www.andrewmackay.net:

Sometimes it’s awfully tough to know exactly what your creative output is supposed to look like. That’s where I am right now. Having just had a brilliant weekend at the Hutchmoot, I’m more encouraged and challenged than ever by my love for story (and The Story). I want to put that to good use. I’m just not certain what that’s supposed to look like. So of course, being the very private person I am, here I am processing that in front of an audience. How fun!

Life, of course, has its stages. I’m still learning how to be a good dad; I’m still learning how to be a good businessman / employee. I’m still learning how to juggle all the requirements on my time. I’m still learning how to be disciplined. Those are hard processes.They are time consuming. They are sometimes frustrating.

But, one thing I’m learning is that it doesn’t get easier. It probably gets harder. It definitely takes on different looks as life progresses, but if I don’t learn how to master my time and my output now, I won’t have any easier time later.

I’m thinking of combining a few pieces of advice I’ve heard and read lately. Chip MacGregor offered great advice on taking writing seriously the other day. I think I’m going to combine those thoughts with “Start small” and maybe go back to trying my hand at short stories.

I’ll let you know how it works out!

I’m just back from the Hutchmoot, the first annual conference put together by the Rabbitroom . It was an incredible time of hanging out, listening to and participating in discussions about art and life. It was all so good that it’s hard to really put my finger on my favorite part. But, I’ll leave you with a quote from Walt Wangerin, the keynote speaker:

Art is not an intellectual construct, it is an experience.

That’s important. Have a good Monday!

comments are broken, I’m working on it… sorry!

update: They’re fixed, I think!

It is hard to measure the actual impact of any given tech fad when it launches. The craze that accompanies a device like the Iphone is roughly the same as the craze that accompanies a software launch like Hulu plus, the Palm Pre, OnLive, and more significant because it’s what I’m writing about today, GoogleWave.

A little over a year ago, Google Wave was this mysterious new service from Google that was going to combine the best features of email, facebook, and instant messaging to change the way we collaborate. As with many new Google services, you had to have an invitation to participate. It created all kinds of hype. People who had invitations to give out could create huge waves of “tweets” on twitter, all from people in search of an opportunity to experience this brand new collaborative communication experience. If we could all just use it, the world would work more efficiently.

Then, Google started to ease up… there were lots of invitations available. As we all signed up, we excitedly anticipated how our world would be changed.

Then we logged in. I’m not going to lie, I got in there and tried to use it. And the general impression I was left with was… “What the heck was that?”

Not exactly world shattering stuff.

Fast forward to just a couple of days ago, and Google has announced that they’ll no longer be developing Wave as a stand alone product.

So, what went wrong? Why didn’t we all get it? Why aren’t we all collaborating in new, innovative ways? Is the world worse-off for not adopting Wave as a communication form?

The thing to remember is that this sort of thing has been happening for years. The Ford Edsel. New Coke. Clear Pepsi. The Blackberry Torch. Wait, I’m early on the last one. Sorry. I digress. The fact is that when engineers and marketers work together to make radical changes to the way a commonly used device or service works, sometimes they will get it right. Sometimes they will fail spectacularly. The latter will be much more fun to watch than the former.

Wave over-promised and under-delivered. It wasn’t that impressive. It didn’t make collaboration easier, at least not the way we collaborate at my company. It was easy to evaluate it and think, “eh… meh.” Then we went back to our email. It just didn’t deliver a revolution.

Maybe if it hadn’t been so over-sold, we would’ve been kinder in our evaluation. Tech fads are kind of like this, though. We never know when the next “game changer” will actually deliver. It’s very possible to invest time/money/brainpower into figuring out how something works only to find it deemed useless by the crowd.

Googlewave, I still don’t really think I got it. But, you’ll be missed. Or not.

I got to spend some refreshing time with my favorite person in the world yesterday evening. I married her, so we spend a lot of time together, but yesterday was a particularly great time, involving dropping the kid off (did he have the best time of all? From the way he talked about it, possibly).

One of the great benefits of taking an evening to go out together is getting a chance to catch up. My wife is my best feedback loop. She sees things that I can’t identify, both problems and strengths. She’s not the type to make things up just to make me feel better (Proof? Final mini golf scores: Rebecca – 57 (2 over), Andrew – 60 (5 over)… definitely no problem beating me).

