Subscriber Voting Polls and Winning the Nerd Oscars

I won the Nerd Oscars and Other Things

The Nerd Oscars

There have been a few times in my writing “career”¹ where I have felt truly honored.

The chief among those honors was when a young boy, of maybe twelve or so, told me at a podcast live show that one of my horror stories was so gruesome that it almost made his sister barf. Then his sister appeared with all of her friends, who were all very nervous to approach me, and they told me that they all almost barfed. Then they started gushing about how great that was and asked for my autograph. And I thought, that’s me, the guy who writes stuff that makes kids want to barf. Wow! I loved that guy when I was a kid.

That’s still my favorite even though I’ve had a lot comments to the effect of “I cried alone in my car in the parking lot” over the years. No offense meant if I have ever been the proximate cause of you crying alone in a parking lot. That just seems to be one of my primary genres.

Then, this very week, yours truly was added to the Astral Codex Ten recommended substack list! For the church lady half of my readership, this is the equivalent of winning the Oscar for Best Nerd. You know who compared it to winning the Nerd Oscars? Me. Right now.

So, congrats to everyone else who took home a Nerd Oscar this year. There. Now you’re all complicit in my analogy. It’s a bit like when my wife sneaks food into the movie theater, even after I ask her to stop doing that, but then she kisses me and pushes a chocolate almond into my mouth that she was hiding in her lips and whispers, “you’re part of this now.”

I’m going to guess the category is “Best Anecdote Salesman with At Least Passably Correct Thoughts on Communal Sense-Making.”

Anyway, it’s okay for me to publish some science fiction on here again. But I promise not to go overboard with it.

Tempus Fugit

For two weeks, plague befell my home and nothing could be done. This was terrible. Numerous essays delayed or gone.

So I got up early in the morning to write. We’re talking 4am levels of early. I click a single key. My toddler immediately wakes up. And there went an Open Letter on AI Policy for Sriram Krishnan and an essay on Community Notes.

So I stay up late to write. My baby son goes to sleep early. I type three sentences. My wife comes downstairs and says, “Hey! Let’s watch Silo!” And there went an essay on the British Grooming Gang story.

Then came Sunday. I sat down to write. This is the two hours per week that I’ve worked out with my wife that I can dedicate just to this project. I decide, on a whim, to turn on a livestream with the idea that people will just watch me write. Then people show up and I felt obligated to talk. Kinda awkward. I didn’t write anything.

That last one is clearly my fault.

Anyway, I will livestream now on occasion. Probably on Sunday during the last half hour of my writing block. And I’ll do what I have been doing, which is just writing as I have time on my phone while the children are otherwise occupied —giving my son a bath while writing this part— then editing it when I have the big chunks of time. That’s how I’m writing this. If you want to chat on a livestream, please let me know.

I’m not a great live-streamer at present so none of these will be saved until I get good enough at it that it becomes worth doing so. And then I’ll maybe knock on the doors of some higher profile folks to chat it out.

Going to move back to writing at 1am to get on top of things. Sorry if things seemed sparse for a bit. Sorry if I am behind on comments/messages. I do read each and every one of them, I promise.

Voting Polls

I’m going to write some of the essays above, as well as drilling rig stories as the passion hits, but for other biographical pieces here’s what we have:

Middle Middle Class — I talk about becoming middle class and probably give a bunch of practical advice.

The Graveyard — I grew up close to a cemetery and used to play there all the time so this would be an essay covering various things I did there.

The Big Kid — I reached my adult height in the sixth grade, so I spent most of my formative years thinking “yes, of course I could fight eight of my peers at once.” This would be an essay covering memories like when the music teacher in the second grade explained that my voice was breaking because of something called puberty and that it was boring to be embarrassed by.

Paid Subscriber Polls

My Big Sister — this is another one of those ones about forgiveness and maybe in this case I was the one in the wrong for withholding it. I didn’t have a good relationship with my sister for a long while for reasons that were never really either of our fault.

Moosha Moosha — the story of how my little brother used to play with my earlobes then other stories about brotherhood in general.

Another Random Therapy Piece — I’ll probably either write about the time Julie had me confront my agoraphobia by going to a slam poetry session or about something else. That was a busy season of my life. Lots to pick from. Offering because a ton of you seemed to really enjoy it from last week.

1. Thanks to paying subscribers I can’t pretend it’s not a career anymore, even if it’s a small one.