Irresponsibility Is Underrated (and, Panicked Packing)

I just shipped an article to a regional magazine, the kind of work I’d normally tell you doesn’t make much sense from a revenue perspective.

Sending a nicely written article to an editor is satisfying, but writing for satisfaction instead of money is something a working writer with a family does carefully; there are only so many hours in a day.

Then again, there are only so many years in a lifetime, and I’ve been meaning to loosen the straitjacket a little; it’s time I wrote more projects with my heart instead of my head.

Before I knew I’d be in Ethiopia for 1/3 of the month, I idly considered participating in Scriptfrenzy (a 100-page script in 30 days).

Clearly, I probably wouldn’t have done it. I know scriptwriting like I know brain surgery, but the simple fact I considered it suggests something.

So instead writing a script, my wife and I are flying to meet our new daughter, which, now that I think about it, doesn’t really make economic sense either.

Maybe I’m better at this irresponsibility thing than I thought.

Packing In A Panic

Packing clothes is not an act that consumes me; packing the right computers clearly does.

In the end, I packed the same way I packed for a fishing trip; I began the process with a monk-like, “less is more” aesthetic, but at the last minute, I paniced and threw in the kitchen sink.

With end-to-end 12 hour and 8 hour flights ahead of me, I figured I needed the Nook ereader (battery should last the whole trip), and I decided it’s time to see if the Android tablet and bluetooth keyboard are remotely useful while traveling.

The odds that working wi-fi is waiting for us in Ethiopia are marvelously slim, but in what I’ll suggest is a fit of optimism, I’m bringing the netbook — just in case real client work needs to be done.

That’s three devices, but interestingly, they add up to less bulk and weight than the middle-of-the-road laptop I owned just a few years ago.

In an attempt to stave off the thoughts of suicide I experience on any extended plane ride, I bought a pair of ebooks:

“Imagine” by Jonah Lehrer (the science of creativity and the brain).

And “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell (I know, he sometimes invokes “cocktail party” science, but I love his writing and I’m looking for inspiration, not ground truth.)

If things get out of hand, I’ve got some dystopian science fiction in the wings (Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi).

It’s brilliant but slightly depressing, and the idea is that Bacigalupi’s stories are just edgy enough to remind me that 20 hours on an airplane isn’t the end of the world — at least not compared to the end of the world.

I’ll let you know how it works.

See you in the sky, Tom Chandler.