Allowing Children to Venture Forth

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I remember the day when Kiki came home from kindergarten with the phone number of a friend I’d never met. She was so excited, she and NewFriend had big plans to go play at NewFriend’s house. I stared at that phone number and confronted the fact that, at some point, I had to let my child go out into the world among people I did not know. Sure I could say no in Kindergarten. I could probably say it through most of grade school, but eventually my child would defy me and go anyway. Also, she would enter her teen and adult years completely unprepared to discern which people were trustworthy and which she should avoid. I took a deep breath and we called NewFriend’s phone number. I went with her to NewFriend’s house. I met NewFriend’s parents. I looked around at their front room and yard, and I made a judgement call. Kiki got to stay and play with her friend. That Kindergarten friend was one of her best friends for the next five years. NewFriend’s mother is one of my friends to this day. I am very glad that I was willing to step into a new and scary world.

I approach my kid’s online lives the same way. Any time there is an online place that they want to go and play, I take a look. I evaluate. I express caution, but most of the time I let them play. Kiki found an online home at DeviantArt. Link is part of an online game community. Gleek and Patch are spending lots of time playing with others on game servers. They play and they know that I will wander by and look at what is on the screen. If I see anything of concern, I’ll point it out and talk it over. Or I’ll revoke computer privileges until we’ve had a thorough discussion and agreement about whatever it was. Gleek in particular has grown quite savvy. She has a particular server where she has played a lot. She’s been granted moderator powers there by the guy who owns the server. This responsibility is quite important to her. She makes sure that unpleasant people are bounced and that newbies are helped. In that online place, Gleek has respect and a job to do. I can see her growing from them. I listen to her talk about the adventures there and I realize that she is learning to be safer online through her interactions. Being online has been good for my kids and I’m carefully monitoring them and teaching them, just as I once taught them how to cross a parking lot safely.

The thing we’re working on most right now is life balance. The online games are very compelling and my kids would be happy to play them all day. I am the one who has to tap them on the shoulder and say “go do something else now.” This is important for several reasons. My kids need to have connections with friends that they can see in person. If they spend all their time online, the in-person friendships suffer. People who don’t have in-person friendships are more vulnerable online because the online interactions have a greater importance in their lives. The kids also benefit from fresh air, sunshine, and exercise, just like any other human being. It is also really important for my kids to have time to be bored. Boredom is where creativity comes from. Boredom drives people to learn new skills just to find something to do. I make sure that the kids spend time away from screens so that they remember that they love drawing, crafts, riding bikes, and a host of other activities.

Unfortunately I’ve never been good at enforcing time limits on kids computer time. When they’re on the computer the house is quiet, and quiet house is very helpful when I’m trying to accomplish a million projects. Fortunately someone pointed out to me that the parental settings let me set hours when my kids are allowed to log on. When they hit the time limit, they’re automatically logged off. No intervention from me necessary. Shortly after I implemented this setting, a magical thing happened. The kids started watching the clock so they could save and quit before the automatic log off. This feature only lets me block off hours. I wish there were a setting that would say “this account only gets two hours of logged in time today.” But I’ll take what I can get.

The online world is still scary. I’m constantly adjusting how we approach it, and my kids can tell you that my first reaction to any new online thing is to tell them no until I’ve had a chance to think it through from all angles. Then, because I’m busy, I often never get around to looking at things until they’ve pestered me for weeks. I tell myself that I’m measuring the importance of the new thing by waiting to see if it is important enough that they keep asking. Right now I think we’ve found a reasonable balance, though I still need to nudge it toward more offline time. In a few months the kids will change and there will be new internet things and I’ll have to figure it out all over again.

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Interviews with James Yee and Jim C. Hines

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My head is full of thoughts about warehouses, the joys of setting up shop in a commercial building, calendar design, monitoring kids’ online socializing, and whether I’m helping too much with homework. I intend to shape some of those thoughts into words later today. For now I give you two interviews.

Doing interviews is really interesting because the shapes of the questions give me a peek into other creators and their audiences. Yes interviewers are creators. It takes skill to craft a good interview. James Yee’s interviews speak to people who are really invested in Kickstarter and want to know details about how to use it as a tool to create things. His questions reflect that, and I had fun exploring that aspect of the project.

You can read my interview with James Yee over on Kickstarter Conversations.

Jim Hines has been a friend of mine for quite a while now. His blog writing won him a Hugo award for best fan writer. Jim often addresses issues of personal safety, equality, and acceptance, particularly as expressed in the Geek community. But usually when Jim and I are together we talk about parenting because we have kids with similar sorts of challenges. This interview was a lot like sitting down and chatting with my friend Jim, which made it lots of fun. I don’t get to visit with Jim nearly often enough.

