Watercooler to the World

First off, a sort of odd welcome to the two newcomers.  Or possibly just the one, if AmyH didn't add me back.  I'm not really around here much, in part because I'm facing a crisis of media, so it was a little irresponsible for me to add someone new who hadn't added me first, but hey, in spite of the unfortunate circumstances that led me to notice your blog, I figure I ought to make an effort to befriend anyone in PHX intelligent enough to use a computer and choose VOX.  (Though I suppose that choice is less exciting every day.)

Anyway, in spite of the fact that I got around four hours of sleep last night, due to a midnight showing of Half Blood Prince, I lay in bed for a little over a half hour without dropping blissfully into sleep.  My best guess is that the double shot canned espresso energy drink that I administered in the late afternoon is keeping my mind spinning.  Part of my brain just never knows if bedtime for Boots is going to stick, and for how long, so I hold out the insane hope that she'll wake up and we'll go on another marginally irresponsible adventure, sleep cycles be damned.

The closing date for our house is looming especially large.  Technically, it was today, but due to delays earlier in the process, we have an extension until Monday and, so far, there is no word from the loan officers other than saying they're "all hands on deck" for processing our loan-- whatever the hell that means.  As much as I like having the extra scratch living on the cheap in my mother's (unoccupied) condo, we'll be doubling the size of our dwelling, and that extra breathing room is going to be fantastic.  For the first time, I think we're moving into a place where I would enjoy staying in more than I might enjoy going out.  But maybe that's just needless optimism talking.

Boots and I are both struggling with this same odd media crisis.  Perrenial bloggers, we've been finding ourselves with stories to share about our lives for our friends, but discovering that there's nowhere to write them down.  For some reason, I've ended up back on the idea of a wiki, for writing down things like my review of The Fashion Show or thoughts about some of the web games I've been playing.  But that still doesn't address this need to write down, christmas-letter-style, the events of my life, hoping that the people I like will read, offer opinions and we can find a way to still be a part of each other's lives in some small way.

Boots is still on LiveJournal and is as loathe to give it up as I am to abandon this VOX blog entirely.  However, it is a little irritating that the people I once knew in person have scattered across the ether and there is still no way to unify commenting and "friends only" stuff.  Actually, LiveJournal turns out to be better than VOX about this, thanks to Brad's (failed?) dream of OpenID.   Anyway, I suppose my last brain dump involved much of the same rambling.  At least I can say that I am reading your posts a little more closely.  It may still be a once a week sort of affair, but I do tend to actually take the time to read at least a couple full entries for each one of my neighbors that has posted.

Summer will be over soon, and that is a bit of a shame.  We've discovered a love for night swimming, since the pool is just a few feet from our side door.  If traditional night swimming is an all naked affair, let me allay your fears.  We are not risking exposing ourselves to the septegenarians who live in this complex, though my trunks are just some gym shorts and not actually made for that purpose.  They're some kind of synthetic material that could pass for trunks, under casual observation.  Hopefully, even once the school year starts we can take some time to beat the heat before we move away from said pool.

We've been going out, seeing friends on the weekend, actually having a bit of a life. Overall, it's been a fine summer and a momentous summer, and I hope we've taken a few lessons away from it that we can use in the upcoming year.

Surely, though, this isn't what's been buzzing through my head, right?  No, as I was tosing and turning, it had to be more about what I could do with the wiki, design decisions, content pages.  Not so much because I really think I have something to say, I guess.  I just like having something to build.  I do have some knitting to take care of...

Hm.  All in all, I think it's safe to say I should take some time to try to develop the official getting things done rigor again.  I think that, like Betsy, during the school year we have (or maybe just have had) our work cut out for us, and each summer we face a little miniature empty nest syndrome.  Betsy's schedule goes all sideways, she starts buying crazy things, we go to Denny's at one in the morning on a work night.  But ultimately we're both struggling with a lack of direction.  Now that the house is in sort of a waiting game, we really have no direction.

Well, it certainly comes across as a plausible description of this mindset.  On the other hand, I always feel like I'm talking myself into plausible mindsets, just so I have a sense of knowing myself.  Ah well, it's getting late, and I think a tamale and a beer might get my body into the right frame of mind to call it a night.

First of all, I should come right out and say that this afternoon I cut my Neighborhood down from seven pages (as viewed in the Organize screen) down to three.  As with any pairing down on that scale, I might have cut someone I shouldn't have.  In the last several weeks/months I have noticed that I tend to let my feed reader collect about a week's worth of posts (150+) which I will scan, grab music from, and mark as read.  So, some of this purge was just an admission to you that I haven't been reading your journals.  I hope that for most of those people cut, that's not going to come as much of a blow.

That leaves the people still in my 'hood, and I hope that by pairing down this much, I can start reading VOX journals again.  The fact that VOX has largely become a place for me to sneakily upload songs that I'm going to use on Tumblr was a surefire indication that I wasn't really blogging here the way I once did.  I did, of course, consider giving up this blog, but I think I still want somewhere to write about life, and (if I don't end up getting a stand alone blog launched) occasionally pen a more topical essay.  The main shift in the way I use VOX is that I am no longer really using it to socialize.  Now that I am spending my days haunting Tumblr, the long-form blogging structure provided by VOX doesn't seem as much like a conversation as a letter.  If I don't have a Tumblr window open, I am not going to go back and catch up on the things said there, but I want somewhere to go when I actually want to make sure every word gets read.

Of course, before I was skimming just about everything on VOX, there were still posts I would skim or not even read at all.  But it seems that now that I have the opportunity to split the more ephemeral qualities of socialization off into Tumblr, I should make the most of what I have here. 

I am staying, in part, because I like the idea that I could, if necessary, make protected posts that would not immediately be visible to the whole wide world.  The stumbling block, of course, is that as much as I have formed some good friendships with people on VOX, many of the people I would want to confide in the most aren't users here.  A good number of them never left LiveJournal, and I do wonder if maybe I ought to go back there myself if that is what I want most from a long-form journal.  So, we'll see.  I may retreat from here entirely, apart from occasionally piping in at Calliope No. 8, and uploading songs for Tumblr.

Naturally, what I want most is some kind of universal plug-in that could create neighborhoods and neighborhood-like security between VOX, LiveJournal, WordPress blogs, MovableType blogs, etc.  I don't see the profit angle in that, so I don't expect it's going to get done.  On the other hand, our esteemed masters at 6A have made suites of blogging tools usable by MovableType and WordPress, so maybe there's hope.  For the record, I am totally willing to pitch in and build this, but it is a project a little beyond the scope of one person, and, to be honest, if I am going to try to fit a project like this into my already occasionally insane life, I would ideally like it to result in some money.  But I guess that's neither here nor there, for now.

If I cut you from my 'hood and you actually care, please let me know.  Anyone who's taken that much of an interest in little ol' absentee me deserves to have it reciprocated.