Fan-girling over a favorite author

Okay, so I didn't exactly go all fan-girl when one of my favorite authors spoke last night at Book People in Austin.  At least on the outside.

But inside that calm exterior, I was waving my hands in the air and shouting as William Gibson, author of some of my all-time fave books like Neuromancer  and Spook Country stepped to the podium. I resisted the impulse to shout "I've read your books for years! And I loved all of them (well, except Idoru). "

I have spent hours and hours tucked into a comfy corner of my couch or even my bed lost in this man's words!  That's worth more fan-girling than just liking a song or two from some band, right?  But no, I sat calmly and listened, snapping pictures as he spoke, along with about 200 other fans and geeks in the standing-room only second floor of the bookstore.

He talked mostly about his newest book, Distrust That Particular Flavor, but also spoke about the crossing of past and future in our conceptions (for instance, when we talk about future life, we usually use pictures and designs from 1940's -50's science fiction even though the future they were talking about is mostly now in our past!)

He had a bad cold, and warned fans that the warm handshake he usually preferred might be a health hazard this time, but that didn't stop most of the audience from lining up to get their books signed.  And risking sharing some germs in the process.

Hmmmm....now that I think about it, I wonder if there was other people  internal fan-girling (and fan-boying) last night? So tell me...have you ever done the internal silent scream over a favorite writer?  Or is this my own particular brand of geekdom?

Where an Austin Blogger Creates....

No, there are no cowgirl hats or even guitars in my blogging room...just because I moved to Texas doesn't mean I changed!  Okay, maybe just a little.  I have developed a new appreciation for the Blues.  And I now don't scream when I see the forecast calls for temps above 100 (I just hide indoors!)


But my office is more about the me who grown and changed through years of living in Florida, the Rockies and rural Pennsylvania.

Of course, there are baskets and files filled with booklets and brochures about Austin events for my Austin blog....and piles of menus and business cards to inspire future posts.

There's also a bulletin board filled with inspiration from now and years gone past, where everything from bumper stickers to pages from old books share space with photos and postcards and bits of ads where the color or the font is far more important than the product it's trying to sell.

My blogger world is also home to less-than-pristine antique dolls rescued from auction shoppers eager to use them for parts....because they remind me that things don't have to be perfect or new to matter.

And it's where I keep pictures of my kids

and my husband

so I can stay grounded in what really matters in life. 

My office where the posts of this blog and A is 4 Austin come to life, where I explore other people's blogs and images, and where I test new ideas. 

It's more than an office...amid the stuffed animals and antiques and more-pens-and-colored-pencils-than-anybody-really-needs, it's my creative home. 

Remembering a letter...

Maybe it's because I'm watching "A Room with a View", where letters fly back and forth across Europe and England.  Or maybe it's because I've just written some Valentines to mail instead of sending electronic hearts and flowers.  But I am thinking about letters...real letters, not e-mails or text messages or IM conversations.

No, I mean a real paper letter in an envelope, that arrives in the mail, amid the ads and bills.  A letter awaited, and checked for day after day, or a letter that arrives unexpectedly.

A letter can be tucked in a purse or pocket, and taken somewhere to read later...or ripped open and read on the spot, and then re-read again and again. Yes, there are a few letters one dreads to open...a note that's sure to be a "Dear John", or a letter that is sure to hold bad news or anger. But most letters, even short ones, are wonderful to find amid the otherwise dull mail.

Upstairs in my bedroom, there's a large binder filled with letters -- letters from friends while I was in high school and college.  They pretty much stop at that point...e-mail took the place of letters.  But there are wonderful treasures there...descriptions of new adventures, new boyfriends (or the dumping of old ones!), letters from two friends who were living in Europe and sent me descriptions so vivid I felt that I was there, exploring old streets and new works of art. Each letter carries the writer's handwriting, many are decorated with little drawings and last-minute added thoughts around the edges, with arrows pointing to where they would have gone. Had those letters been e-mails, they would have been long since deleted, or at very best (and even this is so rare) printed out and stored as impersonal print on a page. 

I miss letters.  I miss writing them, and I miss receiving them. I miss holding them, and re-reading them for details missed the first time around -- or the second. In the movie, at this moment, one of the characters, is reading a letter -- she's tucked in bed, pillows piled up high behind her, the lamp lit. She opens the envelope and with a wonderful sound of paper cracking, smiles and settles back to read.  No Netbook or iPad on the planet can match that moment.

Oh wow! I grew up to be a writer, an artist and a coder! How cool is that??!

Image from http://drawn.ca/

I can remember being a little girl, thinking about all the things I might want to be when I grew up. A dancer, a doctor, a pilot, a writer, an architect, a set designer...there were soooo many things I wanted to do.

And then there was the short list my parents gave me of acceptable choices:

• Doctor
• Lawyer
• Engineer

Meanwhile, I filled books with my stories and poems, spent hours and hours drawing pictures (mostly of horses or horse-related things!), and then once I had access to computers at school, playing around with code.

I applied to college with a double major of theatre and architecture. My parents immediately changed that plan, and it became premed. Then when it became clear that organic chemistry and I were never going to get along well, I was allowed to switch to English and psychology, as preparation for law school.