But, when we talk, it’s not a dispassionate discourse. It’s not neutral. She’s invested. She cares (Even when it’s stuff that she wouldn’t have cared about before she married me). That’s what makes the conversation so valuable. I get interaction at a level that is in direct proportion to the love Rebecca has for me.

So, sometimes maybe there’s a value to getting feedback from a dispassionate source. But, there’s a lot more value (when you have the right sources) to getting feedback from people who are invested in you.

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”

- Jonathan Swift, brilliant writer and satirist of the 17/18th century. Want proof? Read this.

General state of the blog update:

Welcome back, good to see you, all that stuff. Here’s the thing about this blog: It’s only useful as long as it’s serving a purpose. And it’s a little bit of a drain on resources. And, as I approach the place where my time is more and more at a premium, trying to keep this up as a 6 day a week venture is just beyond my capabilities. But, the discipline of routine writing is good for me. So, here’s what you can expect: Monday will continue to be the day where I pawn off something good someone else said as though I put work into a post. Wednesday and Friday, you’ll continue to find original content related to reading, writing, music, creativity and the Believer’s life. The rest of the days of the week (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, for those of you not diagramming this out on a piece of paper in front of you), you’ll find nothing new. Hopefully this will allow the content I do post to be higher-quality, as well as allow for some additional sanity / time with my family / etc.

Thanks for reading, truly.

Andrew

Yep, all the cool kids are doing it. I’m going to take from now to the end of July off.

See ya around… in August.

I was in Minneapolis last week. It was great deals of fun. Friday evening was a unique experience, though. I was planning to do some shopping for things to bring to my family, then get some dinner, then head back to where I was staying. But, I had a client I needed to connect with. So, I talked with him as I drove about 10 miles from where I was staying. I sat in the parking lot where I was planning to shop, on the phone, and started to realize that the Tornado watch / severe thunderstorm warning might’ve been for real. The storm moving in from the west featured clouds dark enough to turn on street lights at 6:00 in the summer. So, I drove back to the burger king near where I was staying. I also wrapped up the call as I entered the parking lot. The wind was whipping up, and there was this big, black cloud that seemed to be rotating a little bit. Definitely the scariest cloud I’ve ever seen. I was pulling into the line up at good ol’ BK when, for the first time in my life, I heard a tornado siren go off.

I got out of the lineup and drove the final mile back to where I was staying and got in side just as the rain started to fall in earnest. I’ve lived through one direct hurricane hit (hurricane Georges, 1998) and numerous other near misses. But, hurricanes are, relatively, predictable. You know where the storm is headed, you know what to expect. This thunderstorm was the exact opposite of that. As I talked with my wife on the phone, watching the storm (I know, I know, don’t watch the storm, get somewhere safe), it changed directions at least three times. It was wild. It was unpredictable. It was powerful.

After about an hour, things had calmed down. I got dinner, even. The next day, I flew out, apparently just a few hours before another set of storms hit the area. But, I’m fairly certain that I’ll retain the memory of the first time I heard a tornado siren. I’m pretty sure I violated a speed limit on the way to safety.

Everyone is controlled by fear. Whether it is imagined or actual, the fear is real to them and controls every aspect of their lives.

- Debby Shoun (a stage actress with a penchant for overstatement?)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the way fear impacts behavior. While I think this quote is definitely hyperbole, there seems to be, perhaps, an element of truth to it.

This whole internet / social media / new media thing is confusing. I understand the way that it’s supposed to work, but I’m not sure that I understand very well how to approach it from a Christian Worldview.

Thankfully, Ligonier ministries just had a (pre)conference that dealt with the issue, featuring guys like Al Mohler and Tim Challies. You can find the audio here: http://www.christianity.com/ligonier/. It’s not all posted yet, and I haven’t made it all the way through yet, but I’m excited to get some help developing exactly how I ought to think about the internet and all these new methods of communication that we have available to us. Check it out.

I think that the continuing struggle for me as a writer is overcoming distraction. There’s just too many things to capture my attention. So, it was interesting for me to talk to a writer yesterday who works on writing from an older PC and then does all his other business / internet stuff from a newer computer. He finds that it’s an effective way for him to separate the two and prevent distraction.

While you might think that’s a little bit overboard, it made sense to me. It works for him. It’s like a lot of things in a writer’s life (platform/marketing, developing ideas), you have to figure out what works for you.