So, here’s the thing.

You know, the first inkling I had that I was good at Twitter — which was also my first inkling that Twitter was a thing one could be good at — was when I would tweet “So, here’s the thing.” and people would start retweeting and liking it before I even made another tweet in the thread, before they could have any earthly idea what I was about to start talking about.

I started doing topical threads on Twitter out of a recognition that engaging with individual people through replies was not always (or often) super fruitful. If someone was spreading bad information or being belligerent, arguing with them directly rarely had any positive effect. If someone was asking a sincere question, replying to them might help that person, but few others would see it… which often led to more people sincerely asking the same question.

I decided that if I found myself with something to say that was worth saying, I would say it in the main feed, usually @-ing nobody. Just put the information out there, for the benefit of anybody who cared to listen to it.

And when I did this, my engagement skyrocketed. I started to gain followers rapidly. I had enough people reading my content and engaging with it that I was able to monetize Twitter through crowdfunding. My tweets were in demand, they went viral far beyond the normal reach for an account of my size… which was constantly growing.

I think this is the best way to use Twitter, the healthiest and most productive.

It’s not necessarily the easiest, or the most psychologically rewarding in the short term. Direct engagement with other people… dunking, slamming, burning people who are spreading hate or exposing their willful ignorance… gives so much more of a rush for so much less effort. It feels like you’re really doing something, while actually demanding very little of you.

It’s so much easier that I’ve found myself doing it more and more in the past couple of months, while I was reeling from my mother’s death and recovering from illness.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure of Twitter has changed considerably. Once upon a time, your replies to other people didn’t show up in the general feed of people who follow you. Then, I think they added a thing where you would see replies if you were following both people involved.

Now, I guess as part of Twitter leadership’s plan to help encourage conversation, if I reply to someone like Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson or Kellyanne Conway, not only will my tweet show up in my followers’ feeds, but so will the one I’m replying to.

For all these reasons and more, I’ve made the decision to refocus my Twitter account away from that kind of engagement and back onto my own original work. I’m not going to ignore the forces of evil at work on social media; I’m just not going to keep jabbing at them pointlessly.

At this point, I have neither the interest nor need to keep proving I’m clever. It’s time to go back to demonstrating wisdom. It’s less fun in the short term, but healthier and more productive in the long run.

I wrote the bulk of this blog post last night and since then… well, it’s been a bit of a struggle. Already today I’ve found myself looking at tweets buried in the replies on viral tweets that seemed to cry out for a rebuttal. But what would be the point? It’s just not a good use of time or energy, two things which I have in limited supply.

August and everything after.

It’s weird to me to look at my blog and realize that I haven’t posted anything to it since the end of May, as so much has happened since then and I have spent so much time since then writing out my thoughts and feelings in a journal, often in the form of a rough draft blog post or something that I intended to finish and post.

But the nature of journaling, for me, is about processing the now. So what I don’t finish when I first down to write, I don’t often come back to. I’ll make an effort to post some of it, though. 

So, I’ve had a rough time. I feel weird about dropping this on my blog two months later, but: my mother died. My emotions around this are very strong. On the one hand my family tends to be philosophical about these things .On the other hand, my mother is dead. In a real sense I feel like my time is my own for the first time in years. I mean, it was always my own, but I chose to spend it in ways that allowed me to spend more time with her and helped her and my father manage their situation.

I look back at the past half decade and think about opportunities I passed on and projects I couldn’t quite commit to, deals I didn’t quite manage to seal… and if I had to do it all over again, I’d do it the same. If I changed anything, it would be to tell myself things I only really figured out towards the end that would have allowed me to help more.

But as the proverbial fruit flies like a banana, time flies like an arrow and once loosed, it cannot be recalled to the bow. I can’t do it all over again. That choice is made and will always remain made.

Now the future lies before me. It’s taken me a while to adjust to the new reality. I do so in the knowledge that tomorrow is never promised. One thing I grappled with a lot in recent years and more especially the first half of this year is the paired knowledge that any day my mother might die, and that this was true, had always been true, and would remain true until she did. It was also true that she might have outlived me. Nothing is promised. “There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,” et cetera.

Complicating factors in all this: my family gathered twice to remember my mother, once as a private matter in Florida, which became her second home for reasons both practical and sentimental, and once as a public celebration back in Nebraska. There was no funeral in the traditional sense, per her wishes and our beliefs. Traveling twice in rapid succession and being around hundreds of people… my immune system was not in the best shape to begin with. I came back from Florida sick and a few days later was traveling to Nebraska, where I think I caught approximately all the germs.

I think it’s a rare year that I don’t catch a summer cold that knocks me on my backside for a couple weeks. This was… in a lot of ways, it was not the worst? I could control the coughing. It was only really bad for a week.

Mostly I slept. My body’s metabolism is such that the mere act of having an immune system can exhaust me, so when I get sick I don’t get better until I allow myself to shut down. So now I’m in the process of recovering from recovery: rebuilding my stamina, getting an actual sleep schedule, resuming all the pills I went off when I started medicating for the cold, etc.

My brain is going to remain partially fog-bound until I’ve been back on my normal regimen for several more days and until I have got my sleep schedule sorted.

That aside, I’m already making plans for how I want to spend my next five years. Tomorrow is promised to no one, but on the off chance that it happens anyway, I know what I want to do with it.

Hack This Look: Sound Reasoning

The weakest point in my own personal wearable computer rig as described in my original Hack This Look post is the sound.

There are two reasons for this. One is that I’m not at all an audiophile and while I do use my wearable to watch videos, that’s not the main purpose for it. 

The other is that what I think of as the ideal solution doesn’t work for me, as it’s incompatible with the rest of my gear loadout.

If you were to copy what I was doing from the ground up, I would strongly suggest going with something like a pair of Trekz Air bone conduction headphones — they are very discreet, easy-wearing, leave your ears open, and the sound quality is decent. So you could watch a video while you’re sitting around, chopping veggies, cleaning, etc., without having to pop on headphones or obstruct your ears.

My problem is I already had a pair of them that I keep paired with my phone and I don’t want to change that. I like using my phone for music, I don’t want to have to re-pair to make or (God forbid) answer a phone call, etc. 

So, I have some really good Bluetooth headphones for my phone and then I use some not great earbud phones when I’m watching a video on my computer, but I’m not wearing the earbuds all the time so I have to put them on special, separate from the rest of the rig, when I want to do something with audio.

But I recently attended a convention where I knew I would be showing off my wearable rig socially, and I decided to look into what existed in the world of wearable speakers. I thought since no one could see what I see on my screen, some audible audio output would be a good way to demonstrate that yes, the whole thing is functional.

I tried a few different things, including attaching a cheap but cool glowy Bluetooth speaker to a modular clip mount. I need to work on the attachment, but this worked pretty well in terms of easy of use, as once the device is paired you just switch it on and it will connect automatically. It has some rudimentary media controls on the outside, and it makes a cool glowy science prop if you happen to be cosplaying as Entrapta.

