Print = poor service, full stop

To traditional commerce, it must seem ironic that the web has turned product businesses into service businesses. But it has. Boy, it has. And the sooner traditional organisations—specifically those dealing with print media—realise that, the better off we'll all be.

This week I bought a gift subscription to the printed National Geographic online, from the National Geographic website. Purchasing was, unsurprisingly, easy enough. But then...

1. I receive an unbranded text-only email, and realise that I made an error in the delivery address for my gift subscription. On closer inspection I realise that while the confirmation tells me the payment method I used, it doesn't tell me how much the charge was.
2. I visit the account management website but have no account number to enter, so I can't change the details.
3. I call the Australian support number listed in the email, but it's been disconnected.
4. In a last-ditch effort, I reply to the receipt email, but unsurprisingly, it's undeliverable.
5. I tweet @natgeo four times, to no avail.
6. I drag up the White Pages and call the National Geographic Channel, whatever the fuck that is, in Australia.
7. Through the IVR I get the 1800 number listed exactly nowhere else for magazine support in Australia.
8. I call that number. 
9. The support person tells me I can expect a confirmation email in a week which will have an account number in it. I can then email service@nategoaust.com with the account number and the correct mailing address.

...or I could just stick a fork in my eye, call the ambulance, and endure optical surgery rather than put myself through the pain of trying to navigate National Geographic's subscription "service"...

This reminds me of a recent book order in a specialist book store. The book was supposedly in the Australian warehouse and would take "a week or two" to come in. I cancelled the order after three so I could just order it online from overseas, receive the fucker, and be done with it.

I am one of possibly 6, maybe 7 people on the planet willing to fork out actual money solely to support the Australian print industry. And where has it got me? Exactly nowhere, friends. Nowhere.

On "Lifestyle Design"

Yesterday, a friend teased me about my looming working holiday abroad with the words, "So you’re doing high-level lifestyle-design now."

Lifestyle design is one of those terms that gives me massive pause ... and a giggle. It sounds like it was coined by some disaffected first-world dropout trying to justify a lack of direction by making it a "thing." Like it's acceptable to do something different from "the norm" if it has a "legitimate" name your jealous brother can type into the Wikipedia search box, or your mum can Google.

Not coincidentally, I also spoke with the Canadian about things in life so often being continued by sheer momentum. I dread the thought of having prettymuch any aspect of life driven by sheer momentum. There are times when momentum is extremely welcome, but in those cases, it's usually not all you have. When you're grateful for momentum, it's usually because you want the thing the momentum is helping you to achieve, and you want it very much.

But if momentum is what's keeping you going, you're probably in some trouble. And if, when you think about that, you start justifying your actions by conjuring up a raft of other things that are keeping you doing what you're doing, well, I'll leave you to it.

For the rest of us, these considerations point us back to lifestyle design. I hold no truck with the idea of lifestyle design, but who doesn't believe in trying to make themselves happy? As happy as possible? Who?

So why do I feel foolish telling my friends I work about three days a week, often in cosy bars, and I'm off to sit in a pool of bubbling mud next month? It's probably because I can't understand why everyone isn't doing this.

No, really: why isn't everyone who can do this doing this? By "who can do this" I mean, basically, everyone working online. For those who are somehow wedded to working five days a week for someone else, or get such a huge kick out of work that they're thrilled to do it 40+ hours a week, happy days and good luck. But for those who aren't, and like the sound of working less than full-time so they can do other stuff, I can come up with only one reason: momentum.

It's no happy accident that I live this way, and I feel fortunate I didn't take a job like teaching or factory work, where I'd have to be on site. I'm also glad I steered clear of management aspirations which might bind me to locations or hours. Sure, this isn't a straight-up dreamboat, but I am comprehensively thrilled to do the work I do, and work the hours I work, and have the rest of the time to myself. Who wouldn't be? It means freedom. Are people scared of freedom? Is that it?

I think we can safely say I don't get it.

ref=bigassorangeonleft

How WordPress undid all the evil it has ever inflicted on me and won my heart in one fell swoop:

[in the fire]

[Go outside
and kill me a dream—
don't skimp, now:
I wanna big,
mean,
beast o' one.
Full-grown
and thrashin',
fierce as they come.
I wanna dream
that fights for life—
no puny, 
runty 
little-un.
Want you to kill me
the toughest 
dream you can find.
Then bring it on home
and we'll throw it in the fire.]

(Being) OK/Okay/-ness

On Saturday night, a car hit my house, inches from the bedroom window by which I lay frozen with terror. Then it sped off into the night like some kind of maniac-monster from a childhood nightmare. It was very scary.

The next morning I found out that I know the driver. She lives in the next apartment: her kitchen window looks into mine. I became the angriest I've ever been in my life. This has not abated.

I've lived alone for four months in a new town since dissolving a partnership of ten years. There was no one I could think to call at 2.30 in the morning. So when I sat down, heart racing, eyes staring, hands shaking, having inspected the damage as best possible in the inky, terrifying dark, I tweeted about it. Not to "broadcast" my "life" but because this is the fastest way I know to reach a large proportion of the people I consider my closest friends.

And I needed some friends.

Since that time, I have spoken with police, encountered the partner of the car's driver, visited the pub to find out what they knew, and called the real estate agent to discuss repairs and issue eviction notices. I also discovered that I was too scared to stay in my house and drove an hour further west, to an old, double-storey hotel I know where the rooms are on the second floor.

But none of the friends I'd tried to reach through Twitter have called or emailed to check I'm okay, and that I still have a house to live in.

