Terribly Happy

I haven’t done a lot of personal writing this year due to … a lot of things. Just some personal ennui, and a general fatigue with journalism, and a sudden interest in stock trading of all things.

But I sometimes do miss the kind of writing I was doing on Medium the last couple of years after I left the newspaper. I got to be more myself in my writing than I ever had before and then I just stopped when leadership changed over there and I stopped getting paid for assignments.

Well, whether I’m getting paid or not (decidedly not in this case), I still like to share, so here’s something I wrote over there, completely on my own, about what it’s been like to be a marching band dad. Hope you enjoy it.

Photo by me, for Breaker Magazine

I was warned, repeatedly, that freelance life was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait, particularly in regards to working with editors and with getting paid.

Five months into my post-job life, I am finding that’s not only true, it’s fuckahellatrue, like so true it makes all other reality a fiction. You know that movie The Truth About Cats and Dogs? This freelance stuff is more true than even that film, my apologies to Janeane Garofalo, just speaking my truth.

The rhythm is what has been throwing me off, the sense that deadlines are much more fluid, that the time between the time I turn something in and the time that it’s published can stretch and stretch (to months, even), that I can get paid for something I wrote within two or three days, or two or three months.

These are not novel concerns, these aren’t new issues, every freelancer I know is a choir in no need of preaching to on this. But for me, someone who spent 21 years adhering to schedules and budgets and deadlines and calendars, it has sent me into an existential time dread.  Someone who cares about me deeply recently pointed out that I seem to have lost all sense of time, and that’s not inaccurate. Sometimes the weekdays just fly by because I have no deadline to wake up early, no deadline to get assignments done and plenty of “Overwatch” and “Apex Legends” to play.

Not that I’m wasting my days doing nothing (my Netflix viewing is up like 80 percent, though, make of that what you will), but I’m working in shorter bursts, not sitting at my desk soaked in the monitor glow all day.  I don’t keep up with Twitter as much as when it was in my face for 8-10 hours a day. I answer emails on the go, sometimes I’m not even at home or in Texas when I do.

I had a week recently where it felt like nobody was responding to emails I’d sent and pitches I’d made, where I didn’t have any urgent writing pending apart from some long-term deadlines I’m in the middle of, and I didn’t even have any thoughts worth Tweeting.  There began to be a sense that I was disappearing, that I was losing the thread of myself and what I was supposed to be doing outside the normal family/house/pet obligations. It was a weird displaced feeling, but not completely unwelcome. At the height of my time at the Statesman, when I was putting out stories and podcasts on top of all the freelance stuff I was doing, I sometimes got tired of hearing my own voice, got tired of being the carnival barker peddling my own warez all the time.  I wanted quiet, I wanted to stop talking, I wanted to retreat into myself for a little while and be still.

And now I’m getting some doses of that and… it’s an adjustment. Be careful what you wish for, right?

But then that quiet is broken up by responses and publishing and money in the mail, and suddenly I’m back into it.  It was just temporary.  And now I’m talking again.

I woke up this morning determined to get going early, to make this week count. And to my surprise, I saw that a story I’ve been working on since last year was suddenly published.

Breaker Magazine is a New York online publication that pushed out lots of news and culture stories about the blockchain and Bitcoin scenes.  I got hooked up with them last summer by a mutual friend and in the fall, I started working on a profile of Jimmy Song, an Austinite who was making waves in that world with some very strong (and often brutal) opinions.  I met up with him and found him to be super nice and easy to chat with, a contrast to his sometimes spiky online hot takes, and a fascinating subject.

The story went through some significant edits and a major rewrite, resulting in more rounds of interviewing.  I’m so pleased with the result; it’s been a long time since I went through a process like that, the kind of edit where you begin to question your own self-worth as a writer, but I was so lucky to have editors who could see the finish line and what the story could be.

I think Jimmy is something more people in Austin’s tech scene should know about.

Elsewhere in the Omar-verse, I’ve been keeping busy writing culture reviews for Book + Film Globe and additional stories for the Statesman.

The great Natasha Lyonne. Credit: Netflix, yo

I did a review of the excellent Netflix series “Russian Doll.”  Honestly, I could have written another 5,000 words about the nuances and greatness of this show, but it was written the weekend the series debuted and I was trying really trying hard to keep any spoilers out of it because it really is something best viewed fresh. The review seems to have resonated with people who were unsure about investing time in the show. A Facebook friend wrote, ” I literally went from zero to 100% in terms of interest in this series,” so that was nice to hear.

In other Netflix-related writing, I reviewed the last bunch of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” episodes for Book + Film Globe.  I had given up on the show early in Season Three, but decided to catch up over the holidays and I’m glad I did. Despite some of its faults (and I get why people started to turn away from the series), I think it ended well and that the stuff it was good at (dense joke writing, absurdist characters) vastly outweighed the problematic. If you fell off, too, I really think it’s worth finishing.

