Chasing Sunsets and Calendars
Long hauls and longer hours before I met my bed again
Hey! Do you have any allergies?
I'm writing this a few days before I'll be able to publish it. Let's call it a loose definition of weekly.
In a few words, my VPN decided to stop working in the middle of my sojourn in China. That meant I suddenly no longer had access to most of the internet as I’m used to using it.
So by the time you're reading this, I'll be jet lagged and sleep deprived as I crawl to my computer and press send.
Frantic Follies
To keep things simple, I thought I’d provide something of a recap of the last few weeks. I started my trip abroad still working to build in public and promote Besnowed.
Fresh off the excitement of demo day and the end of Buildspace, I was still riding the wave of motivation and inspiration. It was then accented by a big event in San Francisco taking place while I was in the air.
All the supportive messages between new friends made me blisslessly aware of my own lack of attendance. There were, however, a few days before the next event would start… in Dubai.
Naturally, I wanted to find a way to get Besnowed into the event. If I couldn't be there in body, surely my book could be in spirit!
Trains, planes, and automobiles with a dash of intercontinental communications and somehow I still found the fuel to ignite my fire. Working with fellow Buildspace alumni Rob and my sister Molly, we thought up a way to virtually attend the meeting in Dubai.
A QR code leading to a simple landing page with information on Besnowed. I had never really built something like this before, and I struggled to stumble through the dials and knobs of Framer.
But with some extra help from Shivani, I successfully created a landing page ready to share Besnowed in a matter of hours.
Unfortunately, the mixing of schedules and timetables prevented the full idea from coming together in time. In clearer terms, there's no fun photos of people enjoying Besnowed in Dubai.
Scrambling to put something together so quickly and so remotely was a good experience though!
It reminded me of the work I used to do on Comatose.
Flavors of Family
More notably, this trip has let me soak in the atmosphere as tweets went unread and emails were left unsent. I could fully embrace the fast pace of feasts with many merry cheers. A well met reunion after too many years away.
The parallels between my real life and what I wrote in Besnowed are far from incidental. I wanted to expose some of my most human connections as familiar stories in the hope that others would enjoy and share the emotions, the nostalgia, the honest reality.
Seeing this side of the family made it all the more real. The old memories bubbling up in talks around a table filled with drinks and dishes. Drunken nights fumbling into Skyping my parents on the other side of the world.
There was also something akin to regret between some of the toasts and a few of the flavors. The little things when I would suddenly realize - Besnowed forgot to mention a specific detail or neglected to name a cousin or an uncle.
Perfection ever the enemy of the complete and the good.
But I am confident in how well I captured the emotions. The ambiance. The atmosphere of a grand gathering. How there's always something to share with the people closest to your heart.
And it felt good to see that fully on display. Night after night. Day after day.
Fanning Flames
In what I thought would just be a practical frustration or a slight annoyance, losing access to the internet as I know it meant forcing myself to adapt.
I ended up finding workable replacements for most of my defaults, replacing twitter and reddit with mastodon and lemmy - decentralized, anti-corporate and open source alternatives.
All I was looking for was something I could access to pass the idle moments of the day.
At the same time, the reddit CEO came out with increasingly unbelievable statements, turning the community against the brand. After a sitewide protest, lemmy was suddenly flooded with new users who wanted to avoid the highly centralized, corporate, closed source web.
All this converged into a rather unique perspective. I was witness to the genesis of an exodus. The sleepy platform and its gentle stream of content transformed into a raging torrent of activity.
I've rather enjoyed riding the rapids and watching people discuss the details of what they hope to find in a new home.
Face-first Flying
Those feelings of searching - some may even call it longing - for belonging reminded me of Besnowed. The makings of good kindling ready to catch another ember. Maybe even sparking into a flurry of words.
Whether that means a novel on the horizon or simply working to release one of my other hidden projects, I’ve yet to decide.
Mostly, I'll be readjusting my clocks over the next few days.
So maybe between more thoughts on the background of Besnowed, I may drop a few hints of what's to come.
Until next time.
Cheers,
John
Very glad you are safely home! Very good read!