Note that this is a CHEAP speaker. I’ve had a couple nigh-identical ones over the years, including some I received as a result of Amazon review spam-scams, and although the specific one I’ve linked to had decent sound quality for me, I would imagine it’s kind of luck of the draw.

Less easy to use but with louder volume and better sound quality right up until the very deep end of the volume pool is the Boomband.  When I say it’s less easy to use, I don’t mean it’s hard to use. It has the sort of very minimalist interface that is common with Bluetooth gadgets where there’s just one button. This can make getting it paired up with a new device for the first time kind of frustrating, as I discovered when I lent it to a friend for a party.

The Boomband is definitely what I would recommend if you want a wearable speaker to go with your wearable computer, for the usual purposes of a speaker (as opposed to headphones). If you’re keeping it paired up to a single device, its one real weakness isn’t much of a weakness. 

It’s also pretty good if you want to play music for other people off your phone, or conduct teleconferences on speaker. These things are more the intended use for it.

I will note that the one time I actually used either of the above as more than a prop at the convention, it was taking the Boomband off and leaving it sitting on a table at a party to provide music. The fact that it’s wearable only factored into things insofar as that was why I was traveling with it. Even in a long weekend of social situations, I didn’t come up with any real uses for a wearable speaker.

The other solution audio solution I’ve tried is a wearable speaker but not one that is intended to play music for others. There’s a whole niche of torc-style wearable speakers you put over your neck and then they play your audio loud enough for you to hear, but sort of focused right around your head. The theory is that this lets you listen to things without disturbing others around you.

I do have a device of this sort. It’s not very high-end. You have to twist the plastic a bit to fit it around many sized necks, which feels like it could go wrong. The sound quality is just okay. If you’re an audiophile with money to burn you can go all the way up the name brand ladder to Bose wearable speakers, but that’s more than I’m willing or able to pay to watch Killing Eve without headphones.

I haven’t had much of a chance to test my speaker torc, especially the claims of a sort of personal sound environment, and as I have the sharpest hearing in the household so it would be hard to make a fair test, but the reviews on many of the devices in this range talk about using them in office spaces, or beside a sleeping partner, so there seems to be something to it.

I would say, though, that you should look at this as a feature that may preserve others’ comfort, not your privacy. I would not suggest using it for phone calls in any context in which you would not use a speakerphone, and do not watch/listen to anything of a personal or private nature in public while using them.

What I’m really interested in, once I have enough money to justify the purchase, is something like this goober here which combines the torc-style speakers with retractable earbuds. Barring catastrophically bad sound quality, I think that would become my permanent sound solution for my wearable computer rig: speakers, microphone, and and earphones in one device. Sounds perfect, honestly. I especially like the flexible neck, seems a way better solution than solid plastic.

As with everything else I’ve got my eye on that I can’t quite justify the cost of, I’m adding it to my wishlist. Buy it for me to enable my habbit and encourage future tech posts for the mildly tech savvy.

If these wearable tech review posts become popular enough, I might make a separate wishlist specifically for them.

WisCon, Ho!

 Well, this is coming much later in the year than usual, but it’s time for my “Hey, I’m going to WisCon” blog post.

Hey, I’m going to WisCon! 

…blog… post.

Anyway, here is my schedule of scheduled events, all of which are within the hotel itself this year.

FRIDAY, 10:30 PM in Caucus*: Kobolds Are People, Too! – Panel about worldbuilding and “monstrous races”/Always Chaotic Evil tropes. This one’s got some great panelists. I mean, they all do. 

SATURDAY, 2:30 PM in Conference 2: Found Media In Mixed Objects II – Trans/genderqueer reading group. We’re putting the band back together with every member of the reading from last year who’s making it back to Madison this year, including our last minute addition of Dr. Sunny Moraine.

SATURDAY, 4:00 PM in University B: Now That’s What I Call Esoteric! – Panel about weird D&D monster trivia. I will mostly be talking about the intersection of mythology and etymology, and the unexpected twists and turns along the way. Or that’s my plan. This might be a “wherever the panel takes us” panel.

SUNDAY, 10:00 AM in Caucus*: The Obligatory She-Ra Panel – Panel. Seems rude that there’s just one She-Ra panel, but I am on it. I may be doing a sort of casual Entrapta cosplay, I’ve got a fundraising goal for that and about $350 more to go, so… go town if you want to see that, or pictures of that.

SUNDAY, 9:30 PM in Room 629 Secret Superhero Party – It’s the third annual launch party for Secret Sisterhood of Superheroes, the project that I’m going to definitely get off the ground properly one of these years, but probably not right now. In the meantime, it’s still a party, and also a soft-launch/pre-launch for my short story collection. Remember that official convention parties at WisCon are absolutely open to all registered convention goers. This is not something yo need an invitation or tap on the shoulder to go to.

MONDAY, 11:30 AM in Capitol/Wisconsin The Sign-Out – This is your last ditch chance to come interact with attendant artists and authors including me in a formal fashion. Come up and say hi, introduce yourself, get a free bookmark (while supplies last) or possibly an early copy of the book, if the stars align for that (but also while supplies last). I’ll sign either or both, or your program book, or whatever. Keanu Reeves signed a receipt for an ice cream cone once. I’m not better than Keanu Reeves. I mean, I’m good, but let’s be real.

HOW TO RECOGNIZE ME

Okay, so, my aesthetic has evolved a bit from the past couple years where it was all bright red and rainbows, but that was evolution from black and white geometric patterns. I still tend to wear the same type of long flowy skirts and layers, and usually some kind of hat or head covering. I am cutting back on sun hats indoors, as they can be inconsiderate in crowded places. So I may be wearing a head scarf with a galaxy print or abstract rainbow thing.

My hair color will vary from day to day but will be very vivid each day. My outfits are going to vary from casual cosplays of Link and maybe Entrapta on some days to my all-purpose look, which I call Intergalactic Cyberwizard. 

Which brings me to a very important point: I may be the only person there walking around with a little borg eyepiece on her glasses. I’m bringing my Vufine, I’m wearing my Vufine. If you see someone wearing a leather pouch with wires coming out of it attached to a high-tech eyepiece, that’s probably me. If she has fiery or rainbow or mermaid hair, or is wearing a Link or Entrapta wig, it’s even more likely to be me. If she’s got a whole set of cool adventuring pouch looking things strapped about her person, it’s almost definitely me.

I like to tell people, when I’m at a convention, that if you think you see me, you probably see me. This is less true at WisCon in particular because there are a lot of people with vivid hair colors and similar aesthetics. But the wearable computer screen over my eye will be a pretty big giveaway.

CAN YOU APPROACH ME?

If you’re in doubt, please look at my badge, which will have the green flag flying if I’m open to socialization, and I anticipate that will be the most of the time. My general rule is that when I’m at a convention, in public, and wearing my badge, I’m there to be with people. Hang out with friends, yes, but also meet people. Be sociable. Be accessible. 