For Austin360, I followed up my Paul McCartney concert column with something a little bit less emotional, a story about how bad I am at organizing all my digital photos and videos. Here’s a little clip from that video I describe in the story:

I also wrote a more newsy daily story for the business section about Retro Studios taking over development of Nintendo’s “Metroid Prime 4.” A big deal for gamers!

On the “Texas Standard” radio show, we’ve done segments about smart watches and health, about why Instagram is doing so well (plus viral egg photos), Apple’s recent security/privacy woes, and a follow up on that Austin360 photo organizing piece.

Things are pretty good! It looks like I’ll be covering South by Southwest again for the Statesman next month and I have some other projects and pitches in the pipeline.  Thanks to everybody who’s been supportive.

If you’ve made it this far, all three of you, I want to ask — would you be interested in an email newsletter of stuff like this and some additional writing/recommendations/multimedia?

I’ve been mulling doing that (and maybe cross posting it here).  I definitely wouldn’t charge for it, at least not until I felt it was something worth paying for, and maybe even then I’d just do it as as additional content.

Some of my favorite online writers have been doing really interesting stuff with their email newsletters and I wonder if that would give me incentive to update more often.

Anyhoo, if you have thoughts, let me know!

This is a piece I read in front of an audience at last week’s “One Page Salon” at the North Door in Austin. Thanks so much to Owen Egerton for the invite.

It’s going to be all right.

I can tell from your face that you’re not so sure if that’s true, so this is supposed to be reassuring. It’s all right. You’re going to be OK.

Unless something happens. Or things don’t work out. That’s definitely possible. Things go wrong for people all the time. They make a wrong turn, some barely-there decision, and suddenly they’re neck deep in manure. Not real manure, figurative manure. Do you know much manure you’re need for it to be up to your neck in literal manure? Even if you’re short? That sounds expensive. And trust me, you don’t have money to be spending on that right now.

Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you can’t afford shit. I just meant you probably shouldn’t be spending money right now on THAT MUCH SHIT.

We’re getting way off track here.

So. Things seem a little weird. I get that. Maybe recapping will help.

You got divorced. Pretty quickly. After being married a really long time. That has to be jarring. The not-being married part. And you bought a house. Buying a house is a huge, ridonk headache, but you did it and now you live in that house and it even has pretty plants and a beautiful patio. Well done.

But then you stopped co-hosting a podcast you loved, one you’d been doing for five years and that stung a little. And, related: you stopped doing the podcast because you took a buyout and left a job you’d been at for 21 years. 21 years! That’s half your life! Wow! And now you’re freelancing, which is a very nice way of saying you’re an unemployed writer. Self-employed. Self-employed sounds better than unemployed or underemployed.

That’s lot of stuff that happened. And see, I think the problem — not that there’s a problem, things will be fine! — is that most people deal with stuff like that over a period of a few years, but you went and did all that in like three months. Some people have a mid-life crisis, you had … like… a midlife Cuban Missile Crisis.

But it’s going to be OK. Unless it’s not, but let’s not think about that.

You’re worried about money, but that’s never been your problem. You hustle, you work hard, you’ll make do. You’re worried that you don’t know what to do next. But remember all those days you sat in an office wishing you weren’t sitting there and feeling like you were wasting your time? At least you can waste your time on your own couch now. That’s an improvement, right?

You’re worried that you have stopped doing the thing that defined you, that everybody knew you for, the thing that gave you worth.

But what if it’s going to be all right?

And it’s just time for some new definitions?

Weird couple of weeks here, all over the place.

Lots of strangeness and change and tension in some areas and then all of a sudden these amazing moments of grace and clarity and reenergizing.

I don’t know what to make of it all, so I won’t even try, but for a lot of this year I’ve felt like things have just been in this weird, boring, waiting lull, me waiting for things to happen or for things to present themselves instead of chasing or working toward them. These last few weeks have been the opposite of that with permanent change going on all around and me asking myself, “Well, are you going to do something or just watch?”

Mostly, I just watch.

But I also did a lot recently, a lot more than usual. I reached out to a few people I haven’t talked to in a while. I finished an archive/migration project for a new website that took me so much longer than I was expecting, but damned if it isn’t done now. I spoke to a group of mom bloggers and was able to Skype in my writing partner for a session that was supposed to only be about 20 minutes, but lasted much longer and really inspired and reinvigorated my energy levels for something that has been a long-term struggle.

(Here’s a photo of that a blog post about the event. The photo is from Nicole at Livemom.com, I believe)

And, weirdly, I volunteered myself to go to a (totally hypothetical) plastic surgery consultation, which I think honestly may be the bravest thing I’ve done in a while (more on that in a minute).

