Continued from part 5.
With my worries put to rest as best they could be, I ended up following Robinson in applying. Since I had a number of articles to write already, which I had thought to be chiefly my technical backlog, I first wrote a plan to list and briefly summarize them. The plan itself took longer than anticipated, and the content raised alarms: it painted a picture of unbalance, like a man with one arm much stronger than the other, in a similarity to asciilifeform's case. The Marquess further emphasized the connection of technology and politics, in particular, that just publishing code and documentation would not suffice due to the large unknown of who I am. To start to address this she proposed an interview, which was completed; as I wrote afterwards,
giving a high-level view of my life story, with some back-and-forth, then answering questions for which my reading and mulling had at least somewhat prepared me. After over three hours of conversation, I found myself with a new Master and, not to waste any time, a blogging assignment drawn from my own plans to recount my steps in setting up the blog, a subsequent one to reflect on my month in the channel, and advice on the writing process.
Bah, at this rate the next "installment" will have 5 words total + another 10 cited. Did you really spin for 60 minutes around 131 words?
Comment by Diana Coman — 2019-11-13 @ 09:50
Yes :( I had this feeling that there was more I should be saying but couldn't put my finger on it. And probably didn't help that I was starting exhausted at the end of a long day. Which was poor time management again, in particular it looks like I allowed the auction and travel planning to throw me off.
Comment by Jacob Welsh — 2019-11-13 @ 20:04
Eh, you clearly push those out of sight and out of mind and you'd push them out of the edge of the world if only it were flat enough to allow such a thing! Anyways, since you start today writing them in the morning, the "starting exhausted" part should not apply anymore and so that's one item taken care of. For the other, that feeling of can't yet my finger on it is a sort of "loading..." bar of the mind, not a problem in itself but ALSO, not something to just stare at while it blinks stuck in place for one hour (or more). There are two main choices there: think of the topic and start writing continuously whatever comes to mind about it - after a while/at some point, something will come into focus and then you'll need to retrace ground and see what it was; alternatively, give it a clear deadline for background processing ie stop writing then and there but commit to get back to it and write it no-matter-what in x hours. This may easily backfire especially at first if you use it as avoidance, obviously.
The good news is that once you actually form the habit of writing daily and so you know each evening that you'll *have to* write something next morning, the background work will start too (at least after you had enough of failure every morning so that's up to you, how much of it is needed).
Comment by Diana Coman — 2019-11-14 @ 08:11