Still failing to post

[julesjones]

 Doing one of my spates of cleaning out my inbox by picking a keyword for some newsletter and mass deleting anything from that keyword I don't want to keep, on this occasion CafePress. That often takes me back quite a few years through my inbox, and the keyword picks up more than the newsletter. As usual, I have been reminded of friends and acquaintances from long ago; and have looked up some on the internet to see what has become of them. Some of them have simply moved on to other fandoms or other social media, or in one case being a town councillor in Glasgow. Others haven't posted anywhere I can see for a long time, at least under the name I know them by. Some author websites have gone completely, not even being used as an electronic billboard by some hosting company with the right to the domain name. And I feel a twinge of sadness, because although most of these people were not close friends they were still people I liked, and I will never know what happened to them.

So doing another "hi, still here", so people who only know me on this social media platform know I'm still around and safe.

Comments

[heleninwales]

I'm glad to see you're still ok. It is sad when you lose touch and dont know what happened.

[graydon]

👋

(If the glyph doesn't make it, that's Waving Hand Sign Emoji U+1F44B)

Glad you're still there.

[agoodwinsmith]

Thank you for the update.

[watervole]

It's strange how people drop out of sight so completely. Not 'strange' as in unexpected, but 'strange' as in disconcerting.

So many people were only ever know as pseudonyms. Some change pseudonyms and I fail to remember who the previous pesud was and who the person behind the first pseud was and how I originally knew them. And then they are effectively lost to me.

Good to see you posting. Give me a call sometime :)

[jhall1]

Hi! Glad to know you're OK.

[duskpeterson]

(*Dusk picks this day to check what Jules Jones is up to these days.*)

Cafe Press does give me a feeling of nostalgia. I recall them as the first place to offer POD by the "pay through a percentage of the sale" model, pre-Lulu.

[julesjones]

:-) The answer is "not a lot", because I've been a customer of neurology outpatients for the last five years, and being unable to look at a computer screen for very long without feeling very sick is not conducive to conducting a writing career on top of having a day job. I'm doing a lot better these days, but still don't have any energy left at the end of the day.

CafePress really were cutting edge when they first set up shop, and are still extremely useful for promo materials, although I haven't used them for a while as I'm not sure what the licencing is on the stock photos used for my cover art.

[duskpeterson]

That must be very frustrating.

I almost completely lost my reading vision in 2001. For about a year there, I was doing my editing during the five minutes in each hour that I could bear the pain of reading the screen. (Composing a story was no problem - thank you, touch typing.) And I acquired a screenreader, which helped considerably with visiting websites. I taught myself braille and rented a braille typewriter, which turned out to be much easier to learn to use than an ordinary typewriter. That helped with taking notes.

Thankfully, my vision is somewhat better these days. But I can't imagine what it would have been like to cope with a situation like that while holding down a day job.

[julesjones]

I'm glad to hear you're doing a bit better these days. Screenreaders are a boon to those who need them, but it can be infuriating when website designers use pretty tricks that require a mouse. I use speech recognition software a lot of the time so get to see how many websites are not fully compatible with keyboard-only input methods (including the disability awareness training modules at work).

I took to writing the old-fashioned way, with fountain pen and ink. I could write one or two thousand words on a good day, then dictate that into a text file with my eyes closed and then correct the mis-heard bits during the brief periods I could manage looking at a screen. That and reading paper books
were pretty much the only thing I could do to keep myself entertained when I was on sick leave and noise hurt too much to even listen to audiobooks. But there are three part-finished novels sitting waiting to be completed and edited if I ever get the spoons.

[duskpeterson]

You are obviously up on top of accessibility matters! I sure wish you luck with those part-finished novels.