What I did on my summer vacation: Jeff's content free post for 7/30.

San Diego Comic-Con was ineffably strange for me, to the point where I've got little choice but to throw my hands in the air and admit this is just a post mentioning I was there, I made it back alive, and, oh yeah, I strung a few stories for io9 while I was at it. (Dammit, thought I had six stories. Whoops.)

It was definitely a "sing for your supper" kind of gig, and working with Graeme, Annalee, Charlie (and Meredith!) was great fun, but wow. Eating, breathing, sleeping your job? Even if your job is writing about geek stuff? I dunno. I was lucky in that I just covered the overflow for the first two days--everyone else was running non-stop, working, like, eighteen hours a day for four days. (Wednesday was a more leisurely thirteen hour day.) It made me think that what we're looking down the barrel of is a future where (for the lucky ones) our work is our play, but the catch is you can never really stop playing. Maybe if I was doing it full-time I'd get used to the pace--stringing stories for io9 for the first time while at SDCC is probably like doing political reporting and your first gig is the Democratic National Convention--but as it was, it was a little bit like thinking you're going to be boogieboarding in the surf with friends and suddenly you're getting dragged by riptide face-first through the sand.

Anyway, once I can sort that experience out from SDCC (to the extent I can), I expect you'll hear more from me about San Diego. And I did come back fired up to write some stuff for you guys--that first annual volume of Love & Rockets, Bottomless Belly Button, and Chiggers all demand more attention than I think they've been getting.

Oh, and if you're David Oakes, drop me an email, will you? I can't find a current email for you to save my life.

More in the next week or so, I promise.