7 ms·

Related: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-beginners https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-be...

• rikroots 7y ago
  Thank you for posting that article - I've never read it before. There's many things John Q says in the article that resonate strongly with me. I've never viewed my attempts at conlanging as anything more than self-indulgent art. I found the passage where John outed himself as a 'conlanger' to his work colleagues hilarious: > “People at work now held me in some sort of state of half awe, because this guy obviously has more going on in his head than being a manager at this dopey state agency, and half in contempt, because I’ve now proved myself to be beyond whatever state of geekery they might have previously thought about me,” Quijada said. “‘You’re a what? A con man?’ ‘No, boss, a conlanger.’” I've learned over time not to be ashamed of my hobby - in fact I'm happier to reveal to people that I invent languages than I am to admit to my other hobby: writing poetry. It was my desire (need) to share my work with those few people who might be interested in it that first drove me to teach myself how to code up websites - so in a way my weird hobby has had a positive effect on my life: web development and coding became a new passion that has kept me out of trouble for 2 decades now, and has been my profession for the past 5 years. Now I'm itching to redevelop my old conlang/conworld website - I haven't done much with it for 10 years; looking at the code that drives it today ... it makes me cringe with embarrassment! http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/index.php http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/index.php