Now, I might look busy. I have Resting Busy Face. And my idle animation is to pull out whatever device I have handy and start writing. This is doubly true now that I don’t have to pull a device out because I’m wearing it. This doesn’t change the above! It just means I’m not going to stand around doing literally nothing.

If you’re looking for an engraved invitation… follow me on Twitter, if you’re not already. I’m going to be tweeting my movements, to the extent that I want people to know where I am. If I say I’m going to The Bar downstairs, that’s not me flouncing away from social contact. If I say I’m going to the swimming pool, then you know there’s at least one body positive, non-judgmental, trans person who will be in the pool. (And probably more than one, we move in packs.)

The bottom line here is that I go to conventions to… convene. Converse. Congregate. Be congenial. It’s my chance to meet people, including people I admire but also the people who support my various works. WisCon is a convention that only has two actual invited guests most years. The rest of us are all just members, all attendees. 

*Tee hee.

About The Vufine…

So, my progression using the Vufine went from “This is a piece of junk and I wasted my money” on day 1 to “This is amazing and I wish I’d had it my whole life” on day 21. I honestly love this device, and even though it took me a week or two before I was really using it with total effectiveness, even a couple of days in I was in love with it. I still thought it was very flawed at that point, but it turned out I was just still inside the learning curve.

As an evangelist for it, I’d like to help people get past that day 1 feeling as quickly as possible, so this is a blog post that tries to document some of my hard-won experiences as well as answering common questions I’ve received or seen around the internet.

Is The Screen Easy To See?

According to the Vufine people, it’s the equivalent of a four inch screen hovering twelve inches in of front of your face. Which sounds tiny. But, you know, if you put a one inch quarter in front of your face, it can block the moon, which is considerably larger than an inch but much farther away.

The Vufine is neither four inches across nor a foot away from your face, so you know that it’s already relative.

I like lean back from my computer screen, so right now my head is about three feet away from a screen that’s about 28 inches on the diagonal. If I move my head so that the Vufine is lined up with it, it’s lining up with maybe about 75% or 80% of that screen. Not a big screen, not a tiny screen, considering. 

The real issue, size-wise, isn’t the size of the screen but the size of text on it. If you watch videos on the Vufine, it’s going to be beautiful and crisp and seem like a really decent size considering it’s not blocking your view. Kind of like watching a movie or TV show on your phone only it’s weightless and hands free. For anything that’s purely visual, the proximity of the screen to your face will make the size pretty much moot. 

Text is another story. Whatever device you plug into the Vufine, there’s a good chance that neither it nor the apps you’re running on it were optimized for this kind of view. Expect to play with text size settings and view/zoom settings until you find something that’s comfortable for you.

One thing I’ll say is that the longer I use it, the fewer adjustments I need. When I started out using my Pocket PC, I ran it in 800 x 600 resolution with the Vufine in stretch-to-fit mode, and when I was writing in Word I used 200% zoom and web view, which ignores page size and simply reflows the  text to fit the display, like a webpage does. After a week of heavy use, I am mostly using the device’s optimal resolution of 1280 x 720, and keeping the Vufine in normal mode. I can write in Word using print view (which does render page size) and zoom set to text width (which zooms in until the margins disappear).

I don’t know that everybody would find themselves as comfortable with those parameters as I am, but If your goal is to have a portable writing device that you can use sitting, standing, or in repose, and you aren’t picky about how much text is on screen, you can seriously just keep zooming until you can read it easily. Any text editor that reflows text when you zoom and any word processor with a web view mode or the equivalent will let you do this.

Now, as another wrinkle: I use the Vufine mainly with my Pocket PC, and when I use it with my phone, it has a feature called Samsung DeX that lets the phone emulate a desktop experience, which has a lot of the same complications as using the Pocket PC. But when I turn off Dex and just have my phone mirror its screen on the Vufine… well, a phone screen is much more optimized to be viewed as though it were a relatively small screen held relatively close to you. Your phone’s screen is probably more than four inches across, but you probably hold it more than twelve inches away.

So if you’ve got a phone or small tablet that can output to HDMI, the Vufine might give you a more comfortable viewing/reading experience. Of course, your phone is already portable with a screen, so you have to ask yourself what your use case is. I’m not saying there isn’t one. Just that it’s less obvious. Being able to watch things handsfree while retaining my mobility is pretty great. I don’t know that I would have bought the Vufine just for that, but I’ve certainly used it for that, with my phone and with my Pocket PC.

What Do You Even Use this For?

I primarily got it so I could continue to write under a wide variety of circumstances as possible, with as little interruption and discontinuity in my work. I use it to write on the go, or when I’m very not on the go. I have written while walking around in the backyard, pacing in an empty house, standing and waiting for food, riding in a car, riding on a plane, waiting for a plane, sitting on a couch, lying on a couch, lying in bed, lying on the floor.

It was especially great on the airplane. I have never had a better experience with working while on a plane. Trying to use a laptop on the tray table or hold my phone and write on it… both have their drawbacks. Being able to write using my wearable computer rig gives me the best of both of them without the drawbacks, and some added bonuses. The handheld keyboard is better than a phone for writing on while being lighter. The Vufine’s desktop screen not only doesn’t require a free tray table, it’s literally wherever I look, so if I change positions I don’t have to adjust it.

I have also used it to keep up with the news or Twitter or the news on Twitter. We’re having some network connectivity issues around here (some of them have to do with our router and home wifi being bad, some of them are down to our local provider) but if we get them resolved I will finally have a decent solution for watching streams of breaking news, press conferences, hearings, etc., while I’m doing my commentary thing.

I have used it to multitask, like watching videos on the Vufine while I’m sitting at my desktop computer or while I’m doing some kind of household chore. I think the first thing I tweeted about the Vufine was that I was using it to watch ASMR videos while I cleaned out the fridge. I’ve used my headphones to listen to ASMR in order to help manage my anxiety, but now I can have the audio component as well. I have also been using it to do things like watch TV shows that I have always meant to check out but never had time for (hello, Killing Eve), as watching them on the Vufine is way easier than trying to prop a phone or tablet up near my screen as I’m writing.

I have used it for operations that benefit from a second screen or having two computers active at once, like things that require heavy referencing, transcription, etc. Not a lot of that yet, but it’s been working well when I’ve done it, and I’ll be doing more of it in the future.

If you don’t see the appeal of any of this, then neither the Vufine nor my whole wearable computer concept are probably right for you. But on the other hand, you might be looking at this and thinking of uses that fit your needs and lifestyle and not mine.

Whatever use you think of it, I’d say the big benefits are portability and privacy. People might come up and ask you questions about the thing on your eye but they can’t look over your shoulder at what you’re writing, or what you’re searching for on Google (which, for writers, can be almost as uncomfortable as having people watch what you’re writing). They can’t see the video you’re watching, if that’s something you’re concerned about because of reasons.

