author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Successful tournament participation!

Game 4, versus Bellingham's All Stars, was an authoritative win: 217 to 78. (Watch it here: Part 1, Part 2.)

It's funny how, when you're in the middle of a jam, everything is chaotic and you're not sure you're doing a good job and OH SHIT HERE COMES THE JAMMER and oh damn there goes the jammer--

And then you get back to the team bench, and you look up at the scoreboard, and somehow it's another three points for you and none for your opponents, so you must have done something right--

Honestly, the whole game was like that.

Then there was just enough time for a burger from the Expo Express before it was time to warm up again for...

Game 6, versus Treasure Valley's All Stars. TVRD took the win, but only by twenty-eight points - 151 to 123 - and only after multiple lead changes in the second half. (Watch it here.)

My assessment: Treasure Valley is the bestest game/tourney host and the most excellent of match-ups for Boulder County Roller Derby. The game was satisfyingly physical, relatively clean, and full of good vibes even in the heat of "battle." (My favorite moment: I'm bracing my wall, I get swept off my wall by some great offense, I shout, "I got O! I got ALL THE O!" The skater responsible for "all the O" appreciated this.) Lots of interleague hugs and smiles afterward. Milkshakes and tater tots and beers at the next-door bowling alley where they have their afterparties.

Good times. When do I get to go again?

Now I'm in Salt Lake City. It was a good drive from Boise this morning. Despite a very interrupted night's sleep (shoulda taken some ibuprofen; my hips were sore and it was hard to get comfortable), it was a high energy trip like Day 1 out of Boulder was. I was out of the hotel by 7:30, on the road by 8:00 with a fresh tank of gas in the car and a fresh bag of ice in the cooler, and pulling into my friend's driveway around 1:15 PM. She and her family won't be in until 4 or 5, so I'm using the time to write. NO SURPRISES THERE--

Well, yeah. The surprise is, I'm actually writing and not saying to myself "But I'm tiiiiiired, I caaaaaan't," as an excuse to play video games instead. It's that whole "tight deadlines make tight writing schedules" effect. Sometimes, my time being limited gives the writing work of the day a necessary urgency, and sometimes I can use that urgency rather than tipping over into the anxious avoidance of "There's no way I'll get it all done." The trick is not to think about getting it all done, but rather to think only about The Next Step.

This blog post was The Next Step. The Next Step after that will be compiling and uploading the Friday Fictionette originally scheduled for April 25. And if I've still got time to myself after that, it'll be Morning Pages and Writing Practice.

But if I don't get to those because my friend and her family are home and the day moves into delightfully social & joyous catch-up on old times mode, that'll be perfectly OK.

Well, guess what: I did not sleep well Thursday night. Woke up all night long. Finally gave up on sleep around 5:45, had a shower and the rest of the morning routine, and got to work on the writing dailies.

It was like pushing a boulder uphill.

So was the remaining drive to Boise, despite it only being four hours and change. Between the two consecutive nights of deeply inadequate sleep and the much warmer weather on Friday, I was struggling to remain awake and alert pretty much all afternoon.

When I finally got where I was going, I needed a nap. Well, Thank goodness for small blessings: My room at the Arcadia Hotel was ready early, and I could have that nap pretty much immediately.

The Arcadia is a self-checkin style accomodation, its rooms locked by numeric code pads, the code to which you get texted to you the day before. It's laid out like a motel, each room opening onto a second-floor walkway on either side of the parking lot. This is not a place to stay if you need accommodations for limited mobility, or if you're hoping not schlep your stuff up a flight of stairs.

The rooms are absolutely adorable! But you would not guess it from the outside. Also, they're kinda tiny. Well, mine was, anyway. Not that I needed a lot of space for my nap. Just a bed. And that bed is super comfortable.

Once I'd recovered a bit, I went out to hunt up some food (meatballs and pizza margherita at Black Moon) and then to make a visit I'd been wanting to make since my previous weekend in Boise:

Oldspeak Book Bar.

Yes, that deserved its own paragraph. It's just that fantastic. It's a bookstore that serves alcohol. Alternately, it's a bar that sells books.

Plenty of comfy chairs and table space for enjoying both types of purchase. Seems to be a popular meeting place for writing groups and book clubs. The decor includes antique typewriters, local artist exhibitions, asynchronous community discussion prompted by a question on a chalkboard ("What do you want to do before you die?"), and of course bookshelf after bookshelf stuffed with books for decoration, books for purchase, books, books, books.

