Birthday Reflections 2024: Eldritch Eons and Birthday Drinks on a Wednesday

 

Credit: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/580823683164479108/ 

As has become tradition on this blog, I’m making a post for my birthday! 

Birthdays, of course, remind us that we’re closer to death, but they are also a good excuse to celebrate life—while we have it. I can no longer pretend I’m a young person. As of today, I can’t even pretend that I’m in my mid-40’s anymore.

To loosely paraphrase Gandalf, I’m at an age where it’s becoming increasingly obvious that I can’t choose how much time I have left, but I can choose what to do with the time that is given to me. 

Random Thoughts, Part 24: Opinions, Generations, AI, Ambition, 666, Doppelgängers, Noticing the Beauty of the Universe, etc.

 

My long-running Random Thoughts series has continued, randomly. Here we are at Part 24, which I'm happy to announce includes Random Thought 666! And there are also memes, because why not? Enjoy!

Academic Cats and Dogs: Does Academia Need to Get Weirder to Survive?

I’ve never been entirely comfortable in academia. Don’t get me wrong. I love reading and writing. I enjoy teaching and interacting with students. I’m fond of conversation about subjects most people don’t understand or care to understand. 

But in recent years—especially with the convergence of the pandemic, my tenure, and feeling middle age—I find myself caring less and less about academia as an abstract system of disciplines. I care about my friends, my colleagues, and my students. I care about philosophy as a global human endeavor. But I don’t care about being a Very Serious Academic. I’m not sure how much I ever really did. 

Random Thoughts, Part 21: John Wick, Colorblindness, Apps, Skinny Doctors, Weezer, the South, and So On

It's randomly that time again: My Random Thoughts series continues with Part 21! I haven't been moved to write much on this blog lately, but that doesn't mean the random thoughts have stopped. Far from it! I doubt I could turn them off if I wanted to, but lucky for me and for you, dear reader, I don't want to. And it's also an excuse for a random assortment of memes curated from my random internet amusements. Enjoy!

Review of Reviews: May 2023

 

I'm a bit behind on book reviews, but rather than doing a few separate shorter reviews, I figured I'd do a review of reviews! This time it's Billy Summers by Stephen King, Dreaming Me by Jan Willis, and Beneath the Rising by Premee Mohamed.

I'll stick to books this time, but I may do some reviews of some notable TV and movies soon (maybe including Star Trek: Picard, Beef, Yellowjackets, Sinister, X, Dungeons & Dragons, John Wick 4, and the latest (surprisingly science fictional!) iteration of Beavis & Butt-Head.

"Unfrozen Eons Drown the Future": My New Short Story on The Weird Tales Podcast!

My short story "Unfrozen Eons Drown the Future" is now live on The Weird Tales Podcast! You can listen to it on most podcast services. Check out the details here.

42nd Post of 2022 New Year's Eve Spectacular!

 

I was going to make one more post before the new year, and I noticed that my next post would be my 42nd of the year--an auspicious number for a science fiction and philosophy blog!

This is fewer posts than any other full year since I started this blog in December 2014. But that's okay. In fact, this has been one of my lessons of pandemic life: it's okay to do less. Sure, life is short and all of our days are numbered even if we don't know what that number is, but on the other hand sometimes you have to take the advice of that great sage of the 1980's, Ferris Bueller, and take a minute to look around at life once in awhile or you might miss it.

I've learned how to rest. How to take naps and walks more regularly.

Besides, I've been busy enough. I did a bit more travel in 2022 than in 2020 or 2021, but not too much. I wrote a bit more fiction after attending a workshop on fiction writing for philosophers. After that, I started my new part-time gig as a first reader ("slush reader") for Escape Pod, which has been an interesting experience so far and no doubt helped my own writing as well.

I published some non-fiction, including a chapter in Dune and Philosophy: Minds, Monads, and Muad'Dib (available now across the Imperium!). I read some books, meeting, but not exceeding, my Goodreads goal for the year. "Meeting but not exceeding" seems like a good motto for 2023.

I did keep up my pandemic journal that I started in 2020, but I've written in it less and haven't felt the need to post it here lately, which is fine. Maybe I'll do another public journal post when/if the pandemic actually ends. Actually, this post somehow became more of a journal entry than I intended when I started it. But that's okay! Another lesson of recent years: it's okay if things go otherwise than you intended.

And I spent a lot of time with my loved ones, including my cats, who enjoy that I've become a lot more of a homebody the last couple years. And we bought a house (thanks to the pandemic freeze on student loan payments), which makes being at home a lot cozier for everyone.

Looking forward to 2023, I will watch a bit of the Twilight Zone marathon on New Year's Day, and then I have a sabbatical in the spring term. I won't be teaching for the regular semester for the first time since the fall of 2011 when I had a dissertation fellowship. 

I'll probably read and write some stuff about classical Indian Buddhist philosophy (especially Vasubandhu and Ratnakīrti: the project I originally intended to start in 2020, which won't go the way I intended it then, but that's okay). I might start writing something about Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler and their Daoist and Buddhist influences. I'll probably write some more fiction, and who knows, maybe publish something. And take lots of naps and walks.

And I have some travel plans for conferences in Denver and San Francisco, maybe a road trip or two, at least one to a beach somewhere and another to visit my Midwestern folks, and maybe yet another to some US states I have yet to visit. Who knows where the road will take me?

And there will be some conventions, starting with Chattacon in a few weeks. And Hugo reading this summer.

So I think I'll be busy, but hopefully not too busy in 2023. I'll do enough, but not too much. And it will be okay if not everything goes according to my plans, because, after all, most of life, the universe, and everything happens outside of my intentions, and maybe sometimes those are the best parts of this wild, mixed up experience of being a bit of the universe that has temporarily coalesced into a human life.

Wherever you have coalesced, dear reader, I wish you and your beloved life forms a happy new year of doing enough, but not too much!