Category Archives: Unemployment

Unemployment, Writing, Changes, Inspiration, Career, Crowdfunding, General, Life, Patreon, Publishing

So. Much. Change.

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

It’s been a little bit since my last post but I haven’t been idle. Where to begin?

 

The Home Front:

Probably the best news is that my sister has started her chemo treatments and so far that is going well. I know the whole experience has been pretty awful for her but I also know we’re all feeling a little better about the whole situation. The tumor in her neck is already noticeably smaller just three treatments in. Definitely a good sign. We’re not out of the woods yet but the horrible sense of loss and depression have receded. I will be joining her on her next treatment so I’ll get a chance to see firsthand how it is.

As far as the school stuff goes I did manage to get all of the required items to the school just under the wire. I didn’t really think that was going to happen since I was waiting for one transcript that took three months the last time I ordered it. I ordered the new one as soon as we finished moving to Madison but that left less than two months. Surprisingly though it arrived just in time and now I await the school’s decision. I’ll probably be coming in as a junior so that will be nice. I might have one or two lame general requirements left but that’ll be it. I should be able to concentrate on my English – Creative Writing major. I’m actually really excited to have the chance to go back to college full-time. I never thought I’d have another chance when I dropped out back in ’99. I’ll definitely be one of the oldest students in my classes but I don’t mind that. It’ll be fun watching all of the kids run around doing their thing. Here’s hoping I get in next semester.

This Year So Far:

In other news I’ve invested a great deal of time and effort into my writing career over the past month. The print edition of Induction was finalized and is available on Amazon. This is crazy exciting for me. Despite growing up with a just-blossoming Internet I guess I still have a pretty strong connection to the physical world. So when I held a physical proof version of my first book, for the first time, it felt more special and real than when I published the e-book version back in February. I know at times I’m disappointed with my progress so far. I definitely had high hopes and set a very high bar for myself last year. I wanted to have this first trilogy done by December 2014 as well as at least 5 short stories, published individually and as a collection. For a long time it looked like that wasn’t going to happen. Between moving twice, applying to one college and getting in, then having to apply to another as well as the rough time my family and I have all been going through it’s been a crazy busy year. Actually, now that I think about it I guess the progress I have made so far is decent. Plus National Novel Writing Month will be here in just a couple of weeks. Topic change!

NaNoWriMo (Huh?):

National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo (nanowrimo.org) is a yearly contest, sort of, to get people to write a 50k word novel in just one month. Specifically, in November. So people who participate have 30 days to finish the novel. Anyone who manages to finish within the 30 day period wins. It’s free to participate and there are a bunch of groups around the country, and probably in other countries, participating. I found out about it last year but I was already writing my first book and working a day job full-time. I wasn’t about to try a second novel when I wasn’t even sure I could finish the one I was working on. This year is different though. I am currently unemployed and writing full-time. College doesn’t start (as long as I’m accepted) until January and I will hopefully have a little income coming in from my writing in the near future. Enough to get by and still eat at any rate. Hopefully. Maybe.

Anyway, the point is I have the time and strong desire to participate this year. I’ve already signed up and am looking at getting with my local group here in Madison. They already have some tentative events planned and I’m very psyched to get the chance to meet other writers. I know writing is a solitary profession in many ways but just in my short time doing that I have already realized that my writing and my experience writing is better when I can share it with other people. That’s been limited to friends and family so far which means I’m very eager to talk and work with other writers to get their perspectives on writing, the writing life, and life in general.

As for what I will be writing next month, that is still undecided. I was hoping to get some feedback from my Patrons via Patreon regarding which of the ideas I’ve had so far they’d like to see, but that requires having Patrons. (More in the next section.) At this point I’ve got four ideas, two related to my Shrouded world, two not. The third book of the trilogy is out as a possibility because it won’t fit within any reasonable distance of 50k words. Both of the first books ran almost 100k and I’ve got plenty more story to cover. There is another Shrouded World book that’s been on the back burner for almost a year now and that definitely has possibilities. We shall see.

Patreon:

So Patreon is a thing now. I first stumbled across it when I was going through some artwork on an unrelated site. They mentioned I could support them through something called Patreon. I was curious at the time but had other things going on and forgot about it for a couple of weeks. Once I came back to it though I discovered that Patreon is basically ongoing crowd-funding for artists. The amounts pledged, either per month or per fixed unit of work completed, are much smaller than what you see on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Most start at $1. Looking through the site I found some artists I already followed on YouTube. (Peter Hollins comes to mind immediately. Amazing a cappella music videos.) I loved the idea right then and there. Have someone creating something you love and enjoy? Give a buck a month or whatever and help them pay their bills and eat so they can focus on creating! I’m learning first-hand just how hard it is to concentrate on creating when you’re worried about paying for rent and food. So I decided to join in as well and started my own Patreon page.

