Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Social reading: A user review of Byliner
In my quest to pare down the general social noise and hone into fewer readings of more substantial value, I’ve gotten pretty excited about the web service Byliner recently. The Byliner site launched around this time last year and does two basic things:
- It aggregates high-quality long-form journalism and short fiction from across online magazines and categorizes them by subject and author. As a user, you can follow authors you like as well as other users who have similar interests to yours. When you login to the site, you are presented with a list of the most recent articles written by your authors, as well as recommendations that reflect what the entire Byliner social population is reading that day (top three articles, etc.) You can read the first couple of paragraphs of the article on the Byliner site before being driven back to the originating site to complete it – which actually helps to perpetuate the existence of online magazines rather than taking away from them.
- It publishes exclusive long-form essays and fiction from some great authors and sells them for between one and three dollars. These transactions are managed through whichever reader-system you have whether that be Kindle or Kobo or Google – so there is no need to give yet another company your credit card info. These works are listed for sale on Amazon as “singles”.
What I like about this? While I am pretty much wedded to hard-copy books, I gave up paper magazines more than ten years ago because they just seem to *wasteful* in terms of their temporality and the fact they are designed to go straight into the recycle-stream month after month. Not only that, the price of magazines in Canada has gotten really out of hand and I can’t really find my way to shelling out $10 or $12 for something that I’ll leaf through and then toss away. In the intervening ten years, a lot of my favourite magazines have come online in a big way, but even then, it’s difficult to track all of them for the authors and topics I actually want to read.
Hence – a long-form aggregator to dish up exactly what I would be looking for on my own – as well as a social reading community to share their own suggestions.
But even more important – I think – is this new model of publishing for writing that doesn’t quite fit into the standard models. Not so long ago I read a piece that suggested that the short story – and by extension, the novella – were the least-marketable forms of printed fiction and thus on their way out. Part of the problem was allocated to the fact that magazines, traditional publishers of short stories, have been on the decline for some time – which has vastly reduced the number of venues for new authors trying to break into the short fiction market as well as established authors who have mastered that particular form.
While I have no idea what the author-cut on the Byliner “Originals” is, I have to imagine it is somewhat decent for authors like Margaret Atwood, Jon Krakauer and Amy Tan to have signed themselves up for what is still an experiment. I would like to imagine that they are receiving at least half of what Byliner charges for their works, which is what service Atavist.net says they pay on average (Atavist publishes singles for e-readers) – which makes for much better remuneration than many authors might expect when submitting to a magazine…. if the readership is there.
Byliner is only really dealing with top-tier writers – which is great from a reader perspective (they are as rigorous as any editorial board, guaranteeing me a good read) but perhaps not so great from the writer perspective. It seems that so far Byliner is relying on print-publishing to determine the writers they will carry. Scrolling through their current selection of “Originals” it is notable that most of these writers are well-established in the world of print – and there is not a lot of risk-taking going on with regards to author selection. On the other hand, a baby start-up has to prove itself somehow, and one way to do that is to snag high-profile authors with a proven track record in publishing.
Ultimately, Byliner gives me the opportunity to do what I want to do: find excellent reading material and pay authors for their work. At one to three dollars (the price of the proverbial coffee) I can “treat” myself every once in awhile to some environmentally-friendly reading material, while knowing that someone like Jess Walter is being fairly remunerated for that. And when I just feel like a quick browse at breaktime, there is always the “free” content collected according to my parameters. This feels like a good model for micro-payment/micro-publishing – I just hope it doesn’t get entirely swallowed up by Amazon or Google down the road.
Unfinished object #1: Spring scarf
As part of the decluttering efforts, I have pared down my sewing stash by about half. Okay – maybe not half – perhaps a third? In any case, I’ve gone through all the fabric, all the unfinished objects, all the thread and bobbins and trims – and kept only the stuff I really believe I am going to work with in the future.
Like anyone who makes things, I’ve got a fair-sized pile of unfinished things – and as part of my commitment to simplify – I’ve decided to finish some of them before I start anything new. Like this scarf I finished last night – a light spring accessory that I pinned together back in March and then left to die in the basket. Instead of that fate, I took an hour last night and stitched it all together so I can actually wear it before it becomes summer. Fabric is a voile I picked up last summer, and the lining is just a simple pink satin. It’s got a bit of wonk to it, but tied around my neck it looks just fine. So done it is (who was it that said perfect is the enemy of finished?), and now onto the next piece.
