Things I Wish I Could Do

(Or were better at)

1. Sing. I'm pretty sure I'm tone deaf. I'm pretty sure I misjudge how many people are in the house when I think I'm alone and thus also are pretty sure I'm tone deaf.

2. Drink coffee black. I've got this down with espresso, but give me a larger cup without (soy)milk at your own peril. Pass on the sugar, though.

3. Pretend to care about things that don't interest me better. I'm nodding my head and artificially adjusting my intonation laudably but my face is giving me away, ruining everything.

4. Throw side-eye/give the death glare. My mother is particularly good at this. I am not.

5. Schmooze. With antisocial academic types in particular. Never does my music sound better or the book I'm reading capture my attention more.

6. Set a schedule. Sometimes I go to bed at 11:30, others at 5 AM. I feel like I have no control over this. Some polite people have informed me that this is called "being a twenty-something", or variously, "being a (graduate) student".

7. Travel. I often look at flights to places I want to go, waiting for the money to pay for them to telekinetically appear in my account. Eating takes priority, though.

8. Be less clumsy. And when I at last throw stellar side-eye, it will be to anyone who can eat flaky, crumbly, delicate anything without getting it all over themselves.

9. Put my obsessive-compulsive quirks to productive use. Less organizing of my living space and earthly possessions, more workaholism.

10. Push all of the bumbling people around here out of my way. But that wouldn't be polite.

Writing, You Say?

No, I haven't died or somehow otherwise disappeared into the (rotting, crumbling) Portuguese woodwork. I haven't stopped writing in favor of other creative mediums like my videos, much as plenty of people have asked (who knew that the number of people who pay attention to my things online grew from 3.5 to 7?). I just haven't had much to write about without feeling like I'm doing the virtual equivalent of sucking wind, because I'm trying to take all of my endeavors in a direction somewhat away from the diary-like format of yore.

So I'm still capable of writing long-winded blog posts, but I find the utility of writing about inane details of my life a little bit less relevant or interesting, and I think those who do read what I have to say would probably agree. I have been seeing much better interaction and engagement from my videos than I typically would from any given written post, and I'm not particularly surprised by that. It feels more interactive and doesn't require as much attention. In this age, our attention spans have shortened to those of something that might grow in a garden. A turnip, perhaps, or a strawberry. Part of this is that I don't really think I'm doing much outside of my creative work (which you invariably see posted here, which is the point) that's of note, since my classes are going much as they ever have, much along the lines of anyone who has gone to school knows, much as any graduate student can relate to, much as any twentysomething who successfully exited a period of senioritis and moved on to other ventures can attest to. It's chugging along, slow and steady, and the anecdotes of note are more like snippets, instead of spreads.

Despite this, since the rebranding and redesign of the blog, I have had record numbers of pageviews and other general traffic between my blog and my main video channel month on month, something I would not have expected given the perceived paucity of my posts. Perhaps it is, indeed, easier for people that I have everything collected under a common identifier, or perhaps I'm just having a temporary blip of good fortunes for my productive energies. It would be foolish to assume that there isn't some kind of a marketing effect when you have figured out the logistics of targeting and how to "brand" yourself accordingly, and in some small way, I have done just that in the way that happens to accommodate the skills that I have or wish I had. So the point of all of this is, then: no, I haven't disappeared, and in fact I am very perceptive of the increased attention I've been getting for my overall creative efforts. I recognize that this still serves as a personal blog, a personal site, videos reaching a very small audience, so the increase in traffic, however relatively small, does not pass me by. I hope you'll stay with me as I produce content designed to be of increasingly better quality.

UPDATE: I would also like to take this time to note that I have been going through posts to add labels to them to make the site further navigable. They can be found at the bottom of posts, and I may add them to the sidebar in the future. If there's something you'd like to see me do with the site, do more of, or do less of, please let me know in a comment or an email!

Video: Nude Beaches

I think the title speaks for itself. Watch to see what I have to say about showing epidermis at the oceanfront:

New York

I'm not really sure how I managed to make it so long without getting to New York, that epicenter of cosmopolitan travel, that city of hopes and dreams in the eyes of so many, that almost mythical "it" factor that few succeed in describing well; New York City, the ultimate destination for someone as nominally well traveled as I seem to have become. Yet I hadn't, and so upon invitation to spend a few days in the city with accommodations accounted for, I couldn't turn up the offer.

Owing to its size, New York is many things to many people, and there are as many opinions about how the city is, what is good or bad about it, and what you should do there as there are people there at any given moment. It is the realization of the cliched American melting pot, a break from the comparative homogeneity of cities elsewhere in the country from east to west, a reminder that we can somehow manage to still be American even without segregating ourselves into cul-de-sacs and sports utility vehicles. New York is perhaps jarring to the content suburbanite but feels immediately familiar to the aspiring urbanite, the young professional priced out of the exact center of his home town but who passes most of his time there anyway. New York is your home town's downtown on steroids, regardless of the borough. It seems to never end, and what you make of that says as much about your background as of the city itself.

What is striking about New York is precisely that it is not striking; the immediate familiarity gives it a sheen of Anywhere, USA coating the sidewalks, the potholes, the peculiar beggars hollering down the streets, the tables of small and pretentious Manhattan restaurants that serve mediocre food. In fact, there is nothing remarkable about New York except that it is a city that makes an art of compartmentalizing, a place where you are free and have the resources to do and be whatever you would like at any moment you would like to, so long as you know what that is or at least have a decent reason for doing so. I suspect many of those who don't end up liking the city never figured out why they were there in the first place, they just expected New York to happen for them.

New York is a fine place to visit as a foreign tourist, but is designed in a way meant to be utilized and enjoyed to the maximum by Americans, newfound or taken for granted as birthright. It is not a museum of a city, the love at first sight that comes with the decorative lattices of Paris or the avant-garde edginess of Berlin. No, New York envelops you and lets you digest it before you decide what to think of it, before you decide what your purpose for being there is. New York will spit you out if you come to lack that purpose, moving onto the hoards of starry-eyed newcomers eager to take your place in it. The city is not boiled down into a Disneyfied garden, instead you are expected to know where you are going before you go there, right down to the paucity of signage in the subway. It is the quintessence of American dystopia, the idea we all seem to buy into of stark individualism and aggressive money-chasing while on the same hand forcing the less stellar reality into an unavoidable collective. It's fine dining on every cuisine you can think of and twenty minute waits for your subway train to arrive to take you to your underpaying job in a different borough. It's two-faced and unapologetic about that. The magic of New York, it seems, lies in its brash disregard for any imposed sort of order.