Settling In
I find it hard to believe that it has only been one week since I moved to my new place. Already it feels like home, I am all settled in now and the place has really come together. I haven't done much since we last spoke, spending most of my time unpacking and making everything nice and new. Theres something to be said for the cleanliness of a new apartment and I am enjoying it because that cleanliness won't last for long!
Now that I am almost done nesting I can focus on more important things like the changes that will be happening with this site soon and my writing. Already I am seeing progress in both areas and while it may not be much, it's a start. I read an interesting piece the other day by Ursula K. Le Guin that happened to coincide with my own thoughts. Here I am sitting on a pile of history and legends for a world that doesn't exist, yet my job as a writer is to make you believe that this world does in fact exist (at least as long as your nose is stuck to the page). She puts it as this “The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.” It has been one of my greatest struggles and my greatest triumphs to be able to express in words the images I see play out in my head, to bring to life a world that only I can see right now. At times I look at some of the great story tellers out there and think that they must somehow have been blessed to be able to express their visions so clearly. It was indeed, a breath of fresh air to read my own frustrations expressed by one of these story tellers. Reading those words put me at peace. My struggles are their struggles and this thought makes me feel as if I am part of some larger fraternal brotherhood of artists. Large or small we all deal within our own mediums with a longing to express our visions and it is our curse and our gift to be able to express those visions to you.
Actually that segues nicely into an announcement I have been mulling over in my head for the past week. My reading group Musings of Calliope is hosted by Facebook's servers and as we all know, or should by now, is that Facebook does not take the security and privacy of its members seriously. I am shifting my focus right now, from redesigning this website to focusing on creating a new forum on my own servers to host the group. This would, in theory, provide us with a secure location to discuss our current topics without fear of someone taking our works and selling them off to potential bidders. Mind you this is a paranoid reaction on my part, Facebook has yet to defame any aspiring artists by selling content posted to their site, but according to their own terms of service they have this right if they choose to act upon it. So in short, Musings will be moving! Those of you interested in joining can always send me an email letting me know you're interested but you will not be registered into the system until June, when the new forums come online. Those of you already a part of this grand experiment will get details soon about what needs to be done to transfer your membership.
May itself is shaping up to be a busy, busy time! Not only will I be working on setting up the new Musings forums and redesigning the site but I will be doing a lot of traveling coming up! Next weekend I will be in Tennessee visiting family for a reunion and the weekend after that I swill be traveling to Georgia to see my friends. This flurry of activity is in response to rumors of more changes coming down the pipe with the job. Apparently we will not be getting vacation time for an entire year once the new company takes over so this may be my last chance! News on the job front is the same as usual, there is no news just rumors and innuendo but they are supposed to be in town next week so maybe some answers will be forth coming. Until next week folks! Sayonara.
