Category Archives: General

General, Insomnia, Life, Writing, Changes

Getting Back to Business

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

Now that I’ve had a chance to get settled into my new home as well as get many of the little but important tasks done that come with moving, I’ve decided that it’s time to get back to my writing in earnest. Since moving back to the Midwest I’ve only dabbled at writing the second book in Stephen’s trilogy. Until today I’ve only managed 4,675 words over upwards of 7 sessions. Definitely not as much as I was managing with my first book and I still had a full-time job. There were days I wanted to really sit down and write but there were too many other things that needed to get done.

One of those tasks was to apply to college. Yes indeed, I am once again going to attempt to finish my first degree. It was funny (definitely funny sad) when it came time to fill out my education history. It turns out that not counting this newest school, I’ve attended a total of 6 colleges between 1998 and now. By far my most successful attempt up to now was the first one. I finished a grand total of three semesters at SIU Carbondale. My major back then was Computer Science because I thought I’d loving programming or designing computers for a living. The first year went well, but I didn’t get to take any core classes. I loaded myself down with the general education crap the first year to get as much of that out of the way as I could. So when the second year rolled around, I was excited to finally be taking some classes related to my major. Unfortunately, once I was in those classes I ended up very much disliking them. My long-time dream of a career in computers was suddenly broken and I had no idea what I wanted to do.

After my third semester at SIU, with no real direction anymore, I decided it was better to just work until I could figure out what to do with my life. It was a reasonable enough idea at the time. So now, 5 more colleges, many, many jobs, and one tour in the Navy later I have finally found something that I think (hope) I can do: writing. To that end I am returning to school for an English degree with a focus on creative writing. (I don’t believe it is necessary for any writer to have an English degree or any derivative thereof, but I’m tired to shooting for degrees that I think will get me some high-paying salary. This time I’m going for something that I am truly interested in.) I’m pretty excited to be going back to school full-time too with no other distractions. This is only possible thanks to an amazing unicorn and my Richard. 😉

Still, school is a long ways off since I’m not starting until the fall. That being the case it is my goal to get the second Shroud novel done, and quite possibly the third one as well. To that end, I will be keeping a daily writing log here as a way for me to keep track of what I do each day and maybe how much time I spend working on writing and/or publishing. At the very least it will help me stay accountable (to myself anyway) as well as give me a sense of accomplishment. This is something I did very briefly for the first book, though I only recorded the word and page count for each chapter as I finished it rather than what I did every day. I will also be tracking what kind of writing I do each day since blog posts, emails, and homework all take time and energy.

 

Writing Log – Day 1, Month 1

Transformation (Second Shroud Novel) – 5,728 words to date (1,053 today)

Other Fiction – 1,094 (Yesterday for the Bits and Pieces book)

Blog Entries – 638

Career, General, Life, Unemployment, Changes

Change Begets Change

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

It’s been an eventful year so far and we’re only in the second month. I’ve published my first book, which is pretty awesome. I still have to finish the print layout to have a physical version available. Sales have been very meh so far, but that’s really what I expected to happen. I am prepared for the long slog to success when it comes to my writing. The only thing I’ve really been disappointed about is the lack of time, energy, and motivation I’ve had lately to continue writing. Still, given the reality of my situation I’m not getting to bent out of shape about it.

The year started off well enough. I went home for the holidays and had the chance to visit all of the people I never get to see being stuck living so far away. It involved a crazy amount of driving though (about 3,000 miles) so it wasn’t so much a break or vacation as a frantic attempt to visit everyone. Still, it was my one chance for the year to do it. Coming back to work was a little tough when all I could think about were the people I’d just left behind. Eventually though, I managed to get back into the swing of things.

All was well until the time came and went for my first paycheck of the year. This was nothing new, unfortunately. During my short time with my company, they’ve been late paying me for at least 6 or 7 paychecks. When you’re paid twice a month, it’s really tough to suddenly have to wait until the next normal payday to get both paychecks. It was frustrating to the extreme, but there was little to do as they always managed to catch me up. It wasn’t until the missed a second payday that I became seriously concerned. I also found out I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been paid. It turns out NONE of the other employees were paid, and we were all very concerned. So here we were well into February and we hadn’t been paid for any of the work we’d done in 2014. I was down to enough money for food and another tank of gas, but nothing for bills or rent. The fact that no one had been paid also had me seriously worried about the future of the company.