Getting close to purged.
Here’s something funny: Just recently, B and I were discussing all the ways we could increase storage space in our home. More bookshelves in the bedroom, more storage for craft supplies in the office.
Less than two weeks later we’ve discovered exactly just how much space we have! That is, once everything we don’t need/don’t use/don’t want was removed from those rooms. In the office alone I removed two bags of garbage, one bag of fabric (garage sale), and one and a half bags of paper for recycling (Brian’s whole collection of academic articles in binders), plus a bag of binders and another half bag worth of garage sale bits and pieces plus a large basket of DVDs. Oh, we also moved out an extra table and a plastic storage tower. That’s six large garbage bags of extra stuff, plus two extraneous pieces of furniture crammed into a room that is pretty small (9×8) and serves multiple functions. The bookshelves have gone from overflowing, to tidy and manageable. Sewing fabric is all tucked away in the closet, and supplies have been corralled and cubbied into much more manageable amounts.
Out of M’s over-filled room came several shopping bags worth of old clothing, a box of books, and a tower of unplayed board games (we have four board games we routinely play as a family and the rest go untouched). I’m hoping that after we get a smaller desk solution going on, we can also decrease her desk-footprint by about half and replace the large rolling office chair with a stool to give her as much space as possible.
In our bedroom? One unused weight bench plus weights, a broken printer, a working printer which we moved to the renovated office, an extra area rug that never looked good and served only to collect dust, a garbage bag of clothes, several bags picked up at convention, two pieces of broken/torn luggage, and a number of novels we had no interest in reading again. And a small garbage-can’s worth of old/unused/expired toiletries.
The basement – the mess which inspired me to action in the first place – heaved up: a classical guitar, three glass carboys for wine-making, an extra-small women’s backpack (I have a much nicer one now), a pair of expensive women’s hiking boots (which have always hurt my feet), two leather jackets, a woven wall-hanging, some miscellaneous tools, a large storage container full of KISS memorabilia (action figures and puzzles, but not the valuable releases of them), some bee-keeping supplies, some camping gear, a shitload of wine bottles, and many other bits and pieces destined for the curb in a couple of weeks.
This morning after a recycling run (dump run was Saturday) I dug a few choice (unused) pieces out of the kitchen – bowls, vases, and a number of rusted, burned and dented baking pans – to make room for all the stuff which sits on top of the cupboards (it’s all inside now!), and I’ve trucked the rest of the bits and pieces into the studio where it awaits our garage sale on the May long weekend. I’ve been listing the larger items bit-by-bit on Craigslist with the intention that all money raised in the house-purge endeavour shall go towards some small repairs that need doing, a power-washing of the exterior, and some kitchen paint.
I’m hoping by the end we have a few hundred dollars, plus we will have made donations to the Purple Thistle (political library), Miscellany (enterprise thrift in our ‘hood), and cashed in some books for trade credit. And mostly? We will have saved ourselves the expense and time it would have taken to put up more shelving, and uncovered more space for actually living in. This little project is about so much more than money 🙂
As much as I have had some anxiety about this process (what if I want this/that/etc. again?), I have mostly enjoyed the act of purging – and B. has been super-awesome as well – he’s bravely dumped tons of personal papers, academic articles, DVDs (all burned to our central storage drive) in addition to sorting out basement bits and pieces and moving stuff around.
Now that all the saleable stuff is dealt with, my next project will be to tackle the sock and underwear drawers as well as the household paper. Neither of those are large tasks, but they are essential to completing this craziness we’ve begun around here.
Creating space…..
I left work in a bad mood yesterday. It’s just been one of those periods of uncertainty (ie: we are awaiting news of layoffs) and everyone is worn a bit thin. On top of that I had some bad interactions as a union rep and I was feeling sour.
But on the way home I decided not to carry it with me, and so I projected something good about what was going to happen next: that I would pick up fabulous groceries for a great dinner (shitake mushrooms, asparagus and tuna steak), and on my way I would run into a neighbour and have a connecting conversation, and then when I got home I would do some more emptying of my space and my mind to get rid of the day’s stress. Just projecting that was enough to get in a better state of mind….
