This is how I feel sometimes about writing

Photo credit.

Rule: Sometimes you are saying "AUGH!" about writing and thinking about writing. This is okay, because it is intimidating.

You're putting your thoughts somewhere kinda permanent (or maybe really permanent - the internet is forever). One day you're going to come back and say to yourself, "Oh my god, that was so tacky/cheesy/awful/incomprehensible/dumb." And as much as you revise it, you can't scrub yourself of that feeling of "Why did I do that? I put my thoughts on paper and this came out? EW MY BRAINS ARE GROSS AND HORRIBLE."

And you know what? They were gross and horrible. I'm not going to give some life-affirming speech about how you're too hard on yourself, you've heard that and you know that. The thing is, it's okay that your brain was gross and horrible. I mean, have you seen the damn thing? Pretty gross. But you recognize it produced something you don't like. So fix it. Improve. Strive for excellence... or in my case, something marginally better than what you had before and add some secret prayer that nobody will notice how hacky your paragraphs are.

So if you are feeling "AUGH!" about writing, you should. Feel the paralysis, the petrification. Then, write something. It will be terrible. Then, THEN make that terrible writing beat on you until you are limber. You are tough meat, and your own bad writing will tenderize you. Brutally. This is ok. You'll loosen up, and words better than the words you had before will come out.

(Hopefully. AUGH!)

Time for another random piece.

I'm just as scared as you are. Sometimes, when you hand me that cigarette, I worry about what I'm breathing in.

We smoke behind things, in front of things. We're rarely ever even in the place we paid cover to get into. I hear muffled music inside. The air is so much less stifling outside, though ice-cold. I feel crystals form on my cheeks. You squint at the sky.

"Brian is such a little bitch," you say.

"Yeah, I know."

"Think you'll still go home with him?"

"Ha! Well, he's fun to have around."

"Yeah, I'd still go too," you say through the smoke.

I look at your clothes. I think you're more stylish than me.

You squint into the street now. "You know, one of these days, your tits are just going to float you away like balloons."

I turn the lighter over and over in my hand. Start to put it in my pocket, but decide the muffle-song doesn't sound that great, and we both light up another cigarette.

"Yeah, well, what does that make yours? Anchors?" I try to see which blinking light you're staring at.

"That doesn't really make me feel better," you say.

"Yeah, me neither," I say.

You pace a tiny trail and duck your face in your scarf while you stub out the butt along the wall. I think I've located what light you were looking at.

"Do you want to go in?"

"Not really, but we should," You're in a squinting mood tonight. Either that or it's so cold your eyeballs are freezing.

"We don't have to," I say, slipping the lighter in my pocket.

"Eh, it's fucking cold."

"Yeah," I look at the door. You look at the door.

"Think I'll find some asshole to buy me a drink?"

"As usual, but then you'll have to deal with an asshole." I hold my pockets to my body to warm my hands.

"Yeah, but it's not a huge deal." You reach for the door and we head inside.

Cranking it out

I've decided that once I get an idea for a blog post, I should just type it up and push it out like I'm aggressive mom-to-be past the due date and I just want it all to be over (angry comments soon?).

Rule: If you are writing something - anything - online and you want it to be useful, one of the most basic things you can do is include the date. Yes, there was an article without a date and it annoyed me so much that I had to write a rule about it. There was also the time when I got excited about a band coming into my town... two years ago. Well that would be awesome if I had a frickin' TARDIS, but I DON'T! (ooh, watch my page hits increase now)

See here's the deal: you are on the internet. Ideas are flying around all the time. There are all sorts of cross-references. New technology/software comes out. Things are moving so fast, that yes, something you posted two months ago could become mildly irrelevant (or really irrelevant). I'm sorry if that scares you; that's what it means to be on the internet. But guess what! What's helpful to your readership (and folks using search engines) is a DATE! If I look up the top 10 iPhone photo applications, I want to know they're the top 10 RIGHT NOW. Not the top 10 applications that are now seen as feature-poor, sad pandas.

You think you can hide the irrelevance by hiding the date? Nope. What if somebody wants to give a "history of iPhone photo applications?" Your easily-searched site without a date could easily have been a good reference point, but nope, no date, so you've eliminated THAT use for your page too.

Please. Please, just include a date with your postings, folks. It doesn't hurt anything, and adds so much value to the reader. Even if they can't appreciate it consciously/immediately, they will once they look for it.

Also in other news, I've had a bout of inspired, productivity/self-improvement fever. In this regard, Ze Frank is still relevant even from 2006 (and just pretty damn amusing):



Psst... this is another example where including the date is good. If you're still relevant years later, it can only be impressive to see the date.

How do you survive as a text-based blog?

A little
poem
is all
you have
left
of your attention
span.


Rule: (at least it seems like a rule) Blog posts without photos rarely get read.

Sometimes I stare at the ceiling trying to figure out if my blog posts are interesting/useful enough to carry a reader's attention to the very end. Anyone have any thoughts on how to keep attention as a text/writing-based blog? Saw someone's blog had categorized posts by the time it takes to read them. Kind of neat.

Photo by me.

If you've never had dim sum, you need to do it.

I was having dim sum with my mom in Taiwan. The dim sum in Taiwan is some of the best anywhere, even rivaling Hong Kong. We had gotten up early, and not too many other people were in the restaurant. The sky was light, but cloudy and weak. She and I only spoke to order or discuss what we wanted next.

We ate and ate, and it was very quiet, and the only other sounds were the carts rolling, plates, clinking, and occasional low talking. Something was odd in the air, but at the table, it was a safe place.

I remember being in a tall building, and the curtains had been drawn open. Why were there so few other patrons? But all we needed was the food and our own fragile company. We ate in the milky morning light as silhouettes. I ate warm, soft, savory things. I dribbled soy sauce and red vinegar on my plate. I bit into shatteringly crisp things. Steam and fragrance rose from steam trays. I wiped silky grease from my lips.

It was like I had died, and the afterlife was calm, watery light, hushed shadows, and the stars were really twinkling plates and chopsticks making some cryptic, tired music.

Rule: Always get the egg tarts at dim sum.

Pretty things!

I love glass as a material. So pretty.

Specifically, I've always had a love of cups, glasses, and bottles in all sorts of shapes and sizes. How pretty are these coupes?

Photo credit: BHLDN Website

Rule: Once you've identified your favorite materials, don't go nutso and surround yourself with an unruly mass of it. If you must collect, you must also learn to arrange. This is what prevents "Hoarders" from knocking at your door.

I have been wandering around amazed

That is what I have been doing this whole time instead of blogging. There's a ton to be amazed at out there.

Here are some of them:
- Everything being really dark during a rain shower except the neon green new leaves
- How long people are willing to wait in line for free cone day at Ben and Jerry's
- How quickly the weather can turn
- This amazing strainer/steamer thing. What an example of great design.

More wandering to come, but I promise more posts too. I need to feed my instagram to this blog. I'm too lazy to Google it. Someone wanna tell me an easy way to do it?

Rule: If you're going to walk slowly, walk slowly in order to observe the world around you. Otherwise, get outta my way!

Outta my way, peas! Photo credit: Dreamfarm website