October 2003 Archives
When it finally occured to me that if I hurried, I would have time to walk to work and still get there on time, I was standing in the shower at 6:30 am. I wasn't in the mood to hurry, as I'd already basked in a long, lazy morning.
It was 7:15 when I left, and it was still mostly dark outside. The moon was a thin waning crescent in the dusky sky above the greenbelt, but a rosy band of gold overlaid the tree line. I walked my normal route, ticking off each conceptual third of the path as I covered it. By the time I reached the first major crossing, the sunrise was only just beginning; by the time I reached the second crossing, it was at its most beautiful.
Before the second crossing, I passed the daycare again. As early as it was, there were still children out playing in the yard. The woman watching them was wiping down the aluminum hurricane fence, but she would turn and look at the kids, no more than toddlers, and try to rein them in with her voice.
"Sit at the table," she told one recalcitrant toddler, her voice rough and her tone firm, then shortly thereafter, "Sit at the table," she repeated. Her tone softened as she tried a third time: "Sit at the table, please," but the little boy wasn't listening. Finally, she started singing, off-tune and hoarsely:
Let's sit at the table,
Let's sit at the table,
Let's sit at the table,
and eat our breakfast now.
Her little song was punctuated by a phlegmy smoker's cough, and as I walked on, chuckling to myself, I wondered whether Patty and Selma had opened a daycare center.
The reason I'm updating at five in the morning, in case anybody was wondering, is that I'm suffering from a case of virtual jetlag. Between the weird and hectic hours I was keeping over the weekend and the office picnic I attended on Tuesday (which turned into an almost-all-night-party), I was worn out last night. Positively exhausted. So I went to bed early... really early. Six-o'clock-in-the-afternoon-while-it-was-still-light-outside early.
And I woke up at four in the morning.
So now that we're all caught up...
For whatever reason, I hadn't been picking up my camera much for a while. The photolog had gone for an unprecedented month without updates. I'm working on improving that timeframe as I try to write more often as well. Part of the slow-down has been my schedule recently. Over the last month, I've been working 45- to 50-hour weeks, then working on preparations for JournalCon after work. Now that JournalCon is over, I'm back down to a life and a half, rather than the three lives I was juggling previously. I'm glad for the change.
I've spent way more time than I should have spent reading people's accounts of the convention. One thing about journallers: you get them all in the same room together, and they write about one another. They write a lot about one another. I don't have a whole lot to add to the discussion. I didn't get to go to karaoke because I didn't have my id with me, and I apparently look twelve. I did go to the tattoo parlor, though, and took some pictures:
some bar on Sixth Street
Emily getting tattooed (if needles or tattoos squick you out, you might not want to click on this one)
Shannon getting painted with henna
This Friday will mark the third anniversary of the day I began publishing on the web on a regular basis. Google has been kind enough to archive my first, most primitive web layouts, ones that I put together for a project in an English class I took during my senior year of college, in Fall of 1998, which precede this date. I find these cringeworthy now, and I try not to look at them. They were meant to be personal but creative, and reading them back now, they sound trite and overstated to me, though, for the record, my English professor loved them. Nonetheless, I have the impulse lately to consolidate my writing into one place, and so I'll probably bring them here someday soon.
As an aside: I state all this not as a way to vouch for my credibility, but rather because CY has challenged me to write my rebuttal in a narrative fashion, because what I really need in my life is more challenge. I told her that because I was trying to be ironic, but she decided to make sure that I actually get the extra challenge I so desperately need in my life. But I digress.
When I first started writing online, the medium served as cheap therapy for me. I was in the midst of a very long period of depression, and it served as catharsis and a way for me to express myself at a time when I didn't really come into contact with many people. For several months, I never even knew that there was a journalling community, and it was a couple of years before I realized how far-flung it extended. I'd been writing for six months or so before I ever heard of a "blog," and even then, I didn't completely understand what the word meant, or what a blog was. (Phil would be happy to corroborate that I live under a rock when it comes to certain new web technologies.)
