SRF Heavy Industries

Which is to say I’m on a whirlwind tour of not doing much and not going anywhere, working hard to solve problems that aren’t really problems using tools that no one would mistake for appropriate tools for the job. Which is kinda my actual job these days, so I’m bending my little oath to not work much on this trip.

Over the weekend at the convention, I busted my ass talking to people and selling books and sellling something that no one’s sure what it is, looking around for gold-bearing seams to crowbar open with judicious applications of business plans, incorporation paperwork, and minimalist lines of credit.

For instance, there’s certainly room for an upgrade to SFWA that is not headed by a DMCA-weilding maniac, one that has membership requirements that aren’t mired in the nineteen-sixties, provides actual advice and guidance to its upcoming membership that has never licked a postage stamp in their collective life, one that can offer the hookup for agents and publishers and templates for twenty-first century publishing contracts that understand that books may never actually go out of print ever again, one that can offer a self-funding French-style mutual aid society benefits organization including retirement funds, legal aid, and a healthcare/HMO group that’s actually large enough to do its members some good.

For instance.

The more I look at the sort of emergent life forms that organizations are, the more I see them in terms of the systems that make them up, and the more I see them in terms of the missing pieces they need in order to thrive and be healthy.

This stuff is bone-dry as conversational fare. I’ve been triggering ennui-induced seizures all weekend. I try to make it up by drawing amusing pictures of animals on cocktail napkins. With mixed success. I can’t shake the feeling that I just might make more money (and solve more pressing problems) selling my napkin sketches.

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