You can find Jim Hines’ post over on the Jim C. Hines Blog. While you’re there, you might want to take a glance around. Jim talks about lots of important and interesting things.

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Strength of Wild Horses Kickstarter is Live

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This morning I pushed the launch button on the Strength of Wild Horses Kickstarter. You can see the project page by clicking on the link. I recommend doing that since the page has pretty pictures. You can also watch the video that I posted about last week. I hope that after you’re done marveling at how uncomfortable I am in front of a camera, you’ll consider kicking in some money to support the project. I love this book and really want to see it made real. If you don’t have a child in your life who needs a book, then perhaps you’ll pass the word along to people who do. Every bit helps, and in fact the most help is when a person, who is not the creator, says “Hey this book is worth looking at.”

This has been a fantastic day. Lots of people have helped spread the word on social media. Friends have been kind and helpful. I’ve got lots of fun interviews and guest posts lined up for the next week. They were really fun to write, having people read them will be fun too. As of this writing the project is 13% funded with 29 days to go. It is a strong start and I’m excited to see how things continue.

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Life Shift: Moving Into the Warehouse

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The night before the move I lay awake in bed cataloging the things I should have done to get ready, but didn’t. It was Schlock Warehouse moving day and I was not prepared. I know how to ship. I know how to run a shipping event. I know how to manage having inventory in storage units and the work station in my basement. But beyond broad strokes of knowing that I needed a truck and people, I didn’t really know how to proceed with moving. The truck was a source of stress, I’d never driven one before and the thought made me nervous. Once I survived driving the truck,I was going to have to provide instructions to a moving crew when I didn’t know the most efficient ways to work. I worried about these things the night before, or at least part of me did. The larger part was calm, because one thing that many shipping parties has taught me is that the Schlock volunteers are smart, helpful, and innovative. They solve problems when my brain is too tired to figure it out. This move was no exception.

These were the two storage units. They were thirty feet deep and each of those cardboard boxes represents 40lbs. We haven’t done the exact math because there are a lot of boxes and we were all pretty tired by the end, but our ballpark guess is that we schlepped 8-10 tons of things. Those are literal tons, meaning 16,000-20,000 pounds of stuff. On the first load we had to pull some boxes back off of the truck because it was riding too low. I wish we’d gotten a picture of that. Not a good thing when the wheel well is touching the top of the wheel.

This is the space we had to move into.

I measured it. It is larger than the combined space in both our storage units. The office space is larger than my office and shipping room in my basement. Yet at 1am the night before I was convinced that it was not all going to fit. That fear lingered through the day, mostly because all day long I had to make decisions about where things would be put. The decisions felt crucial and irrevocable because we were so tired that I could not picture rearranging things later. I felt like I had to get it right, which I didn’t really. I just had to get all the things into one place so that I could begin to see how it all works. This is one of the reason I’m so very grateful for the helpers we had. They were my auxiliary brains and thus able to tell me everything was just fine.

The first merchandise moved into the warehouse prior to moving day, thus demonstrating that we are able to receive deliveries.

This same truck driver has delivered to our house on more than one occasion. He was pleased to see our new facility and admired our giant roll up door.
I love the great big door. We could back the truck all the way inside.

The other reason I need helpers for these big Schlock events is because they make me laugh. We loaded the truck with the musical theme from Tetris playing on some speakers while making jokes about things fitting. Later there was the Angry Birds theme with matching jokes. My helpers are always glad to come and I always owe them far more than I ever feel able to pay back. They come, and because of them I can do work that I would never be able to accomplish by myself. They make what we do possible and they keep me sane when my brain wants to tell me that I’m ruining everything.

We emptied the storage units. There is left over garbage in them that I need to clean out.

Then I’ll need to sweep and go inform the office that they’re available again. It feels strange to see them empty like that. This morning I saw the matching padlocks sitting on my kitchen counter and I had a moment of panic “Oh no, I forgot to lock up the storage units!” But then realized that I would never lock up those units again. We’re done with that part and moved on to the next.

Even more strange was walking into my downstairs shipping room which is now half empty. We ran out of time with the truck before we completely cleared the shipping room. Which was fine, we were out of energy too. What is left are odds and ends that I can move at my leisure. Except it won’t be at my leisure, because I had a moment of panic standing in that half empty room.

I went to Howard and cried “I broke it. I broke the system I’ve used for shipping for the last seven years and I’m terrified that this will destroy everything.” Of course it won’t. The new set up will, obviously, create new problems especially at first, but it will be better in a hundred ways. The biggest is one that became clear after Howard commented.
“At least now the light will be off in that room. You always left the light on in your shipping room. I never understood that.”

