Archive for the 'sxsw' Category

this year’s girl

Published on January 6, 2011 in bluishorange and sxsw. 2 Comments Tags: , .

So my friend Brad died last January.  I didn’t mention it here for whatever reason, but he died.  I’d seen him every March at SXSW Interactive since 2001, and since he lived in St. Louis we’d meet up there sometimes when I went to visit family. One night he took me to a piano bar, an awesome local cafe, and then a pancake house, and I didn’t get back to my aunt’s place until 3am.

A bunch of us had a sort of memorial party for him at SXSW in March, which I think was good for everyone.  It doesn’t solve the problem of how we’re all going to deal with Brad’s absence this March and the Marches after that, but still. It helped.

At 20×2 in March they paid tribute to Brad by showing this video from 2005, in which Brad answers the question, “What’s the word?” Even if you’re not the video-watching sort, you should watch this one.

Brad Graham – What’s The Word 20×2 v.5.0 from 20×2 on Vimeo.

I’m not a big fan of new year’s resolutions, either. I’m firmly in the, “If you want to start doing something or not doing something, just fucking start already” camp. But I like the idea of a year having a theme of sorts.

My plan to quit allowing my fear of failure to own me has been going relatively well, but I’ve got a related problem. When it comes to things I want to achieve, I always think I’m not good enough to achieve them. I think that someone else would do it better, or someone else will do it first. Or when I look at the things others have done, I think, “They did that, but I never could.”

So my theme for this year is going to be, “Why not me?” Whenever I start to think that I won’t be good enough to achieve X or Y or I don’t have the right stuff to do something well, I’m going to stop and ask myself, “Why not me? Why can’t I be the person who does it?”

Because I already know the answer to that question. The answer is that there’s no reason why it can’t be me. It absolutely CAN be me! The perfect person to get something done is the one who does it, and does it well. And if I want to, I can be that person.

Thanks, Brad.

some stuff that happened recently

Published on March 23, 2010 in depression, lists, maude, sxsw and travel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .
  1. I am soon to be in need of a new car and a new phone and some studio lighting, and B and I need a bigger bed. That’s a lot of expensive purchases that ought to be made, but before doing all that, we’re getting a dog. Not a replacement dog, an additional dog. Maude has always seemed like she could use an Evil Minion, and who am I to deny her? She’d make a great Overlord. We’re in the final stages of adopting a 5-year-old chihuahua with a history similar to Maude’s, and I’ll let you know how it goes. There will of course be pictures.
  2. I saw Shutter Island. It was beautifully acted and shot and the dialogue was good and stuff. The movie started out looking like it was going to be about WWII, post-WWII anti-communist sentiment, and the history of treatments for mental illness. Those are three of my favorite subjects! But then (no spoilers here) the movie turned into something else entirely, and I was disappointed.  It’s probably just me, though; I’m sensitive about how mental illnesses are portrayed in fiction.
  3. I went to whatever SXSW Interactive stuff didn’t require a badge. Which was pretty much everything I wanted to see anyway. I got to spend time with most of my favorite SXSW people and introduce them to B and Maude. I got to help pay tribute to my friend Brad and see 20×2 where they also paid tribute to Brad which made me cry, and so forth. Good times.
  4. Then I got a cold. This is unsurprising, as I went on a cruise for a week and then worked a lot for a week and then worked/partied for a week. So right now I feel like the critical-thinking part of my brain has shut itself off, which does me no favors at work or when I’m trying to write.
  5. Oh, yeah, and I WENT ON A CRUISE. I’ll have to tell you about that later because I’m pretty busy dealing with #’s 1 and 4. But it was a lot of fun and a lot of weird.

hello, internets!

Published on March 4, 2009 in bluishorange, craft, lists, photos and sxsw. 9 Comments Tags: , , , .

How’s it going?  Man, it’s been a little while.  Things still all right with you?  Still Twittering?  Far out.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been up to lately:

1. Adding things to the walls and ceiling of my apartment. B and I put up these shelves:

new shelves in the bedroom craft area!

Since I live in an apartment that was built in the fifties, my walls are made of spit and old newspapers, which I guess is what they had available at the time.  To get these shelves to stay, we put something like 30 holes in the wall, a few of them MASSIVE and unnecessary, most of them with hefty amounts of wood glue applied to them.  I think we did a decent job of making them look nice, but they do not look nice if you get too close.  Don’t get too close!

I put my bike up on the ceiling like this:

does this look just a little bit stupid or, like, monumentally stupid?

It does not look good, and I know it.  Several of my friends expressed concern that they’d come over, have a couple of drinks, and then end up with their hair tangled in the handlebars of a bicycle.  It’s a valid concern. Maybe I should all make them sign waivers when they come over.  Or maybe I should just think of something else.

2. Taking a photo every day.  This has been interesting, in the sense that I didn’t really think I had good things to take pictures of every day.  But I’ve improvised quite a bit, and despite a few lifeless outings I think the first month has gone pretty well.

What has not gone well is this. But I don’t really want to talk about that.