Does It Impair Your Vision?

I mean, obviously it occupies a portion of your field of vision and attention. The Vufine website notes that whatever your local laws may or may not say, you shouldn’t drive while using it. Whether you can walk around while watching a video or writing or browsing or reading depends a lot on your own personal capabilities.

It doesn’t block much of your view if you have full binocular vision, as your other eye will see most of what it’s blocking for the one it’s over.  How your brain reconciles the image might vary. I find that when my attention is focused on the tiny screen, it seems perfectly solid, and when I’m trying to look at something past it, it recedes into transparency. Just as an example, I have moved my head so that the Vufine is pointed at the computer screen where I’m tying this and I can see what I’m typing “through” my Killing Eve video.

Some people get vertigo, motion sickness, or headaches when their eyes are giving them mismatched inputs, in which case the Vufine might not be for them. I’m looking at another device  (as mentioned in my previous post) that uses both eyes while still promising that you can continue to see your environment. I can’t give any recommendation or review for that as I haven’t tried it. But I could see it being a good alternative for people for whom the Vufine is *almost* right.

How Do I Get It Into Position?

So, the Vufine attaches to your glasses by this little armband thing. You strap the band to the arm of your glasses, and the Vufine clips onto that with a little magnetic post. The post is round so it can swivel in its little socket, letting you adjust it up and down. The part with the viewport and the screen is on a little telescoping neck that lets you adjust it horizontally.

You want to attach the band so that the viewport on the Vufine is attached it’s right in front of the lens of your glasses, in the very center of your eye’s field of vision (i.e., in front of the pupil. Once it’s there you can swivel it up and down a little bit if you for instance don’t want the Vufine screen to fill the center of your view. Right now I’ve got it tipped down a bit so that it looks like I have a second screen below my computer screen, which since I like to sit back from my computer monitor lets me view both of them very comfortably. When I’m walking around and writing, I like to put it up above my field of view so I have to glance up a little bit to see it. This helps me focus on my environment and lets me type without immediately seeing what I’m writing, which I find freeing.

How Do I Get It To STAY In Position?

This is a thing that comes up in negative reviews.

The big thing is to make sure that your cords aren’t just hanging of it. If your cords have got a big slack loop drooping down, the weight of them is going to pull the Vufine out of position, pull your glasses down, etc., as well getting snagged on things. When you figure out how to manage the length and placement of your cords, your experience will improve markedly. I tweeted early on that it’s not worth it trying to keep all four corners of the screen in view, but after 3-4 weeks of use, it just feels like second nature. It’s so easy. And managing the cords is the biggest part of that. 

Do I Need Glasses?

Nope! If you don’t wear glasses, you can use the non-prescription frames that come with the unit, or any non-prescription pair that you like. There’s also an accessory for attaching it to a hat or headband. I haven’t tried that much, to be honest. I was starting to experiment with it because I’d had bad luck keeping the device lined up while it was attached to my glasses, but then I figured out how to make that work.

What Other Pitfalls Have You Encountered?

So, I saw a lot of reviews saying it doesn’t work well in bright natural light and I didn’t know what they were talking about until I went to take the trash out and found the screen was very indistinct. I hadn’t had that problem before… because any time I’m going outside for longer than it takes to put a bag in the bin, I put on a sunhat. So, you know. If you’re going outside, maybe wear a hat. That’s not just a Vufine thing, your skin will thank you.

Not all glasses work equally well with the Vufine. Metal wire frames are especially unsuited, as they’re too thin for the band and may be too lightweight for the Vufine to not make them sort of list to the side. The unit comes with a little adapter bridge thing you’re supposed to be able to clip over the arm to make it thick enough; I have seen reviews saying it doesn’t work well but it’s possible that only people who have bad results think to mention it. I’ve also had a problem with glasses that have arms that are too thick – it’s not that they don’t work, it’s that if the band is stretched too far, it can break if too much strain is put on them, such as by trying to reposition it without undoing it.

On that note, something I should note: the arm mounts that came with the unit seemed poor quality compared to the replacements I ordered. The basic mount seemed to have the strap attached poorly, which I think contributed to it wearing out on my larger pair of glasses. The advanced mount, which has a couple extra points of articulation for more precise placement, had joints that were so loose the weight of the unit even without cords would move it out of position.

I haven’t had those problems with the replacements I ordered. I don’t know if there was a first run production problem or what. I hate to recommend a product that isn’t 100% out of the box, but there really is no competitor in the Vufine’s space that I could give the nod to instead. And while it sucks if they’re shipping a product that isn’t 100%, they seem to be doing better? 

As far as this problem goes, I don’t think you’d have a problem with the basic mount if your glasses don’t have over-sized arms. Some of my frames are basically novelty frames, so I might be an edge case there. I didn’t notice any negative reviews mentioning it; I did see several of them talking about the ball joint on the advanced mount, so I know that’s not just me.

Basically, I would suggest looking at the pictures of the Vufine. The frames pictured are the non-prescription frames that come with it.

The more your glasses look like those, the better it’s going to work just right out of the box. That isn’t to say you have to have identical ones. The glasses I have on right now, that I’ve been using for a couple of weeks with it, have thinner arms, but still plastic, and they’ve been working really well. I’ve also used the pair that I broke the first band on, with one of the replacement bands I ordered, and while I’ve been more cautious about stressing it, it doesn’t show any of the signs of wear and tear. 

The only pair of glasses I’ve tried them on and couldn’t get it to work was a heart-shaped pair from Zenni Optical. Don’t know if the lens has an unusual curvature or what, but I just couldn’t get it lined up.

Hack This Look

A Wearable Computer For The Moderately Tech Savvy

So, lately I’ve been getting questions about some pictures I’ve posted of myself, as well as tweets about my wearable computer situation. How does it work? Does it work? Where did I get it? Does it work.

It does work, and I put it together out of off-the-shelf consumer electronics, which I’ll link to below. Please note I’m using Amazon affiliate links throughout this post — if something sounds useful to you and you click on it and buy it, then I get a small advertising commission, which I will probably blow on alcohol. So by all means, proceed.

My target here is people who, like me, are moderately tech savvy: not afraid of computers, a heavy user of them, and interested in taking them further, but not devoted to learning the technical ins and outs

A little background: I got into wearable technology for the same reason anybody does: I want the ability to beam my own personal power song directly into my brainpan 24/7, like I’m a character on Ally McBeal. That’s a very common problem so it’s also one that has a ready solution: bone conduction headphones. They allow you to hear audio from a paired device while leaving your ears open, and if you have a propensity towards hats and wigs, you can wear them anywhere without notice.