So I sat up at the bar with a rice lager and my laptop, drafting the Friday Fictionette originally scheduled for April 25th into its final form. Then I went back to my room at the Arcadia and watched all four extant episodes of MURDERBOT on the big TV. The fourth episode is AMAZING.

Anyways, now it's noon on Saturday. I'm writing the bulk of this at Roots across the street - that's an organic/natural/local/bulk grocery with a deli counter and a lot of table space. I'd walked down to the river and peeked in at a couple restaurants and coffee shops, and was disappointed to find those that were open to have lines out the door and nowhere to sit. Resigned therefore to making myself tea and sandwiches in my tiny hotel room and getting to work in there, I found Roots to be a delightful surprise.

Might have to proof, link, and upload this later, though - I gotta get ready to go to the tournament venue.

P.S. Games streaming at Good BOI Studios!

Hi! So, it's been a hot second since I blogged here last, so why don't I break the ice with business-NOT-as-usual? Today I drove from Boulder to Salt Lake City.

Pictured here: My flight of tasters at Epic Brewing, which I had not been acutely aware was in Salt Lake City. My first experience with Epic was their "Brainless on Raspberries," whose ABV is quite high, which effect was magnified by the excruciatingly spicy pasta I'd chosen to prove my capsaicin machismo with. This was at Backcountry Pizza lo these many years ago, and by the time I'd finished both food and drink I felt half out-of-body. Definitely not safe to drive. Opted to leave my car in the lot and walk the two miles home. Turns out, everything Epic brews has a quite high 8% ABV. Despite a heavy meal at La Cai Noodle House, after 16 ounces of Epic goodness I was remarkably glad I had walked, not driven, from my hotel room.

(More pictures going up into a gallery on Imgbox throughout the weekend.)

But let's back up a moment. I'm in SLC breaking the 12-hour journey to Boise, where on Saturday the Boulder County Roller Derby "Flatiron Phoenixes" will play against Bellingham's and Treasure Valley's A teams in a round-robin tournament at the Expo Idaho. This is actually my second trip here this month; our B team, the "Rockslide Bolters," played Treasure Valley's B team that first weekend in May, and I was on that roster too. Several friends were like, "Twice in a month? I woulda noped outta that, hard!" But I love a solo road trip, especially across such a gorgeous and geologically fascinating region. (Link goes to a review of a book that a teammate recommended after hearing me rhapsodize about the landscape along I-80 through Wyoming and Utah. I've snagged myself a copy of the audiobook for the drive home.) Besides, breaking my journey in Salt Lake affords an opportunity to visit with one of my oldest and dearest friends. Circumstances prevented us meeting up during both of the outbound trips, but we spend a lovely Mother's Day overnight on my way home last time. I hope Sunday sees us similarly fortunate.

In any case, a 12-hour solo road trip requires SNACKS and LISTENING MATERIAL. As far as listening material goes, I kept myself occupied last time with the audiobooks of Gregory Maguire's Another Day trilogy (which pick up directly after the events of Out of Oz). This time I meant to get into some Librivox downloads, but mostly I just spent today listening to tunes off my flip-phone and singing along for hours like a one-woman karaoke special. I think that's why I've been so high-energy all day, despite getting far too little sleep last night. Even for me, I mean. I stayed up way too late reading, and that's on top of my tendency to wake up every hour, hour and a half, every night, all night long. The app SleepScore is happy so long as I get more than a total of six hours sleep, but I think the lack of continuous sleep counts for something, and not a positive something. I tell my friends that my life now resembles a Paul Simon song, and unfortunately that song is "The Obvious Child":

Well I'm accustomed to a smooth ride
Or maybe I'm a dog that's lost its bite
I don't expect to be treated like a fool no more
I don't expect to sleep through the night

There's also the bit about thumbing through one's high school yearbook and observing that "some have died" - unfortunately, yes, though not students from my particular class, that I know of. Several of my teachers, certainly.)

But yeah, most trips of this length involve at least one 10-minute nap at a rest area. Today I just never felt the need. Never stopped for a meal, either. Stopped only to fill up the car's tank and empty my own. Ate out the ice chest, mostly. I spent a couple hours yesterday turning two cups sushi rice and a package of Omni brand "plant-based meat-style luncheon" into vegan Spam musubi. HOO BOY WAS THAT A GOOD IDEA. I don't have a musubi mold, but after a night in the fridge it held its shape and it tasted PERFECT. I sauteed those suckers in a home-made teriyaki glaze and that was JUST the right amount of flavoring. Anyway, that was breakfast, along with a bunch of fresh raw veg from Friends Farm, whose first CSA share pick-up was Tuesday - carrots and radishes and turnips OH BOY.