3. Trying out Weight Watchers.

not the kind of photo I'm going to post very often

I’ve been hesitant to talk about this because I know I’m within the healthy weight range for my height. I know I look fine. But I’m doing it anyway because of the following things:

a. I don’t feel quite comfortable in my body right now.

b. I’ve gained 30 pounds in the past seven years. I know that part of that is because I’m getting older and my metabolism is slowing down, but

c. The other part of it is that I don’t pay attention to what I eat.  I cook for myself more often than most, I eat more vegetables than most, and I don’t drink sodas very often, but I have a definite portion-control problem.  When I buy a frozen Amy’s pizza or a box of macaroni and cheese, I eat the whole thing.  When I go out to dinner with B I’ll usually eat everything on my plate and a few things from his, and I’ve still got room for dessert.

d. I have a closet full of beloved vintage and handmade clothing that fit me last year or the year before, but does not fit me now.  This is monumentally depressing.  I can’t re-make the handmade stuff, nor can I replace the vintage stuff easily.

If a-c weren’t factors I’d just let d go, but all four of these things have combined into one unhappy Alison. So Weight Watchers it is.  Thus far I’m happy with it. I’ll keep you posted, unless of course it doesn’t go well, in which case I’ll never mention it again!  Har har.

this is not nam, this is SXSW. there are rules.

Published on March 6, 2008 in bluishorange, lists and sxsw. 12 Comments Tags: , .

You didn’t know this before, but now I’m going to tell you. I cried three times at SXSW last year:

  1. When I was hungry and tired and waiting for a big group of friends to go to lunch, I cried.
  2. When I thought I was going to have to spend a lot more money than I’d anticipated on dinner, I cried.
  3. When it was over and everyone was gone and it was time for me to pack for my roadtrip, I didn’t pack for my roadtrip; I sat down on the couch and cried.

I’m making these situations sound much less complicated than they were, but still! What was my problem? I wasn’t being robbed or mugged or attacked by bears or even poked in the eye or anything. I was at an internet convention downtown in a relatively safe city, where there are no bears and people don’t poke each other in the eye, at least not when they’re unprovoked. Why did I get so upset?

(In retrospect, it probably had to do with this.)

The point is that I do this sort of thing to myself pretty often. I get worked up about problems that don’t really matter too much, if they even exist at all, and I convince myself that everything is just awful and whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing I’m not doing it right and my hair looks stupid and I’m never going to amount to anything at all, ever. When I’m in moments like these, I’m often unable to stop myself and remember that it’s all in my head, that none of it is true, that my hair is fine, that I’m going to be okay.

The sad(dest) thing about this is that the crying is what I remember most vividly from SXSW last year. All that crying and I didn’t even have a good time. This year we are not going to do that. This year, there are rules.

The rules:

  1. I am going to make the best of wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, and whoever I’m with, and not worry about what I should be doing instead.
  2. I am going to sleep.
  3. I am going to spend time alone.
  4. I am not going to worry about what other people are doing.
  5. I am not going to worry about what other people think.
  6. I am not going to the Boiling Pot.
  7. I am not going to wait for anyone but you.

the roots

Published on March 13, 2007 in bluishorange and sxsw. Closed


the roots
Originally uploaded by bluishorange.

a few more things about sxsw

Published on March 24, 2006 in bluishorange, lists and sxsw. Closed Tags: .

1.  everyone should watch house of cosbys.  andy was shocked when i told him i still hadn’t seen it.  shocked!  jaime was surprised too, and set me up with his laptop and headphones right there in the convention center so i could watch it immediately.  it’s hilarious!  i never download or watch any videos online, probably because i had dialup for so long that i’m still stuck in the “videos will take for fucking ever” mentality.  but house of cosbys was totally worth it, if only for cosby team triosby.

p.s. if you are my mom or dad, you should not watch house of cosbys.

2.  this year kevin had a silent auction to raise money for 20×2.  he picked six people, each of whom made a shirt based on one of the previous questions.  the one i made was based on “what is interactive?” and you can see it here.  i added some velcro to the front of a black shirt, and made a bunch of magnetic poetry-type words with velcro on the backs so that they would stick to the shirt.  essentially it was a magnetic poetry shirt, with a little handmade cosmetics bag to store the extra words.  the guy who won my shirt at the auction (as a gift for his girlfriend) asked me for a swear-word expansion pack.  why didn’t i make any swear words in the first place?  you’d think i would have.

3.  everyone (even my mom and dad) should play apples to apples.

4.  during the conference i was interviewed by a lovely woman named andrea and her husband christopher.  they were filming interviews with bloggers for andrea’s masters thesis.  andrea had a series of questions to ask me, which she said i could answer as briefly or elaborately as i liked.  i’ve never been interviewed on film before, so i was a bit nervous at first.  but then my penchant for long-windedness and bizarre jokes took over, and the whole thing ended up taking at least an hour.  you can see pictures of it here and here.  i had fun!

afterward andrea and her husband said that i was articulate and well-spoken.  which of course made me launch into a ridiculous story about an ex-boyfriend who hated that i spoke in complete sentences during arguments.  but it also made me more confident about my public-speaking abilities.  my relative successes in the interview and on the panel are leading me to believe that i might not be as terrible at it as i’d always thought.

5.  not about sxsw: i’ve had this keyboard for over six years and i’ve never really cleaned it.  theoretically, it could contain the dead skin cells of four of my ex-boyfriends.

6.  every year i’m delighted to spend time with this creative, funny, interesting, talented group of people.  that these people seem to enjoy spending time with me is what pushes me to be more productive and try to accomplish new things.  these wonderful people must like me for a reason, right?  maybe i can do things, too.

i’ve been feeling sorry for myself for a long time now, and i think this year’s sxsw has helped me to realize that i’m capable of doing some of the things i’ve been meaning to.  to wit: if my new plan works the way i want it to, i’ll be seeing many of my sxsw friends before the end of the year.  keep your fingers crossed.