I’d never seen the point of Bluetooth headphones before – one more device to keep charged, one more valuable piece of hardware to lose – but once I figured out a use for them, I found a whole lot more uses. I also finally found a use for a digital assistant, as I could use my headphones to interact in a limited way with my phone without pulling it out. Voice commands allowed me to get more out of the basic function of the headphones, as I could control playback in more sophisticated ways than the buttons on the headphones allowed.

Soon after I added a Galaxy Watch to my gear loadout, which also extended my ability to interact with and receive information for my phone without laying hands on it. At around the same time, I invested in a Microsoft Universal folding keyboard, a lightweight and sturdy laptop-sized keyboard I could use to type on my phone anywhere there was a flat surface. This let me leave the laptop at home when I was going somewhere to write.

Not long after that, I discovered the Vufine, a wearable display device that I could use to keep my phone screen private when writing in public, or get visual information from my phone while walking around. It was at that point I realized that my push towards portability for my writing operations and wearability for my tech were working towards a convergent point.

My dream, my goal, has always been to have total convenience and total continuity in my work environmen.. the ability to pick up my work and take it with me, to continue it anywhere, whether I was sitting on a plane or riding in a car or standing up or laying down or basically anything, ideally with as little a change in the interface and environment as possible.

Cloud computing and mobile technology has done a lot to bring that dream closer to reality, but it hasn’t really got us there. The change in fashions from clicky-clacky physical keyboards to on-screen ones was a backwards step in terms of being able to type comfortably at a decent speed in many positions, and reclining or reposing with a phone held up in front of your face when you’re tired enough to feel like kicking back is a great way to drop a phone on your face.

So, I started to wonder what it would take to put together a wearable computer. Not just wearable technology that interacts with computers, but the whole personal computing experience, prete a porter and ready to go.

Surely that’s the sort of thing you’d need some serious engineering chops to… engineer? That’s for the sort of people who go into Maker Spaces and say, “Excuse me, but you got your Arduino in my Raspberry Pi.” The closest thing we’ve ever had to a wearable computer was Google Glass, and they noped out of the consumer market faster than you could say, “You put a camera on what?

Well, it turns out that we live in the future, and with a little creativity and some willingness to go very slightly outside the intended usage of some of the components, you can put together a fully functional, user-ready, internet-capable wearable computer running Windows 10 and basically any kind of office software you might need for about the price of a laptop.

“Which laptop?” you might ask. Well, I mean, that depends a lot on what you need it to do and what trade-offs you’re prepared to make. There’s a lot of flexibility in some parts of this exercise, but I’m going to say you can have a decent work computer for a writer or blogger or office drone for right around $500.

Which is not nothing! I was very lucky that I already had a number of the necessary components on hand from earlier, incremental steps, and I got some help with the rest. I don’t think the expense would be worth it for everyone.

Instead of trying to explain the use cases for it, I think I’m going to just tell you what it lets you do and then figure that will either appeal to people or not: you can have a computer that can run all day with a screen floating in (but not obstructing) your view, that no one else can see, that you can use anywhere regardless of the presence or absence of any particular working surface. It just works. It goes with you and it works.

So how do you assemble a wearable computer for yourself without having to have any special tools or particular technical chops? The same way you put together a desktop one: you take a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse, and some speakers, and you connect them to a computer tower, and then you plug the monitor and tower in and turn them on. Then you just tidy up the cords a little, let Windows set itself up, and start choosing your desktop wallpaper.

It’s really as simple as that.

I’ll tell you how I did it, in case you would like to do the same. Some caveats: what you’ll get will not be a high-end gaming computer but something more comparable to a decent, reliable netbook. A little slow to run webpages with complicated Uis, fine for office functions, reading, playing videos. You’ll have to adjust some of your expectation about things like comfortable text sizes, but the trade-off is the most portable computing experience you’ll ever… experience.

You’ll be able to watch videos in perfect privacy on a crowded bus or plane. You’ll be answering emails and drafting memos in the backseat of a rideshare. You’ll be able to lie on the couch or in bed and stare at the ceiling while you hammer out your next chapter or blog post in perfect comfort.

Your results will vary, but you may even be able to write an essay while pacing around the house or the backyard. The only two things I’ve really asked for in my life is the ability to write using the same tools and medium whether I’m laying down, sitting comfortably, or walking around, and I can do that. Mission accomplished.

What You Need

Here’s what you need. Once you understand what we’re looking for and why, may substitute other components that serve your needs better. Just make sure you understand the power needs of the main components before you start messing with them or with your power source. The items I’m listing here all play well with each other.

1. A Pocket PC, or some other kind of computer on a stick. These are smaller than cell phones, slightly bigger than (but very similar, in principle and operation) to) a smart TV streaming stick, and you can find ones with similar specs for slightly more or slightly less than the one I linked to, which has 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage. You can save some money by going down to 2 GB and/or 32 GB, buuut you’ll be paying more than half price for half the power, and that doesn’t seem like a great trade-off.

Pocket PCs are meant to be portable, not mobile. They’re like the big league version of keeping your work files on a thumb drive, and one step up from having a whole operating system on athumb drive. The idea is you take them somewhere where there is a screen and the necessary peripherals, and plug them in. Our idea is that you take the screen and peripherals with you.

On that note, you’ll need a double-ended HDMI adapter like this one to plug it in to our mobile display, which is…

2. A Vufine+. This is your monitor, and unless you want to spring for more RAM or storage capacity, this is the big ticket item at around $199. You can save $100 by getting the original model Vufine, but that lacks a key feature I think you’re really going to miss: view modes, which lets you adjust zoom by clicking the button on the back of the device. If you’re iffy enough on the Vufine, I’d suggest buying from the website (which touts a 90 day free trial) rather than trying to save money on the cheaper one.

The Vufine has a bit of a learning curve compared to a typical computer monitor, so I’ll be making a blog post with the tips and tricks I’ve picked up. I went from worrying it was an overpriced useless piece of junk on day 1 to finding it super easy and useful about three weeks in.

A possible alternative in the same price range would be this wearable display/VR band from Avegant. It’s got pretty bad reviews as a VR device, but good ones as a personal display. I haven’t been able to try it so I can’t speak to its suitability. I think the pros compared to the Vufine would include less fiddly to position and built-in audio, but more of your vision being obstructed.

I feel like it might be better and easier for some purposes than the Vufine, but worse at others. I’d love to try it but I can’t justify the additional expense when I have a solution that works for me, for most of my use cases. So it’s on my Amazon wishlist for now. I’d be happy to try it out for science.

3. A battery/portable charger that can output enough power to run the Pocket PC. I’ve linked to one that can; just be sure your’e using the USB slot closest to the power input, the one marked with a “Power” symbol. If you skimp on the power supply, your Pocket PC might run erratically and then shut down, or fail to turn on at all. Also make sure the cord you use can handle it! Here’s a pack of cords that have the right end, the right capacity, and are nice and short. I usually like longer cords, but you’re going to be wearing these.