To make a long story short, we were finally paid yesterday. Almost 2 full months into 2014 and only for hours worked in January. I have since discovered there are five open lawsuits against the company for unpaid wages. The ship was sinking all year and I had no idea until this latest fiasco. At this point I’m pretty sure I won’t see another paycheck and that the CEO of this messed up company will suddenly disappear. Not that it matters much as I have since received an email notifying my I’ve been let go.

All of this crap had me thinking over the past couple of months that it was time to make a change in my life. Make some decisions and changes to improve my situation. Hopefully. The first thing I’ve decided is I’m taking a break from the 9 to 5 rat race to go back to college and finish my degree. The shenanigans this year just reinforced how unhappy I was stuck away from the people I love doing work that, while important, demanded a lot of sacrifices from me. When I really think about it, I’ve been going where life takes me for the past 9 years or so. With the responsibilities I shouldered over the years I’ve had little choice about what I do and where I live. I like it’s time to go against the flow and make some decisions for myself.

So now here I am, getting ready to leave the life I’ve gone with for years behind. Big changes. I’m going to be a full-time student again. I’m not really sure how to feel about it just yet. I know it’s going to be strange walking into my first class. I haven’t been there for 15 years. I’ll be one of the older students in the class. The kind I used to wonder about when I was a kid fresh out of high school. Despite my fears and uncertainty about such crazy changes, I’m also very excited and more hopeful than I’ve been in a very long time. New life, here I come!

Career, General, Life, Writing, Changes

Still Sinking In

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

As of right now, I am officially a published author. My book is up and running on Smashwords. My publishing work isn’t finished of course, there are several other sites I need to publish to as well. Still, the book is out there. I spent a huge part of this day formatting my book to the Smashwords specification. I know that bit will get quicker the more items I publish. I just don’t know what to feel right now. I’m happy of course, but this is still scary to me. Success with my writing would be such a huge, life changing event that I can’t help hoping against hope for this to mean writing full time. Maybe a good night’s sleep will bring the reality of this step home.

 

For those interested, my book can be found here:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/399672

 

Career, General, Insomnia, Life, Unemployment, Writing, Inspiration

Crisis of Confidence

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

Wow, almost two months since my last post here. Didn’t think it had been that long ago. Well, as the title suggests I went through a bit of a crisis of confidence where my writing was concerned. I took what was supposed to be a short break at the beginning of October. That turned into almost three weeks of little or no writing on my book. It coincided with the whole government shutdown and furlough thing. You’d think being stuck at home would inspire me to write non-stop, but I couldn’t stop worrying about when we’d get to go back to work and how I was going to pay my bills if we didn’t get back soon. So instead of writing I played Terraria, which conveniently enough had a content release the same day the shutdown started. Go figure.

It wasn’t until I’d been back at work for a week or two that I really started thinking about my writing a lot. It had been there the whole time in the back of my mind, but I didn’t feel good about how my story was turning out. I was also stuck. I didn’t know how to get where I needed to with the story. So all of this was on my mind most days at work. In the end though, I think my job was what convinced me to try to get back to writing. I know, through and through, that I can’t handle doing the 9 to 5 for the rest of my life. The daily commute and traffic, parking nightmares, tedious work, and soul sucking monotony just aren’t conducive to having a happy life. That ultimately got me to sit down one night and try to pick up where I’d left off.

It was a new chapter, so I had an empty page just staring at me as I tried to think of how I wanted the story to go. Then I remembered Stephen King’s advice from his book On Writing: just write. Do it. Doesn’t matter if it’s good, bad, amazing, or the worst bit of drivel the world has ever seen. Write. Don’t worry about it. Silence the inner critic and worrier. Just write. And that’s what I did. I looked at where the last chapter left off, then thought about what the main character would likely be doing at that point. Didn’t worry if it was mundane or not, I just started back up. It wasn’t as easy as before I’d taken the break. It took me a couple of nights to really get back into the flow of the story. I did hit my word count minimum each night though, and once I was past the rough spot in the story I was excited to be writing again.