And so I did, in fact, pick up fabulous dinner ingredients, and then I ran into a neighbour who was gardening and we had a great chat for about fifteen minutes, and then I came in the door and greeted the dog as I put the groceries on the counter. All as I had wanted.
And then the phone rang. That wasn’t in my projection.
Brian (who was out taking M. to piano lesson) was calling to tell me that our downstairs tenant gave notice earlier that day. Three days notice in fact. Oh, and he might not actually have his stuff out on the 1st, in fact it’s a little unclear when he is planning to have his things out. But he is leaving on the 1st, with no notice.
I said, “I guess that’s what’s going to happen then,” and I put down the phone, made my lovely dinner, and then emailed a friend who I know is apartment hunting right now.
While cooking (and eating) it was hard not to reflect on the fact that we have been on a week of getting rid of unwanted things in our home, and that my projection included getting home to another evening of emptying out space. And then, as if responding to that, our tenant decided that he was up and going too. Except I don’t think it worked exactly like that, and I believe he’s been planning to move for some weeks and failed to tell us because he is unable to think outside of his own self these days.
Though we will lose a little income towards the mortgage, I am glad with this turn of events, because it does fit with my emotional being at the moment (very much about creating flow and space), and because things with our tenant have been steadly degrading since last summer due to a combination of factors. Most recently, he has refused to speak to either of us in anything other than single syllable noises, which has put me in avoidance of any interactions at all. You can see how that might be tense-making for all three of us, and I hope that wherever he is going, it turns out to be a happier living situation for him too because clearly he is unhappy with us.
In the meantime I have a friend coming to view the suite tonight, and I really hope she takes it because she fits the tenant profile I am looking for. If not, it’s a very easy place to get someone for so I’m not worried about it sitting empty for more than a couple of weeks. I do feel like things in our home are shifting energetically in a positive direction, and at least some of that has to do with our intensive efforts at freeing ourselves from some of our possessions and making more room. It’s just interesting how things come together sometimes – you start one process in motion and suddenly it takes a shape you hadn’t quite expected. A little cosmic perhaps. But whatever is going on, it feels about right.
Breathing room
Now that I’ve started paring down my stuff at home, I can’t seem to stop. Just yesterday, I walked into my office at work and before I had even turned my computer on for the day, I started throwing stuff into boxes and shredding binders full of no-longer-needed paper. It’s as though I’ve just noticed that I am surrounded by things I do not require, and those things are making it hard to breathe.
And I don’t just mean material things, in this sense of “too much” I have long felt plagued by the number of emails in my inbox, the amount of junk mail that comes to my home, the number of windows I have open in Firefox at any one time, the amount of information coming at me from Facebook the 12 times a day I check in. It’s all TOO MUCH! And it’s been creeping up on me awhile – this sense that I’m distracted all the time, and that I have no control over the rush of information and things which seem to come at me from every direction.
But! I do have control. Or at least some control over that which comes into my life, my brainspace, my home. Not total – because none of us has that – but I’ve got a lot more agency in this whole affair than I’ve been exercising lately.
So in addition to the cleaning out of stuff that is going on in my home and office, I am also making two other moves in the direction of breathing room:
- I am unsubscribing from every single email list and advertiser notification I receive. As I see them come in, I am immediately unsubscribing or blocking them as spam. This not only frees me up mentally from having to look at so many uneccessary emails, it also prevents me from being tempted to purchase “deals” via Groupon or anywhere else.
- No more leaving Facebook open on my browser all day. No matter what I am doing at work, I always have a FB tab open on my browser which results in an almost-oc checking of the site every few minutes. Overall, that continually checking just makes me tense, and I know it’s terrible for my productivity so I’d like to cut it out.
As I clean out my physical spaces, I feel compelled to work on my mental space as well – for the two are intrinsically linked. Looking around our revamped office/sewing/tv room last night, I felt a lot more relaxed in there than I have in the past few months. Same with clearing off my desk at work. With each non-necessary item removed – be it actual or digital – I feel a little bit more relaxed again.
Red Cedar 