Tag Archives: India

What India, Burning Man and TC Boyle Have in Common

You may have noticed it’s been a few months since my last post. Likely you didn’t, but I still feel I owe you an explanation. What follows are not excuses, merely facts. I never promised to post often, my only commitment is to making what I do share original and worth reading. But in case you are curious, here’s what’s been going on.

In August, I went to Burning Man

Only one post on the blog, but I did create a huge album and playlist as a gift to my burner friends. If you look closely, the link to it is hidden on this site. So I was writing a ton, but not so much blogging. It’s cliche to say so, but Burning Man was nothing short of awesome—in the traditional sense of the word: fearsome and awe-inspiring. Here’s a few photos from my trip.

In October I Went to India

I have three locations on my bucket list: India, Burning Man, and Barcelona. In 2014 I ticked two of these off the list and this summer I go to Spain. Don’t worry, this isn’t a made-for-TV-movie about a terminal patient looking to seize the day. The opportunities just presented themselves all at the same time, and I was in the lucky position in life to take them. Still, I know with this kind of luck I have to be on the lookout for falling anvils and black cats.

I did actually write a long post about India, but I’m still sitting on it. It’s controversial and I want to be sure I have my thoughts in order.

Here’s a tiny selection of the photos I took in India (really tiny, all of these are just from one day). If a web log is a journal, I know I should have written a post for each day of my journey. But I already put a lot of time into sharing all those photos with my Facebook friends, and really, do strangers on the Internet want to see my photos of India? I’m not sure if you do. Here’s that sample anyway.

In January I Got an Awesome Gig

After going home to visit my family (and surviving with zero drama! Amazeballs!) I was offered a writing gig for a kickass site. I’ve been doing copywriting for years here and there, but this was the first time I needed to write several posts a week. And I’m not just writing about lame stuff, but my favorite things ever: books and music.

At the end of the day, I often feel my writing urge satiated by my nifty job. Not only do I enjoy the content, I’m proud of my work there.

To get a taste of what I’ve been up to writing for my new client, here’s a recent interview I did for the site with PEN/Faulkner award-winner TC Boyle.

What’s Next?

As you can see, everything is just grand over here. No complaints and no apologies. But there are some other issues that have made me hesitate to type at’cha. I put a lot of work into setting up separate Tumblr blogs based on the themes I write about, but my love affair with Tumblr has gone sour. The culture of the site has become, at its worst, vindictive and mean. At its best, it is often shallow. But the real gripe I have with Tumblr is that when I share photos with my tablet or phone, they always come out pixelated, and my emails to support on this issue have never received replies.

Meanwhile, the music site I adore, wherein I have more than 42,000 followers, also stopped offering support. Most likely because of conflict with the recording industry, they killed all their uploads and now they only play YouTube videos. It’s not what it once was, and I’ve yet to find a suitable replacement.

You may think, what does Tumblr and some music site have to do with this non-Tumblr,  non Blip.fm blog? Well Tumblr was motivating me to share my adventures in San Francisco. Blip.fm was motivating me to share great music. Both of these things would froth over the short form and, to continue the metaphor into cliche, the cream would rise to the top as blog posts.

Now I’m not sure how to proceed. Should I give up my Tumblr blogs, and just post everything here? If I do, there will be a lot more short content, like single songs and videos without so much explanation. But I’m not sure if I want that. I like that any post you click on here will have plenty of original content, and hopefully some new ideas too.

I’m still pondering these ideas. Maybe I need a rebranding. Maybe I just need a little encouragement. Maybe I will post here less often as people are kind enough to pay me to post elsewhere. But like I said, no apologies. This blog may be sparse lately, but not my life. My life is amazing.