Episode #203: A Holiday Break

I is exhausted and I think that shot of Tequila is doing wonders for my state of being.

Merry Christmas to one and all, and will see you on New Year's Eve.

Now, if only that pile of wet leaves weren't so wet.....

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #202: Playing The Long Game Of '23/'24

A little summer to warm the frozen memories of today.

It's funny how playing the long game can monumentally affect your short game, no matter what your vibe is. I'll give you a couple of examples.

Example #1: Losing weight.

Back in mid October I decided, after seeing a photo of myself looking rather portly (now there's an archaic word you don't often hear), that I needed to lose weight. so I chose to pursue a non-Noom Noom diet (basically, not spending any money) diet, which basically meant that I needed to cut my caloric intake.

T.L.; D.R.: I dropped from 2300+ calories per day to roughly 1200+ per day.

Now the long game here was to lose weight, which I did, so far about 9lbs +/-, but there were some side effects to a very brutal short game. The most serious side effect in the short term was major sugar crashes.

In a nutshell, when you are reducing your caloric intake, you also have to reduce your (in my case) insulin intake. Thus, the brutal short game was about a month and a half of consistently tweaking my day time and night time insulin until I was able to find a happy melding of the tow that wouldn't make me sick.

Added bonus: Changing my diet also started giving me enough energy to tackle the distance I cover in my daily walks. Less calories equals more burning the excess weight. So while the short game was unusually brutal (e.g. bad lows and the side effects thereof, along with consuming certain edibles for the first time in more than three decades.), the long game has been sunshine and a wildflower valley. 

Example #2: Publishing a novella.

This is a little trickier to separate into the short and the long game, but I will give it the old technical school try.

Now, obviously enough, the long game is to publish this novella. But the short game has been just as maddening as the previous example. To whit:

I've had to, albeit reluctantly, pivot to another graphic designer for my cover, because the one that I normally use has been seriously m.i.a since early November. Their socials seem to be kaput with no activity whatsoever (and that includes advertising being sent out via e-mail).

Now this pivot to another graphic designer has created a cascade effect for everything else: I can't use my current formatter because I don't have a cover, so they're now on the back-burner; I had to solicit a few suggestions from the writer's group that I belong to, and having found a potential new one has brought a small litany of other issues, none of which are the potential new designer's fault whatsoever.

For example, while I was deciding on which package to purchase, I was pre-answering a question to their form (as in, getting my answers prepped prior to the purchase). While I was doing that, I discovered that I actually don't like the current title, so I had to come up with a brand new one (title #3). And, oh wait a minute, I found a few errors in the final draft that I now have to fix.

Plus, there are a myriad of other tiny issues that need to be addressed once I purchase the book cover, but before I actually publish. So while the short game for publishing this novella isn't fraught with drastic health issues as the first example, there's still a tone of short term aggravation that has to be addressed before we cross the long game finish line of self-publishing.

In summary, playing the long game often involves a plethora of short term headaches with minuscule rewards, but when you do finally succeed at the very end, it does truly seem that all of the short term aggravation really was worth it in the long run.

And in the end, that is all that rally matters.

Have a happy Monday and splendorous week!

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #201: Do You Critique The Book Or The Writer?

Apparently Santa's soy milk and gluten-free vegan cookies didn't agree with him that day.

I subscribe to a nifty monthly newsletter put out by the Insecure Writer's Support Group, which contains great advice and links for writers of all abilities, among other things. It also sponsors a monthly blog hop, which I haven't participated in quite some time, and in conjunction with that blog hop, the newsletter will have a question prompt for that blog hop in case you're lacking a topic of choice for your monthly participation.

For the month of December the question had to do with book reviews, specifically, when you write a book review, are you critiquing the book or the author of said book?

For me, back in the day when I was able to write book reviews on Amazon for books that I had borrowed from my public library (current Amazon policy is that you have to spend at least $50 with a credit or debit card before you can leave a review), the majority of the time I would review the book and not the author.

Being a semi-professional writer, I was quite sensitive to sledgehammering an author over a particular book, since I had quite a few people do it to me, so I would try my best to critique a particular book. Very rarely did I critique the writer, as I would always try to give them the benefit of the doubt, especially if it was for a book that I didn't like or understand (example, I don't understand most poetry nor traditional prose). I always try to find something positive about a book, which is why I usually go no lower 2 1/2 stars on my public reviews.

On at least three occasions though, I did critique the author of a particular book. The first time was a book that started out decent but quickly nosedived into a master's thesis: very analytical and devoid of emotion. The second time was a memoir written by someone who was a civil rights lawyer, but it too nosedived, only this time it was the equivalent of a novel length apology from a White Liberal Savior. The third time was a well known indie musician turned writer who wrote a bio on a well known early R&B singer, but the bio basically read like a bio of the group they were in and not of them.