It took a few moments of thought for me to figure out why I did that. On the occasions where I walked out of the room knowing I wouldn’t be back for awhile, I turned off the light. That was rare. Usually I stepped out for a moment, or got called away, or paused what I was doing and intended to come back. The light stayed on because I was always about to ship, in the middle of shipping, or not quite done shipping. That was the problem. I was never done and the shipping/convention prep work spilled all over the living spaces. It won’t be able to do that anymore. I’ll have to decide to go work and decide to lock up to come home. This is good. I am looking forward to it. However, it represents a fundamental shift in my life and a part of me is terrified that I’ve broken everything and we’re all doomed as a result. That part of my brain wanted me to jump in the car and drive to go check on the warehouse at 10pm last night. Just to make sure everything was okay.

Everything is fine.
All the merchandise fits.
I didn’t crash the truck.
The helpers were amazing.
And I’m not nearly as sore as I expected to be today.

That last part is good because I’ve really only begun working. There is still stuff to move out of my house and there is lots to organize over at the warehouse. Some of the organization need to happen pretty quickly because there are packages to mail.

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Projects in Process

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The trouble with a recorded interview is that I then have hours and weeks to think up better answers than the ones I gave. I do the same thing after conventions, important conversations, or presentations. This is one of the reasons I like writing, I can revise and tweak my words until I’m certain I have them correct. The podcast interview was one of several I worked on today in preparation for launching my Kickstarter next week. This weekend I’ll be writing up some guest posts as well. I’m finding this process fascinating as I talk about different aspects of the Strength of Wild Horses project and about how I’m running my Kickstarter.

But I can’t just focus on that, because tomorrow is the day we move into the warehouse. There are organizational things I was supposed to be doing at a steady pace over the past couple of days. Instead I’ll be doing them tonight if I can develop some forward momentum. It is a real challenge because Friday night is generally work-resistant. The good news is that after tomorrow the heavy lifting will be done (literally) for the warehouse project and I can start focusing on the next thing.

The next thing will be the launch of the Kickstarter and opening pre-orders for the 2014 calendar. Both of those will hit next week. Further out we’ve got the shipping of all the calendars and the final push to get LOTA ready for print. On the family front we’ll be prepping a space for Kiki to inhabit when she comes home for the holidays. I’m not going to run out of projects any time soon, which is fine. I like having projects.

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Halloween Costumes

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When I was little, Halloween was magical. Around the time my age hit double digits it started to be…complicated. I believe this is a common experience as children begin to be self conscious. In my case I was frustrated because no one ever knew what my costumes were, and I found them hard to explain. This is because I never chose to be a commonly known character. Instead I would create a character based on half a dozen worlds that I’d read and synthesized. Why could no one see that my long blue dress and cloak obviously meant that I was an empath who rode a winged horse? They would ask “what are you?” in a confused tone of voice and I wouldn’t know how to summarize, but I knew they didn’t want to hear the whole back story. When I was a kid among other kids, they understood that costumes had stories. But by junior high, they stood there in a yellow crayon outfit and stared at me like I was the weirdo. That was a difficult year and it put me off costumes for the rest of junior high.

Halloween became a big deal again after I met Howard and got married. It started small with just some stage make-up. But the seeds of the next year’s costume were planted until the pinnacle years when we had a group of six people and our toddler all dressed up like post-apocalyptic cyborg survivors. And then like medieval warriors with a preschool dragon and a baby dragon. We got professional photographs that year and had a great time. Then our Halloween loving friends moved away and somehow our Halloween efforts dwindled. The creative energy that we used to spend on costumes got spent on other things instead. I’m not going to complain because I like Schlock and I’m not sure it would have begun if we’d had a full-blown costuming hobby in place.

Today I went to our church Halloween carnival and for the I-don’t-know-how-many-th year in a row, I was boring. I didn’t wear a costume at all. I think I started being Halloween boring when Gleek was a toddler. I had three kids and it was challenging enough to keep track of them without adding complicated clothing. I always ended up toting their discarded props and trying to juggle all of their things plus a heavy cloak or a long dress stopped being any kind of fun at all. I used to make jokes about being dressed up as the storage closet because of all the things I ended up carrying around. Not only that, but there was never time to think up something to wear when I was so completely occupied with supplying four outfits to the exacting specifications of my children. I still enjoyed Halloween, but from a spectator role.

