Vocation

Qarrtsiluni has moved. I don't think I mentioned that I have another "short short" up there, the last of the short shorts. The new theme is "education." Send 'em something!

I'm also very honored to have my poem "Meiosis" appear in Sage Cohen's Weekly Poem. Sharing space with Rumi and Jack Gilbert makes me feel very proud and quite ridiculous.

I've been reading up on massage as a career and came across references to the national convention of a massage therapy organization. And found myself thinking of it with great enthusiasm. What a terrific thing! Think of all the people you could meet, all the cool stuff vendors would have on display, the contacts you'd make and the things you'd learn! & I remembered then being sent to some software convention in Seattle, a few years ago, and finding it all horribly off-putting and boring, and wondering what on earth it was being held for. And I realize now, it must have been exciting to some people -- to the people who really belong in software -- in just that way.

Even more extraordinary, I have been speculating about various ways to advertise myself and "gain visibility" with pleasure. This is really bizarre. I have always hated that sort of thing with a passion, and efforts to induce me to do such stuff -- to give papers and be on panels and do demos and what-not -- on the part of my employers or advisors, has always made me surly and mutinous. But there's a huge difference between selling yourself as something you aren't, so you can do something you don't want to do, and selling yourself as something you are so you can do something you do want to do.

In prospect, anyway. Will it be so in reality?

Well -- I'll find out.