Beyond those three, all my reviews have concentrated on the book. I do try to point out in the reviews of books I don't quite understand why I would give them just a three or three and a half star rating, and I always try give props to those writers who write in genres that I don't understand.

I know it may sound like I'm being wishy-washy or waffling with those 3 star reviews, but I simply can't see myself hammering a book simply because I don't understand it. I find there's a huge distinction between reading a book and not liking it, and reading a book and not understanding it, so I always wrote my reviews with that philosophy in mind.

Oh and, in case you're wondering about the reviews of books that I'd enjoyed, almost without exception I do 4 or 4 1/2 star reviews. I have problems giving 5 star reviews, but that's a me problem more than anything else.

So my friends, this concludes my semi-shallow dive into my little slice of the topic called "Book Reviews". Hope you liked it and were able to learn something from it. Have a great week.

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #200: Did I Actually Listen To That?

Yes, this is the legendary late kitty of mine, Holly, who tripped across the rainbow bridge during the pandemic year of 2020.

The other day, I was perusing my socialized media platform of choice, YouTube, when I noticed in the comment section of a cover band that I follow {Broken Peach} that someone mentioned that the band was in their 2023 YT music recap. I didn't think much of it until a FB friend happened to mention/post her top ten Spotify list, then presto, blog post topic.

I've been commenting on YouTube for the past five years, simply because out of all the socialized media platforms that I'm familiar with, this one seems to be the most stable of the bunch. In short, because of the variety of the channels that I subscribe to {57 and counting}, 99% of the commenters I come across are the type that don't engage in flame wars or any of the kind of trolling that permeates those other platforms.

Normally I do not bother with the yearly music recap, because I really don't care to review what I listen to. I listen to what intrigues me the most. However, because I needed something to blog about and because Little Brother is a trade-off when your digital life is controlled by the Alphabet Company, it was a match made in Purgatory.

~~~~~~~

So to start things off, according to YouTube, I listened to 1,456 minutes of music, contained in 297 different songs that were performed by 129 different artists. For genres, this breaks down to 23% Rock; 16% Indie; 9% Heavy Metal; 7% Pop and 4% Country, with the remaining 41% classified as Other. 

I'm like, "Okay....", like, apparently listening to Classical or any other now predominately niche genres like RPG/Fantasy didn't register on the YT Algorithm Scale? Whatever. How about we look at what the top 5 songs where that piqued my interest that were played?

1} South Side by Moby;

2} Life Is A Rock by Reunion;

3} Bad by Royal Deluxe;

4} What Would You Do With A Bernie Sanders by The Cog Is Dead;

5} Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy) by Big & Rich.

Ummm....Okay? Like, I really can't believe that those were my top 5 tracks listened to for 2023. Granted, they were good, but "South Side"? Really? I'm sure there were a lot of other tracks that got heavy play that should've made this list.

Well, how 'bout my top five artists? That should be a good one, right? Right?

1} Leo Moracchioli aka Frog Leap Studios;

2} Broken Peach;

3} Violet Orlandi;

4} Ami Kim;

5} Moby.

Okay, I get the first four listed, as they are prolific cover artists whose videos are a must watch, and who are now branching out into original music, but Moby? Moby? Really? There are so many other artists that I have watched on YouTube that are so much more worthy, like Sina, whose drum covers are spot on and who is branching out into original music as well.

Sigh.

Well, let's try to see what my particular music mood was. Uplifting was 25%; Upbeat was 24%; Energizing was 22%; Dramatic was 15% and Happy was 11%. Who knows what the remaining 3% was. And I have no idea on how to even remotely interpret this particular glob of info. Does it mean that all the music that I had decided to listen to was just one big fat Venn Diagram for positivity? I find that very odd indeed.

It looks like that overall, the stats that YouTube came up with were woefully short of meatiness, but overflowing on vapid empty calories. If anything, it just solidifies my belief that ignoring my yearly YouTube music recap was a very good move on my part, and that paying attention to it this time was an exercise in bewilderment. Like the commercial where the waiter brings out prawn for a customer who clearly states that he has a shellfish allergy.

To sum it up, for 2023 I listened to, allegedly, 24 1/4 hours of music that was collectively produced by 129 different artists who created 297 different songs. To be honest, I have to disagree with the total amount of time spent listening to music, because I'm almost certain that I'd listened to more than 24 1/4 hours of YouTube music. But what do I know, I'm only the actual user of the product, so my opinion means as much to YouTube as a politician who swings right or centrist with their opinions.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this little weird breakdown of my YouTube music listening endeavors, because this is what you have to look forward to if you spent even a scintilla doing the exact same thing. And please check out those artists links, they really have put out some outstanding quality music videos on their channels throughout 2023.

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved