I have had two phone conversations with strangers today to schedule appointments. They took less than ten minutes, but wrecked my entire day.

It is cruel to force me to use phones

A statue of a hedgehog prays on a deck railing in falling snow

It's snowing!

The interstate even managed to get shut down.

My poor wife is having to shovel our driveway because the snow blower broke and my shoulder has me out of commission while our 3rd is stuck off mountain!

But this little hedgie monk thinks everything is serene, and he's got a point.

That does present a challenge...

Steal Something from Work Day | CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective April 15, every year

I'm not saying anyone should steal from work. Just that April 15th has been declared Steal from Work Day...

(Note: it is likely bad to get caught stealing from work.)

crimethinc.com/steal-someth...

Draft-2-Digital is "experiencing a high volume of inquiries at this time."

So please don't bother them to complain about them penalizing real writers for being unpopular while not actually solving the rotting AI slop problem they claim this addresses.

We should be trying to open doors for small creators, not shut them.

What if we just fine the AI slop creators instead of charging all the small creators who struggle to promote and make $1 a month of they're lucky?

Kick an author while they're down, why don't you, D2D? Like it's not depressing enough to try your hardest all year and have everyone ignore your book, now there's a financial penalty for it?

Unsatisfied with merely suffering when involving my right shoulder in moving lightweight objects, I have decided to also injure my left wrist.

Now both arms can get in on causing me agonizing jolts of pain! Yay!

Sweet!

As soon as I figure out what questions I need to ask, I'll ask them...

Discovered today that my website has vanished. Completely.

I wanted to redo it anyway... Guess this is a chance for that. But I'll need help from someone who is overly busy until at least next weekend.

If you're wondering how my life is going, I was partway through journaling about how I no longer possess the capacity to deal with disruptions to my expected schedule when a family member disrupted my expected schedule.

My next ski instructor related task is going to be writing an essay about being a non-neurotypical instructor and why PSIA needs a program to educate instructors on how to teach the community. But I'm still too exhausted from the weekend to get started on it.

Although most ski lessons are for kids, my personality has resulted in my school channeling a lot of middle aged and older students my way. I say I specialize in helping me's - low athletics, nervous people who want to ski without feeling scared all the time. It's good to have more tools for us.

I spent the weekend obtaining an official certification that I've put extra work into being qualified to teach skiing to older adults. PSIA-Northwest is the only region to currently offer a Senior Specialist program, which I find sad. There's a lot of good information in it.

#PSIA #SkiInstructor

I have introduced a canonically straight character in Winter's First Verse! OMG! Where did she come from?

She's an out-of-town friend of a lead, so very much a bit character, but it's more rep than the straights have previously had in this series :)

#Writing

BTW, we were right to assume I'd be impatient for Triple Strike Book 5. :) I've spent the last several days trying to start a different book but am having trouble getting it to because I'm so busy pouting about how Sven isn't in it.

6. Some other thing I'm about to elaborate on...

5. I refuse to give advice beyond 'Follow your heart!'

4. Switch to A.M. Brokaw. It's mysterious!

3. Switch to Ander. Its gender is ambiguous.

2. Switch to Andy. It's neutral enough and what people call you

1. Keep Andora and just declare your pronouns

Obviously, it's my name and my choice. But input and advice is greatly appreciated.

Note: I settled on Andora because I didn't want to continue under my birth name. By the time I was waffling between it and Andy, I had much better search optimization under Andora. But the gendering of it has been bugging me, so I'm considering whether it's worth the trouble to move on from it.

Serious question for Trans Day of Visibility... Do I change my published name to better reflect my lack of gender? While it's a pain, it's less of one now than after multiple books are under it.

Since Bluesky lacks polls, I'm going to post the options into the thread. Just like your answer?

Politics again, Kara?

(Joking!)

(Also, it is ridiculously bad)

My grandmother hated pets. Which taught me you're right not to trust people who don't like animals.

Sympathies. If you're ever in the market for an auncle type who your profile implies has a lot in common with you, you can let me know, but otherwise I'll fade away again now...

There are no politics AT ALL in my book about someone deported to somewhere she's never been, a guy whose small business relies on public subsidiaries, and a social worker who winds up being a national voice for increased voting rights.

You'll NEVER guess my political viewpoint from reading it.

Not doing great today.

Cleaned a lot. Which needed to happen, I guess. But it's not something that makes me feel better about life, myself, or even the state of my house really.

I wish my wife would come home to watch her dog so I could go to bed. Even though I recognize 7pm is early for that.