So here I am in the downtown SureStay, still a little muzzy from my visit to Epic and a lot full from spring rolls and beef-with-basil at La Cai. I am going to sleep SO WELL tonight, at least for values of SO WELL that apply to me at my age and in my particular body.

"At my age"--I turned 49 this year. Going to have to plan a party or something for the big Five Oh next year. But this year it was a Wednesday like any other, and that meant scrimmage. Dad calls me up the next day with happy birthday wishes, says to me, "Your old body still tolerating that rough sport?" And I'm like, "Listen, you got this backwards. Roller derby is how my body tolerates getting old." It's true. I had a pretty nasty cold last week, which along with other circumstances resulted in my not going to practice for, what? fourteen days? and that resulted in every dang joint in the lower half of my body (especially my right hip! omg!) getting stiff and hella sore. Motion is lotion, as the physical therapists say, and nothing else in my life promotes healthy hip flexor motion like roller derby, I tell you what.

But this is the Actually Writing Blog. Am I actually writing? Yes and no. Natalie Goldberg talks about "the dead year" in her book Wild Mind, meaning that first year after you decide to be a writer. "It comes back to test you often in the following years, but if you get through the first year, then you know about it. It will never have the power to defeat you again." I try to have faith that this is so, as I plod along, day after day, doing morning pages and writing practice/freewriting/idea generation and trying to catch the Friday Fictionette Project up to schedule. And that's it. I haven't done much in the way of submissions to paying markets beyond the twice-yearly poem for Eternal Haunted Summer--which reminds me, I need to submit something for Summer Solstice 2025. Deadline is June 1.

Anyway, I did my "dailies" today after I got into Salt Lake City: not-in-the-morning pages at La Cai, writing practice at Epic, and, hey, look, I'm blogging tonight at my hotel! First blog post in a good long while. I've missed it. I've missed having a journaling outlet. I've lately been incorporating journaling/personal writing into my daily freewriting lately--I describe that practice in this week's Monday Muse post--and it feels good.

Since I can't check into my hotel in Boise until 4:00 PM, there's no reason to get out of Salt Lake early. So I'll be sitting at this very desk tomorrow morning, doing tomorrow's writing dailies. With any luck I'll post tomorrow night from SLC and tell you how that went.

It's Day 9. Yesterday I tested positive again. But I wound up going home yesterday for a couple hours, while John was out and we would not come into contact, in order to do some laundry. And while I was there, I took the opportunity to grab those much-missed physical copies of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way and Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. But first I did something else.

See, while I was in Metairie, Dad showed me this vintage Singer portable sewing machine of Mom's that he'd found at the bottom of the closet. He was thinking about selling it, if he could figure out how much it was worth. Of course I offered to take it off his hands. (Are you kidding? How could I not? Haven't you seen my typewriter?) So when I started driving back to Boulder, it was in the trunk. And there it stayed through much of my isolation period, in my car in the hotel parking lot.

Yesterday, while the laundry was spinning, I brought it inside and began my investigation. By plugging its serial number (AC976189) into this lookup table, I was able to identify the machine as Model No. 127 (possibly variant 127-24 according to this chart), dating from January of 1930 and featuring the innovative and weirdly rocket-shaped vibrating shuttle. (It also features an add-on motor controlled via knee-lever, but that's not currently behaving itself and will need professional attention.) I downloaded the appropriate owner's manual from here, followed its instructions for threaded the bobbin and the needle, and, by rotating the handwheel manually, sewed a few trial stitches in a bit of scrap cloth.

And it performed beautifully.

Flush with success, I turned to my World Fantasy 2011 canvas tote where one of its original seams was coming unraveled. The bobbin thread got stuck and snapped just the once, but otherwise, it was smooth sailing. And my tote is partially mended!

This whole exercise made me unreasonably happy, just utterly joyful way out of proportion to any logical explanation. I wanted to do more with it, like, right now! But, alas, the laundry was finished, and it was time for me to fold it and bag it and take it back up Diagonal Highway to Isolation Station.

As I said, I made sure to pick up my copies of The Artist's Way and Writing Down the Bones. I figured, maybe I'd been unfair to Baig's How to Be a Writer. I'd basically had a tantrum at it for not being the book I wanted it to be. Although, in my defense, that really did seem to be what it was trying to do--to be Writing Down the Bones for the two-thousand-teens. Trying, and failing. Offensively. But nevermind. Ranting and raving about it was of limited utility. I figured my energy would be better spent on rereading the books I actually enjoyed and found useful.

