🎉 Who's got two thumbs and possible ongoing income after all~~~?!

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😅 Okay, now that this tense crisis was averted, time to get back to my writing tasks. This week I have some challenging content to share - but there's a lot of research still to go to make it sharp!

#AmWriting

"Some people simply love their job, and it would be ridiculous for me to tell them that actually, they are quietly suffering from some disease they cannot perceive. But many of them are also adherents to a cult of productivity and achievement, wherein anything short of finding one’s vocational soulmate amounts to a wasted life. They have founded a new kind of religion ... And it’s making them a little bit crazy."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/work-revolution-ai-wfh-new-book/673572/
(If you can't access it directly:
https://archive.ph/9qlGW)

Real-talk:

It's not the meeting itself I dread--either there will be work, or there won't be--but the time spent with Western attitudes toward corporate culture and individual entitlement.

I just hung out with street friends for healthy perspective (& learned some new words!) before this meeting in 20. Life is hard. Our systems are arbitrary and unjust. And if everyone who deserved the world got it, what a paradise we'd all inhabit.

Lean in where you can.
Let go of what does not serve. 💙

All right, loves. I've been a bit of a wreck (and I'm itchy for today's meeting, to see if there's any chance of ever getting paid again for certain work), but I got back to work on BookTube.

This is a 30-minute intro to Children of Doro that talks about Brothers Karamazov, polyphonic narration, different writing contexts, spec fic before commercial SF, & personal life.

Patrons! I'll have sneak peek content for you this week. Thanks for your patience!

#WritersOfCoSo
https://youtu.be/4MYGL1yULek

April is starting nicely, though.

Good run this morning, good energy going into an extended fast, and just... a brief pause in the morning's labours to wait for headache medication to kick in. (Spanish crossword time with a friend!)

Long afternoon of revisions ahead, then hopefully something to share tonight.

(Chewing over a deep-dive series for next week, too, but - one ambition at a time!)

Hope your own months are starting well. 💫

(But not dramatically! Volcano warning in local news!)

Part of what made March rough was ongoing uncertainty with a team project. Tomorrow we'll find out what the future holds. I think I'll be able to breathe out once I finally have intel; for months I've felt like the only person acutely aware of how bad the situation truly was - & I do not enjoy professional climates that rely on top-down communications silence.

But! The world's wobbly right now. Best thing to do is keep building an independent name for myself--scary & hard as that definitely is.

I treated myself to John Wick after wandering parts of the city I hadn't visited in a while. A good day, but the best part was when two Colombians from another department asked me for help getting home safely. What a lovely chat while navigating them out of chaos, in which they asked for and trusted my opinions about the city. I felt deeply "local" and not like an exotic weirdo.

Now, two weeks of hunkering down to get caught up on the last overdue tasks. 💪

Night CoSo. 💫 Be good to yourselves.

Gender is such a funny business.

In Colombia I dress femme because it's safer than looking like a tourist.

I also detest the word nonbinary, but it's what's in vogue for those of us who were happily agender / genderqueer in other eras. Gender happens *to* me; I've got no internal sense of "being" a gender either way.

Some enbies identify as trans. I do not. But boy howdy am I aware of the safety that "passing" provides.

May our world one day be safer for us all.

#TransDayOfVisibility

March was messy, & I still haven't properly rebooted tons of key routines. My inbox is heavy with unanswered emails, as I try to finish tasks taking longer than expected before reconnecting again. I've been super solitary this month, too.

Tomorrow, though, I'd love to start the day off right with a pre-dawn run, then spend a few hours *in* the city, writing in town (notebook, not laptop: be smart in Medellín!), & reminding myself that there will come better seasons. I just need a mental reset.

Tankies in the family, man.

That's it. That's the toot.

(Happy Thursday, all, hard day though this may be. 💙 )

Today, I have a deeper meditation for #OnlySky. I've been meaning to talk about religious superstition in #Colombia for quite some time, in contrast with the rhetoric that underpins a great deal of hateful discourse in Anglo-Western news these days.

But I was waiting for the right local example - which showed up in a wild interview by Colombia's Director of Police this weekend!

Enjoy? I sorely hope this piece helps cultivate a sense of how much we truly share. #Humanism
https://onlysky.media/mclark/what-the-world-can-teach-us-about-religiosity-at-home/

The interview in the latest podcast episode of The Problem with Jon Stewart, with San Francisco's mayor, was so solutions-focused as to leave me feeling surprisingly hopeful this morning. I love listening to discourse about policies that work, and what needs to happen to bridge contexts that don't. So! Maybe it'll be heartening for others here, too. Happy Wednesday, CoSo!

https://pca.st/episode/ab3bd352-8879-4e1b-a426-1718a27d3dbf

Just finishing a piece for Analog's blog, & I say this not to put myself down, but whenever I write about SF influences, I always come away wondering why on Earth I'm not a better writer myself. It's not for want of good role models!

I suspect I'm like the protagonist of Adele Wiseman's under-read Canadian classic, Crackpot: a person who tumbles out of a tough childhood into a life of "taking up space" with words as much as body. My work sprawls as if I'm trying to ground myself via word count.

I cannot express how thankful I am for the shape discourse took here today.

Elsewhere online I've seen groups play off their own interest in polemics by speculating how "the other side" is going to spin this trauma for politics.

Tne sheer addiction to talking about everything in terms of media spin.

More than six families & their communities were shattered today, in large part because they live in a culture incapable of sustaining difficult policy conversations.

May we atone by doing better.