The Worry

Screenshot: AMC

Navel-gazey post ahead. Please beware.

I think I worry about stuff a lot less than some of the people in my life, but I do worry. Worrying can be useful. It can be one more ingredient in the rocket fuel that makes you get off your ass and do things. It’s a powerful motivator if you don’t let it overwhelm and paralyze you.

I think I do a good job masking my worry, especially around my kids or on social media, where I don’t really let myself indulge in much angst.

But I worry. Not all the time and sometimes not even very often. It’s rare that I lose sleep, lying awake, thinking about the stuff that has to happen and the things that aren’t happening. But once in a while, maybe once a month, those nights do happen and those worries do get the better of me.

What do I worry about? Things that other parents worry about. Things that are specific to my job. Things that are specific to my personality and my own unrealistic goals for myself.

But I can be more specific.

Stream-of-consciousness mode ON:

I worry that I don’t spend enough time with my kids. That they spend more time at school and daycare than they do with their parents and that this time that we have with them at this age is going to be gone soon and we will have lost that part of their childhood forever.

I worry that I haven’t been a good enough parent and that, especially with Lilly, who had to suffer us figuring out how to be parents the first time, that we’ve somehow damaged her emotionally.

I worry that so much change has happened at work that I no longer fit in there. That I haven’t adapted as well as I should have and that the changes coming are going to make things worse for me. I worry that I’ve stayed there too long, but I also worry about what life would be like if I left. I worry that I’m not doing my best work and that people are being kind by not telling me so.

I worry that the thing I spent the last year writing is unpublishable. I worry that even if I self-publish and promote the crap out of it, no one will want to read it. That it will be this foolish thing that only I care passionately about, so much so that I couldn’t see how terrible it was as I was writing and editing it.

I worry that I’ve recently taken on too many things at once, but also that I haven’t taken on enough and have allowed myself to get lazy and complacent with age.

I worry about my parents. That I also don’t spend enough time with them and that at any moment their health could deteriorate. And the health and well being of other relatives and friends who are going through pain or divorce or job transitions.

I worry about an upcoming deadline that I feel unprepared to meet and a story that feels too big for me to tell properly. I worry that I won’t do the story justice and that everyone will be disappointed with what I write and that I will have screwed up a story that, when I describe it to people, all agree is an amazing story.

I worry that my commute is a huge waste of time and that it’s ruining my health.

I worry that I spent too many years writing for other people instead of writing for myself or creating new things and that it’s too late for me to change course on that.

I worry that I missed an important window when I should have struck while the iron was hot and that instead of focusing on what was in front of me I should have been planning ahead and seizing the moment.

I worry that I haven’t given close friends much attention in a long while and that they must think I don’t care.

I worry that I don’t sleep enough and that many of my other worries stem from that.

I worry that the things I care about and that I’ve worked toward won’t matter in a couple of years, culturally, and that I’ll suddenly feel a generational shift that will signal that I am too old to be relevant.

I worry that the technologies that I advocated for years are actually messing up everyone’s lives, or at least making people more obsessive.

I don’t worry about actual zombies (or zombies falling from the ceiling), but I do worry about whether we’re overdoing it on zombie culture.

I worry that putting all this in a blog is a bad idea, but I worry more that not posting it would be something like being dishonest. I’ve tried not to go back and re-read and second guess myself. In an hour I may feel differently and some of these worries won’t even apply anymore. But when I wrote them, I was feeling them.

I worry about running in circles.

I’m sure there’s more, but I worry that’s all I can think of right now. The nice thing is that I don’t worry about all of these things at any one time. I mean, except for when I’m rounding them up for a blog post and seeing them all together. Then it’s really shitty, let me tell you.

OK, moving on to happier things:

Stories

Credit: The Fullbright Company

New stuff I wrote in the Statesman:

A Digital Savant column about video games to play that aren’t Grand Theft Auto V.

Weirdly, that full column appeared on the LA Times website.

Here’s a column I did about TV spoilers online inspired by the cranky people who were trying to avoid Breaking Bad spoilers last month. The blog post I did to go with that had lots of feedback from social media friends on how to handle online spoilers.

The Baylor Lariat had a full version of that one as well.

And this week’s column was about ways to juggle multiple digital gadgets. That one also ran in full on the website Hispanic Business.

In Digital Savant Micro, I defined “All-in-one computers,”  and answered a reader question about printing from an iPad.

Elsewhere, I wrote a story about Bitcoins right after the recent Silk Road arrest, wrote about some new stuff related to the crowdfunded Austin game Star Citizen and dropped some news about SXSW Interactive 2014 panels and speakers.

Previously

I mentioned last time that I was doing some writing for the fantastic TV website Previously.tv. What I didn’t mention was that I’ll be regularly covering not one but two TV shows, How I Met Your Mother and (wait for it…) The Walking Dead!

Screenshot: CBS

HIMYM will be run through the Show-O-Matic and you can already find my first three write-ups for the third, fourth and fifth episodes of the final season.

For The Walking Dead, I’m doing “Particles,” which are an extremely challenging and cool way of recapping a show. They’re told in short stories, often with photos/screen grabs. The one for the season premiere was an awful lot of work, but I attribute that to the learning curve of adjusting to a new way of doing something. I’m hoping I’ll be a lot faster as it as I keep learning. I’m thrilled with the way that one turned out and can’t wait to do more.

Space Monkeys!

We did a comic and blog post about Gravity (with a guest appearance by Sandra Bullock).

We also did a comic about the last episode of Breaking Bad (no spoilers, we promise) and there’s a blog post to go with that, too.

Our latest is about fantasy football with an emphasis on fantasy. And there’s a blog post.

We fixed most of the website issues we were having, but we still haven’t fixed the problem of old blog posts not appearing with comic posts. I’ll let you know when we figure that WordPress conundrum out.

Everything else

• I went to ACL Fest, but only for one day before it got rained the Hell out. I didn’t take photos like last year but I did shoot a Vine video of my brother attempting to eat a “Tiffwich”:

The Tiffwich challenge, attempted by Pablo G https://t.co/c2SfJaI6VH

— Spoooookymar Gallaga (@omarg) October 11, 2013

• Due to worky obligations I also missed the Atoms for Peace show. My brother and his friend Graham were second row. Lesson: BEING OLD SUCKS.
• I did get to see the Wild Child album release party, which for me trumped anything on the ACL lineup. We got warpainted by singer Kelsey:

• At the same time that The Cure were playing ACL Fest, our water heater sprang some leaks. Lots of things got wet, much garage organizing was done and long story short, I found a bunch of old photos. I may post some of them. They are kind of hilarious.
• Despite my worrying above, the girls are doing great. They got to go on a bunch of carnival rides and ride ponies at the county fair, which if you’re a nearly 4-year-old or 6-year-old is pretty much the ultimate.