my-pattern

For a decade, I’ve been working from home as part of a virtual team and as a freelancer. So purely in terms of work environment, for me, working virtually in self-isolation during this COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t required much of an adjustment. The emotional burden of the mass suffering, however, can be overwhelming. I’ve found myself in reactive mode, overstimulated by the horrific news every day, and feeling helpless. To maintain any kind of productivity, I’ve turned back to some freelancing best practices that provide a bit of structure or framework for getting things done....

How do you stream? I’ve been leery of all the subscription services. I keep seeing reports of how Apple messes with your purchased library. Pandora won’t let you choose what songs to listen to (unless they changed that). And the ’zon seems to have too much market leverage to be healthy for creators over the long run (a self-0interest concern). But I also need a usable way to discover new music....

I’ve been writing science fiction and a bit of fantasy. One story is out for submission. A couple others I need to look over before sending out. Right now I’m working on a weird transhumanist tale with four-eared humans and eight-legged aliens—which in turn is an interstitial project between rewrites of the epic space opera I’ve been reworking for a couple of years now. (I think it’s close.) Some people have asked me about the next Maid book....

This blog has been too quiet. I’ve been typing words elsewhere. This changes now. So a couple of years ago I wrote my first novel It was intended to be a comedic political satire. Many of my readers liked it. Some didn’t. One or two just didn’t get it. As I learned from one of my editors, comedy is a matter of taste (or lack thereof). I had no perspective on the text, and life at that moment was getting a bit too interesting, so I put the manuscript into the metaphorical drawer for a while, shifted gears, and wrote a science fiction adventure (which is another story—more on that soon)....

The Apple Watch seems to be inspiring a lot of uninspired thinking. Things like all the news that fits on the wrist. I for one cannot imagine why I would spend hundreds of dollars so a device can annoy me with yet more notifications. I certainly don’t need to have my work/flow/conversation/meeting/meditation/relaxation interrupted with news about people I don’t know in places I’m not. That crap can wait until I’m ready to lean back and browse the headlines....