shooshee

I’m here. I’m alive. I know - this is awful. I moved to a new web space and quit writing. What up with that?

I’ve been writing. Really. I’m working on some thoughts - consolidating them, pondering them, wondering if I’m saying what I’m meaning, putting together a wishlist of sorts.

Really though, in the meh times, the times that are neither overwhelmingly good nor overwhelmingly bad it’s hard to come up with anything more to say than, “today, I had a cheese sandwich.”

Granted, I’ve had some damn fine sandwiches lately. I’ve had some weirdness too. I’ve had some ick as well. Just none of it is quite ready to quit swimming in my head. But it’s getting close…

I’ll stop brain-dumping in text edit and start writing here more very soon.

after my last blog post, it’s definitely time for something lighter.

You can post video on flickr now. Really.

I’ve never done much of anything with video. In fact, this right here that you can watch me babbling in is the first time I even tried to record video in Photo Booth on my MacBook. But I’m intrigued now, inspired even. What some may grumble about on Flickr, I actually like - there’s a limit, videos can only be a max of 90 seconds long. (Although, 2 minutes might be really nice, then we could have a virtual 20×2 on flickr all year round.)

So I wonder (SAT style), does that make it: a 90 second flickr video is to youtube as a 140 character twitter tweet is to blogging? Maybe.

I like the description, the idea of what flickr videos should be:

1. A long photo
2. Personal
3. Simple – not overproduced or slick
4. Possibly the best answer so far: The Great Unknown

It’s little snapshots of life where you can hear the squeak of someone’s guinea pig or the voice of their loved ones or the giggle of their child or their own voice if you’ve never heard it. It’s vignettes of how you wanted to string your photos together. It’s more moving photography than video. At least that’s the idea and it could be really cool.

I’m betting that moderation is going to be a bitch on this one. It could get, well, not so cool pretty fast. Do you know how many innocuous photos I’ve had to lock down to just friends and family because someone with a weird fetish was linking to them? Word of advice - no photos or videos of your feet.

update: Holy crap! I find this absolutely highlarious. There are a ridiculous amount of people who have their panties in a wad about videos on flickr. There’s a NO VIDEO ON FLICKR!!! group and a We Say NO to Videos on Flickr group. But the one I joined? EVERYTHING NEW IS BAD. You know it, baybee.

*shaking my head*

Of course in the work that I do, I see this a lot. Some people are just resistant (for whatever reason) to change. I get it, change IS hard sometimes. But this change? Well *I* choose to be inspired by it.

I was thinking about storytelling, not in the fairy tale or even folk hero sense, but more in the Fray sense, true personal storytelling. There are some stories that you want to tell, but just can’t because there may just not be the right audience. Your available audience just might not get it. Or they might be judgmental. Or it may be a “well, you just had to be there” kind of thing because it was a collective experience or you just can’t explain it right.

Aside from retelling stories, ones you heard from someone else, they’re always yours. It was your experience even if it was in a big group of people or a small group or just with one other person or completely on your own. But there’s always a risk involved in telling a story. Will I tell it right?

When you’re talking about a group experience, what if you had a completely different experience from the rest of the group? And if your experience involved any other person, what if they don’t want the story told? And if it’s just mine, will it change the way you think about me in a way that I don’t want it to?

I want to write here without fear. I want to be able to say what’s on my mind. I want to be able to share the amazing things that happen to me or that I happen to. But after getting bitten in the ass again (and this time it was more of a relative nibble - it only stung and didn’t so much hurt) by what happens when you put yourself out there publicly, I’m approaching this new writing space with a certain amount of hesitation.

When people go through effort to attack you for ridiculous things in ridiculous ways… I mean, I’ve lived long enough to know that there are a lot of assholes in this world. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who seem to find a lot of joy in being a dickhead. I know this, but I don’t really understand it - I just don’t operate that way. I attempt to do everything with tact. I attempt to be nice and kind to everyone I meet. When I can’t be kind, I’ll generally just ignore you and work very hard on turning any anger I might have into apathy.

It does suck when the universe gives you reminders that this is not how it works for everyone. I have trust issues as it is for a variety of reasons and shit like this doesn’t help.

So I want to tell you about the crazy insane like it was out of a movie told in several acts long lovely mind-blowing wowsers Friday night that I had that started at about 4:30 in the afternoon with a happy hour at work and ended more or less the next morning near 10:30 am when I kissed him on the cheek and said goodbye before I headed home and all the twists and turns and conversations and the full cast of characters and venue changes and moments in between. I want to tell you about some of the things I hadn’t done in a while and other things I hadn’t done in a very long while and still other things I had never done before but holy shit I wouldn’t mind doing again.

I’ve been listening to this uber-sexy dance club kind of song with an infectious beat and just downright salacious lyrics by Armand van Helden, “Jenny” - the lyrics are damn near impossible to find online, but there’s this one line, “you’ll never know what happened last night.” And you won’t, probably, because even though I want to tell you the story I just can’t here. Not yet anyway.

So, I’m moving in. The big furniture seems to be in place. But I’ve yet to move the little bits and bops. And I really haven’t had any time to decorate here. But I will. I will make this feel like home.

So you got my forwarding address somehow, welcome and please say hello in the comments, or better yet, register (I promise I won’t spam ya’)…

˙ǝɯoɥ ʍǝu ʎɯ oʇ ǝɯoɔlǝʍ puɐ ʎɐp slooɟ lıɹdɐ ʎddɐɥ

* you can flip your shit too.