My daughters, who in recent weeks have been behaving like little, possessed zoo animals have turned a corner and are starting to behave like the sweet girls that I remember from before the new school year hours made them into cranky kids.

So, strange times lately, but I’m actually kind of excited about the rest of the year and hoping to take a few more risks after what’s felt like almost a full year of stasis with only the occasional curveball (like going to New York City or restarting an old project I hope to help debut before 2013).

A few days later… I wrote the above almost a week ago and since then, the 2012 presidential election happened, I went to Wurstfest and had another week just like what I describe above.

The holidays are on us like a loose freight train and, weirdly, I’m not stressed about it in the “gotta get stuff done” sense, but more in the looking back and wondering how so much time passed so quickly from summer till now. Outside of work, I don’t feel like I’ve gotten much done at all even though I feel busy all the time.

We’ve been having a hard time with a few things like figuring out how to deal with two kids 5 and under who are angels half the time and tantrum machines at other times.

Work is still in major transition with a lot of things up in the air right now.

And due mostly to lack of sleep (caused by the above-mentioned girls who have also added waking up at 5 a.m. for no reason to the mix), I’ve had a really hard time staying up late enough to write anything, or being clear-headed enough to even have the energy to get myself to the keyboard. And of course, that leads to a self-loathing cycle of feeling like I should be doing more even though I know I don’t have the energy or the right mindset.

Really frustrating.

So instead of more whining, I’ll try to focus on some positives.

I’m working with my brother on something I’m excited about. I’m working with some old friends I used to work with in the Latino Comedy Project on a comedy thing for next year that we’re very excited about. And I’m working with a writing partner on the ongoing thing, which is still slow in progressing, but is still happening.

I don’t trust myself to work on stuff along right now outside of the usual freelance stuff because mentally I’m just not motivated right now. If something isn’t assigned to me or given a deadline or pushed along in some small way by someone I’m working with, I probably won’t do it And that’s frustrating too. Wait, positive! This was supposed to be the bright side.

OK, here’s this. I feel like the only place I’ve been really productive the last few weeks is at work (SEE ALSO: deadlines, teamwork, stuff assigned to me). I’ve written a lot of stuff, it feels like, but only there.

There was a Digital Savant column I was pretty happy with about how to spot online fakers and scammers, which I hope came in handy as the election craziness was ramping up (and which is an issue now that holiday shopping is in season).

Speaking of that, I did a column that runs in Monday’s paper about what’s new this year in online shopping. I tried to do a story like that a year or two ago and it didn’t seem like a lot had changed, at least not enough to warrant a big article. This year, I do feel like there are some new trends that are just starting to take off, so the piece is a roundup of those new shifts.

I had some hands-on time with Windows 8 and the Surface tablet (neither of which Microsoft was able to provide review units for, not that I’m bitter). I don’t think I held anything back in that write-up, but I’ll that for myself, I don’t really like using Windows 8 on a computer with a keyboard and mouse. It doesn’t seem built for that, and I don’t plan to go through the trouble to upgrade my PC (or my Boot Camp on Mac) to Windows 8 anytime soon.

I wrote about an Austin restaurant called Lucky Robot (where Zen on S. Congress used to be) that uses iPads for its menus and ordering. It was a mixed-bag experience.

For the Micro feature, I defined 4K TV (or Ultra HD), and what the deal is with Windows RT (the OS running on the Surface tablet).

And then there was the nose job story. We got pitched an item about this 3D plastic surgery image and both my (former) editor and I thought it would be fun, interesting story. Then, at one point, as we were trying to figure out if the story could lead the section and if we would have enough artwork to go with it, I suggested, “Maybe I should do the imagine and we could use those photos.”

That was when the story went from a pretty standard thing to me standing in an office with my face being swabbed and put in front of a machine to have my nose critiqued.

Dr. Jennifer Walden, a plastic surgeon, checks out the old Gallaga beak. Photo by Deborah Cannon / Austin American-Statesman

The trick to doing a story like that if you have even an ounce of shame and vanity is to have a deadline the same day as the office visit. When I got there, our photographer said she didn’t think she could do that and I told her that at that point, I had no choice; there was no way to back out with my deadline looming.

And that’s how I’m able to trick myself into doing things I would never, ever want to do otherwise — having my nose the focus of the front of the Life & Arts section on a Monday. I’m too numb about it to even be horrified at this point.

I’m sure there’s lot more I’m not thinking of at the moment, but those are the high/low lights. I’m really trying to get my energy back up and not end the year in the doldrums. I’m going to try to get to bed earlier and to stop stressing about the writing so much. It’ll happen when it needs to happen, I really hope.