At this point I also went back to Dean Wesley Smith’s website to check out some of the other sections about writing and publishing that I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet. The section called Think Like a Publisher was incredibly informative. It’s all about self-publishing, put into simple terms. He laid out just how easy it is to publish your own work, and that’s made me more pumped about writing than ever. Last weekend I decided to try and make a big push on my book and managed to write over twice as much as I usually do. When I stopped to check my progress the other day, I realized I’m nearly done. It’s hard to describe how it feels to have come this far and to see the finish line ahead. With a longer weekend coming up my goal is to have it all finished by next Monday. I am incredibly excited to get this finished, but I’m also more hopeful than ever about my future in writing.

Mr. Smith basically provides a step-by-step guide to the process of publishing as well as how to succeed as an Indie publisher. I know this first book is just the beginning for me, and I can’t wait to get started on my next project.

Oh, interestingly enough this month is National Novel Writing Month. It’s an annual challenge where writers sign up on http://nanowrimo.org/ and try to write a novel within the month. I’ve thought about trying it myself, but I just don’t have the time to write a second novel while I’m still finishing my first and working the exhausting 9 to 5 still. Of course, the novel only has to be 50k words. Not too difficult to get done in 30 days. That’s only about 1666 words a day. My current minimum is 1k. If I get my current book done by next Monday, that will leave me with 19 days of the month. That’s a little over 2600 words a days to hit the 50k mark by November 30th. I’ll think about it. If I don’t do it this year, I definitely want to try next year. Maybe by then I’ll be writing full time!

 

If you’d like to check out Dean Wesley Smith’s site, it’s right here:

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?page_id=3736

Dramedy, Insomnia, Life, Love, Writing, Anime

Watching Toradora

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

So I’ve just spent the last several hours watching an anime called Toradora. The title is a mashup of the Japanese words for tiger and dragon. The two main characters are Ryuji and Taiga, the dragon and tiger of the story. It’s probably supposed to be a romantic comedy, and it certainly presents itself in a fairly light manner. The drama is pretty heavy handed though. Some of the conflicts are pretty forced. That hasn’t stopped me from enjoying it. I guess that’s obvious or I wouldn’t be awake at 3 AM writing about it.

I discovered anime when I was in high school. The first one I ever watched was an over-the-top comedy called Outlanders. Barely had a plot at all. I loved it. A crazy alien girl sent to wipe us filthy apes off the face of the planet falls in love with a pathetic photographer. Really, I watched just about any movie, show, or anime that had a bit of romance in it. Ah My Goddess! was next after Outlanders. Definitely had a crush on Belldandy. I didn’t think about it too much back then. Why I was drawn to that. Too close to the situation to see clearly. Isn’t that the biggest kick in the ass? To be so wrapped up or overwhelmed by what you’re feeling to be blind to the realities of the situation. Looking back it’s pretty clear that all of those movies and shows about falling in love, struggling to express it, all of it was a surrogate for what was happening to me. I’ve heard it said that nothing hurts as much as your first love. A bit of forethought could have helped me quite a bit. Not a good idea to take a class just to be with someone you’re in love with after they dump you. You still have to show up to class. Probably why I’ve never pursued anyone I work with. Messy. I digress though.

I’m now on episode 25. (SPOILER ALERT: READ NO FURTHER IF YOU CARE ABOUT THE PLOT TO TORADORA) In the last couple of episodes, out heroes have finally admitted their feelings for each other. I won’t go into the ridiculous means the writers went to keep them from doing this much sooner. I’ve never been to Japan, but I have a hard time believing the willful obliviousness of some of these kids. There was a time when I thought it was just a difference between US and Japanese culture, but I’m not that young anymore. Not that I don’t understand, once they get together the story is over, right? Bleh. Pretty tired of this trope. It’s all over the media EVERYWHERE. As if the bits that happen after people start dating aren’t interesting? I have to wonder if this tendency in television and movies, magazines and manga, really builds up an image of love and relationships that has no bearing whatsoever on reality? I mean sure, when I was in high school it was damn hard to talk to girls, to tell the girl I loved that I love her. I did, and I got hurt. Some people don’t, and still get hurt. The rare few stick together from those early days. I think this constant buildup of the “before love” gives people expectations that can never be met.

