October 24, 2013

In 2013, I have lost more friends, both to death, and to stupid breakup drama, than I ever have in my life.

On returning from DC, I am not merely alone, but reminded with the death of dannye that it's only downhill from here.

I have no eulogies in me. I have only a grieving that's six months old and getting reopened every other week. There are too many of my family gone.

Peace to you all. Shantih, shantih, shantih.

I have spent good parts of recent days arguing over whether 'Universe' ought to be capitalized. Apparently, it depends on how alone we are.

I haven't daylogged in too long.

That's all I have. I think, just for a little while longer, I'll pretend nothing soul-crushingly sad has ever happened in the world.



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Node auditing proceeds thusly:

avalyn is done.
C-Dawg is done.
dutchess is done.


Pseudo_Intellectual is on page 14 of 31
Segnbora-t is on page 22 of 34
kthejoker is in the queueueue.

Blessings to all.

It's late over here where I live. Can't sleep, still reeling from dannye's passing.

I haven't been on E2 for a bit. Perhaps it's a natural drifting apart, but I'm thinking I should, perhaps, start drifting back. At the very least, it's a better use of my time than Facebooking.

I'm a now a professional writer, a member of SFWA, HWA, and a bunch of other acronyms. I can honestly give dannye a tip of my hat for his feedback. Perhaps it's because I'm an older noder, but we always got along. That didn't stop him from pointing out when I screwed up a node.

Well, I happened to be in the midst of writing a short story for an invite anthology about supernatural things in Colorado. I ended up changing the protagonist to Danny Wildman, and I even snuck in thefez and Jet-Poop as reanimated bodies. It's a small thing, but every time I think of that story, I'll remember Danny. And that'll be a good day.

The journalism school I went to accepted 120 high school graduates out of thousands of applicants. If you got in, you were probably at the top of your high school English classes and you probably thought you were hot shit.

There was a rude awakening coming, and woe to those who were not prepared. They told us early on that we would be graded more harshly and critiqued more sharply than we were probably accustomed to. It was nonetheless a shock to some people's systems.

I had my own internal struggles with journalism school, but I didn't go in with a false, inflated sense of superiority because a year earlier, I had signed up for a writing website that I didn't quite understand, posted some things that weren't up to par, and gotten a stern lecture from some guy I didn't know who apparently took the place really seriously.

I won't lie: I stayed here partially out of spite. Quitting would have been too simple; I wanted to get it and I was going to wear him (among others) down. I asked him to take a look at a subsequent writeup (long since nuked at my own request). He told me that the content was fine this time, though "it rambles a bit and fails to establish a solid point." I got better. He was encouraging — blunt and honest, but encouraging.

We had many, many conversations about music over the next couple of years. (Consider that when I secured tickets to a concert I'd been hoping for forever, the first person I excitedly told was a man 1,700 km away whom I'd never met and would never meet.)

He was the first god who threw some extra votes my way as a reward for a solid effort and he was generous with his C!s, but he was usually the first person to tell me that I'd phrased something awkwardly or made a typo or could stand to clarify something (or had neglected to mention Matt Drudge in a writeup about online journalism, but I stand by that one).

He took my writing seriously enough to tell me when it needed work, and I'll always be grateful. The best people never stop expecting the best of you and call you out on it when you slack.

I hope this was neither rambling nor lacking a solid point. I can't presume to guess what he'd think about the content, but I mean it. Every word. Thank you, sir.

E2 has just lost one of its longtime noders, dannye. I'm compelled to write something about it. First of all, You noders fucking suck and you need to stop dying and need my not-dying wisdoms, etc. Seriously.

So dannye and I just didn't get along. But hey, it's always sad to see such a great talent pass into the Great Beyond. And it's always sad for anybody to suffer and die from cancer; it must be so horrible and I hope I never have to experience it. Poor dannye and grundoon. :( Lots of feels.

dannye didn't get me. I probably never got him. Many have mentioned that he helped them be better writers. He was hard on them, as he was with most people, and that got them to decide to do better. Or something. I didn't have that same experience. I've tried to search my brain but I honestly cannot recall a single instance where a comment from him encouraged me to write better. Maybe once or twice he ate a factual writeup of mine and I came back with a better version that survived? Maybe? Don't get me wrong, I am not doubting any that have said he helped them, I'm just saying: YMMV. Anyway, sometimes the opposite was true. I'd write something, realize that would annoy him and other like-minded higher-up noders, and then I'd be all the more apt to post it! Of course these wouldn't be any of my factuals. He just did not get or appreciate or like my weird stuff at all (plenty of noders did/do).

The thing is, he didn't help me because of that, and the fact that most of his comments to me were negative and discouraging. I know that a lot of folks out there believe in the power of negative reinforcement and that by telling somebody they suck it spurs them on to improve. But I think that's bull shit. Maybe it does genuinely help some people. But my stand is that positive reinforcement, or encouragement, is far better and more effective; if you tell somebody they suck they're more liable to believe they suck and then subsequently they go on to suck more. By contrast, swankivy is one of the only people who helped me be a better writer. To be fair, 90% of her interaction with me as far as writing critiques was outside of E2. However, her comments were always - no exceptions - tactful and at least neutral, if not positively encouraging.

I am not claiming that any of dannye's comments to me ever said that I (or a writeup) "sucked" - using that exact word. But that was gist of most his critical messages to me. And he also chastized me in the catbox for my writing there fer cryin out loud. EMOTICONS: BAD! Really? I mean, really?

That all said, RIP dannye. I'll miss you anyway, you cranky old dude. I was as surprised to hear of his passing as anybody was.

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There's just too much sad and depressing crap lately. This is just another one. Some of you are aware of the pile of shit I've personally been dealing with. And that is certainly going to get even worse before it gets better. Much worse, I fear.

Maybe I'll node the entire horror story someday, I mean the real version of it.