Within the context of the online writing community in which I was figuratively raised, a blog was something completely different from what we were doing. Within the context of the journalling community that I come from, the image of a blog evolved into a form of online publishing that focused on the external, reporting things that happen in the world around you, rather than on the more introspective kind of writing that made up journalling.
Obviously, weblogs were invented long before the spring of 2001 when I first heard of them. Lloyd began writing in his weblog in May of 2000, using the term "blog" at a time when I didn't even know online journaling existed.
The way I see it, the two genres evolved parallel to one another, and those who adopted each genre over time have had a very wide berth to develop a style of writing appropriate to themselves. To me, the difference between a weblog and a journal is often semantic and nothing more. There isn't a barbed wire fence that runs along the border between the two genres. For the record, I consider much of the content that I post upon this page to be weblog material, but I'd probably classify this as a journal entry. I don't know how my page fits into the diaspora, but that's the least of my worries.
My writing has evolved a great deal since I began publishing on the web. The voice of that writing sounded nothing like what I generally publish now. What I wrote then was intensely personal, and the audience was different. This website is meant to be more public, but that means that I self-censor quite a bit -- after all, family members, friends, and co-workers all read it. Still, my writing voice continues to develop every time I write something meaningful here in these pixels I call my own. Likewise, my photographic skills have evolved over time as I've developed an audience and challenged myself to advance. The improvement comes from practice, and from the fact that I know that at least 150 people every day come here to delve into my life, and I'd like to think it has nothing to do with whether I call this medium a weblog or a journal.
All this is to say that I feel like a troublemaker for getting Lloyd all riled up over what I see as a semantic difference in the first place. (In my defense, the conversations in question actually happened ages and ages ago.) Whatever elitism journal writers might participate in has absolutely nothing to do with the writing done in within the IU extended community. Based on the definition that I understand, those would be defined as journals anyway. Perhaps this page would be defined as a journal, as well. I called it a weblog when I first built it, but its function has changed over time. Ultimately, your genre is whatever genre you most identify with, and the definitions (and opinions, for that matter) of whatever establishment might be pertinent lose meaning anyway.
It should be noted that one of my weaknesses in narrative writing, which got sort of sidetracked about halfway through this entry, is that I'm awful at conclusions. Therefore, this is the very non-narrative conclusion. The End.
It's been another incredibly long day, and I'm the person on call at 8am tomorrow, but JournalCon is going very well, and I wanted to post a quick update before I go to bed.
I attended several panels throughout the morning and afternoon and presented my own panel, What Not to Wear: Web Site Makeovers. I've been working on a new design for my friend Pecan of Estoy Nueces, and I'm excited that I can finally show it off. It's been something of a secret in the weeks leading up to JournalCon.
Iko of Eileene.net put together a lovely redesign of Devota's page for the panel, as well.
I had a great time presenting my panel. I wasn't particularly nervous, I always had something to say, and a lot of people seemed to find it entertaining. Mission Accomplished.
We didn't have internet access in the conference rooms, so I couldn't really show, though I was tempted, that my own site is still very similar to the standard MT template. I feel all inspired by my panel success to redesign my site, bits at a time. I imagine the photolog will come first.
In the evening, we all packed into the Hideout's theater to watch excerpts of two one-woman shows, as well as some skits that Omar put together for the Latino Comedy Project. The place was packed full of JournalCon attendees, and I helped run stuff up in the A/V booth. Everyone seemed to have a great time!
After the show, a bunch of people went off to do karaoke, but I went with a group of people to Forbidden Fruit (the tattoo/piercing part, not the sex toy part, just for the record) to see Mnvnjnsn (buy a vowel) get her new tattoo. I wanted to document the process, so I took pictures, of course. While she was still being worked on, Shannon got a henna tattoo of a lizard on her back. I think the henna ones are more my style -- I haven't got the attention span to pick a design that will be meaningful to me in five years.