My love life has been a train wreck pretty much from the beginning. I fixated on one girl throughout junior high and high school. I was in an abusive (emotionally) relationship for quite some time after that. It took me years to get out of that one, and more years to understand why I needed to. I don’t hate her for the abuse though. We were both young and dumb. It came down to wanting different things. Neither of us could understand that though. It’s easy to confuse intimacy and the closeness that brings with love when you don’t have the experience to tell the difference. I learned a great deal from that relationship. I learn from every relationship. At least I try to. So I’ve dated, married, divorced, married, divorced… I’ve come to understand what it means, really means, that we are all different. It sounds obvious, but everyone being different means relationships are all different. Not superficially either, but truly unique. How could they not be? You take two or more unique individuals and put them together. Never know what’s going to come out of it. You can’t be too afraid to try. I won’t say don’t be afraid because there’s a lot to fear. Just can’t let the fear freeze you in place, or stop you from taking a chance. Even if that ends up in failure, you’ve learned something. Another combination that won’t work. To quote Thomas Edison: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” (I am aware that this attribution is contested, doesn’t change how apt it is.)  So keep on learning from failure in the hopes of being able to recognize the real deal when you meet them.

Back at the ranch, I think what is pissing me off most about what’s happened in Toradora is just how forced this latest conflict is. Ryuji and Taiga were ready to elope if their parents tried to stand in their way. They’ve finally admitted their feelings and are taking the first steps to becoming a real partnership. They already know each other behind their social masks so really they’ve got big leg up over most new relationships. It can be pretty awkward when you start letting someone far enough into your life to really see all of the little “gross” things we do that are part of life, but that society likes to pretend doesn’t happen. Anyway, there’s some drama where they decide to run away. Sort of. Their friends all think it’s a bad idea but help them on their way. (True friendship or total irresponsibility?) After making their decision they both run home to get a few things. Ryuji expected to have to fight past his mother, but discovers she’s gone. She leaves him a letter and a watch that will get him into his grandparents’ home if he wants to. So naturally they end up there. Where else would they go, I guess? After they’re there for a day or two, they hatch a scheme to get his mom to show up. (BTW, the grandparents are incredibly understanding to take in a grandson they’ve never met along with his “bride”.) This is where they finally kiss for the first time as well. Practicing for when they really do get married. It’s actually an incredibly sweet and touching scene. Too bad it’s completely ruined by the next bit.

So after a happy family reunion, Ryuji and Taiga decide to return with Ryuji’s mom and go back to living the way they were until they can get Taigi’s dysfunctional parents’ permission to get married. Yeah, okay. At least they’re going to work on being a couple. Until Taiga comes back to her apartment to find her mother didn’t stick around to wait until she showed back up. And now, now, after all of the crap her family has put her through does she suddenly get a hair up her ass to go home and mend fences, leaving her fiance a note. A note. So of course Ryuji is devastated but is putting on a brave. All of her friends at school are upset, and more drama is about to ensue. Thus the writers have managed to narrowly avoid that kiss of death for a romantic comedy TV series, the happy ending. I think what annoys me the most is that I was far more interested in watching their relationship develop. All of the missteps they would no doubt take, Ryuji’s wacky mom breaking out with surprisingly insightful commentary from time to time. I guess that’s kind of shift to a more slice of life series, but why not? I like a lot of the things they’ve done with this series, but this forced conflict thing is just crap. It feels like they’re jerking these characters around for no more reason than to make the series longer.

I will no doubt continue watching this until it ends, or until the forced conflicts grow to such ridiculous proportions that I feel like I’m watching a puppet show by kids imitating bad soap operas.

