Day: July 9, 2009

It has been at least a year since I first became aware of Lolcats. When I first encountered the pictures of cats with misspelled captions I didn’t think they were at all funny. But over repeat exposures I learned the dialect of the humor and now I appreciate them. By “dialect of the humor” I don’t just mean that I gained the ability to decipher the misspellings, but I also learned how the misspellings and the pictures and general knowledge of cats work together to make an individual Lolcat funny (or not funny. Many of them are still meh.) One particular lolcat meme has been very useful to me as a means of expressing my own experiences. It is the “I haz a” meme. The final word may be sad, or happy, or warm. The usual way to express that idea would be to say “I am sad, happy, warm.” Except the phrase “I am sad” implies that at this point in time sadness is my defining characteristic, which may not be true. If I am not completely sad, I have to say “I am a little bit sad” or “part of me is sad.” These statements are longer to say than “I haz a sad.” Taking out the grammar and spelling errors, “I have a sad” implies that I own this small sadness which is separate from myself, but which affects me. This is a very useful way for me to picture emotions which are a piece of my current experience, but which do not dominate it.

All of that is just an introduction so that I can say “I have a scared.” Yesterday we received 5000 books. So far only about 500 of them are sold. I’m getting ready to ship 1000 of them to a major convention. The sales at that convention will be the difference between an extremely tight budget with a stressed scramble to create the next book, or a more relaxed budget and steady work on the next book. I have been scrambling for months just to keep up with my life. I really want option two, the one with relaxing in it. I want like I want air. But it is all out of my hands. I can spend the time/effort/money to get the books to the convention, what happens after that I can not control. All the logic and calculations say that we will be fine, but I have to acknowledge the fear, stare it in the face, own it, then set it in the back of my brain where it will not interfere with the things I must do.