alexandraerin

...on my "where to find me post." I also have a formspring account, which is a great place to put the random questions I otherwise get as Facebook wall comments or "off topic, but...?" comments here. (Not that I mind those, as long as they're not on Serious Business type posts.)

In a move critics are hailing as "the single most intelligent act of the 21st century to date", I switched my phone off last night so it wouldn't wake me up in the morning. I did this not after I put it back on the charger by my bed, but right as I was saying goodnight to Jack on my computer.

You can probably guess where this story is going.

I don't actually use my phone as a phone... I think I have had all of one conversation using it in the conventional telephonic fashion. It's my PDA, my notepad, and my auxiliary brain. The good news is that all the alerts I have set in it are automatically backed up to Google Calendar, so I'm not going to be completely lost until it turns up.

I know it's in the apartment. I know I must have set it somewhere in between signing off the computer at midnight and when I headed into my bedroom not long after, when I realized it wasn't in my hand. I've checked all the obvious places... there are only two places I let myself set the phone down if I'm paying attention, so it will always be in the same places. I checked both of those places and everywhere I remember going before bed. No luck.

In other "magic of being me" news, I missed the touring production of White Christmas on Sunday because the reminder never made it from my old dead Treo to my Pre. Usually I deal with events like that by reminding obsessively fearing that I'm going to forget them and checking the dates on the tickets several times a day. This hasn't stopped me from doing things like commiting to family gatherings at the same time as a concert or other event, though I usually catch those conflicts before they actually come up. The obsessive worrying didn't happen this time, though, and I missed it. I feel terrible because the tickets were a gift, and part of me is thinking "This is what happens when you let yourself relax." Between the handiness of the Pre's calendar and having good things going on in my life, I stopped worrying that I was going to forget something important all the time and I forgot about it.

I am feeling pretty emotastic shitty. I felt that I'd come to terms with the idea that I needed an electronic organizer to make it through the day/week. Now I've misplaced it within 24 hours of blowing an important engagement.

Consider this post a vent. If you're wondering what you can do to help, the answer is you don't have to. I'm writing this down to get it out and then move on. That's all I need.

Oooh, I just had a flash of insight. I put the phone in my pocket last night... no, that's not where it was, but it let me figure out where I lost it. Phone has been retrieved, and there are my flash fiction prompts.

Time to go to work.

s00j concert was perfectly lovely. s00j was perfectly lovely, as well.

I used to feel slightly embarrassed that when I thought about my favorite ones of her songs (and it must be plural, because with a body of work that has as much breadth and depth as Ms. Tucker's, it's difficult to have one single favorite), my mind invariably goes to songs that are at the very least co-compositions of stealthcello, (Alligator In The House, Tough Titty Cupcakes, and I believe The Notorious Salad of Doom) or are the songs she's written as companion pieces inspired by the work of yuki_onna ("Taglio!", the entire Palimpsest album, "City of Marrow"... really, too many to name).

But of course, this is silly. Art cannot exist in a vacuum any more than fire can. Musicians know this. That's why they jam, and why they cover, and why they share. It's why it's important that authors read for pleasure, and that we experience stories in other media. Cross-pollination. Hybridization. Good stuff. The way Cat and s00j play their creativity off each other has got to enrich them both immeasurably. s00j has been premiering a song she wrote based on a painting by this artist as part of kylecassidy's massive collaboration meme. Every song she writes has a seed somewhere. Whether it's in a random phrase someone said ("Ravens in the Library"... which just might elbow its way into a top slot in my head if I can hear it enough times for it to stick) or a painting or a book, it's still her creative genius that's grabbing the reins.

As s00j herself said of one of her songs that has now become a Tricky Pixie song, "it's like my little song is growing up."

So, yeah. Creativity good. Collaboration good.

Anyway, on the subject of things that are slightly embarrassing... I may have said this a few times before, but since it came up again tonight, it bears repeating (or possibly saying for the first time). If I meet you somewhere, and then you see me again, please introduce yourself and remind me where I know you from. I'm not pulling a e-celebrity diva thing, I swear. It's an "everybody's brain is wired different" thing. I honestly don't remember people very well. It isn't personal. I know s00j and omnisti when I go to their gigs because they're always doing s00j and omnisti things when I get there. If they hired a couple of other skinny white people to mess around with guitars and speakers before the concert, I'd never know. At family gatherings around the holidays and such I end up doing a lot of smiling and nodding until I catch on to who it is I'm talking to.

Knowing I am going to inevitably make a giant fool out of myself has generally kept me away from large public gatherings as an adult, once it was in my power to avoid such things. But as I learned from one of my beloved train family from back in March has taught me, it's far less embarrassing to just flat out be honest about it. So, I re-met a very nice person whose name I think she said was Aggie (that could be wrong as I didn't think to write it down until I was in the car, sadly) who was at the concert at bryirfox's and I met another person named Lora (I think for the first time) who heard about the concert here because she is a gamer and she reads my blog, and now that I've written about them I'm much more likely to remember who they are, though I still probably won't recognize them on sight.

This is not a judgment on anyone's relative worth as a person. It's not something I can just "try harder" and overcome... believe me, I've tried, and I'm learning tricks to get better at it. It's just the way my brain works, and the way it doesn't work.

The phrase "admitting you have a problem is the first step" is a bit trite, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. It doesn't always accomplish anything on its own, but it's necessary... you can't come up with plans to tackle a problem if you don't recognize its existence. I'm learning to use reminders (via my computer and my phone)... tonight, for instance, I had one set up to tell me to thank s00j and omnisti for bearing some wristbands to our folks at WisCon, and one to ask them to convey my personal thanks to Betsy Tinney for supporting me.

Well, actually, the first one just said "Thank omnisti". I spent a good portion of the concert trying to figure out what I was supposed to thank him for and wondering if he would find it weird if I told him thanks for whatever he did for me and asked him if he remembered what it was. Still learning how to make the most of this reminder thing. Getting an unrelated text message from popelizbet is what jarred that memory loose, since she was in charge of wristband distribution.

You folks who read this know how much I value popelizbet. When next we meet in person... and we will... if she's not already wearing a nametag, she's going to have to remind me who she is. Likewise with Cat Valente, who I mention roughly a million times a day. So it really is nothing personal. That's just how it is. I can be slightly embarrassed and admit it or I can live my life in terror of being terribly embarrassed by not recognizing dear friends and end up hiding from them, and by extension, life.