It’s only September and I already feel like 2009 has been the year of great personal improvement. I made new friends and met some very cool people. I learned to drive and earned my driver’s license. I learned to ride a bicycle for the first time ever. I expanded my knitting skills. On a rather nerdy and fulfilling note, I somehow found myself as a guest on two of my favorite podcasts. I also somehow managed to lose almost 20 pounds through a series of diet and exercise (I do have more to go though). You know how some people have their “life list”, the list of things they want to do before they die? I feel like I’ve knocked about 50% of that list in this one year. It feels that amazing.

And yes, I realize it’s only September, and things may go all pear-shaped before the end of the year. But for now, I’m seriously having a ball. If this is how turning 30 feels like, then all I can say about the rest of my thirties is: Bring. It. On.

That concludes my brief personal-blogging effort. You may now return to your regular Internet programming.

Paper Heart movie poster

This is why Paper Heart, the half-real half-fake movie created by Yi and director Nick Jasenovec, intrigued me. The movie’s premise starts out with Yi traveling across the country, asking people what love is. The interviews are real. Then it segues into Yi meeting Cera at a party, where they show signs of liking each other. This part is presumably fake. Which, in the end, doesn’t really matter. Their love, pretend or not, is just as interesting and charming as the real stories we hear about in the rest of the movie.

This is why: Their relationship doesn’t have the kind of lightning bolts and passionate heavy breathing that we expect from romantic comedies. They’re low-key and quite humdrum. They go out on dates, walk on the beach, share quirky moments, and write silly songs. There’s no real drama (except for the very end, but that’s a bit of a spoiler). Their relationship, whether it’s real or not, is actually very close to reality. Relationships aren’t always exciting and romantic. Relationships can be kind of uneventful and quiet most of the time. But that doesn’t mean love isn’t there. Love doesn’t need lightning bolts and car chases and the running across a meadow. Love can just be.

As Yi and Jasenovec take us through multiple tales of love, including Yi’s own journey from not believing in love to her relationship with Cera, we learn that everyone has a different definition of love. And that they’re all valid, real or not.

John Hodgman plays his ukulele in his MaxFunCon keynote address
Photo by Nicole Lee (More photos here)

When I said I was going to MaxFunCon last week, many people did not know what I meant. Even after I pasted the link, or after I tried describing it, I was met mostly with incredulity and laughter. I don’t blame them. It’s hard to comprehend how something like this can even happen. Matt, Adam, and Katie probably explained it better than I can, but here goes anyway.

Perhaps some background is in order. Jesse Thorn is a professional podcaster and public radio broadcaster who has somehow turned his college radio show into an audio podcast heard and loved the world over. The show that started it all was and is The Sound of Young America, which specializes in in-depth interviews with pop culture icons (ie. Brian Michael Bendis, Jeffrey Tambor, Neil Gaiman, Scott McCloud, etc.), many with a rather nerdy or comedic bent. TSOYA, as it’s called, has since been syndicated on PRI (Public Radio International) and is broadcasted on select public radio stations across the world. Since then, he’s produced many more podcasts under the Maximum Fun umbrella, like Jordan, Jesse, Go!, a light-hearted podcast co-hosted with his long-time buddy Jordan Morris, and The Kasper Hauser Podcast, a comedy podcast starring the members of Kasper Hauser, the San Franciscan comedy sketch group. All his podcasts are recorded and produced in his modest Los Angeles apartment.

Some time last year, Jesse had the idea of creating a convention called MaxFunCon. Not only would the conference bring together fans of his podcasts, but he also planned to invite his comedian and performer friends as entertainment. They include the You Look Nice Today crew (whom I consider friends), comedy rock duo Hard N’ Phirm, nerd rockstar Jonathan Coulton, and none other than the deranged millionaire himself, John Hodgman. When I heard this list of performers, I threw down my money faster than you could say “I’m a PC.”

And what did that money buy me? Three days and two nights in a mountain cabin, all meals included. The weekend’s itinerary included activity sessions like cooking, crafting, hiking, and learning the ins and outs of improv comedy. We were also treated to a creativity seminar by the super-inspiring Merlin Mann and a humorous slideshow by Improv Everywhere‘s Charlie Todd. If that wasn’t enough, we also saw comedians Jimmy Pardo, Tig Notarro, the aforementioned Hard N’ Phirm, and Maria Bamford send us all into fits of laughter as we sat shivering in an open-air amphitheater. Add in the late-night s’mores by the fire pit, John Hodgman passing around Crystalhead vodka and Jeppson’s Malort for us to sip right out of the bottle, meeting old friends and making new ones, and it was truly the most magical weekend I’ve had in years.

There was one key ingredient in this weekend of awesome: The incredibly nice people that Jesse somehow managed to attract to his fold. Maybe it’s just the inherent nature of people who listen to nerd comedy podcasts; that we’re all just really nice and easy-going. Or maybe it was the chilly mountain air, or that there were only 150 of us, or that the presenters were guests enjoying the conference just like the rest of us, or the fact that we had to brave thick debilitating fog to get to where we were. It was a treat, and I will not hesitate to do this again.

Sign me up for MaxFunCon 2010.

The following is a work of fiction.

Aaron dropped his jacket on the floor, his hand suddenly limp with exhaustion. He slumped on his narrow twin-size bed, which he bought because any other size wouldn’t fit in his closet of an apartment. He bought his rose patterned bed clothes because they were on sale at the local Ross. An empty coffee pot sat on his bedside table, still unwashed from this morning’s brew.

It had been a long day at the Imagination Factory. He worked in division A section 15, which was a slight promotion over division A section 18; instead of working on the dreams of the clinically depressed, he was now working on the dreams of juvenile delinquents, who were surprisingly less suicidal than he thought they would be.

Not that it mattered. Aaron didn’t have time to theorize or psychoanalyze every dream that passed through his hands. He just shaped them as per his instructions. A bit of masturbation fantasy stuff here, a bit of career ambition stuff there, and in the case of the delinquents, he would add in a touch of rebellion. Every once in awhile he would get a rather disturbing one where he had to add a dash of blood and gore and dead animals, but it was not his job to question his directive.

He felt around between the covers for the remote, and when he found it, he pressed the button that would bring the television to life. The small 20-inch set flickered. Problems in the Middle East, it seems. Aaron never worked on a dream from the Middle East before, and wondered what their dreams must be like.

“Probably full of hope and hate,” he muttered to himself.

As a low-level worker, Aaron did not have the privilege to know the names of the dreamers. But he at least knew their country of origin, just to properly facilitate the packaging of the dream and avoid cultural confusion. He also knew of racial and sexual orientation markers, but those were less important than memories.

Aaron sometimes wished he could remember.

Aaron does not have a last name. Or at least, he once had a last name. It was lost in the Great Amnesia of 2201, when all the databanks got shuffled by mistake. Even “Aaron” was just a name the man in the blue uniform assigned to him. According to news reports, almost 30% of the population lost their memories. Many of them regained them through families, friends, and existing government records. But Aaron was not one of them.

He figured he was probably a very lonely man who didn’t have anyone, who was probably an unemployed bum living homeless on the streets. His tattered and smelly clothing when they first found him was another such indication.

As Aaron ruminated more about his life, the news anchor suddenly said something very interesting. Very interesting indeed.

“Thanks to the latest information infrastructure developed by Dr. Lineas Smith, and championed by President Rita Mao, the government is finally working on fully recovering the memories of the victims of the Great Amnesia, ten years after that terrible tragedy.”

Aaron sat up, now at full attention. The phone rang. He scrambled over to the floor to get his pocket telephone from his jacket’s pocket. A robot spoke:

“Hello! You have been selected to have your memory recovered from the Great Amnesia! Congratulations! If you don’t wish to have your memory recovered, please fill out online form B43. If you do want your memory recovered, simply do nothing! You will be shipped a miniature chip via Express Download. Installation instructions are included.”

The robot then hung up. Aaron sat there, confused and shocked.

He did not know what to do.

Little did I know that many people feel this way, including the respected Mr. Mann. He said that most successful people –Mr. Coulton and Mr. Hodgman included — go through a period of self doubt. It’s only human. And not only do you have to be prepared to suck, that you have to realize that you WILL suck. For a very long time. This is the sort of thing I’ve yet to come to grips with as I flounder around trying to find a creative outlet I can really sink my teeth into.

Allow me this digression: I write for a living. I’ve always wanted to write for a living. But I never figured out what exactly I should write about, which is why I went into journalism. Wide variety of topics, and you get to pick and choose your field. Perfect. So I went into technology journalism because that’s something that I do feel passionate about. But I’m passionate about technology in the larger sense of things; in the way it brings harmony to people’s lives, in the way it makes the world smaller, in the way it shapes our understanding of human nature and the world. I do like playing around with gadgets and writing about them in product reviews, but it’s not the only thing I want to do.