I have some photos I want to post, but I’ll save those for a separate blog entry. If you can’t wait, you can probably see most of them over here on the Flickr or on my new Instagram profile page. For now, here’s one I really like that I took last week at Wurstfest:

Monday night, I spoke at an Online News Association meetup with Tolly Moseley about secrets of online writing. The above Slideshare presentation amounts to the slides that we emailed back and forth until we were satisfied we had enough visual ammunition in case words should somehow stop falling out of our mouths (it turns out this will never be a danger).

The session was good. It was a large crowd, it was downstairs from my work desk which made getting there supremely easy for me, and I brought two big bags of cheap candy (for eating) and a box of Kleenex (in case anyone should get emotionally overcome by our tall tales from the wilds of writing careers).

Great questions were asked, an abundance of visual Powers were Pointed at and at the hour and a half mark, we had to stop when we could have easily gone on another few hours. As we were packing up, Tolly mentioned that she was going to put up a blog entry on Wednesday summing up the panel. She confirmed this later over email, remarking that the Twitter response was great; some of those attending had taken great online notes, posting tidbits that I didn’t even remember us talking about just seconds after it was over.

What I expected would be a few short clips of warmed-over reminiscence was instead synthesized, powerfully, into a perfectly delicious 7-course goddamn feast (I’m not even counting the appetizer or dessert) baked with care by Tolly. Let me tell you something about Tolly: she does not say she’s going to do something and then not do it. Rather, she tells you she’s going to do something, to which you may reply, “Oh, that’s nice,” and then she doesn’t just do this something, she freakin’ WHALLOPS IT WITH A SHOVEL UNTIL THE THING IS DONE TO THE GREAT BEYOND WITH A QUICKNESS.

I had never worked with Tolly before on anything more than social chit-chat, but it turns out that when you work with Tolly, you’d best come correct, because if you come incorrectly, shirking as one does when there’s no money or long-term business commitment involved, you will be shown How It Is Done. It’s a good lesson to learn.

Facebook went public last week. You might have heard about it. They sold some stock or something.

In the big lead-up to the big let-down, I wrote a piece for CNN.com about why I’m staying on Facebook and why people should just accept that the kingdom of Zuckerberg is just a fact of life and that people should just get used to it.

Of course, every time Facebook has shown vulnerability or made a bad decision in the past, they’ve found a way to sidestep criticism and come roaring back. This stock market thing shows a much deeper, perhaps more fundamental weakness in the company that we really haven’t seen before.

And since was a column that was meant to be a little contrarian in the first place, I find myself wondering if it’s going to be a piece of writing that I’ll come to regret in a few short years. We’ll see, won’t we? I certainly was anticipating the flurry of negative comments this time around and was able to enjoy them from backstage, twirling my mustache and saying to myself, “Job well done, villain.”

What I wasn’t expecting was for CNN to slap it on the front page center with my name out there for the world to see. That was pretty amazing-cool, but also terrifying at the same time. I felt like I’d been called out by my own words, made to stand before a crowd and justify my opinion. Lucky for me, I have a lot of opinions about Facebook, even if they’re not even always consistent or right.

Dustin Maxey (right) and his friend Larin Frederick, talk about “GroupWink,” a group dating app Maxey is planning to launch this summer. Photo by Julia Robinson for the Austin American-Statesman

Another big piece I wrote that ran this week was in the Statesman and it was about ambient/serendipity apps like “Highlight” that pair you up with people nearby, social network-like, even when you’re not actively using them. The piece evolved into an article about the line between convenient and creepy and how future apps are going to have to overcome that label.

I had some great conversations in the interviews I did for the article and as usual it was just a lot of material that needed to be condensed into one good-sized story. I hope it didn’t lose too much in that process and that it made enough sense to people who don’t follow this kind of tech.

I’ve had a weird thing lately, just the last few days, where I’m getting a little tired and bored with the whole social media thing. It’s not that I’m not posting; I still do that. But I’ve also found myself not posting a lot when in the past I would have responded to something or had a thought I wanted to share. Some of it may be that I’ve been writing so much about social media lately that I’m a little burned out on thinking about it, but some of it is also that I know that if I respond to certain posts that I’m going to get into a whole conversation with someone and of late, I’ve been so pressed for time that I’d rather just not even get into it, you know?

A guy I know, Loren Feldman, is working on a documentary about social media and I’m dying to see how it turns out because he and I have a very similar view on a lot of what’s going on, only he’s able to say a lot of the things I can’t in ways that I don’t. We both feel the bubble is close to bursting and that in a few short years, people will have moved on to something else, even if it’s just faster/more efficient ways of doing what we’re doing now.

Or it could just be that I get bored of hearing my own voice (typed, rather, and online) and that I get the sense a lot of other people are chirping along with very little to say, too, at times. It gets boring sometimes, doesn’t it? That can’t just be me that feels it, right?

Another theory: summer is here (we get it early in New Braunfels) and I’d rather just be outside, swimming or tubing. That’s probably it, honestly.