You know you're getting old when ...

The only time you use your shot glasses is to mix hummingbird food.

Happy Independence Day!

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. 

It's unlikely this scene ever actually took place, but Trumbull did a fine job creating it.  

The Watch v. The Band

Last year I bought a Fitbit … and it was amazing.

It did everything - or at least everything I wanted. It tracked my steps, kept up with my sleep, even synced calories burned with MyFitnessPal, the app I use to keep up with my meals and snacks. It was a pedometer with a brain, and the ability to keep a record of my steps taken and hours slept every day made my S heart sing.  

I loved it. Then I lost it. Just like in that old song.

Physically, the Fitbit is just a tiny black cube that nests in a flexible band. If the band becomes loose, as mine did, the cube can fall out … as mine did. I walked a lot of steps that day. You’d have to be very lucky to find something that size when you’re not sure where it dropped, and I wasn’t lucky.

(For the record, I don't blame FitBit for that. Losing things has never been a problem for me.)

I could have bought another FitBit, but why go with the old when there are so many new options on the market? I settled on the Gear Fit, which at that point wasn’t even out yet. It’s a watch instead of a band, and has a big color screen and multiple functions. And best of all, if you have a Samsung phone it syncs right to it.

I pre-ordered one a few days after losing my FitBit. It was more expensive, but it would be worth it, right?

With apologies to Samsung, it’s not worth it. I’ve given this watch a couple of months to grow on me and it hasn’t. The Gear Fit is a decent piece of technology but doesn’t equal FitBit for several reasons.

First of all, the step tracking is off. FitBit put a lot of time and resources into the algorithms for counting steps and it paid off. I’m not sure how the Gear Fit’s step-counting algorithm works except for ‘meh.’ Samsung should have done more research in this area.

The software issues are even worse. Gear Fit doesn’t sync with other fitness apps. It has its own app – actually it has two or three – and they are clunky and buggy.  It also syncs with these apps through your Samsung account, which for me has caused all sorts of login problems and delays. About half the time the results won’t load, or it will load steps from a month ago. They’ve had a few updates but none have really addressed this problem.

The menu is clunky. You have to swipe and touch several times to do anything. Take sleep mode, for instance. To get to the sleep tracking function, you have to turn on the screen, swipe twice, touch the sleep button, touch start, then touch again to confirm start. (Oh, the horror of multiple swipes!)

You have to do the same thing to get out of sleep mode, which is even worse. With the FitBit, you only have to tap the band a few times to enter sleep mode – and if you’re already in it, FitBit will blink twice every time you tap it to let you know. I can’t count the times I’ve gone through a whole day with my Gear Fit still in sleep mode. It even lets you stay in sleep mode when you enter exercise mode, which is just bizarre.

The Gear Fit does have several cool features, like a timer, a stopwatch, and the ability to sync with apps on your phone. And it’s nice to see incoming calls on my watch when I leave my phone in the other room. That way I can ignore them intentionally instead of accidentally. But these aren’t really fitness features. I bought the Gear Fit to use as a fitness tracker more than a smart watch. If I’d wanted a smart watch I would have bought a Gear 2.

Every technology has its bugs – but some of these issues have simple fixes. You can find similar complaints on just about every review published on this watch since it came out, and as far as I can tell Samsung has done next to nothing to fix them.

Don't worry, it's just a figure of speech. I wasn't going to do it ... and it's waterproof, anyway.

I’ve tried to avoid my usual tendency to judge things too early, but my patience is running out. So as much as it would pain me to flush the money spent on the Gear Fit down the toilet, I’m considering returning to the fold and purchasing another FitBit. There’s no doubt (in my mind, anyway) which one is the best fitness and sleep tracker.

But maybe I’ll give it a few more weeks.  Or just wait until I lose the Gear Fit, too. This band is bound to break sooner or later …

Fun with letters!

Most of the time when I think about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test it’s about the F (feeling) and I (introverted) aspects of my ISFP personality. These letters are visible day-to-day and are often in conflict. For example, sometimes my F wants to go out and interact with people and their feelings, and my I wants to stay at home and introvert. The sparks that fly from these internal conflicts can be amazing to behold.

But another interesting letter is the S - or sensing – aspect. My friend and co-author Sherry uses a clever example to illuminate the conflict between that pair of letters:  the way to tell a sense-er from an intuit-er is to see how they cook up a new recipe. Some people follow the recipe item by item, while others use it as a guidebook and throw in whatever (the “routine vs. terror” scenario on page two of this article is classic S).

The recipe example doesn’t always fit. When you do something for a long time, you become more intuitive at it- someone with S tendencies who is also a professional chef will probably not need to follow a recipe. But it fits when experimenting with something new.

To be honest, I don’t cook much, so that experience is always new to me. When I do cook it’s a constant journey back and forth between the stove and the cookbook/internet recipe. I’ve had friends gather to watch me cook for their own entertainment.

According to Myers-Briggs, S’s are around 73 percent of the population – but all my close friends are intuitives. It’s a little stressful sometimes, because I need to have everything planned out, step by step, whether it’s a schedule or a building project, or I am lost. They just do stuff. “Want to go to the movies?” “Sure, what time?” “Who cares, let’s just go when we’re ready.”

It’s amusing even to me. Being an S can be pretty funny, and the greater your sensing tendencies, the funnier it is. Mopping and vacuuming are like mowing the yard – nice, even strokes along a specific pattern on the floor. The same pattern every time. Loads of clothes are washed in the same order every week, and usually on the same day. Sometimes I even make to-do lists that include “Make a new to-do list.”