Quick note that unlike an actual mobile device with its own internal battery, you will not see a power remaining display on your wearable computer, so you’ll want to check your battery’s power level indicator from time to time. That’s a little inconvenient, I know, but… I’ve operated my wearable computer from 9:30 in the morning until 1:00 at night and still not run out of power. And by this I mean it was on the whole time. Screen on, Vufine and PC both drawing power from the battery. I’ve never had a laptop or phone that could do that, running off its own power.

4. An input device. Here’s a keyboard/trackpad combo that fits in a lot of pockets and pouches, has some cool backlight features, and is wireless over USB. A neat feature this one has is a scrollwheel, which meeans if you’re reading something you don’t really have to have your eyes or hands on the keyboard properly, just a finger on the wheel.

Normally I prefer Bluetooth but USB will make setup easier, and also this particular keyboard is one of the more ergonomic for use. It’s much lighter than any cellphone but bigger and better spaced than any physical keyboard from the Blackberry era.

If you’ve got something like the Microsoft Universal I mentioned above, then when you do find yourself with a table or desk or counter or tray in front of you, you can plop it down and have a full-sized keyboard. In that event, you can just set your handheld one down next to it and use it as a trackpad.

Sidenote: While I was researching for this, I discovered someone invented a “wearable keyboard and mouse” combo, which is actually a little string of sensors you wear on your fingers. It takes input using a specialized tap code which they claim can be mastered in about an hour and a half. Reviews are mixed. I am intrigued but not willing or in a position to throw money at it to see if it works — I already went out on several limbs getting to this point, and don’t wish to push my luck. So it, too, is wishlisted.

Sidenote to sidenote: If anybody sends me either of the wishlisted items, I will provide a thorough review after testing them.

5. Unless you go with a different HDMI display that includes sound, you will need some kind of audio output. The open-ear bone conduction headphones I mentioned above pair well with the Vufine along the theme of being private while not obstructing your senses, but I prefer to keep those paired with my phone. You can use any Bluetooth earbuds or headphones. I’m not an audiophile, so I can’t make a lot of serious recommendations here. Honestly, this is the one thing on the list you’re most likely to have something suitable on hand.

If you get the specific items I’ve mentioned for 1 to 4 — the Pocket PC, the Vufine+, the charger, and the handheld keyboard/trackpad — you’ve got like $40 left for earphones in order to come in at $500. If you do spring for the open ear ones, it’s more like $600, but you’re upping the cool factor.

Putting It All Together

Depending on what you have on hand, you might spend a little more getting your components safely wearable. Because once you have all of this stuff, it’s time to put it together. The goal is for it to fit safely and comfortable on your body, so parts of this are going to be subjective. Here’s how I do it: I have a cross-body bag that Is small but big enough to hold all this hardware in one little carefully wrapped package.

I wear it with the shoulder strap cinched up fairly high, so that if the battery pack is standing up in the bigger pocket, the power cord from the Vufine can run down to the second slot and have just enough slack to not restrict my movements, not enough slack that it will snag on things. The Vufine touts a 90 minute battey life, which is enough time to crash four or five drones but not nearly long enough if your goal is to have a ubiquitous computer environment.

So, the Vufine’s default configuration is that you take a little band that comes with it and strap it to the arm of your glasses, like you’re some kind of optometrical ornithologist tracking its migration. The Vufine unit has a little round magnetic peg that fits into a round metal divot on the side, and then you can pivot it up and down. The key is you want the screen really close to the lens of your glasses. Once it’s turned on, you can start fine-tuning the placement. The “neck” has got a horizontal adjustment that slides in and out, and you can swivel it up and down.

Now, despite its name, the Pocket PC should not be run inside a pocket. Again, it’s meant to be portable, not mobile. So you want to attach the included loop/strap to the Pocket PC and then hang it off the bag using any kind of secure clip or carabiner. Make sure it’s positioned so that you won’t be running it into door frames or crushing it against arm rests when you sit down – I hang mine towards the front of the bag. I’m also looking at some self-adhesive clip attachments that might let me hook it onto a belt or strap, or the outside of a pocket. As long as the vents are facing outwards, it’s good.

If you’re using the wireless USB keyboard, it’s got a receiver inside the back compartment. Put that in one of your USB slots, and then connect the Pocket PC’s HDMI plug to the Vufine using the Vufine’s cord and the double-ended adapter. Now, this is a pretty long cord, and you’re going to have to deal with that. You can wrap up the excess with a twist tie, you can braid it maypole-style around the strap of your bag. My solution for now is to run the cord under my top and out at my neck – since it hangs down off the bottom of the PC, this works really well. The strap of the bag on top of my shirt helps keep the cord in place once I’ve got it how I want it, which is with enough slack at the bottom and the top that normal movement of the bag/computer and my head doesn’t yank on it.

Once you’ve got everything in place, connect your power supply to the PC and turn it on. If everything worked, a blue light should light up and the fan should come on. It can sound loud in a very quiet room, but any background noise tends to swallow it up. The Vufine turns on with a button at the back of its “stem”.

Turn on your keyboard/mouse combo and you’re ready to go. You might want to adjust some settings in Windows and the apps you use because you’re looking at a very different scale of screen than you’re used to. I’ll have some specific advice in a future blog post. Step one here is just getting a wearable computer together. Actually doing stuff with it is a broader topic.

One thing that will make your life easier while you’re figuring that stuff out and learning how to optimally position the Vufine is understanding its view modes. Each press of the power button cycles through them:

1. The very pretty natural resolution mode, which letterboxes your computer’s display at its normal resolution. Great for watching movies, looking at pictures, etc. Basically, anything visual. Depending on your eyesight and visual preferences, this may be the only view mode you need to use. But while you’re learning how to use the device, it can be hard to position things so you can see the whole screen in this mode.

2. A zoom mode which zooms In on the center of the screen until it reaches the point where the letterboxing is pushed off the screen. In landscape mode, this means the center of the screen is as big as it can get without cutting anything off at the top or bottom. You can’t see the sides of the screen, but this can be really useful for reading some websites.

3. A stretch to fit mode which shows the whole screen, but fills the viewport without cutting anything off. So pictures and videos get slightly squished/stretched, but this is the mode where the screen and any writing on it are easiest to see. I use it for reading and writing most of the time.

I’m going to save the rest of the finer points for later blog posts addressing specific topics. This is just about getting you there. If this catches on and other people do this, I’m sure we’ll all come up with interesting new tricks to get the most out of it.

Travelin’

So, a couple of quick notes.

I am back in Florida. I have with me a proof copy of First Dates, Last Calls, which I am proofreading to try to catch any mistakes or terminally rough spots before I call it final. Some of the stories in it are years old and have gone through multiple rounds of editing before this book was even conceived, but some of them were just written in 2018. Two of them have never seen the light of day before, so I’m making sure they get a little extra scrutiny.