Alright, it's too late. I'm off to bed.
Most of my regular audience will be sick of me writing about JournalCon by the time the weekend is over, but somebody somewhere wants to know how JournalCon is going, so I'm going to be the girl who tells you.
So far, JournalCon is going swimmingly! We have the Chambers Bar reserved at the Omni all weekend as our hospitality room, and it was pretty packed with people for most of the evening, during the welcome mixer. The webcam got moved around periodically to show different areas of the room, and it was funny to see people move to avoid it.
After the mixer, people headed out for dinner, and then later in the evening, about 40 people showed up again for Web Writers Gone Wild, where several journallers read revealing sex-related entries. They were all fabulous; some were funny, some were poignant, and every one of them was entertaining.
People keep commenting on how weird it is to meet the people whose journals they read regularly, and it's true, it is weird! For me, it's even weirder to hear people say, "Oh! I've read your stuff!" I forget sometimes that I have an audience outside a few close friends, some of my family, and people googling for random things.
So, yeah, the conference is going very well. I'm proud of our committee for organizing things well ahead of time, so that we can mostly mingle and enjoy the conference ourselves now that it's actually rolling.
I'll try to continue posting regularly over the weekend.
Oh! One funny story before I submit. I got to the Omni at around 2:30, so by the time the welcome mixer was well underway, I'd had a couple of drinks (over about three hours -- I was hardly intoxicated). Then we had a cash bar for the mixer, and I was talking to CY and another journal writer as I was exchanging a ticket for a drink at the cash bar.
Long story short, the bartender gave me my ticket back because it had taken him so long to give me a Shiner Bock, but the ticket fell to the ground. I stooped down to pick it up, but my center of gravity was all messed up because the bar was in my way, and I managed to roll backward onto the floor, hitting the illustrious AB of Hashai.
She, of course, was all concerned for my well-being, because it looked as though I had completely fallen over, when in fact, I'd just rolled a bit.
Yeah.
Hi! I'm Rachel. I'm on the Host Committee, and I'm a total spaz. Nice to meet you.
More JournalCon later.
Want to know what those silly JournalCon attendees are up to? Go check out the live webcam!
Why is it that I never think to drag Catherine to Austin journalling events? She would've enjoyed our pre-JournalCon get-together this evening. Lots of friendly Austin people were around, plus Beth from Hawaii, who I found to be very interesting, and Fredlet from San Francisco, in whose cult I intend to be involved, though I didn't get much chance to talk to her this evening.
I've borrowed an iBook from work to take with me to JournalCon this weekend. Rumor has it I can find a bit of stray wireless access somewhere in the convention hotel, so I'll try to update if I find a spare minute.
Every year in Austin, there's one day where the breeze starts to blow a bit crisp-cooler, and the leaves fall off the trees softly-silently like raindrops or feathers or maybe even kisses. No matter when the first official day of autumn is marked on the calendar, this is the day that I mark as my very own first day of autumn.
I was thrilled when I woke up this morning and the breeze outside was crisp-cool, and the bright yellow leaves glided across the black asphalt weightlessly, with an exquisite silence, a dancing poetry.
It's lucky that I noticed the dancing of the leaves across the street today. One more day, and I would've missed it. It's easy to miss things when days and nights are equally busy.
Tonight was Ani in concert. Tomorrow is preparation for JournalCon, Thursday is the pre-party, and then Friday through Sunday is the actual event. It wears me out just to think about it.
Autumn is here just in time for all the lovely people we've invited to Austin. The weather should be beautiful, Chamber of Commerce days if ever there were any. This evening was cool and clear for the concert -- so clear that the music was its own atmosphere beneath the starry Hill Country sky.
And when this week is through and I'm looking back upon it, that is what I would like to remember.
I should be back next week, after JournalCon is over.
Conscious self | Overall self |
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