So the next morning--this morning--I cracked open The Artist's Way and reread the first few sections. And in the section headed FILLING THE WELL, STOCKING THE POND, I hit this bit of text, and then I just laughed:

Any regular, repetitive action primes the well.... A little experiment with some mending can cast a whole new light on these activities. Needlework, by definition regular and repetitive, both soothes and stimulates the artist within. Whole plots can be stitched up while we sew. As artists, we can very literally reap what we sew.

Well no wonder part of me bubbled up with joy at the prospect of rehabilitating a vintage sewing machine and using it to rehabilitate a beloved tote. That's precisely how this works! And, really, when was the last time I deliberately paused between writing tasks to knit, or tat, or cross-stitch, or spin?

I took the lesson to heart and darned a pair of socks this evening. And, with Cameron's "artist dates" in mind, I made sure to take a walk--and, for my efforts, I was rewarded, not just with the delightful discovery of the loudest frogs in Boulder County on a rain-flooded lawn nearby, but also with a small plot discovery which I immediately jotted down upon returning to my desk.

Tomorrow morning I will finally check out of this hotel, spend tomorrow night at the home of a friend who's out of town and has offered me use of her place, and then Sunday--Easter Sunday, at that!--it will be Day 11, all of John's guests will have gone home again, and so, at last, will I.

OK, so, since the last time I ended a blog post with vague promises about "tomorrow," a lot of tomorrows happened, to nobody's surprise.

So what did the intervening undocumented tomorrows consist of? Well, some of them involved me driving down to New Orleans for my 30th high school reunion! It was great! Turns out, the people I grew up with are all stellar human beings and I like hanging out with them! I was in town a few days on either side of the big event, visiting friends and family, writing a little, skating a little, eating a lot of good food--all pretty much expected features of a visit home.

Then, on the Wednesday morning I was packing the car to drive away, Dad tested positive for COVID-19 and I realized I had a sore throat and a runny nose myself. Yup. I done got it again. Thankfully, the spread seems to have been limited to myself, my dad, and my brother when we had dinner together Monday night. No one else I visited that day or the day before reported symptoms. So it seems unlikely that I encountered the bug among, or introduced the bug to, the Alumni Weekend/Class of '94 Reunion crowds on Friday and Saturday.

This has been a mild case, as covid goes. And a good thing too, since I still needed to drive the 20-hour return trip to Boulder. Thank goodness for cough drops and hand sanitizer.

For my two previous bouts with covid back in 2021, I isolated in the office/second bedroom. But this time around required a more ironclad plan. John's about to host a small private gaming convention, and he needs to present zero risk to his guests. So we agreed that, after passing by the house for a brief non-contact exchange of goods, I'd check myself into a nearby hotel to isolate.

Annnnnnnnd I'm still here. Still testing positive a week later. I DON'T LIKE IT. But over the past couple days I've regained enough energy and physical well-being to sit up and play games on the computer and even write! Yes! Today's been especially good. Got a full "morning shift" in, took a guilt-free nap, and now here I am writing a blog post like I haven't done since February.

Now, at the end of that previous blog post, I suggested I might get back to talking about actually writing. AND SO I SHALL. Sort of. Here we go:

Barbara Baig's How to Be a Writer
(Being a Rather Grumpy Book Review)

So I recently had occasion to install Google Play Books, and it turns out that when you install Google Play Books, you get a bunch of freebies. Well, I did, anyway. Almost all of them were writing books:

• Sam Barry and Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Write That Book Already!
• Les Edgerton, Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One & Never Lets Them Go
• Barbara Baig, How to Be a Writer: Building Your Creative Skills Through Practice and Play
• Victoria Lynn Schmidt, Story Structure Architect
• Theodore Cheney, Getting the Words Right
• Marilyn Ross and Sue Collier, The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing
• Writers Digest Books, The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing

And then there was The Oera Linda Book, which purports to be a Thirteenth-century manuscript but is in fact widely held to be a Nineteenth-century hoax or forgery. From 1922 on, it got really popular among the Nazis. Why Google included that, I dunno.

But anyway, here I am at Isolation Station with lots of time on my hands, trying to discipline myself into using that time for writing, and I figure, why not dive into this selection and see what we find? I started with the one by Baig, because it sounded like it might freshen up my Morning Pages and freewriting practice with a little extra playfulness.

