One admits to dissatisfaction with 2007. An example will suffice: Of my last three public presentations, two received unfavourable audience responses. I am pretty much at the end of my tether with playing nice, so my initial reaction was YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARDS. That was also my intermediate reaction, my final one, and every reaction in between. Let me get this right: You people like Jared Spool better? He’s more turkey than Christmas and you know it. I apologize for working at a higher level than you and failing to give you news you can use.
I haven’t completely run out of Plans B through Z (maybe I’m down to W), but if you’re the kind of person who reads my blog and also harbours misgivings about me, guess what: You were right all along, just as you knew you were. You also have a livelihood and I don’t, and never really have since leaving home. You win again. But don’t get all smug.
I’ve come within a hair’s breadth of desubscribing from every Web-development blog in Tarnation, though that might be ironic given my dwindling options.
I am also within hair’s breadth of having the rights to my first book returned to me. (Nouveaux Riders, never one to get it right the first time, are taking months to mail me an agreement that actually spells my name right. And there is no way to communicate with them, at all, but postal mail.) It’ll be rereleased with outdated 2001-era nonsense (tables for layout, tabindex, skip links) removed. You should know me better than to expect anything but full copyright protection, but, if I can figure out how, I might put the whole thing on Bittorrent as an exercise. (I remain the only person interested in copyright reform who does not believe in Creative Commons. That doesn’t mean I am not contributing in my own way.)
Another book was pretty much stopped in its tracks by an author’s refusal to license a title, though he did play dirty by suggesting I reword the title and run with it anyway. (This author refused money to license his own work but counseled me to write a knockoff.) A different book has been stuck in gestation too long but should come out for my birthday, and it too will be one of those new kinds of experiments in book form and distribution. (The difference is I know what I’m doing.) Yet another book is merely an idea, but unfortunately a potentially saleable one. If I got a contract for it I’d be stuck interviewing bobsledders, kayakers, and gay wrestlers for the next two years. That may be structurally inappropriate or unseemly given my age. A fifth book would pretty much have to be printed on acetate, would need to retail for a hundred bucks, and would have to be written without an advance. That’s five uncompleted books, and it isn’t even the full list.
I do, however, have great ideas for the Open & Closed Project. You will learn of them in January. Having a fusillade of opponents is helping no end, actually. And I have a brilliant plan for Toronto typography. Make sure to set aside one evening a month until this group, like every one I’ve ever formed, also implodes. The difference is we’ll have a great time at zero cost along the way.
Every seven years, like clockwork, my “career” collapses and reveals it was never anything but a shell in the first place. 2008 would be right on cue. It will be the year I do a lot more asking for help. You’ll be seeing a whole page on that topic, in fact.