I’m a collector of lists. I used to keep a list on lined paper of every movie I’d seen; I still keep an equivalent list for books, although now it’s on GoodReads. My TBR list is fearsome to behold. My browser tabs are equally fearsome, on more than one device. I’ve got long lists of things to watch on all my TV/film streaming services, and things to listen to on my podcast app. Sadly, all the lists are growing. It might be that I like making lists more than actually consuming the media, the way people (ahem) buy books faster than they read…
Funny thing about podcasts. I always swore I was a visual learner, couldn’t do audiobooks, much preferred transcripts over training videos and online newspapers over radio or TV news. Then…well, things changed, I needed to rest my eyes more and had to get my story fix somehow. I started out with a queer SF audio drama (Moonbase Theta Out) and have been really enjoying a short-story podcast (LeVar Burton Reads…yep, I’m a child of the 80s and have been a fan since Reading Rainbow and Star Trek: The Next Generation, so I will listen to that man read anything). Most recently, I’ve added a couple of non-fiction/self-help shows about neurodivergent self-care and housekeeping (Struggle Care) and decluttering (A Slob Comes Clean). Maybe I’ll finally end up hooked on Welcome to Night Vale. An early adopter I am not!
Speaking of being a late adopter, after some 7 or 8 years of being on my local contra dance committee, I’ve recently stepped up to become co-president of running the thing. Who, me?! So far, I’ve managed to run a meeting successfully and make announcements less successfully (microphones are scary). My co-conspirator has a ton of experience in community organizing, so I’m hoping to learn lots from her as we work to revitalize both the committee and our dance community.
One of the things we’re trying is shifting committee-related conversations from our overburdened inboxes to Discord. If you’re not familiar, Discord is a social media website where anyone can set up a group or “server” and then make subgroups to keep topics organized. My co-president organized an entire political campaign via Discord; I’m in a group that migrated over from a forum and now hang out there together all the time like it was a 90s chatroom. Some people use it for gaming (it has voice and video capability), others set it up as a family chat (I wish my family had one like that, because we’re somehow terrible at communicating between households).
Oh, and Discord lets you set up little games like Co-ordle, a multiplayer version of Wordle. I’m still doing the O.G. Wordle…and Quordle and Octordle. Word games have always been my jam, which will surprise absolutely no-one. I did crosswords for the longest time, and later cryptic crosswords with my spouse. Nowadays I mostly just try to keep up with his puns.
And — confession time — I haven’t written a word of fiction since finishing Voice of the Sea last winter. Let’s hope that changes soon.