The boyfriend (formerly known as not-boyfriend) gave me a few gifts for the holiday season including some Woot monkeys to “fire at your coworkers”. Since I like my coworkers, I’m instead trying to train them to do the phone support part of my job. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get them to type up the entire works of Shakespeare.
When you describe what a writer does, it’s almost more rewriting than writing. Rewrting sometimes hurts. It’s letting go of your attachments that are just that. At some point a piece of writing (or any kind of art) becomes its own thing outside of you, greater than you. It feels like a part of you. It came from you, but it’s not part of you anymore. You have to look at it with an objective, analytical mind, and think practically about what is best for it. Let it be and become what it was meant to be.
My middle school English teacher used to say “kill the baby” to refer to this editorial process. He said it in a very creepy and energetic way,
“Kill the baby!!!”
As much as I knew what he was trying to do, I say to this day, “Nooo, don’t kill the baby.”
There is editing and there is killing. It’s whole art and skill within itself to know when you’ve overworked something. With many forms of art, there’s no going back. An overworked charcoal or pastel drawing is going to be an overworked charcoal or pastel drawing no matter how much you want it to back to that fresh, exciting, perfect moment you passed. You can get to that point in writing too. The idea behind the writing is so overworked in your head that the words you are writing are no longer exciting, but lifeless.
I happen to be of the opinion that it’s better just to give the baby a haircut, trim it’s nails, give it a bath, and let it grow up.
Carolyn Snyder apparently has a lot of exciting analogies.
“…discussing paper prototyping without talking about usability testing is like trying to gossip without using pronouns.*
*The next time you throw a party, ask your guests to sing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” sans pronouns before you’ll give them back their car keys- not because it’s an effective sobriety test, but because it’s funny.”
-Carolyn Snyder, Paper Prototyping
I think I’ll try that.
This will make you all say, “What’s a usability specialist, and how do I become one?”.
“Usability is also similar to pornography…”
-Carolyn Snyder, Paper Prototyping
I was already excited about Usability, but this would make anyone excited.
When I find a blog I really like, I’ll go back and read all of the old posts as if it were actually a webcomic. Hyperbole and a Half is certainly like a webcomic. It has illustrations, plot, and a main character. It has more text than a webcomic, but it’s quality, funny text.
It also has mandatory sex parties.
I actually should say that it doesn’t have them, or I at least I couldn’t find one. It just made them famous.
Once upon a time the author wrote a blog post saying that she Googled the term, with quotes, “mandatory sex party”. The only hit that came up was her own blog. This made her sad. She called upon her readers to fix this and fill the internet with mentions of mandatory sex parties. Some people love audience participation, and even though I’m reading a year old archive I said, “I have a blog! I want in!”.
First I had a look to see what had happened since her post, so long ago, in the year of our lord, two thousand nine.
I searched “mandatory sex party” (including the quotes), and Google returned about 10,900 results.
I’ve seen and heard a lot of memes, and I’ve watched things go viral, but still I am amazed. Behold, the power of the mighty internet. Some woman (or superhero?) from the vast reaches of the internet says, “Jump!” to a bunch of faceless entities on the internet (us), and what do we do? We JUMP. Why?
I think the internet, as a whole collection of faceless entities, has a certain overall brand of humor for its most active participants. This humor thinks the term mandatory sex parties is really funny. This humor loves the idea of arbitrarily spreading the term, even if the actual concept that would lie behind such a term is kind of disturbing. That’s the weird thing. Most of these faceless entities not only will never experience a mandatory sex party (whatever that is), they don’t want to.
The term is funny, but the actual prank and humor actual has to do with search engines. The term is said and this is the reaction:
“What? Ha. What are you talking about? Haha.”
That’s it.
To the term “mandatory sex party”, add pranking a search engine. The term is said over and over until Google goes from one hit to over ten thousand instances of the term mandatory sex party. The reaction is:
“Wait… what? Really? Seriously? Hahahaha! That’s hilarious.”
Yes, I’m saying manipulation of a search engine is funny. We’ve come a long way from water filled buckets on door jams.
I’m interviewing for a different job at the company I work at. When you start interviewing for a job, sure, you want the job. When you’re in a multi-step interviewing process that extends over a week, you get very immersed in the idea of the job. You research it. You get ready for the questions about why you want it and why you’re so good that you’re the only person who could possibly fit this role. You start to think about ‘how it’s going to be great if’, and try very hard to not slip into ‘it’s going to be so great when’. Today I found out that I passed interviews round one, which means I get more interviews. Really, its sounds like being rewarded for eating your vegetables by eating more vegetables, but I’m still convinced there’s cake in this for me if I go far enough.
Mentally I can get ahead of myself. I think of all the different elaborate scenarios involving cake. I’m lost in the what ifs and the maybes.
It would be very easy for me to drop the phrase ‘the cake is a lie’ right now.
The not boyfriend is a rum cake I think. The mixing up of carriages and which side the horses go on it not always my fault. He’s certainly had his part in this.
Last post I joked about a ring, white picket fence, and four hundred babies, saying that would happen before he called me girlfriend. Next thing I know, he says that he loves me.
It was on the phone, so he couldn’t see what I’m sure was a priceless expression or me sliding down to the floor, leaning back against the door frame.
I said, “What did you say?” even though I was pretty sure I heard it the first time. I cried happy tears like a stupid diamond jewelry commercial.
Before he told me this he’d asked me a question out of the blue. It was the type of question where the person asking it prefaces it with a question. They ask if it’s okay to ask this strange question. How do you answer that question when you don’t know the next question? It’s a trap. It’s making the person feel like they’re okay in asking, as if they warned you and you consented knowing full well the consequences.
That’s not really consent, but me, you can really ask me anything and I’ll try to answer it, so I said, “Sure.”
Not-boyfriend asked me about what if I accidentally got pregnant. I’m sure he wasn’t looking for, “That would suck!” or, “That would never happen!” as an answer either. Unfortunately, my actual and quite honest answer of, “I don’t know,” wasn’t satisfactory either. I tried to elaborate on that answer with, “I’d talk to you,” which was also true, “But really, besides that, I don’t think I honestly know what I’d do in that situation. I think it would depend on a lot of things.”
I had to explain that no, it’s not something I’d already thought about and decided for future reference. It would be a lot of talking. It would be a lot of thinking. There would probably be tears and anxiety involved.
“Are you asking me if I’m pro choice?” He explained that is not what he’s asking, and even though he wants kids, he’s not pro-life or anything. He wasn’t thrilled about my answer, but he was satisfied that I would involve him and not just get an abortion without even saying anything.
“I know how much that would hurt you. You should understand I’d never do something like that to you.”
Then came something that might have been as powerful as saying, “I love you,” he tells me that if it happened and wanted to have a baby, he would want me to move in with him. He would want to take care of me. I joked that he was a perfect target for women trying to trap men, and we laughed a bit about it. He clarified that it wasn’t something he’d do for any crazy woman he’d dated. He just wanted to let me know that if against odds it happened, and if I kept it, he wanted us to have it together.
Saying, “I love you,” may equal, “I would have a child with you,” for some people, but I don’t think most guys who say one explicitly mean the other. It’s almost like it qualified the “I love you” with “This is how much I love you.”
The labels don’t matter. I don’t know why those labels have been such an issue, but with what we have become to each other, I guess really doesn’t matter.