Caitlín R. Kiernan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greygirlbeast) wrote2009-10-10 11:02 am
greygirlbeast) wrote2009-10-10 11:02 am
Entry tags:
Stepping back...
Last night is the first night since at least December 2007 that I've managed to sleep without Ambien. I've been cutting the dosage back for weeks now, and last night, I just said fuck it, and didn't take any. And I slept.
We take our victories where we can find them, no matter how small.
There was no writing again yesterday, so I think I can officially say that I am now in a crisis state. We'll say Code Yellow. Tomorrow, if I've still not written, we go to Orange.
I did read Holly Phillips' "Cold Water Survival" in Lovecraft Unbound, and I liked it quite a lot. It's very rare for me to actually read an anthology in which I have a story, but I'm reading this one. At least for now.
In the midst of all the Not Writing that was going on yesterday, I also resolved to begin withdrawing from Facebook and Twitter, and stop using them as anything but a mirror for this journal by the end of October. Well, truthfully, I made my last post to Facebook yesterday evening, after being prodded with one pointy stick too many, and discovering I couldn't turn off comments. That is, discovering I could not disallow comments. As I said yesterday, what kind of fucked-up forced-socialization fascism is that? So, no more Facebook (except that the LJ entries will continue to show up there). I think the thing I will most miss about it is the fact that people seemed almost always to use their real names. I won't miss having people I've not spoken to in ten or fifteen or twenty years suddenly thrusting themselves back into my life uninvited. So, yes, I'll try to stick with Twitter until the end of the month. But a lot of things are wrong in my life at the moment, and one of them is having allowed myself to wander off into all this "social networking" brouhaha. I do not think in sound bytes of 140 characters (or whatever Facebook allows, for that matter). I don't write in them. It was a mistake for me to try and force it.
Of course, this leaves me here in the wasteland of LiveJournal, which seems to be losing writers and readers like a sinking ship purportedly loses rats. But, at least I can finish a thought here without being told I'm over my character limit. And if I don't want to interact, or hear someone else's thoughts, it's easy enough to turn off comments.
If you've not yet, please take a moment to order a copy of The Red Tree. It's the reason I'm still bothering to communicate with the public at all. Which means, if you're reading this, you probably would benefit by reading that.
A cloudy day here in Providence. The sun's never around when I actually want to see it.
We take our victories where we can find them, no matter how small.
There was no writing again yesterday, so I think I can officially say that I am now in a crisis state. We'll say Code Yellow. Tomorrow, if I've still not written, we go to Orange.
I did read Holly Phillips' "Cold Water Survival" in Lovecraft Unbound, and I liked it quite a lot. It's very rare for me to actually read an anthology in which I have a story, but I'm reading this one. At least for now.
In the midst of all the Not Writing that was going on yesterday, I also resolved to begin withdrawing from Facebook and Twitter, and stop using them as anything but a mirror for this journal by the end of October. Well, truthfully, I made my last post to Facebook yesterday evening, after being prodded with one pointy stick too many, and discovering I couldn't turn off comments. That is, discovering I could not disallow comments. As I said yesterday, what kind of fucked-up forced-socialization fascism is that? So, no more Facebook (except that the LJ entries will continue to show up there). I think the thing I will most miss about it is the fact that people seemed almost always to use their real names. I won't miss having people I've not spoken to in ten or fifteen or twenty years suddenly thrusting themselves back into my life uninvited. So, yes, I'll try to stick with Twitter until the end of the month. But a lot of things are wrong in my life at the moment, and one of them is having allowed myself to wander off into all this "social networking" brouhaha. I do not think in sound bytes of 140 characters (or whatever Facebook allows, for that matter). I don't write in them. It was a mistake for me to try and force it.
Of course, this leaves me here in the wasteland of LiveJournal, which seems to be losing writers and readers like a sinking ship purportedly loses rats. But, at least I can finish a thought here without being told I'm over my character limit. And if I don't want to interact, or hear someone else's thoughts, it's easy enough to turn off comments.
If you've not yet, please take a moment to order a copy of The Red Tree. It's the reason I'm still bothering to communicate with the public at all. Which means, if you're reading this, you probably would benefit by reading that.
A cloudy day here in Providence. The sun's never around when I actually want to see it.
no subject
Oh, dear me! I was not aware that LJ was in difficulty. This is still a favorite blogging location for a lot of writers that I know of. Blogspot would be another. Not sure what kind of traffic it gets.
From what little I know, LiveJournal is the biggest social networking system in Russia, and the Russian and American branches of LJ are run by the same people. If they are in financial trouble, I haven't heard anything of it.
LJ is, indeed, in trouble. The last couple of years, its traffic flow has plummeted, likely as a direct result of the rising popularity of other forms of online communication. LJ has been described recently as being on "life support," and hence I am backing everything up to Dreamwidth.
However, most people who want to use social networking sites are not artists or writers or graphic designers, so the easy set-up works fine for them, I suppose. They want hot dates and idle chit-chat. That's what those places were made for.
I think this is largely true, yes.
no subject