I'm 23% of the way in, and I don't think I'll be finishing it.

How to Be a Writer is basically an introduction to writing-as-practice and the value of freewriting. These are concepts I'm already extremely familiar with. Which is fine. I knew going in that I was not going to be the primary audience. But I did hope that it might offer a few new-to-me insights. Or at least be enjoyable to read?

Turns out, not so much.

Put it this way: Imagine someone said, "Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron were very good for their time, but their hits were 40 and 30 years ago. It's time to repackage their tools for a new generation. And while we're at it, maybe remove all that inconvenient spirituality. We don't want to scare anyone off..." Well, then, you might get something like How to Be a Writer... if you also had a very poor opinion of the new generation's reading comprehension.

Look. It is fine to devote a few early paragraphs to how writing is a skill just like baseball is a skill, and, like baseball, it benefits from regular practice. That is a perfectly cromulent beginner-level truth. It is, in fact, the argument for this book's entire existence. But, having stated it in the introduction, and then having expanded on this thesis throughout Chapter 1, why continue trying to convince us through Chapter 2? We are now already convinced. We do not need the point belabored further. We certainly don't need to introduce Chapter 3 with a paragraph-long quote from Tim McCarver's Baseball for Brain Surgeons and Other Fans about how baseball players make it look easy because they have been practicing. But all right, fine, include that long quote if you must. But then for heaven's sake don't continue for two further paragraphs that do nothing but paraphrase that quote! We read the quote already! We don't need it explained to us!

At this point I'm beginning to wonder whether she thinks her readers are not just beginners at writing, but also at thinking, that a concept this simple should need to be developed painfully, slowly, and with great repetition and as many sportsball comparisons as possible, over nearly a quarter of the book's page-count. Or perhaps there was an assigned minimum word count that had to be reached?

These are, admittedly, not kind things for me think about an author. But I am not best disposed toward an author who seems to assume I can't keep a thought in my head for five minutes at a time.

(To be scrupulously fair, Goldberg compares writing to running at least as often as Baig compares writing to baseball. But then, Goldberg herself is a runner. There's no hypothetical "when we see a runner in a marathon, we are seeing the result of months of daily practice" here. It is her own running practice, and her own writing practice, too, that she puts on the page. She is writing in specific detail from her lived experience, and not from an abstract course syllabus in her head.)

All right. Fine. Shifting from Goldberg to Cameron here: Let's say this book is deliberately meant to be something like The Artist's Way but for the two-thousand-teens. Why, then, having reached the 23% mark, have I noticed no quotations--neither the chapter-heading epigraphs or the "like so-and-so said" anecdotes--that aren't old enough to have been included in The Artist's Way in the first place? In fact, I'm pretty sure a good chunk of them were included. I think that's why I recognize so many of them. (Well, the McCarver quote dates to 1999. It would have had to wait for the 30th Anniversary Edition of The Artist's Way.) Do you think no writers have said anything quotable more recently than that? And why are all the writers you're quoting--not to put too fine a point on it--men?

(And why, for the love of little green crickets, is one of those men Woody effin' Allen? I mean, it's a quote about the importance of having a daily routine. I'm pretty sure other writers with less objectionable histories had daily routines in 2012 and would have been happy to talk about them!)

Maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe later on in the book there are really nice quotes from Ursula K Le Guin and Nnedi Okorafor. Maybe there will also be insights unique to this author and to the decade in which she's writing. I'll never know, because what I have read so far has not inclined me toward continuing.

So, yeah, I'm sitting here in a hotel room, eating tonight's DoorDash delivery, and getting very homesick for my physical library with its well-thumbed copies of much better books. (I am also homesick for my husband, and for my bunny, and for the ability to cook myself a meal from scratch...) But I'll be there Sunday morning at the very latest. Until then, there's always the public library's online catalog.

OK so it turns out that firstly, the NUU F4L does not by default save text messages to the SIM card.

But that secondly, there is a setting by which you can tell it to.

And also, thirdly, the long-press menu for every individual text message includes the commnad "Save to SIM card."

However, and fourthly, attempts to do so result in the error message "Save unsucsseful. SIM card full." (This would explain why, despite telling the new phone to save SMS to the SIM card and then having a lengthy conversation with the out-of-town friend I was kitty-sitting for, there continued to be no SMS saved to the SIM card.)