The real downside of being an S that it can be scary to try new things. Once you’re comfortable with something, you can excel at it – but there’s a tendency to stay in your zone, to do things the same way every time.  You have to push to get past that - and sometimes it can be especially tough to put yourself out there like that when you’re also an introvert.

But at least I’ll always have a to-do list to fall back on.

Telephonic introversion

If you’re an extreme introvert like me, a phone call isn’t always just a phone call. In fact, getting one can be as stress-inducing as having your door kicked in on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Like many introverts, it took me most of my life to accept who I am. Society can seem packed with extroverted personalities who make us feel like oddballs – often without even meaning to. That's faded over the years. It’s not a rule, but generally the older one gets, the less concerned one is about fitting in – which means a greater willingness to accept yourself for who you are.

The phone is the epic pinnacle of extrovert society. It’s a device that can reach into your home at any time, demanding your attention and most often getting it. Through this channel, friends, casual acquaintances, strangers and even solicitors can enter your social bubble and use up some of your own precious time.

Perhaps for people with extroverted tendencies, a ringing phone is a happy thing. Something that makes one perk up in anticipation. I wouldn’t know. I’m an introvert, and for me it has always sounded more like a dog whistle.

As big a part as the phone is in American society, I can’t wait for it to be dead and buried. It’s the worst of all worlds for an introvert. It’s not just that it can demand one’s attention at any time - a lot of things in our society do that.

No, the phone is far more insidious than that. It forces a person to communicate by voice, in real-time, with all the drawbacks and perils of a direct conversation. But at the same time, it takes away all of the body language and many of the social cues that us introverts need to not make an ass of ourselves in front of others.  

And many people think nothing of picking up the phone and talking for an hour or more. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve collapsed in mental exhaustion on the couch after an hour-long phone call with a more extroverted friend or family member.

I lived through the tail end of the telephone’s golden age and was happy to say goodbye to it. In this day of e-mail and texts, I can conduct 95 percent of my personal and business affairs – the non-face to face interactions – by other means. I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 that I use for everything you can imagine - except to call people. My calling plan is secondary at best. The only time I use the ‘phone feature’ is when I have no choice but to call someone – or when someone calls me.

If we’re lucky – and by we, I mean introverts - in a few more years phone calls will be as rare as handwritten letters are today.

Just write

There’s a question that aspiring fiction writers such as myself like to ask successful fiction writers:

“Do you have any advice for me?”

I don’t know what we expect to hear - maybe something like, “Hold your head sideways for better reception from the muse.” But the answers I see are pretty basic.

Stick with it. Don’t get discouraged by rejection. But most of all – sit down and write. 

In the late 1990s I had the pleasure of meeting David Drake at a book signing in Virginia. He was at the time my favorite author, and I still consider him to be the best military sci-fi writer around.  He’s also one of the most prolific in his field.

According to Drake, one of the secrets of his success is that he writes for eight hours a day every day. It doesn’t matter if he’s sick, if he’s got other things to do, or if he doesn’t feel like writing. He sits down and he writes.

In 1997, Pete Abrams began publishing an online comic called SluggyFreelance. If you haven’t read it, it’s worth your time, but be warned – you’ll have to read more than 6,000 of them to catch up because Abrams has been publishing daily … for 17 years.   

In a 2010 interview, Abrams said, “When I started, I knew that most businesses took two to three years to become profitable—I heard that at some point. And when I started the strip, I made it daily and I treated it like it was my profession before it was paying me full-time.”

Abrams has missed a few strips here and there, and he often uses filler on the weekends and holidays. But he’s published a comic almost every day for the past decade and a half.

Drake and Abrams are both top-shelf writers and storytellers. It’s hard to say how much of that comes from honing their craft each and every day, but it’s a good bet that all of the practice has helped. If you do something all the time you’re going to get better at it – and if you neglect something, it’s never going to improve … or even get done at all. 

I’ve been dreaming of being a fiction writer ever since I was in my 20s, but something else has always come up. No regrets here – I wouldn’t be the person I am without the experiences of the past two decades. But now that I am collaborating with my co-author on my first real fiction book, I try to make it a point to remind myself every day how important it is to do the simplest thing possible.

Just sit down and write.

Conjuring Mice

Many years ago – during a time when computers had been around for a while but the Internet was still new, wild and exciting- I was searching for a unique fantasy background for my desktop. There was one background called ‘conjuring mice,’ which showed a purple-clad wizardess summoning rodents outside a church. Perfect.

A few months later, I saw the same art – this time in a Barnes and Noble. Turned out it was the cover to Barbara Hambly’s Stranger at the Wedding, which some early Internet thief had lifted and made into a background jpg. After staring at the image for months, I decided to pick the book up. It became one of my all-time favorite fantasy novels.

That was a long time ago. But last month I saw a Buzzfeed piece called 13 Fantasy Novels That Are Good Despite Their Covers. Number nine on this list was Blood Song by Anthony Ryan. After seeing the cover and having one of my friends rave to me about how good it was, I decided to give it a read.

As it happened, I couldn't put it down.  In fact, all of Monday was a fog because I was up until six in the morning finishing the last three chapters. Reading them took three times as long as normal because the ending was so good each line just had to be read at least twice.  It’s my favorite fantasy writing since Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles (the first book of which is also featured in the Buzzfeed article). In fact, I’ve already pre-ordered the sequel, which is out July 1st.

So two of my favorite fantasy authors, Hambly and Ryan, got on my radar because of cover art - although the context in each case was very different. It just goes to show one can never underestimate the visuals. For an aspiring fantasy author like myself, the lesson is clear – cover art should stand out. People read books for the story, but it's what is on the cover that can grab their attention.

Bonus reading: Here's an interesting though somewhat dated conversation on this very topic.