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.