indi.ca

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I seriously spend a large proportion of my day in the fetal position thinking about all the crap I have procrastifaked to the point of crisis, hence minimal updates here. Hence I am republishing an email I sent to my good friend Lucy. This is bootleg, but it starts with my response to her thing on ‘Tamil Rebels’ and digresses into a semi-honest summation of my life, certainly better than my crap about page. And it begins, ‘Oh Luce, I am a stress basket. And they’re not Tamil rebels, they’re terrorists… argh. They honestly represent Tamils as much as Al Qaeda represents Muslims. Most of the people they kill are actually Tamil dissidents, unless they’re cleansing Muslims and Sinhala out of villages. They’re seriously being assholes now, using a pregnant woman as a suicide bomber. You’d be surprised though, the day after what was pretty much an act of war people just went back to normal. I’m still working, though I have a bit less hope than before. Life is always OK for the Colombo elite, it’s the poor people that really suffer. Less tourism, less investment, yadda yadda.

Anyways, it honestly doesn’t effect my life that much. Colombo is pretty insular and all the trouble is in the North and East, which most people have never been to. Only thing I worry about is that this prominent Tamil MP lives near my office and he rides by in convoy – jeeps, beamer, motorbikes, really annoying. The LTTE already killed the Tamil Foreign Minister and he’s next. If they suicide bomb him (again) it’ll probably shatter my windows.

In that way, among others, life in Sri Lanka is somehow more real. More terrible and cruel, but richer in a lot of ways. It’s also much much faster to ‘come up’ here, which is kinda what I came. Anyways, lifewise I just had a small anxiety attack and had to lie down on the floor for half an hour. I haven’t felt the same since first semester when I realized you can’t learn Deductional Logic and Programming C in one night. I just lay in bed feeling the stress seeping through my body. The difference here is that I can get potent anti-anxiety drugs over the counter at the grocery store, but I digress. To clarify, I am in three lines of work, all of which interfere with each other. Someone should yell at me, but there is no adult supervision here and I stumble along. Every now and then Amma or my friend Sam slaps me upside the head, which I truly need. There is no way I could get away with half this shit in the states. I wear trainers to board rooms, refuse to go to office, take entire days off to watch TV and generally act like a child.

1. Blogger: This is my most successful thing, and if I could do it full time I certainly would. It makes me popularish, people recognize me, hate me, and I have gotten laid at least twice off its tangential effects, not to mention two directly related hookups. Plus I absolutely love doing it. I love the community, I love the discourse, and I love the absolute freedom of expression. I also feel like it’s the most important thing I do. It earns me exactly 15$/month.

2. Consultant: This involves basically doing design work I don’t especially care about for people who mangle my work and yell at me. They also have deadlines and stuff which I am kinda iffffy on. I actually kinda like it cause I get to meet new people and try new challenges, but it has nothing to do with anything future wise, it’s just money. I find that the people that can pay the rates I ask tend to have the most boring shit to work on. Dunno how that works. It earns me anywhere from $400-$3000/month.

3. Editor: This I have neglected the most cause it gives me an ulcer. I actually stopped the magazine for 3 months to get the distribution fixed (a god-forsaken tangle) and the content in line with the original vision. I actually did those parts, but the advertising is still buggered and I just don’t have the time. The thing is literally produced on my laptop with minimal (re: no) advertising or marketing support. Even circulation is cocked and I have to go in there myself. The cool thing is that you can start ventures in SL, but the uncool thing is that none of the infrastructure works. You literally have to do everything. I try delegating but I get back crap and I have to go back and fix it anyways. Arrgggh, pffft. This venture is hemoragghing money cause there aren’t enough advertisers, except for the ones I have personally sold. On the other hand, there is demand for it cause people keep asking me and PR people keep hooking me up with these really interesting tech people passing through town. I hate print, but I really want to focus on this to bridge the gap between off and online and maybe force the symbiotic relationship that the blogosphere traditionally has with mainstream media. It’s that community that I care about, and I want to give it a foothold in the ‘real-world’. However, the business end is giving me anxiety attacks. Anyways. This earns me about $400 a month.

Right now I have more money in the bank than I know what to do with and I’m thinking of slowing down on the consulting and focusing on the mag. Only problem is I’m so fucking lazy and I end up hanging out at Barefoot or watching TV all the time, which leads me to think I should be a blogger, except I don’t earn enough there for a bottle of wine. Someday I plan to make a living blogging, but it’s like I have to build the infrastructure myself. Oi. I’d like to bring advertisers into blogging, but I have to bring blogging into the mainstream media first, but I can’t do anything cause I drink too much and I’m addicted to One Tree Hill and I fight these waves of depression and yadda yadda. Anyways, I’m going to publish this cause I haven’t updated in forever, if you don’t mind. You pay attention to words, and I always like writing to you. If you write back in style I shall tell you somethings personal and most juicy, and most out of character for your little Buddhist.