments wouldn’t show up on WordPress. I guess I was using an old version of Blogger that didn’t export cleanly. So I gave up.

I gave up and just started Tweeting, Facebooking, and Tumblring. That worked for short thoughts, and reblogging other people’s fan-art and social justice thoughts, and sometimes I’d miss writing long posts and I’d try it on either Facebook or Tumblr. But that never felt quite right. It wasn’t the same as having my old dedicated blog. And I got out of the habit of posting my own words on a daily (or even more often) basis.

So here I am, trying to write again, and hoping other people will read my words. So many habits I’ve lost, that have atrophied. I know what I want now: I want a blog, with one of the four or five domains I own, nice and simple. I want to be able to repost my own articles, I want to have a clippings file to show prospective editors or agents, I want to be able to (eventually) sell my work, once I have enough to sell. And I want to get feedback, and comments, and to share and have stuff shared with me. 

Having an online presence now seems fragmented; does it make sense to have one site for everything these days? I don’t want to give up Tumblr, I won’t stop tweeting, and I like being able to interact with friends, family and acquaintances on Facebook. But words are my business, so I think I’m going to make this blog my hub, my central place on the internet. I’m not so much planting a flag, as I am reclaiming an old place that holds a lot of memories; as you can see, there are old posts here, going back all the way. The comments, sadly, are gone, at least many of them from the earlier days. 

But we can rebuild it and we can march into the future!

Hello again.