If I thought I would recover or something from last issue’s inability to write an editorial, beyond gesturing vaguely and having emotions, well, foolish, foolish boy. I’ve had my moments, sure, but the instant I take in any part of the news cycle, see a few headlines, read anything on social media … yup, exhausted all over again. And this while working my day job, reading submissions, putting together this fabulous new issue of Penumbric …

Actually, that does lead me into something I occasionally want to talk about: interviews. You may have noticed that, sometimes, we do such things. (They’re really amazing, not through anything to do with me, but because of the authors and artists I’ve been lucky enough to speak with; you should check them out in our archives.) You may have also noticed that, especially in the last few issues, they’ve been sporadic (at best). This isn’t because I’ve run out of people to interview, it’s because, well (gestures vaguely, sheepishly almost), despite seeming, perhaps, that I’d be really outgoing and extraverted (I mean, I’m an Editor; doesn’t that mean I have to talk to people?), I’m actually prone to introversion and a lot of anxiety. I think there’s more of that around than is generally thought, even in this enlightened-though-regressing-rapidly age, and that there has been more of a focus on it due to and since the pandemic. And unfortunately, I think we’re entering an era in which there will be less focus on it and less acknowledgment of it (as we can already see via governmental edicts and a willingness in some sectors of the public to follow that with denigration and derision, something I didn’t expect to see again, frankly).

I digress. Alliteratively, but still …

This anxiety is not, of course, due to the interviewees, who have universally been awesome. It’s just that it takes a lot of mental preparation to actually get myself to the point of interviewing, almost as though I’m preparing for a part on stage, and I also have to make myself be OK with flubbing a question or stuttering through something or (worse than anything) starting to go on about some anecdote of my own (during which I have an inner voice telling me to shut up, this is an interview with someone else, no one wants to hear my “brilliant” attempt at anecdotery, let’s get this back to the other person)—I mean, an interview is definitely a balance between everything feeling stilted (e.g., questions just sort of non-sequituring along as though prepared without heed for the answers), reacting and continuing the flow of the conversation naturally, and mistakenly turning it into a conversation where the interviewer becomes a large part of the story themselves. My OCD and anxiety lend themselves to the more stilted end of that spectrum; the strange extraversion I developed after high school (when I started joining large social groups and improbably had to talk to loads of people) pushes me too far in the other direction. (As an aside, because there aren’t enough parentheticals in this editorial already, I think that developed through role-playing at Ren Faires and science fiction conventions—if I wasn’t me, exactly, if I was Lord Jareth or even just some random person in a cape, hat and sword in hand, I could talk and tell stories and be what I imagined other people were. If I wasn’t wasn’t me, if I was reminded of myself like Christopher Reeve’s character in Somewhere in Time, it all crumbled; and if the demons inside my head were able to seize on a stumble, a poorly worded remark or some overstep of ego, then I became invisible. Or just left. Or worse.)

I am generally OK at this interview thing, despite asides to the contrary. And I have moments where I am OK in general. But all of this is to say, the (again, gestures vaguely) things and stuff going on in the world these last few months, combined with some personal things, have increased my sense of being easily overwhelmed, and I have felt unable to really do proper and good interviews. There are loads of people I want to interview, but, for the moment, it just ain’t happening. It will happen again, sometime, if the world doesn’t fall down beforehand, but (gestures vaguely a third time, within one-too-many parentheses, and vanishes in a puff of worry-scented mist) (a mist that says, somehow, Have a good couple of months, stay safe, do what you can and not what you can’t, and I’ll see you in April) …

Jeff Georgeson
Managing Editor
Penumbric