Writing, Changes, Career, Gaming, General

Side effects

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

So I’ve been noticing some side effects from the whole writing project thing. The first and most noticeable was that having something meaningful to do, something I’m doing for myself and not just to pay bills or just as a distraction, pulled me out of my funk. Between re-locating for a job, getting divorced, and a general lack of direction with my life I was definitely pretty down in the dumps. What has fascinated me about starting, and keeping with, my writing project is how this one positive has lead to others. I suppose it shouldn’t be too surprising that positive habits can reinforce more positive habits, but it has definitely been a fun experience for me so far.

Anyway, on to more nerdy topics! Sometimes when you’re sitting around on your computer with nothing in particular to do, you suddenly find yourself heading out on an Internet Adventure! It was on one such Adventure that I discovered an amazing web series called ‘There She Is!!’  Now, I actually discovered this quite some time ago while I was stuck on a deployment and incredibly bored. The Internet connection was slow and very unreliable so Flash videos were much easier to watch within a reasonable amount of time. The series is made up of five short music videos with no dialogue and a different song for each video. It follows the story of Nabi and Doki, a cat and rabbit person respectively. In their world, it is completely taboo, even forbidden, for cats and rabbits to be cross-species couples. Over the course of just these five amazing videos there is an amazing amount of story, character development, humor, and more genuine feeling than you can shake a stick at. The series was completed in 2008, but has never (to my knowledge) garnered much attention outside of its native Korea. This is unfortunate because I really can’t say enough about these videos. They are both incredibly moving and inspirational with a very definitive message.

Link to all five videos (the site is in Korean, but the Play movie links are in English and will launch each video in a pop-up window. You’ll need Adobe’s Flash Player to watch them. Or you could watch them on Youtube.)

http://sambakza.net/works_tsi/tsi_main.html

 

PS: If these videos do not tug on your heartstrings, you are a soulless automaton and should go back to watching “reality” TV.

 

PPS: So I just discovered that the whole series was posted to www.newgrounds.com as well as their Korean site. It looks like all five videos won trophies for top video when they were posted, and the last video has an amazing 1,662 pages of comments from users!

General, Writing, Inspiration

Another Week Down

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

Another week of (successful?) writing has been completed and I find myself now into my fourth week. I’m not sure at what point I can call this a successful habit, but it’s definitely starting to feel very natural. Most nights I can bang out my minimum of 1k words with little trouble. Tonight was actually the first night in at least a week that I had to really work to hit that number. Mostly, I think, because I’m pretty tired and more than a little sore. Still, very happy to have managed to get this far. Here’s hoping I make it to the end of this story! That would definitely be something to see.

General, MMO, Writing, Balance, Gaming

No Country for Old MMO’s

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

One of the things that has been helping me stick to my writing project is the complete lack of interesting MMO’s on the market currently. I’m a long time player of World of Warcraft, but I’ve pretty much come to the end of my rope on that one. The ridiculous daily grind introduced with the most recent expansion pretty much killed any desire to continue playing. That and I’ve leveled almost every class to max. Not much left to do except grind for raiding or Arena gear. No thanks.

Still, just because there’s nothing I want to play that’s out right now doesn’t mean I don’t want to play at all. I’ve definitely been missing the ever-present entertainment of an MMO. The knowledge that there’s a game I enjoy that always has something new I can try. For a long time that was WoW for me. I’ve tried other games from time to time. Conan. Rift, Star Trek, Star Wars, Age of Camelot, LOTRO, and so on and so forth. Honestly I’m pretty tired of the WoW copies. It’s just frustrating  knowing that most of what’s out there are all variations on the same basic theme. Of course, there are some sandbox type games coming. Everquest Next is supposed to be such. Free to play as well. As a player of the original when it first came out back in 1998 (dating myself here), I do hope they’ve come up with something different. I am very interested in CCP’s take on the World of Darkness. The concepts they’ve talked about would definitely lead to a different type of MMO.

Sandbox games have certain grown on me as well. While I don’t care for Minecraft, Terraria is a game I just keep coming back to. Super excited about the hopefully near-future release of version 1.2 that’s going to add a massive amount of content. Starbound is a similar game that’s in the works and supposed to be released this year. Not sure if they’ll hit that time frame. Either way we’ll just have to be patient.