But technology is only one tiny facet of my life. I have a strong interest in fiction, in humor, in photography, in crafts, in cycling, and more. In the past year, I’ve taken steps to get better at these things — I’ve been reading more books for leisure, I’ve experimented more with taking photos, I’ve enrolled myself in a variety of craft and cycling classes, etc. It’s almost as if I’m dying to get as far away from the computer as possible during my off hours (Which, by the way, is why I’ve stopped playing a lot of computer games).

So, stepping out of the digression, I want to force myself to be creative. In any way at all that I can be creative. Writing a short story, knitting a self-designed poncho, taking interesting photos, improving my drawing skills, etc. A 9-to-5 job is no excuse for not giving some bit of your time to yourself.

One of my first steps in doing this is redesigning this stale and sad website. For I am sick of it. Guess I’ll have to relearn CSS all over again.

Anyway, I forgot to post a couple of Buzz Out Loud episodes I guested on recently, so here they are in video form. This is really more for my own archiving purposes, but maybe there’s one or two of you that care about this sort of thing.

Buzz Out Loud Ep. 961

Buzz Out Loud Ep. 968

PS. I also co-host a cell phone podcast every week called Dialed In, but you already knew that, right?

Update: Well, looks like the video is up! Here it is:

In 1998, I visited San Francisco with my then boyfriend, and one of our stops during my introduction to the City was Stacey’s. A mutual friend showed off her Stacey’s “Literary License” membership card, so we stopped by to check it out. It felt like a regular bookstore at first, and then I climbed the stairs and hit the incredibly well-stocked magazine section. I was in love. I was a fan of obscure travel and art magazines, and I remember buying at least five of the damn things right then.

After I decided to actually move to the City in 1999, I would encounter Stacey’s several more times. I went back for the occasional birthday gift (Example: A book about Germany for my friend Jesse who was going on holiday there), a few author talks and book signings (Example: I was there when Jack Bishop gave a little Q&A about Cook’s Illustrated taste tests), and yes, another indulgent stop at the magazine rack. I’ve always had fond memories of that place; the multi-storied building with its multi-storied shelves.

And here in my hands, I hold a Kindle, an e-book reader that has replaced much my reading. In this 0.36-inch piece of plastic and metal holds the potential to condense most if not all of the contents of a brick-and-mortar bookstore. It is, ostensibly, the future.

So why then, even as its doors have closed and its days are gone, do I still want to get a Stacey’s “Literary License” membership card?

(Originally posted on my Tumblr)

You may have noticed that I am not a social media entrepreneur, nor a programmer or a developer, nor a designer, nor a well-rounded “thought leader.” I do not make a living with this blog, nor do I use this site to promote my money-making endeavors. I probably should, but I don’t. Which is unfortunate, because I could use the money. No, I actually went to SxSW Interactive to meet people. Make new friends, reunite with old ones, etc. And hey, maybe you’re one of them. I hope I was nice and friendly when I met you. If I wasn’t, I apologize.

So who am I, and what do I do? You could take a look at my About page, which is a decent primer of my background and what I do for a living. You could also read a few of my recent posts, where I “review” the Watchmen movie by going all Comic Book Guy batshit insane on it, or my lengthy personal take on “social networking”, which sums up my opinion on social Web 2.0 stuff in general.

How did I get involved with all this Web stuff if I don’t do this for work? Because I just like it. I was on IRC when I was 17, and I started my first Web site when I was 19 (With Microsoft Frontpage, scarily), and I was one of the first few adopters of Grey Matter, a publishing tool from way back when. I also latched onto Movable Type when it first came out, and I eventually moved to WordPress, which I use now. I am largely self taught when it comes to content publishing. As for social Web stuff, I tend to jump on them rather quickly — I was one of the first people to use Upcoming, Flickr, and Twitter. I guess I’m what you could call a first adopter or a power user. In the future, I hope to use some of this knowledge for something useful.

To wrap it up, this is mostly just a personal blog where I experiment with my fledgling knowledge of HTML and CSS and flex my writing chops at the same time. You probably get a better glance at the minutiae of my life on Twitter or on Flickr.

Oh, and it was very nice to meet you.