If you’re with me on the social mediums, you might have seen me talking about or wearing a device on my glasses called a Vufine. This is a wearable heads-up display that I invested in when I found it likely I was going to be traveling a lot in the coming months, under the theory that if I could get my working environment as small and portable as possible I could do so with less disruption, and maybe get more writing rather than less done.

I had a side goal of making my actual laptop computer less essential to my operations, so that I don’t have to take it with me every time I go anywhere. There are still some things (such as laying out books) I would not care to do without it, but I think I have figured out how to make the VuFine work as a display for basically everything else I do. It’s not a wearable computer all by itself (it’s a wearable monitor) but if you have something like a Pi or a PC stick or a powerful enough smartphone, it’s pretty easy to rig one up.

I made a Twitter thread about this remarkable device and some caveats/tips for using it effectively, shortly after I got it. Now that I’ve been using it more (and in particular, now that I’ve been through a trip to the airport and plane ride with it), I am thinking making a blog post elaborating on that, because honestly the difference in user experience between before I knew what I was doing with it and after is night and day. I definitely understand some of the negative user reviews, there is a considerable learning curve with it.

But as I type this, I’m comfortably on my side on a couch. I started writing it at a table and I kept writing it on my way over to the living room. It’s really pretty amazing

Anyway. One thing about the travel is that no matter how portable I can make my portable office, it’s never going to be completely seamless to pick up my work and routine and move it from one place to another. So, I’m kind of reinventing some of my approaches to things, and I’ll be talking about that more in the coming days and weeks. The short version is you’re going to be seeing more longform communication from me and fewer Twitter threads.

Which is likely to slow my audience growth, nothing beats Twitter for engagement and visibility, but it will have its upsides in terms of space to develop my ideas.

“What Is Dungeons & Dragons?”

Sometimes you ask someone if they would like to play D&D with you and their response goes along the lines of, “That sounds really cool, I’ve always wanted to play D&D, it seems neat. I just have one question:

What is D&D?”

And honestly, that’s a good question.

This blog post is my attempt to answer it, for anyone else who has been wondering but felt that asking would make them look silly.

Let me start with a little background on why I don’t find this kind of question foolish at all.

See, for as long as I knew it existed, I thought Dungeons & Dragons was the coolest thing in the world.

It would be years after that before I learned what Dungeons & Dragons actually was, though, because in addition to everything else it is…

Dungeons & Dragons Is A Multimedia Empire

You see, I was born in the 80s, which was the first heyday of D&D in pop culture. The first time you could get D&D merchandise in big box stores. The first time you could see it advertised on TV. It popped up in movies like ET. It was a Saturday morning cartoon.

The cartoon was my first real exposure. Most cartoons were based on something, and in the days when narrative arcs in children’s programming were rare and all the money was assumed to be in syndication, most cartoons had an en media res approach where you’d just sort of come in halfway through the picture and no one would explain what was going on.

So when the first episode of the cartoon aired with an opening sequence that starts with a bunch of kids at a fair noticing a roller coaster and going, “Hey, a Dungeons & Dragons world!” and winding up in something called “the world of Dungeons & Dragons”, I just kind of went with it. This was how cartoons were. 

I was a little confused with how few of the toys on the store shelves seemed to have much to do with the cartoon beyond a basic theme, but, eh. Childhood is a confusing time. 

As I got older, I discovered tie-in novels and comic books which, again, had very little to do with the cartoon and often not much to do with each other. Elves and orcs and dwarves and, yes, dragons showed up again and again. But they all featured different characters and were even in some cases clearly set in different worlds.

And that, in a nutshell, is what Dungeons & Dragons is really about: unique characters, unique worlds, unique adventurers.

But I didn’t know that. I just knew that there was cartoon that was both like all the other ones but also like nothing else I’d ever seen, and it was connected somehow to all these other things. 

When I started reading the novels and comics, I would see adds in the comics for gaming supplements that tied into the novels, that talked about going on adventures and fighting alongside the heroes from the novels.

What were they, board games? Video games? I wasn’t sure, but I wanted to know, and so I went and I found out that…

Dungeons & Dragons Is A Roleplaying Game

The best way I can describe a roleplaying game is a game of make-believe that does not immediately end in an argument the first time there’s a question of who shot first or who hit whom or who missed or if the target had their forcefield dog or if the shooter brought their attack dinosaur who eats forcefield dogs.

A roleplaying game is a game of make-believe with rules and structure to it. It’s a game of shared storytelling where everybody agrees on a basic framework for what is possible and what is likely, and one person is given responsibility for figuring out the gray areas and deciding what happens next.

When you play a game like Dungeons & Dragons, you create a character through a process that will likely be at least vaguely familiar to anyone who has played enough computer games over the years – because the computer games cribbed their concept of character creation (along with a lot of other things) from Dungeons & Dragons and its descendants.

In D&D, you define your character by choosing a race in the sense of being Human or Elf or Dwarf or some other fantastical folk, and a character class that broadly describes your special abilities and role as an adventurer: Fighter, Wizard, Ranger, and so on. 

You define your character’s basic abilities in six areas: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma. Your class and background help you determine what special adventuring skills you’re trained in, such as Stealth or Acrobatics. 

Your class gives you special abilities that defy these kinds of broad categorization. Anyone might know Stealth or Sleight of Hand, but a Rogue has special features that lets you use these skills in ways that other characters can’t.

So you create a character according to a set of step-by-step instructions in the Player’s Handbook (the rulebook for D&D) and then you have a character sheet, a paper or electronic form that records all the vital statistics of your character that impact the game. This is a picture of your character at the start of their career as a heroic adventurer. You might be a High Elf Wizard or a Hill Dwarf Cleric. You might be a Dragonborn Paladin, or a Tiefling Rogue.

Once you’ve created your character — often with guidance from the person running the game, who will usually know the rules at least a little bit — the game properly begins with an adventure.

Dungeons & Dragons Is A Social Experience.

You can play D&D with as few as two people — one person to run the game and one person to have an adventure — and in a pinch there are some variants you can play solo, but it’s intended to be a group experience, with each player creating one character as part of an ensemble for the story and serving a different role in terms of the game. 

Some characters are tougher and stronger and fight on the front lines, putting themselves between danger and their allies. The world of online gaming calls this role the “tank”. Tabletop gaming often goes with the more prosaic “meatshield”.

Some characters are skilled specialists, the kind of role that Thorin Oakenshield described to Bilbo Baggins as “expert treasure hunter”. They deal with tricks and traps that crop up along the way, look for creative solutions to problems, and often have ways of tying opponents up in combat or striking precise and deadly blows while the meatshields keep the attention on themselves.

Then there are support characters, who heal and inspire and help the whole party cohere and be greater than the sum of their parts.

Some character classes are strongly predisposed towards one role or another. Others are more flexible. The ultimate point, though, is that with a group of 3 to 6 people, you can have more fun because each character can both do their own things and find things to do that complement each other.

And of course, there’s a lot of fun to be had just sitting around a table (or in a chat server) with friends, playing a game and imagining epic adventures. 