No one. Zero people. 0.

At least some know it happened, because they acknowledged my tweets. I know people are busy, but to be honest, I'm not sure what to make of this.

Perhaps I'm overreacting about the terror and the potential death and the myriad things I'd like to do to my neighbour. Maybe I've been living in the country too long, and have become accustomed to a degree of unselfconscious human concern that no longer exists in the city. Has working from home made me feel the lack of human contact more than other people? Do I expect too much of Twitter as a human communications medium? Are my friends are embarrassed that I would use the service for such a personal purpose or, conversely, do they assume that if I'm capable of putting fingers to keyboard everything must be fine? Am I just being inconsiderate of their lives and too wrapped up in my own problems? Is it conceivable that they don't realise I actually need them?

I don't really know. All I do know is that I could have been dead, and I would love to hear the warm voices of my friends again.

[the plains]

[After the long, friendly day, the warm beauty of which had been so tempting to believe, whose lull was so gentle and sweet, came the night.


It was a slow, creeping darkness. A trap, a hell, a horror. The gentlemen stood about with hats doffed, not making eye contact, being as kindly as was decent.


"It's not right," they said.


"It's not right."


But in the end there was no respite save the empty plains, where the wind played low along the fences and half-starved dogs preyed on everything. Everything. Here the night was a madness, the stars pinpricks of white-hot horror; the sickle-moon a threat; the vast dark immutable, abiding.


Time had run out long ago. Waiting had no meaning here, no purpose. But what else was there to do? Listen to the wail of the fences? Watch for the swift-running dogs? The plains stretched in all directions. And they lost people before they even showed their faces—before they even offered their hands.]

Overshare

A rather well-known personal blogger is in the midst of a family crisis, and is blogging about it.

On a practical level it's not surprising—that's what personal bloggers do. On a cynical level, the same applies.

But on a human level? I don't know. I don't know at all. The telling even of the most perfunctory personal information challenges me, though I never mind to hear it from others. And I'm not alone: witness the horrified awe surrounding reality TV.

It is a stunning good fortune that people ask so few questions, really, because that makes it easy for the most of us to avoid telling our secrets. I'm not sure about the volunteering of them, though. I question the dignity of it.

I question the dignity even of sharing the secrets of others. Example: of all the crazy people in my apartment building, the vampires and the window-breakers, the cartoon guy and Hawaiian-shirt man and the Caretaker, there's one I don't tell about.

Although I come and go and appear to pay no heed to the shifting tides of the blind at her window, the arrangement of chairs and the dying geranium on her balcony, I'm always watching and listening and waiting. With her, the familiar feeling: I don't know what's so wrong here, but I know it is.

Some secrets need keeping.

Remote work misadventure #799

Remote work misadventure #799 is the day when your car's with the blue-eyed mechanic but you need to get to the city for a 1-hour meeting, so you get up at 7.30am, which is hardly appropriate for a remote worker, ride 12kms to the nearest station, get on the train for 1hour 15min, tram for 0.5hours, have said meeting, then backtrack to home, arriving circa 3.45pm. Cursing the blue-eyed mechanic all the way.

Yes, if I was more organised, I would have rearranged my life to make today more functional! But sometimes, even us remote workers find ourselves taking each day minute by minute, however it comes.

Also, the scenery was good, even if the headwind was a bitch.

Language-slave snobs, STFU

I'm all a bit new-money in ye olde-money worlde of wrytyng and publyshyng. Having zero literary education and being the worst-read language-user on the proverbial block will do that to you.

However, being well and truly beyond the hallowed walls of The Establishment has afforded me the perspicacity to notice that those who have paid good money for education in these fields, and then slaved at cadet language jobs for a pittance, tend to rail against the babes-in-arms flocking to the professions of writing and editing now that the web has allowed all manner of associated roles to proliferate.

It's as if the grumping old-timers fear that newcomers to the industry can somehow ensure that all the hard yards they put in amount to nothing. As if newcomers—people who treat the job as a job, rather than a sort of calling-from-on-high—are irreverently undermining the nobility of the written word.

In the last three days I've encouraged no fewer than three separate individuals to leap forth into the wonderful world of web writing and editing. (I've also heard much bitching about new writing, new-media writers, new content formats, and, well, new in general.) I have no idea whether these people have a faculty with written language, the pernicketiness required for the job, and/or the passion that might actually see them enjoy the work. But they were all interested, so why the fuck not?

As far as I can see, the only reason that dinosaur stalwarts could have for discouraging such endeavour would be if we felt threatened by the willingness of bright young things to undercut our rates and turn out better work for the dollars. If that's your worry, you might as well pack up your dictionaries and go home now. Otherwise? Language-slave snobs, STFU.

Ridiculous sentences I actually receive in email

People don't seem to believe the things I receive in emails, so I thought I'd provide some real-life examples for you to marvel over.

• If you do take my tv, you would be able to view programs when they are actually shown.
• Is your rate still $45 an hour?
• I will like to make regular submission to your blog.
• I have recently discovered the joys of a gourmet G and T and can not wait to make them for you.
• I was thinking of naming my first son Jesus.

Need we go further? You get the idea.

Why do people complain about email? I can never understand it. Opening my inbox is like opening the fresh page of a choose-your-own-adventure novel: one never has any fucking idea what one is going to get.

[grass]

the dead grass
grey in the light
soft grey and silent
empty—still—silent

the dead grass
more dead in this light—
a blanket of dusk
blankets the dust

the dead grass
fades into the night
waiting and lonely
never so lonely
(it takes me, alone.)