I am not sure what could possibly be filling up my SIM card, because, fifthly, as far as I can tell, it brought nothing from my old phone over to my new except my telephone number and whatever other esoteric identifying data a new phone needs to be given, that it should successfully replace an old phone.

Ergo, I conclude that the SIM card which Credo assigned me has absolutely zero capacity for extraneous data, which is sad. Though I could test this conclusion by taking that new SIM card that came with the new unit, which I am otherwise not using, and popping it into the old phone, and attempting to save my sentimental value texts to it, but I'm not particularly hopeful about the results of that experiment.

Anyway, sentimental value texts aside, I am successfully transferred onto my new phone. Contacts imported. SD card full of music transfered. Shortcuts reassigned. Mobile data turned OFF before I could accidentally run myself into an overage charge (I have a grandparented-in data plan that's limited to 25mb but is SUPER CHEAP). And while it is exactly the same as the old phone, meaning its calendar interface sucks rocks and its playlist-creating interface is mysterious (where does it save them? Not the SIM card!) and the photos it takes are somewhat low-res, it is also brand new rather than 4+ years old, which means that when I press a button, the phone damn well knows it got pressed, making the act of composing a text about 98% less painful than it had been going on a year or so now.

Also the new unit arrived on Thursday rather than Friday, and early on Thursday at that, so, hooray! I was up and running relatively quickly. And I sprang for the insurance this time, so should I be as foolish with this one as I was when I doomed the previous unit last week, replacing it should be even more painless.

So! Thus for the saga of the NUU F4L. I sholud probably get back to talking about actually writing.

...tomorrow.

So several things have happened between last post and this one--most excitingly, a couple roller derby bouts; most disappointingly, an abject failure to keep to my morning routine--but today I want to talk about/document/gripe about my poor flip phone.

Flip phones are rugged little things. I've had this NUU F4L for, ooh, at least since before the pandemic I'm pretty sure, I'm honestly not sure how to check. In any case, I've dropped it countless times, gotten it lightly splashed, kept it in my pocket during scrimmage, and otherwise treated it roughly. Through it all, it kept on chugging. But last night at roller derby practice it finally met its match. As I was sneaking glances at a web text in between drills, I wanted the browser to stay on and open to that page, so I left the phone open. On the floor. Next to my water bottle. Also next to the track boundary. During a drill involving extreme footwork.

Yep. Poor thing got under someone's wheels. And the interior display got borked.

Happily, it is a flip phone. It is not expensive. A new NUU F4L plus its activation fee comes to less than $150. Also, after opting for the insurance plan, my monthly bill is still going to be less than $35. We're talking a lot less headache than when John has to replace his Android. Also a lot less set-up on the new phone, since there are no apps to download. Just swap in my SIM card and the 64gb mini-SD where my tunes and playlists live, and I'll be good to go.

...except I'm not actually certain that my text messages live on that SIM card. I hope they do. I have a few conversations I want to hold onto, for sentimental purposes, but there is no option to save the whole thread or forward a collection of messages. All I can do is forward single messages to myself at my email address. And I'd rather not have to do that. Also, I spent a significant amount of today combing through text logs for people I hadn't added to my Contacts yet, and also for any photo attachments I wanted to keep (again, just in case text messages don't transfer over with the SIM card). Photo attachments to texts don't automatically save themselves anywhere useful. You have to highlight the message, long press the big central button, then choose "download attachment" from the menu. And if you're me and you're using this particular device, you do this multiple times per photo, because the phone has a bad case of button-lag such that it isn't always convinced I'm doing a long press, but thinks I'm just selecting the message instead, and then I have to hit the Back button, which, again, sometimes the phone just ignores.

With all this button-lag, this "I swear I am trying to push the button, I'm PUSHING the damn BUTTON, noooooo I only wanted to push it once" factor, it was, honestly, about time I replaced this unit. I'm just glad I didn't pull that trigger and then let the phone get crushed under someone's roller skates.

But now I am ALL BACKED UP. Text photo attachments downloaded. Photos from Downloads and Gallery moved over to my computer. Phone contact list updated and exported. Everything's ready to go.

FedEx tracking estimates the new phone will be delivered Thursday, which means realistically I'll probably get it Friday, which means that, by the weekend, I'll be able to see the corners of my screen once more, and small text on the web browser will be legible again, and maybe I'll get a few years without button-lag, which will be nice.

All the above complaints aside, I don't regret my decision to continue sticking with the flip phone. Not only is it inexpensive and rugged, not only is it of a size to fit easily in my jeans pockets, not only does its battery charge last several days to a week (depending on wi-fi and bluetooth use), but also it is not eating my soul.

