Plattsburgh, NY, everyone. (Taken with instagram)
Good morning, astronauts. Today is moving day. (Taken with instagram)
Well I don’t know how, but I did it. (Taken with Instagram at Brooklyn College Library)
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Anonymous asked: Is it okay to follow you? I mean... do you have zillions of followers already? I ask because I'd like to follow you covertly, and not be noticed. I'd basically like to read what you write, without the risk of you finding my journal and reading the utter embarrassing crap I write.
First of all, no I don’t have zillions of followers, and even if I did I would notice you.
Second, please feel free to follow me, or better yet: email me, davidmpressatgmaildotcom. It’s on the front page of my blog if you click on the envelope. Send me some of your stuff, if you’re comfortable, I’d love to read it.
Let me ask you a question, and sorry if this puts you on the spot, but you write for some value, correct? I mean that’s what got me started, I started writing to escape my daily reality and to take down some of what was happening around me to better understand it and gain some clarity. To think about things rather than lash out and be angry about them. And yeah alot of it was embarrassing crap too. It’s a phase. So, and I’m sorry if I’m assuming incorrectly here, (which is probably more than likely), but perhaps you’re writing and putting it in your blog for some sort of similarly cathartic experience. No?
I’m going to be a writing teacher for the rest of my life, which is great, but let’s not kid anyone, that was not what I originally intended. Life grows, things change, and you do what you can to keep riding with the tide. Not that I’m complaining, I think helping people become better readers and writers is pretty great. Listen, I’m here for you and I’d love to work with you, so feel free to email me. My idea is to help you become un-embarrassed with your writing, that you become comfortable to put your name to it. And if that sounds like something you want to do, feel free to get in touch whenever. Believe it or not I got this line from a Jeph Loeb comic and I’m embarrassed to admit that, but I think it’s true and honest: “You write something, you put your name to it.” Part of that comes from not being embarrassed with what you write, but proud of it, what you write is who you are and you stand by it. I have no doubt you stand by what you write but I don’t think you actually think it’s crap, as you say, because if you did you wouldn’t put it on a blog. You’d be more secretive about it. You wouldn’t put it on a blog if you didn’t want someone to read it.
So, really what I’m saying is I’d like to help you move past the thought of where you think what you write in your journal is “utter embarrassing crap.” I’d like to help you become more confident, because believe it or not, that really affects how you write. So again, feel free to email me. Now, I don’t think I’m an authority, there are definitely far better people than me, Neil Gaiman is one of them, Gail Simone is another, but I figured I’d offer. Thanks for reading.
Going hard, getting thorough and thumbnailing. (Taken with instagram)
“I have two work spaces, one in Paris, the other in the country. Between them there is no common object, for nothing is ever carried back and forth. Yet these sites are identical. Why? Because the arrangement of tools (paper, pens, desk, clocks, calendars) is the same. It is the structure of the space which constitutes its identity. The private phenomenon would suffice to shed some light on structuralism: the system prevails over the very being of objects.” —
Roland Barthes from his autobiography.
I wonder about this kind of thing all the time. Does the place actually change the structure of writing? Does it really change? My friend Rick said something last weekend that touches on this—that I seem more level, calmer, and focused in the things I post when I’m home. I thought about this for awhile because there is something about having an opportunity to write and create at home. Place does make a difference in that your mentality shifts. That’s really at the core of why I’m going home: I’ll be able to do what I care about up there, because the place keeps me level. Whereas here I’m like a chicken with its head cut off. Too much stimuli.
Untappd. -
I’m terrible at remembering what I had to drink or places I’ve been, so my friend Francis talked me into checking out this app that helps me keep track of the beer I’ve been having. Obviously, I was out last night.
The app, at first, is pretty confusing, because it definitely needs someone to explain to you how to search for a beer, and that nearly defeats the entire point of having the application. You have to hit the “Drink up” button before searching for the beer name or brewery. For me, I think an app should be bluntly, even stupidly, intuitive in the sense that you shouldn’t need someone to explain to you how to use it.
Otherwise it’s very useful for my purposes.
[video]
Wil Wheaton reacts to his first published comic book:
When I bought some copies, Amy (who some of you know from Tabletop) held it up and said, “Is this your first published work as a comic author?”
I thought for a second and said, “I’ve written manga before, but this is my first comic book.”
And that’s when it hit me: Today, I am a published comic book author. A real one, and if I work really hard, and have a little bit of luck, it’s only the beginning.
I’ve been traveling and working so much the past few months, I haven’t been able to slow down and look around very often (life moves as fast as Ferris Beuller warned us), so I haven’t been able to just stop, reflect, and be grateful for what I have. I don’t mean to suggest that I’m taking things for granted, or under the delusion that I’m some kind of big deal or anything stupid like that, I just mean that I can’t think about more than what is immediately in front of me until it’s done, and there’s been a long list of somethings in front of me for most of this year (which is awesome; it’s great to be busy making a living doing what I love.)
What I love about this is how honest and grateful he is but also values the work done. That’s really fucking great.