I have about 20 minutes before I have to leave for the office, so this may be a bit short. I am dealing with a lot, but handling it nicely, or at least as nicely as I can. I feel like I have many more tools for dealing with anxiety than I once did, and am hoping to get word back on a side hustle working for an online wine magazine. I sent the editor different kinds of samples, and we’ll see what happens. Now that it’s out of my hands, I can only “let go and let God.” There’s only so much I can control, and putting myself out there is one of them.
Getting paid for being a writer would be a dream come true… not that I haven’t been paid on this web site. Your donations have literally sustained me over the years, not because I have lived on that money, but because I have been inspired by it. The money that you give keeps the site going, and furthering my education. The last big purchase that I made was a Red Hat certification with which I’m not finished, but mostly because I got a full-time job in a Windows shop and had to put it away so that I could focus on the things I haven’t used in years. #alllinuxallthetime #noDOSever
I don’t have enough experience to be a system administrator, but I do have enough experience to install LAMP servers (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PERL/Python), run and improve WordPress installations, etc. I use WordPress.com because I wanted the site to be about the writing, but there are plenty of times I’ve had my own server space and administrated it well. WordPress just makes it where I can add content and press “Post.” My own server space would entail making sure all the plugins, scripts, etc. are in the right folders, although the plus is that I could add ads, rather than going to a subscription-based model. WordPress.com is not down with that. I am sure that I could hawk “fine hyptertext products” (thanks, Jason Kottke), but for now, focusing on the content is enough.
I might change my mind in time, though, because it would be nice to have income coming in that I don’t have to watch. I’d just want a site like Dooce’s, where the ads are relatively unobtrusive. I’d also be able to add plugins like a discussion forum that’s better than the comments section on each entry. I don’t know what we’d talk about. Probably everything from childhood abuse to ice cream. It’s all important in its own way.
Plus, I’d have the ability to use CSS/HTML to customize themes that WordPress.com does not offer unless you buy a professional package, and what I have found, since I had it for a year, is that it is not as extensible as I would want. Plus, here’s something that’s also very, very important… secure FTP and a shell into my own server.
That may not mean much to you, but it is everything to a web developer.
I’m working through all the Python lessons on CodeAcademy now that I’ve finished SQL, but I am not as far along as Dana because she was the one with the math/logic brain in the family… although I’m sure it was good that Aaron was a ready resource. I still maintain that she could have a six-figure career, but I’m not sure that coding would appeal to her. But maybe now it would. We don’t know each other anymore, and I’m ok with it.
Whatever she does, I hope she’s as happy as I am, with the few caveats of everything that’s going on in my life right now. It’s intense and scary, with no real escape until it’s over. There’s a lot I wish I could share with her, and the fact that she wants nothing from me is enough. I’m not chasing her, ever.
However, I did write a long letter to Argo in my notebook, for two reasons. The first is that she hates reading handwriting. The second is that it wasn’t to mail. Just to talk to her without her talking back. The “angel on my shoulder” trope is working well. I don’t need to have her input to have her in my life, as weird as that sounds. I can miss her on my own, and I never get responses for which I am unprepared.
No chasing, just thnking.
And on that note, I have to go. I just thought a letter in my notebook with all the real things that were happening in my life would help me to get my feelings out while keeping the promise that I would not write about it here and I would not contact her all at the same time. That feeling that I need her is gone; mostly because I realized that my relationship with her was text, and I still have it.
Letters that don’t get answered are still valid and healing, because it’s my emotions spilled on the page and not hers. When I lost that open line to say what I wanted, I realized that I never wanted an escalated conversation ever again… and now they’re not. They’re one-sided and perfect because it’s more like a diary than anything else, because I do my best thinking while writing letters. As I have said before, the chord that was once between us has become a loopback, feeding me. There’s no place like 127.0.0.1.
😛
Stories That Are All True 