One year of law school at age 21 was a disaster...I was the youngest in the class by several years, and my heart was far from in it. It was an epic fail in so many way. Then there was more university time, and a couple of grad degrees. In Political Science, of all things. And still, through it all, I wrote and drew and painted. I bought a computer and played around with changing things, coding and learning how it worked.

One day, I got a job as a feature writer on a small town newspaper. And I loved it! And I wrote and took photos. And I entered some graphics in a small town fair art show and I won! And I bought my third or fourth computer.

Then there was a writing job for an online catalog site. And there,  I got to learn all about Search Engine Optimization (SEO - the stuff that goes on behind the scenes in a website.) I learned how to write and edit HTML. And because it was a small company, I also got to select images for our pages and articles, and work with Photoshop, too.

A few years later, I got another job where all of those same things were needed, but for a big company...

And so it goes...

Now, my days are spent online, writing articles and posts and other content, creating and fixing the HTML code behind our company's pages, and at home, doing my art.

And yet it was not until yesterday, as I was riding in the car, on the way home from dinner with my husband that it occurred to me that I have grown up to do all the things I loved to do as a child! I make my living by writing and coding and doing art!

Now I ask you...for someone who took so many other paths, and who was directed away from all she loved sooooo many times, how absolutely awesome is that???!

Thanks, G-d. Thanks, Universe. You got me exactly where I was meant to be :-)

I've lived in a thousand houses

Growing up in Fl. with family in NJ and PA meant annual road trips up north to visit the family.

Yes, sometimes we flew, but more often than not, we would make it into a three-day-each way journey, complete with stops in Savannah to eat dinner at the Pirate House, a furniture shopping stop in North Carolina, and a visit to the tacky-but-irresistible South of the Border tourist trap.

But one of my most treasured memories of those long days in the car was looking at the houses we passed and creating stories about the people who lived there.

It could just be a fleeting glance as we sped past. I would memorize the color of the door, the front porch, the windows as we came up to a house, went in front of it, and drove on. If we stopped in front of a house, for a light or traffic, I would gather even more information for my story. The flowers. The fence. The swing set. Or the absence of all of those. Then the story would start.

I would begin by imagining that the house was mine. It was the place I came home to each day after school. With just that brief view in my head, I would image walking up to the door, seeing the porch, hearing my footsteps as I walked across the wood or concrete or dirt or stones that led up to the door. I would see the door in my mind, imagine reaching for the knob. Try to gather up how I felt coming home here. Happy? Sad? Hopeful? Scared?

Then I would picture walking inside. The light. The colors. The furniture and the pictures on the wall. The sounds and smells. Who would be there? I would imagine my family-of-that-house. Their names and who they were. Were they home when I got home? Or was the house empty? I would picture my room. Did I have a room to myself, or did I share. What did the bed feel like to lie in at night?

I was too young or too innocent to imagine that horrors could happen in any of my imaginary homes. I could picture sadness or even fear, but not terror.

I would go through a day and night in that house in my imagination, seeing myself as the person who lived there, maybe of a different skin color or religion or language, but always somehow still enough me to recognize. And always a girl.

Once I had exhausted one house in my imagination, I would pick another. I would look ahead and see it coming up, start to gather the details in my mind as it got closer.

I never wrote down any of those stories. But it was clear from those early trips that I was destined to be a writer. Those trips prepared me to live in other skins and see through other eyes.

I seldom get to spend much time on my imaginary homes these days (I am usually behind the wheel, driving my kids), but when I get a chance to be a passenger, I do find my old game coming back. And the other day, my youngest daughter told me from the backseat -- "Mama, when I see people out walking or in a store, sometimes I imagine that what it's like to be them." Another writer is born!

When it's too painful to write

When you're not sure whether things you believed with all your heart and soul are true...

When the possibility of the things you always believed would be a part of your life might never happen...

When you've given your all to hope and to trying "one more time," only to have it fail yet again...

When you just can't think of anything except the things you had or thought you had, and can no longer imagine looking forward with real excitement for more than a day or two...

David sang out to G-d at times like these. I cannot even find the words for that.

What a difference a day makes!!!

Okay...I pulled a poor, poor pitiful me post off the site, and look what happened!

1) The new owner of my condo called and said that I can stay on a month to month basis until I find something new. No deadline!!!!!

2) My bosses called me into the office for a talk...and gave me a raise!

3) I had an unplanned lunch with a friend (one of my anam caras!) and got to talk and laugh in the middle of a crazy busy work day.

4) I got to talk to my sweetie on the phone --- always a treat even though we talk every day. And I learned in last night's conversation that the fact that a call cut off at an awkward moment worried him as much as it did me! (We both thought the other had hung up!)

5) A couple of cool freelance opportunities have come up suddenly

6) Three promising apartment openings called me within the same hour...I will see all three on the weekend or next week.

7) I am going to the beach (not just "the" beach...my favourite beach!) to hear jazz and see an art festival for my birthday this weekend with my kids and my sweetie.

Flying high right now! I have to get back to work...end of the month deadline crazies are in full force, so it's back to the catalogs!

Tuss, everyone!