Dungeons & Dragons Is A Storytelling Medium

When you play a roleplaying game, you’re helping to tell a story. The game runner — Dungeon Master, in D&D’s trademark parlance — serves as a narrator who sets the scene and describes how the story unfolds, but everybody playing is also advancing the story through their decisions. 

The basic rhythm of the game is back and forth: the Dungeon Master narrates an opening and describes where the characters are, what they notice about the world around them, and asks what they are doing.

The players describe what their characters do in response to the scene, and the Dungeon Master decides (sometimes by consulting rules or dice) how that goes, and what happens as a result.

Whatever the players did probably wrought some change in the situation, so now it’s back to them to respond to that.

And so it goes, back and forth, until the story reaches a stopping point or the players do. There’s a lot of “to be continued” in gaming, especially as groups get older.

After each session, whether your character won the day or retreated or lost and even died, you’ll have a story to tell about it, one that hopefully binds you closer to the people who were there for it and helps you connect to a wider community of players beyond it.

And if you keep playing over a long period of time (which is often called a campaign), your character will grow and change to something far beyond the original concept you had when you rolled a Level 1 Half-Elf Bard. You might conquer lands or free them. You might restore the power of a lost god, or destroy them, or ascend to the heavens yourself. Long-running campaigns can change the face of the worlds they take place in, becoming the same kinds of epic stories that inspired people to start playing in the first place.

You can lose battles and you can win wars, but there’s no winning or losing the game of Dungeons & Dragons. Not even if your character dies. Because in the first place, you aren’t knocked out of the game — you can make another character. In the second place, it’s fantasy. Magic can heal even fatal injuries, if you can amass the right power and resources. And sometimes people’s best stories are how their character went out in a blaze of glory.

Dungeons & Dragons Is Fun

That’s it. Even with rules, the point of the game is to have fun. The rules are there to facilitate the fun by cutting down on the arguments and second-guessing and give you a framework whereby you can, once you’ve got your character’s features down, just confidently announce “I throw a fireball at his face.” instead of having to inquire, “So, can I throw a fireball at his face? Is that a thing I can do?”

Even the official rulemasters at Wizards of the Coast will tell you there is no wrong way to play and that if a group at a table agrees it’s more fun when they don’t sweat the small stuff or change an official rule completely, then go for it. 

Because it’s a game. It’s supposed to be fun.

And while it can be more fun when you have a strong handle on what your character can do, it’s 100% possible to play without any prior knowledge of the actual rules. It’s not a competitive game and it’s not a guessing game – most new groups have some element of learning as they go, and as long as you don’t mind asking.

Back From There Again

Well, I’m back in… dang, even years after I moved to Maryland full-time and after my parents relocated to Florida, my urge is still to write “back in Nebraska” in these blog posts. Some of my plans for my Florida foray didn’t work out so well. I was planning on blogging, but I wound up getting sidetracked on that. I was planning on doing some virtual poetry readings and other video streams, but it turned out that there wasn’t any acoustically suitable spots in the house. The place I had picked out from previous visits as being farthest away from the noisy spots? There’s an AC unit right outside it.

But, it was still a good trip! I made less progress on those particular fronts but wound up getting way further ahead on other things. I’m going to have my proof copy of First Dates, Last Calls sometime this week, which is well ahead of schedule, and means that I might actually be reading from the physical book at my reading at the Flying Camel on Saturday, depending upon exactly how timely is arrival is. 

I’ve also had some good luck in changing my habits lately, and building better ones, which I think is going to help me reach goals for things like writing, blogging, etc., as I apply them more broadly.

My big insight here is that if you think of life as a game, you have to remember that it’s often easier to alter your equipment than it is to upgrade your skills. A habit, a true habit, takes time and repetition (grinding for experience points) to develop. But if you can change something in your environment, you can make it automatic, or nearly so.

I’ve tried to cut down on caffeine and alcohol in the past. I’ve tried to drink more water. None of this attempts really took. Then I started carrying around a reusable water bottle. It got me drinking water all the time (because it’s right there), and any time I’m drinking water, I’m not drinking anything else. And let me tell you, I don’t want to be one of those boring people who tells you that drinking water will cure your depression’s cancer or whatever, but the more water I drink, the less caffeine and alcohol I find that I need.

I’m sipping a Dr. Pepper spiked with Fireball as I write this, but, you know, I woke up at 7:30 and didn’t need caffeine to get going, or booze to keep going. I just like i.

Anyway. Along those lines, what I aim to do in order to get my blogging habit back on track is just opening up a blank blog entry when I go to bed, so it’s there when I open my computer in the morning. We’ll see how that works. It’s not quite the slam dunk of a physical hack, because it requires me to cultivate a habit (open a tab before going to bed) and there will be times when I need to do something else first or I don’t have anything to say when I wake up. But it’s a start.

Seasons in the sun

So, if you follow me on Twitter you might have noticed I’m in Florida. If you’ve followed me for long enough you know this means I’m engaged with my family. In the current climate, I like to employ a certain amount of obfuscation about my movement which is why I was a little bit oblique about the fact that I was getting ready to travel and why I’m not going to have a lot of details here. 

I will say that I’m going to be down here for a while. The first little stretch is a bit like a chill vacation – each day we’re going to a different art museum or similar attraction. After that, it’s going to be a working trip – helping out around the house while also working on my writing (I’ve got a book to put to bed!) and my political commentary. It’s hard to guess how much time and energy I’ll have, though. Some of these visits have been among my most productive creative intervals. Others have been less so. There’s really no way to know beforehand. I mean, that’s true no matter where I am in the country. It’s not something particular to here.

Anyway, I’m trying a few things different this time around that might help me have a better time managing my spoons. I’ve been hydrating like never before for most of March and I’ve stepped it up since I’ve been here. I’ve got a weighted blanket to help me sleep, which has worked to the point that I slept through at least one minute of my alarm – don’t know if I would have woken up at all but it did wake Jack up, and he woke me up. 

I am such a light sleeper that I have slept through an alarm only once before in my adult life, and that was a time I was physically exhausted.

I have a weighted blanket at home but dang, the availability and quality have seriously improved from the time I got it. I might be looking to upgrade/replace by the time this kind of weather gets to Maryland. When the weather is chilly, I just sleep with a ton of blankets… but Florida-weight blankets aren’t that heavy, you know?

So, yeah. Extra hydration, less caffeine and alcohol (which wasn’t a conscious choice, just a side effect of drinking water all the dang time), and better sleep. This could be a really productive trip. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

But right now is for family time, so for now, I’m just stealing a few moments here and there to do my thing when everybody else is sleeping and I’m not, or we’re all just doing our own things. One thing I’m going to focus on once most of the family has departed and I’m settling in to work is keeping up this blogging thing. I am already doing it more than I was. I’d like to be doing it more than I am.

I’ll keep you posted.