Utopian and Me

I recently mentioned that I have a new gig. It's time to talk about it.

I am now a moderator for Utopian.io, in the Blog and Visibility categories. I'm also helping out my dear friend @techslut in the content department.

I never meant to go the startup route. I've got my tiny publishing house and translating. I'm busy... some of the time. Some of the time, I'm waiting for a book to translate, or waiting for a shoe to drop in my publishing house. And, well, turns out publishing isn't quite the gold mine one would like it to be.

My feelings on open source have long been complex. I love the idea of it. I love some of the implementations. But I think it is often sorely lacking in the user experience. To give two prominent examples, I wanted to love Gimp and Libre Office. I hate them.

Many other open source projects, such as VLC, have been an unquestioned boon in my life, and so I found the idea of Utopian extremely appealing from the minute I heard about it.

Utopian addresses a genuine need in a way that is both virtuous and powerful. And while I am not a developer, I am a writer and editor. I can help with that, and I can get paid for it.

I still hesitated before taking this on. As I've written here, depression and anxiety have been taking a major toll on me, and adding responsibilities is something that should be undertaken with care and forethought at the best of times, and moreso at a time like this.

But @techslut wanted me in there, for me and for the company, and I eventually decided to go for it. So here I am, with a new gig. This will probably have a negative effect on my blogging here, and there will be an adjustment period, but I hope everything works out.

Fingers crossed!