Note to Readers #5: From the Editor

I don't think many people have noticed, but I haven't been posting much lately.

Our front page pretty much illustrates this clearly: with the exception of "Perks of Not Caring" and the previous "Note to Readers" - the latter being nothing more than a very brief update post - every other article was written by another person on the team.

In my opinion, that's not really a bad thing.

As I write to you, the Evernote tab displaying my Biology notes wriggles impatiently behind this one, waiting for me to return to the sleepless embrace of memory-stuffing academia. There's a single pack of three-in-one instant coffee to my right inside my mug, basically my version of a shot of vodka, should I ever require it (significantly likely). A couple of textbooks serve as an armrest, mostly because I really don't know where else to put them - my bed is filled with them as it is. There's also a timetable that I left buried in a bag somewhere so that I wouldn't remind myself of the fact that prelims......are ongoing.

Pretty much not a very conducive nor convenient time and place for writing, then.

And I'm not ashamed to admit: I'm tired. I'm very tired. Not just from the whole studying/mugging situation - which I've faced for years now anyway - but simply also from the fact that writing stuff on Suburban KID isn't really easy. I don't want to glorify our work, it's actually not complex either, but many of our posts require more effort than your average blog.

This will be my average workflow on a feature article: I write a long and detailed post, with research if necessary. I try to take/create a picture, or several, to go with it; failing which I'll source it online and credit the source. I put the draft online, perhaps let a couple of others have a first look. I set a time for it to be published (usually a weekend night), and up it goes. I then control two of our official social media accounts, and two of my personal ones, to promote it, including writing a short draft as a note on Facebook and tagging those that might be interested in reading it so they can make a judgement from that said draft whether they want to continue reading on the site.

So, while not the biggest job in the world, it can take quite a bit of work. Basically I'm trying to attain the quality of top-ranked sites, without close their resources or manpower. This is even more exhausting in context; While my title is "Editor", that's a bit of a misnomer: I'm also chief writer, primary CSS/HTML developer (though I'm not that good at it), bug fixer, social media manager, occasional designer and public relations point-man.

That's why while I wish I could write more often, I'm more than happy to let the others on my team take the oars and have a go. As you can see, their work has been phenomenal, attracting plenty of well-deserved praise. I'm especially proud to see this because, at some point near the very beginning, the quality was shit. Yes, I'm not afraid to call it so, because the point that I've made very often is that so was I, and so were many great writers. I've been able to watch the team grow, not just on the writing side, but in evolving as a dynamic force working on a single cause - Suburban KID.

Make no mistake, once I get a taste of a little more free time, I will be back in full force. Until then, however, I'm content to play backstage crew more often than usual.