A few weeks ago I ready this Hyperbole and Half piece about a dinosaur costume. Not only was it really funny, but it made me think about identity. I have come full circle to a place where I am again friends with people who love costuming. I admire their brilliance at conventions and yet have never planned to don a costume “That’s not me” I thought. “I’m not a costume person. I am a writer person.” Yet I used to be a costume person. I used to be willing to put on a different identity for the span of a day just so that I could play. True, I was always a little awkward with it, unwilling to fully own an outfit, but at least I put the outfit on. The tale of a little girl and her dinosaur costume made me re-consider the power of costume and how being something else for a while might teach me something about who I am when I’m wearing my regular clothes.

Also, I’m tired of feeling boring on Halloween. I can’t guarantee I’ll follow through on anything. My life is full of projects and any costuming project is pretty far down the list, but when Howard dons his steampunk clothes I’d kind of like to have an outfit that matches. Perhaps this next year I’ll learn how to play dress up again. And maybe I’ll learn a better answer to the question “who are you?” or perhaps I’ll be the beneficiary of a world that is more open to adults in creative costumes.

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The Jay Wake Book is Complete

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Those who want their own copy of the Jay Wake Book may get one in either pdf or print format. For PDF I recommend downloading the low resolution version first. It is much smaller and will allow you to see all the pictures and read the words. The high resolution is sharp enough for print, but much larger in size. If you prefer your books on paper, that print link will take you to the print-on-demand site Lulu. You’ll pay $28.22 plus shipping. All of that price is the cost of full color printing. No funds go anywhere else.

It was an honor to work on this project. I’ve loved seeing all the ways that Jay’s friends see Jay and the ways that the celebrate him. I hope that even those who have not had the chance to know Jay will take time to look at the book.

To those who contributed to this project: Thank you. To those who read the book: thanks go out to you as well, through you we’ll keep the celebrations of Jay going.

Low Resolution PDF 7MB (Recommended)
High Resolution PDF 72MB
Printed Book

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Shooting Video

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Video intimidates me, but I shot one anyway because Kickstarter projects do better with a video. The process went something like this: Wait until kids are gone at school and Howard is occupied so that no one else will witness nor tease me about my process (or lack thereof.) Fix hair and makeup. Set up tripod and camera. Shoot a test shot to make sure I know where to sit and am properly framed. Start recording. Sit down and begin talking, then realize I don’t know what comes next even though I thought through everything I want to say. Freeze up and flee from in front of the camera. Pace around the kitchen muttering to myself as I practice all the words. Record again. Mess up often. At each mess up, pause then start the sentence over because through the magic of editing maybe I’ll still be able to use the shot. Nope. Start over with a new take. Repeat until two takes feel acceptable. Watch the video and marvel at the number of times I roll my eyes because I’m trying to remember what to say next. I’ve learned not to Um, but my eyes were all over the place. Bundle everything up and hand it off to someone who has the magic power of editing.

There is a reason I do not video blog.

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Shouting Out Some Things I Enjoy

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A Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White
I really liked this book. It falls into the category of YA paranormal romance, but it is far more about family. Also it doesn’t have a love triangle, which is good because those are so often done so very badly. Egyptian mythos and real emotion.

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson
I thought I’d guessed the ending reveal, but I only half guessed it and there were at least five other reveals which were just as cool. Once again Sanderson builds an amazing world and delivers some impressive action scenes.

Agents of SHIELD
I know this one has gotten lots of mixed reviews. I wasn’t sure myself, but it is really growing on me. Rewatching several episodes made me realize that things which I thought were weaknesses were just me not knowing the characters or rhythm yet. I hope this show gets a good long run so that it can finish building the story it has started.

Sleepy Hollow
I’m not generally a fan of horror and historical details are flat out made up about half the time. But I like the characters. I love who they’ve cast. It makes me happy to see a man being “the pretty one” who gets the special soft lighting. The show has promise, I hope it delivers.

The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson
Loved this novella. Loved it. I can see why it won the Hugo. Definitely worth the read.

Vodnik by Bryce Moore
I’m only part way into this, but so far it is building a compelling mythology and has taken me to a very believable Slovakia. I want to keep reading and find out what happens next.

Dancing With The Stars
I’ve been a fan of the show for years. I’m watching the current season as soon as the episodes are available online. I think Corbin and Karina are going to win it. I hope they do. I also hope that Lea and Tony stick around for a long time. I really like them. I’d never heard of Bill Engvall before, but now I like him quite a lot. I’m sad Bill Nye got injured so early. I wanted to see more dances from him. I never thought that I would feel any respect for Snooki, but she surprised me. She’s working hard and spending all of her non-dancing time taking care of her family. Once again Tristan’s partner left early, which is quite sad because I love watching him dance.

Angel
I recently re-watched a bunch of the show Angel. I skipped most of season four because the show really went to a weird place there. But there are some amazing episodes. I highly recommend Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been from season 2. I think it can be viewed as a stand alone episode and it is really good.

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