Where did October go? Since I didn’t spend much of it around here, I come today to answer that question. I usually post this kind of thing as “Show and Tell Sunday.” The “preparing blog posts on the weekend” thing hasn’t worked out so well recently, though. Welcome to “Show and Tell Thursday”!
There were entire weeks where I got up each day, fully intending to go straight into writing on the book, and instead ended up checking Politico, the Washington Post, Five Thirty Eight and a whole other host of political sites, and got myself wound up enough that it was a miracle if I got any writing done at all, much less hit my daily quota.
–Aside from the “writing a book” stuff, John Scalzi on “The Election and Productivity” pretty well nails where the first half of October went. The specific distractions were different–Salon.com, Twitter, Facebook, and various rabbit holes of links–but the experience was just about the same.
I mailed in my ballot on October 16, Once that was done, I felt freer to selectively ignore election-related media.
Good timing, too, since work became an endless series of budget meetings right after that. (They’ve mostly ended now, however.)
Two Weekends in Pictures!
The month wound up with some much more fun distractions. Paul and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary on October 21 with a weekend at Disneyland. (Click through for slideshow if you’re viewing this post in a feed reader)
The weekend after that, we took my nephews to Stan Lee’s LA Comic Con (formerly Comikaze Expo.) T., my older nephew, went with us last year, but this was his younger brother J.’s first con, and he really got into it. Paul and I, for our part, got into “Baby”–aka The Impala from Supernatural–and I got a book signed by the Dread Pirate Roberts.(Click through for slideshow if you’re viewing this post in a feed reader)
I actually have done some non-election-related reading during the last few weeks. You might not know it from around here, though, so here are some book covers and a few links to prove it.
I have another busy weekend ahead, so I may not make it back here this Sunday either. In the meantime, tell me…where did October go with you?
I’m in denial that it’s already November.
I’m hoping I won’t be in denial of a whole lot more about this time next week ;-).
I’m tired of reading about the election, I’m tired of hearing about it, I’m tired of the phone calls and the mailings and since I’ve already voted, I’m of a notion to walk away from social media and the internet sources until after the election. At which point I may need to get back on to research other countries to move to or places to buy semi-automatic weapons to protect myself from the crazies!
My eldest hits up cons as often as he can make the scheduling and road travel work. Lately he’s been doing a lot of video work at them and hasn’t crafted new costumes for them, thank heavens. Somehow I always ended up putting a ridiculous number of hours into making those things! What fun to get to share it with your nephews!
I’m afraid the crazies will have their own weapons because they really think the Second Amendment could be repealed! And seriously, the amount of trees killed for campaign mailings no one reads is just ridiculous.
And it was a lot of fun taking my nephews to the con–they’re already excited about their next one!
Sounds like you’ve been very busy and as my work hovers around the political, I’ve had to be inundated with the election since it began, though different aspects than the salacious stuff. I am going to be glad when the election cycle is over.
I’m not sure I will, to be honest–depends how things turn out! And it’ll probably be about six months before people start jabbering about who’s going to run in 2020, so I’m afraid we won’t get much of a break.
Yes, these election cycles are getting way too long!
That was an interesting article about bookselling from Lithub — I always read Lithub, but somehow missed that one. I am a bookseller (and have been one for almost 20 years), and I find recommending books to be the most fun part of the job. I don’t take it personally when someone isn’t interested in a book I love! The job of a bookseller is to find out a little bit about the reader and what he or she likes to read. The first question I always ask is, “What was the last book you read that you really loved?”
That’s usually a good place to start. I think that’s part of any good recommendation process, not just books. I get thrown when people ask what they should read without giving me any background about their own reading interests, but I’m pretty comfortable giving recommendations to readers whose tastes I know pretty well.