Which: no shade on anyone with a smart phone who interacts with it most of their waking moments! But I just don't want that to be me. It's already kind of me, what with my constant laptop use; but the laptop introduces just enough friction that sometimes, when I'm out and about, or when the laptop's in another room, it's easier to just... not. So instead I end up knitting at the pub after practice with friends, or reading a physical book over a quick brunch at a local restaurant.

(Or, admittedly, reading something on my phone's web browser that I Saved For Offline Reading. I'm not made of stone, and Project Gutenberg is right there.)

One day, I suppose, Credo Mobile will stop offering a flip phone option--or more society infrastructure will require use of apps and QR codes such that I can no longer get by with Bluestacks, I suppose that's possible--and I'll have to upgrade to a smart phone and a real data plan. Until that day, I'll just keep toodling along in the low-tech slow lane, a loyal member of Team Flip phone, texting like molasses via KT9 and occasionally grumbling "I said H, I pressed H, why will you not---no, only one H, dang it--"

Hello! Last week kind of puttered out and took the Thursday blog post with it, but I am feeling MUCH BETTER today. Despite today starting with a physical therapy appointment and ending with leading a roller derby practice, I got a LOT of writing and writing-adjacent stuff accomplished.

But I'd mostly like to talk about that roller derby practice.

Our league experienced a high level of membership turnover during the pandemic hiatus. A lot of good people left the league. On the other hand, so did a handful of toxic people who'd had disproportionate influence on league culture. As a result, our league--the remaining members along with the brand new members--utterly reinvented itself, and very much for the better.

Here is one specific and powerful positive change that affected me personally: Where once I got the message loud and clear that my role was and always would be to shut up, listen to my betters, and do what I was told --what I was now hearing was, "You've been around a while. You've seen this league through its ups and downs. You're good at this sport, you're effective at sharing that knowledge, and you're kind about it. Why don't you join the Training Committee?"

That was 2021, when we returned to play, revamped our practices, rebranded ourselves, and reinvented our culture. But growth did not stop there--how could it? we are always learning--and so now, as we kick off the 2024 season, our Training Committee looks very different than it did three years ago.

The biggest change this year is that we've divvied up into subcommittees, one for each practice level. I've joined the subcommittee dedicated to training our beginners (cryptid-themed team name: Jackalopes; team color: Orange) and preparing them for their skills assessments.

This new organizational structure has had a remarkably positive impact on me.

Before, when we were just one big Training Committee, and the question "Who can lead Travel Team practice this Sunday" went out to all of us, I felt a like a vile little slacker for never saying, "Me." I was giving in to my imposter syndrome. I was refusing to step outside of my comfort zone. I was signing up to train the beginning skills because I had to train sometimes, and I didn't feel capable of more. I felt like I was guilty of making my insecurities into other people's problems. Like I was failing to pull my weight.

And--wow. What a disservice to our newer skaters, to view training them as the job for people who aren't good enough for anything else! And I never really looked at it that way, not truly. It was more like--OK, in avoiding the training spots I was uncomfortable with and gravitating toward the ones where I was more confident, I felt like I was guilty of eating dessert while dinner got cold on my plate. Like, by never taking a turn leading more advanced practices, I was shirking a responsibility.

But now that script has flipped. The call that went out was, "Who wants to be on the Orange Team subcommittee," and I said, "Me!" not because it's the only work I'm fit for but because it's work that I'm good at. It's a strength. And it's work that I love. I love this sport, and I love making this sport accessible to others. (It's why I head up the Recruiting Committee, too.) I didn't wind up training the "newbies" by process of elimination. I jumped at the chance to make it my specialty.

So tonight I had the joy of welcoming seven new members to our league and teaching them their very first roller skating skills. I got to watch them light up as they made their first strides. I got to bask in their great big smiles as we ended practice on a team cheer. I felt like I was exactly where I belonged, and it made me so happy, I can't begin to tell you.

So. What's the lesson here? Something like: Don't beat yourself up for what you perceive as your weaknesses. Work to improve where you need improvement, sure, but never forget to value your strengths. Do the things you love. They are valid contributions to this world.

By golly, there is going to be a blog post today.

Problem is, being all out of the habit of regular blog posts, I'm also out of the habit of regularly coming up with stuff to blog about. And it's no good asking myself, "Why did I start keeping a blog in the first place, some twenty years ago?" I remember exactly why I started blogging. It was a form of external accountability: if I blogged that day, it meant I had written that day, and I would blog about what I had written. So on a day like today, when I in fact have not written in any meaningful way, it feels like there's really nothing to say at all.

