{"id":2,"date":"2014-08-24T12:40:24","date_gmt":"2014-08-24T12:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tmwaldroon.com\/blog\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2021-08-01T16:17:28","modified_gmt":"2021-08-01T16:17:28","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/tmwaldroon.com\/blog\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First things first: pronounced WALL-drone. Possibly\u00a0originally a Dutch name, my pocket-size <i>Woordenboek Nederlands-Engels<\/i> offers few\u00a0clues about its meaning, except that <em>wal<\/em> can mean coast or shore.\u00a0And <em>droom<\/em> means dream (if a masculine noun); or vision, phantasm, illusion (if neuter).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve wanted to be a science fiction writer (or, to punctuate that more correctly, SCIENCE! FICTION!! WRITER!!!) since age twelve. I long ago\u00a0lost my feeble efforts from that time, but I vividly recall sitting in my father&#8217;s office after hours, rows of extinguished fluorescents overhead, poking at the IBM Selectric with\u00a0<em>both<\/em> index fingers, and sometimes even a thumb. And the smell of Wite-Out! (Reading the label, I was surprised to learn that it was made in nearby Burtonsville, Maryland.) The slightly sticky feel of erasable bond! The hum and rumble of the Selectric and the way it made the whole desk vibrate ever so slightly! The whir-<i>thunk<\/i> when the ball-head struck\u00a0the paper! The machine was adjusted for making triple carbons, so it punched little holes through all the periods,\u00a0and the page held up to the dim light was\u00a0like a sky full of unknown constellations.<\/p>\n<p>Many intervening interventions intervened. This is called living one&#8217;s life.<\/p>\n<p>I decided to try again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First things first: pronounced WALL-drone. Possibly\u00a0originally a Dutch name, my pocket-size Woordenboek Nederlands-Engels offers few\u00a0clues about its meaning, except that wal can mean coast or shore.\u00a0And droom means dream (if a masculine noun); or vision, phantasm, illusion (if neuter). I&#8217;ve wanted to be a science fiction writer (or, to punctuate that more correctly, SCIENCE! FICTION!! &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/tmwaldroon.com\/blog\/about\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;About&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmwaldroon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmwaldroon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmwaldroon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmwaldroon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmwaldroon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/tmwaldroon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":473,"href":"https:\/\/tmwaldroon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions\/473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmwaldroon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}