Having lived without phone or internet service since Saturday night due to the Bay Area storms, possibly some wire-hungry squirrels, and definitely AT&T’s valiant but ineffective efforts to get my neighborhood’s phone service to match the correct phone numbers, I feel like a hermit crab that has crawled out from under a rock, or a bear that has come out of hibernation back into the world – or back into the cyberworld anyway. I missed you guys (sure, maybe in that “I threw a rotten tomato but missed you” kind of way, but it still counts).
So one thing a post like Blez’ “Brand New AN Coming Soon” announcement does is generate some useful feedback from the community, some of which Blez and I chatted about last night. I gotta tell you, when people say “I wish that if you had three great observations on a Tuesday but nothing to say on a Friday, you’d write three posts Tuesday and nothing Friday,” I salivate. How frustrating it is to have an inspired idea – perhaps one that is timely – and not to be able to write anything, and then to have to force a post (or ask Cindi to fill in) on a day where nothing especially inspired comes to mind. Not sure how to improve that situation (we kind of need to have assigned days to plan AN around the rest of our lives, which include day jobs and – ahem – recreational activities), but we need to keep talking about how to put quality ahead of “scheduling”.
Blez and I also discussed the whole “pull a diary to the front page” idea for slow days, uninspired days, or just special “different front page voice” days. Again, just an interesting idea to bring up, kick around, mess with – as you would a helpless baby or a frightened puppy.
So we’re listening, talking, thinking – and in my case, just being grateful to be able to post this at all! Six whole days without the internet; now I truly understand hardship.