So that sucks. But--what the heck. Let's pretend today was worth blogging about. What all did I do today?

7:00 AM - My alarm went off and I got up. That wasn't fun. It never is. Getting up early is painful, like, literally full of actual pain. Nothing localized to a particular body part, aside from the daily soreness/stiffness attendant on having slept (approaching one's 50s apparently means one can hurt oneself sleeping); just the sense that being conscious at all hurts, and can I please not? Please? But I've managed it all week and I'm not breaking my streak yet, so, up I get.

There are consolations. I got out of bed, stepped over the pet gate that keeps our bunny Holland out of the bedroom, and encountered Holland beside the sofa, where he usually is at that time of the morning, waiting for signs of movement from his humans. He came bounding over to me and lowered his chin to the carpet, presenting his nose and forehead to be petted, please. I obliged. The look of bliss on his little furry face at such times will never not melt my heart.

After a few minutes, I went over to the office, set up my thermos for tea, and filled up and started the electric kettle. (Tea, also, is a consolation.) While that came to a boil, I did the bunny breakfast chores (gave him his food pellets, topped off his hay and water, portioned out his day's treats) then went to brush my teeth and hair. I transferred my laptop to the office. I put tea bags in the thermos and filled it up with just-boiled water. Morning routine: complete!

7:30 AM - Time to join my scheduled FocusMate session. My partner informs me she'll be off-camera doing her morning routine; I tell her I'll be doing my Morning Pages as usual. We each do those things. I fill up three pages with messy handwriting, using my Platinum Curidas retractable fountain pen and some lovely green ink. Then I review what I've written, especially in the margins, and from this extract a to-do list for the day. That goes in my Day Planner, which, under better circumstances, I would refer to throughout the day--but today I would set it aside and never touch it again, alas. Anyway, 7:55 rolls around, my partner and I unmute our microphones and report to each other how our session went, wish each other a lovely day, and log off.

8:30 AM - And here is where I lose my momentum. Already? Yes. Because I did not have the luxury today of moving directly into my actual writing. I had to go run an unpleasant errand. And while I treated myself to a delicious breakfast burrito to make up for the unpleasantness, and I was actually kind of cheerful about being awake and out of the house early on a lovely day, I got home exhausted and pretty much went back to bed. Until noon.

So much for my morning.

I won't chronicle the rest of the day, but suffice to say, writing didn't happen. I got up, futzed around, and never wrote at all. (Exception: this blog post.) But I did get a lot of work done on my new LibriVox project, so I can't really call it a wasted day. It just wasn't, properly speaking, the writing day I'd intended it to be.

But there's always tomorrow. (Unless there isn't. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that there is.) And tomorrow's errand doesn't have to happen early in the morning. So I'll be able to proceed from my FocusMate session and my Morning Pages directly into actual writing. Hooray!

Hello! Happy New Year! Happy new blog post! [Insert ritual self-deprecating quip about not having posted in seventh months, assume appropriate New Year's resolution as read.]

Things I did in 2023:

• Had two new poems published in Eternal Haunted Summer: "Fiat Nox" and "The Curious Incident of the Black Dog of the Night"
• Had a previously published poem designated a Rhysling Award Finalist (but not, ultimately, winner)
• Skated a hell of a lot of roller derby with the BCRD's "Flatirons Phoenixes" (A team) and "Boulder Bolters" (B team)
• Also skated in a mix-up bout in Salt Lake City and was awarded MVP Blocker
• Learned how to cook biryani
• Completed two solo LibriVox audiobooks: Lud-in-the-Mist (Hope Mirrlees), What Dreams May Come (Gertrude Atherton)
• Uploaded a whole bunch of Friday Fictionettes (but not, alas, as many as I should - I'm still behind schedule)

Things I would like to do in 2024:

• All of the above, only moreso; where applicable, on time
• Attend my 30-year high school reunion
• Attend WorldCon in Glasgow
• Blog! Here! Regularly!
• (Maybe make this blog look more attractive? Ye Gods, this post looks like ass)

To those ends, I will:

• Renew my intention to get up on time, that being 7:00, every weekday (thanks, Focusmate!)
• Renew my intention to write every day (and not just my daily freewriting and fictionette work either)
• Renew my passport

That's it. That's the blog post.

There should be another tomorrow. Stay tuned.