Overall this lack of games that I want to play has coincided happily with my finally getting off of my butt to start writing. When any of these games do arrive, it’s going to be tricky to balance the unfortunate necessities of work and sleep with my writing and games. There are much worse problems to have though, so I’d best keep my perspective. In the meantime, Writing Week 3 ho!

Career, General, Life, Unemployment, Changes

Switching it Up

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

Recently I have been giving a lot of thought to a serious attempt to change careers. This is a pretty big deal for me as I’ve mostly been going with the flow since I dropped out of college. I went in to IT contracting after giving up on school and eventually landed a steady job at a phone company for about 5 years. I stayed in the job because it was easy and the pay was okay. By the end of my time there, my day’s work only took me a couple of hours to finish. The rest of the time I spent reading news or playing games. In the time that I worked there, I moved out away from home and got my own apartment. Eventually picked up a house on the cheap that needed some work. Didn’t do much of the work except the necessities for the first couple of years there. Eventually though it was a nice little place to live. My sister moved in and suddenly my social life improved. My job though was clearly a dead end affair. Not much possibility of advancement.

Then the company was bought out by a much larger one and the layoffs began. We went from an office of well over 100 people to about 30 before they moved us to a smaller facility. The trimming continued. Seeing the writing on the wall, I was looking for work elsewhere. One of our managers landed a group of us positions at another telephone company. Not experienced enough to know this was a bad move for me, I left and went to the new company. In hindsight I should have stayed with my old company until they did lay me off so I could at least collect unemployment while looking for a job I might actually want to stay with. I quickly found myself in a high-stress customer service position with the new company and realized I couldn’t hack it. So again, with my lack of experience, I simply quit. I had confidence that I could find something better for me fairly quickly. This turned out to be a foolish belief though. My lack of a college degree severely hampered my ability to land a decent job.

After that, it was a slow and steady slide in to unemployment depression. Good jobs did not fall out of the sky. I spent most a year unemployed, and during that time I was forced to sell my house and move to an apartment. I lived off of my various sources of credit. Definitely a step back. In the end, I decided my life needed a drastic change. I could try to go back to college, get student loans, take on even more debt. Fun times right? Instead I decided to enlist in the military. It was a bit of a crazy idea. I know my family couldn’t have been more surprised as I’ve never been the gung-ho military type. Still, I figured it was worth a shot. Luckily for me, I did quite well on the placement tests and had my pick of jobs within the service. Six years later, I was married and divorced, lived in several states, and had a very marketable set of skills to go with my military experience. I was up for re-enlistment, however the job I really wanted, I wasn’t allowed to switch to. The service gave me an ultimatum: go back to training for more of the same work I’d done for the past several years, or get out. Easy choice. Now I do the same thing, only there’s no military hoopla to deal with on top of the job. The pay is better to. This, finally, gets back to my original point though: money can’t buy happiness.

Now what? This is the question I face every day. Some days it’s a bit easier to ignore than others. It’s a tough question because it leads to a follow-up: what do I want to do? That’s the real 65 million dollar question. What the heck to I want to do with my life? When I was a kid in elementary school, I thought I had that one down. I wanted to be a computer programmer. I certainly spent enough time writing little games. I’ve even used those skills to help with pretty much every job I’ve had from time to time. When I got to college, I arrived with the mistaken expectation that being there would change everything. That I was finally getting the chance to do what I really wanted. My freshman year I took a huge load of general education classes to get them out of the way, so they wouldn’t interfere with what I was really there to learn. So the next year, I get in to my first Computer Science classes. They sucked. Perhaps it was how they were delivered. After all, an auditorium lecture format is not ideal for teaching a programming language. I was hugely disappointed, and it showed in my grades. After the first semester, I dropped out to take a break. Figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Guess I’m still figuring.

