Dear Friend,
Did you notice I missed my first Wednesday letter yesterday? I’m going to make up for it by writing you a long, rambly letter today!
Around the country and the world, people are dealing with weather events (if you are affected by Hurricane Helene, I hope you are doing okay!) attacks, wars and more. By comparison, California is doing pretty well this week. We are between big fires and have another day and a half before our next heat-wave gets really real.
Which is just to say there are no big external forces that I can blame for the recent maelstrom of my own life.
My week has been a series of technology refusing to technology— hard drives not talking to computers, emails lost in the cloud, breakdowns in communication etc. The kinds of things that, living in California, people love to blame on “Mercury in retrograde.”
Mercury retrograde has a reputation for bringing chaos and confusion. Occurring when Mercury appears to move backward in its orbit, it's often blamed for miscommunications, technical glitches, and travel mishaps.
Mercury apparently goes into retrograde four times a year, which makes it a convenient excuse pretty often. However, this is not one of those times. Mercury is not in retrograde.
Except, maybe it is for me?
Yesterday morning, along with my day-to-day list, I had two main objectives:
To submit my “work-in-progress” film to a festival before its midnight deadline.
To upload my client’s book to a publishing site and order a printed copy.
9:30AM: On the phone with my VFX / colorist, we’re concluding she can just do VFX because her version of a coloring program is somehow incompatible with that of my previous colorist. And some other stuff to untangle. The conversation takes awhile, puts me behind on my day, but I still have hopes of catching up.
11:30 AM: As I create the account to upload the book, our internet stops working.
12PM-6PM: A fugue-state of texts, calls and slacks— all run from my phone’s hotspot,
6PM: I return to the project from six hours previous, and attempt to create an account in order to upload the book:
Create account.
There’s already an email associated with your account, please sign in instead.
Sign in.
There’s no email associated with your account, please create an account.
Create account.
There’s already an email….
7PM: Comb hair for the first time today and go to a yoga class.
9PM: Upload all material to the book platform with an account I’ve created with a new email address.
Unable to process your request due to technical difficulties.
10pm: (while watching Youtube instructional videos for another book publishing platform) Receive a call from VFX person who has been dealing with multiple issues before she can output the film so I can upload it for the festival submission. She asks me to look at her shared screen.
So, uh, do you see the silhouette of a bunny that is traveling across the screen for this entire scene?
I do see it. “Why is it there?”
Something in the programming from the first color pass, but I can’t find the source.
11:15PM: The export is complete and I can begin uploading my Work-in-Progress film (complete with mysterious bunny tattoo that we can’t fix today) to the festival site.
Note that uploading 1.3 Gb with a hotspot is not fast.
3% uploaded
Minutes pass
7% uploaded
That’s okay, it gives me time to fill in the application prompts I didn’t notice, like writing a 350 character bio, etc.
11:40PM:
Optimizing video
That means it’s uploaded!
I create a link, create a password, scroll through the application and reformat all urls the platform doesn’t like.
11:56PM:
Hit submit with minutes to spare.
You need to create a festival account before you can submit.
Despite my own personal Mercury in Retrograde, the computer autofill comes through when it counts
From my receipt:
Today’s list is today’s list, plus literally everything from yesterday’s list…
Except for this one thing.
I’m taking my victories where they come.
B
P.S. I’d love to hear about your own small victories! (In the comments is preferred, since I’m like a hundred emails behind 😹)
I’m so impressed you made your yoga class!! That’s 2 things accomplished.
That is a victory! And maybe a bit of stubbornness, too. I recall that Tallahassee has a pretty good track record of avoiding the worst of most weather events.