Doubling Doubling Down Down

ANNOUNCEMENT: I HAVE MOVED TEA WITH ALICE

For more than ten years, I’ve had Tea WIth Alice up on an experimental bootstrapped frankenstein-monster that was cobbled together on the premise that I couldn’t actually at that time afford $15 a month for a platform service. It’s worked until now, but I have set up my admin life a little better for this year, so we have ported over to Podbean as host. Of course, I thus borked the feed. I have alerted most of the pod-distributors to unify the feed, but some have done so and some haven’t so if you’re not getting the latest episodes, please resubscribe to the newer feed, which is over here:

Or search in your own platform, and subscribe to the feed that has the latest episodes.

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I did The Bugle Podcast last night, with Neil Delamere as the other guest. It was lots of fun, and we recorded for 80 minutes, so it’s always fun to see/hear what makes the cut. The Bugle now has a new full time producer/editor under Producer Chris, so it’ll also be interesting to see his taste in jokes emerge in the edits.

This year I’ve decided to double down. My son is now two (TWO) so the sort of curved inwards internal, slightly defensive psychological posture (inner monologue: just keep my head above water, keep commitments, keep momentum, maintain, sustain) is giving way to a more head-up-look-to-the-horizon attitudinal pose, which in my family we’ve dubbed “a doubling down year”.

Now this neat distinction is actually fairly fictional, because of course last year I did in fact push quite hard; I launched a book, did a book tour, recorded the audiobook of A Passion For Passion, wrote and toured a show about the book, toured the show, etc etc etc. BUT of course with the theft of all its authors’ money by unbound/boundless, it feels like in order to tell a hopeful story about my creative trajectory, I need to hit a bit of a “new chapter” button.

I now want to do a tangent about the ways in which I used to be extremely sceptical of hand-wavey language about destiny or astrology or serendipity, as I like to think of myself as quite a practical, sensible and grounded version of a creative person, but as I get older, I feel like often the wooshy gooshy language is just pointing to the fact that we don’t have good vocab to articulate the deep tides of human ... vibes (SEE! NO GOOD WORDS). Metaphors are sort of slightly clunky abstractions; big foam rubber handles that get us a precarious grip on the deep code of motivation and season and momentum and ... venus is in the girdle of poseidon or whatever, this is my DOUBLE DOWN YEAR.

It’s like, Valentines day is very silly and commercial and froofy and cutesified, but it’s also a profound ackowledgement that we should give love its due. The power of love is profound. The power of infatuation has driven some of my most impactful decisions during developmental phases of my life. It deserves a day on the calendar. (Also, we should all acknowledge that armed babies are adorable. Ye gods, parents and kid-friend-having readers, can you IMAGINE a toddler lad with WINGS.)

BACK TO THE MAIN POINT

In being willing to accept the (if not existence of, at least the human brain’s obsession with) rhythmic symmetries of the sub-factual universe, I’ve been thinking of doubles and twos. It’s like our brain makes portentous puns to give our cycles of being a structure and rhythm.

I have been waiting to hear back from the publisher who approached me about which of the two book ideas I sent through they are interested in buying, and have been choosing between two agents while that goes on. I’m doing a minimum of a thousand words on each book, alternating, each work day, and now am at 20,000 words on each,. Which makes me wonder if I should just stick to this rhythm and write two books at the same time. IT’S DESTINY! (IT’S NOT DESTINY, BUT IT MIGHT BE USEFUL TO DECIDE IT IS?). Is it the kind of thing I’d do in a double down year? Or is it that I should double down on the one book? Either counts as destiny, which is the handy thing about destiny being a storytelling device, rather than a reality bending device.

I’m touring two shows; the one I wrote and took to Edinburgh last year, because I didn’t do A Passion For Passion at any of the Australian comedy festivals last year, and it’s a good show that deserves attention, and also now when I sell books after it, I will actually get money from them. And also I want to work my new show, Oh Man in, so that it’s not awful by the time I hit Edinburgh, so it’s two shows a night for Adelaide and Melbourne, WHAT AM I DOING? DOUBLING DOWN.

Now my eye is in, I’m seeing doubles and pairs everywhere. MAYBE I SHOULD JUST GET PREGNANT WITH TWINS (this is not on the cards, thankyou, it would just be very funny, and I can make the joke here without having to actually live the joke, two children is comedy and magic enough.)

Oh also

The Gargle is Back

So I’ll be doing alternating weeks of The Gargle and Realms Unknown, please subscribe or remain subscribed to both feeds on your podcatcher of choice or over at the Bugle’s youtube channel if you want a weekly bugleverse dose of Alice, or only subscrible to the one that you’re interested in, if you’re only interested in one of them, I’m not the boss of you. Or am I? Probably not.

xx(!)

A