So what is the answer? I don’t really know. I wouldn’t mind investing for a living, at least giving it a shot anyway, but I definitely don’t have the kind of money to really get that going unless I get lucky. I could try to break back in to the computer programming business, but it’s getting a bit late for that. I also do not relish spending the rest of my life in some cubicle, pounding away on some program I don’t really care about. There’s freelance programming of course. Indie game development and such. Now is certainly a good time for Indie games. Hell, I’ve got over 400 hours in Terraria. Every time I’m bored with everything else, it’s back to Terraria I go. Still, there is one thing I’ve always wanted to do, but never had the guts to try. It’s even something I can do, though with difficulty, while holding down my current job: writing. I have been an avid reader since the 3rd grade, and have dabbled from time to time in the fine art of writing. The trick though, is that it is extremely difficult to make a living with just writing. A very, very small percentage of writers in this country succeed to the point where writing is all they need to live comfortably. Indeed, many writers have said that money should not be one’s motivation. I can certainly believe that. I guess the question now is am I still willing to give it a shot? Do I invest the immense amount of time needed to polish my skills, write, write, and write some more? Can I handle the inevitable initial rejections? Can I handle the possibility of failure? A dream not pursued is still there to dream about. True failure would kill that dream. Then again, what happens to a dream deferred?

General

Happiness and the Daily Grind

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

I don’t know how it is for most people, but for me the daily grind is such a soul sucking experience it’s extremely difficult to come home and have much desire to do anything besides relax and pass the time until the next work day rolls around. I’m not saying that my job is horrible.  Far from it. It can be challenging and rewarding at times. It even pays fairly well. There was even a time when I was much younger that I believed that having a job that I didn’t like would be doable long term if the pay was there. I have since learned differently. It has actually been a fairly interesting personal learning experience. In my case, I’ve come to realize that once I have the money to pay my bills and save for retirement while still having a bit left over for my hobbies, interests, etc., the money on top of that does not make up for a frequently miserable existence.

That’s not to say everything is horrible and I hate life. No, this dissatisfaction is more subtle. As the days grind on, it has slowly become apparent that my life is going nowhere. The life I want to live and envision on a regular basis is on hold due to reality. There’s little use denying the facts as they stand. The job market is terrible and is likely to remain so for quite some time. Those of us with steady employment are lucky. No way around that, even if it doesn’t feel that way most of the time. The alternatives are far worse. After all, who really gets to make a living doing what they love? Who indeed?  For that matter, how many people actually know what they love doing? I’m not talking about just entertaining ourselves to pass the time. I’m talking about a passion. Something that moves us beyond measure. That inspires us. How many of us have actually found whatever this is? How many of us recognized it for what it was? From there, how many had the courage to pursue it against all odds? Damn few.

So now I return to my situation. I am most certainly not doing what I love for a living. For that matter, I’m not sure of exactly  what I could be passionate about as a career. I would think that it couldn’t feel like a job. A job is something you do because the alternatives don’t bear thinking on. You get up five or more days a week, likely after not getting enough sleep, and go to work. You do you thing. You try not to think about what you’d rather be doing throughout the day. You distract yourself by commiserating with your coworkers, not looking at the clock, trying to lose yourself in your work for as long as possible. Anything to make the day pass more quickly so that you can trek home and not think about work for a few short hours. If you were to feel this way about something you had been passionate about, that passion would die a quick and horrible death. So the trick seems to be to find that passion and somehow make that work for you. Make it a success to the point where you can do that for a living because it is what you want to do. That is quite a trick though.

In my case, I have a few ideas of things I could possibly do that I might truly end up being passionate about. How do I go about trying these ideas out? How can I keep my regular job, do my regular job, then come home and take up my passion with the energy and creativity it needs to survive? I’ve actually thought about this long and hard. What can I do to make this happen? How can I motivate myself to do what I dream when the dream dies a little more with every passing day? When the enormity of the effort needed for the dream seems enough to crush hope? I have been searching for the answer for some time. Searching outside myself, casting about in a vain attempt to find a ready made solution. It is only recently that I have come to a dawning realization: there is and will never be a quick fix for such a task. The answers will never be found with someone or something else. I am stuck. I am unhappy. I can’t keep this up indefinitely. This is my problem. The world doesn’t care and really shouldn’t care. It’s time I start looking to myself for the answers to my problems. After all, even if I can’t solve all of the problems I perceive in one fell swoop, I can make the many small decisions and take the small steps needed to begin fixing them. Bit by bit, I can build the life I dream of. Once again, I find that I already have at least some of the answers, even if I don’t always like what they are.