It’s been up for less than a week and I don’t have any Patrons yet but I’m hopeful this will be the answer for transitioning from regular 9 to 5 jobs to writing full-time. I will say this though: I am far more motivated every day to keep writing, publishing, reading, researching, and learning. My main passions in life so far have been book and gaming. Now writing has usurped both of those as number one. Not something I could have predicted but it’s something I’m enjoying immensely. Whether or not I’m successful I am definitely enjoying the ride.

 

(EDIT)

So I spazzed out and completely forgot to include links for all of the stuff I’ve been working on. Here they are in no particular order:

Patreon (Seriously, this site is awesome. If I had the money there’s a bunch of artists I would already be supporting.): http://www.patreon.com

My Patreon Page: http://www.patreon.com/fuzzynerd

My new Tumblr blog where I post my free work: http://fuzzynerdcorner.tumblr.com/

I am now also on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FuzzyNerdCorner

National Novel Writing Month Site: http://nanowrimo.org

Life, Unemployment, Writing, Balance, Changes, Imagination, Inspiration, Method, Career, Gaming, General

Done and Done

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

It’s been a couple of quiet weeks as far as posts here go. That was mostly due to being ill. Picked up a nasty little bacteria that took up residence in my sinuses and chest. It was a lot like a mild flu mixed with a head cold. Got the fever, cough, congestion, and sore throat combo going so that was a lot of fun. Probably could have cut my sick time in half with a little antibiotic love but that requires expensive doctor visits and medicine so no joy there. Future illnesses like this shouldn’t be a problem if the VA comes through though so here’s hoping on that front.

As far as writing goes I didn’t let a little thing like being sick stop me from writing. I certainly slowed down but I’m very happy to report that book 2 was finished early today. I was working on Chapter 21 when I realized I was just dragging out the story and could easily cut it at the end of Chapter 20 plus a short epilogue. So that’s what I did. My second novel ever clocks in at just over 92k words and took an unfortunate 5 months to write. Book 1 was 4k words longer and took 3 months all while I was working 40 hours a week. Funny how it’s been harder to write when I have so much more free time. Of course moving threw a big monkey wrench into my writing time/energy so there’s a good month lost to that. The real problem was making the time and space for it. For the first book I was in a lull as far as my gaming went so it was no big deal to devote an hour a night to getting some writing done. Still, done is done.

This second book was much harder to write for me. I think part of it was just the amount of world-building that went into this one. For the first book I could get away with vague references and hints until the big reveal at the end. Book two though is all about getting down and dirty with this new world. It’s a first for the protagonist, the reader, and me. 🙂  Fun fact: I used a short story that I wrote to build a lot of the details in book two. The short story takes place in the same world and focuses on a day in the life of a secret agency office worker. I ended up going through the short story again to jot down all of the details and filled an entire legal pad with notes. I will definitely be writing more of these kinds of stories to help flesh out my world. I think it takes the huge task of world-building and breaks it down into smaller, more manageable chunks. I’m actually itching to get going on another short story. It’s nice to know that I can start a project and get it done in a week or less. Finishing a novel feels great but the slog getting there can be rough.

Unemployment, Changes, General, Insomnia, Life

Too Late?

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

I sometimes wonder if I’ve waited too long to figure things out. Looking back to when I was much younger than I am now, I was a pretty confident kid. Not with the other kids around me or social situations in general, but with what I wanted and what I was going to do with my life. I know a good part of that was just lack of exposure to and experience with the world as it is. We all dream about what we want to be “when we grow up”. (at least I hope we all get a chance to do so) The problem with this though, is that we have no clue what it really means to grow up. Society has a pretty good idea, but that’s just a mixture of expectations, upbringing, and various pressures put upon us. We have our own ideas of course. For me, it was all about getting a great job. That seemed to be the key to happiness, stability, and well-being.

I was confident in this path I’d set myself all of the way up to college. I had some big expectations for my college experience. Fun was definitely a part of the equation, but more importantly I expected that I would be excited and satisfied that I was finally learning about my chosen vocation (Computer Science in this case). Of course, the reality was something else entirely. After putting up with all of the learning requirements in high school I was looking forward to choosing just what I wanted to learn. Well hold on there buddy, you’ve got a bunch of general education requirements you have to meet before you can even think about taking classes actually related to your major! Yeah, that was the first slap in the face. It’s not that I don’t understand why this is the case, but I was very impatient to get on with the whole process. Still, I decided to take my medicine and loaded down with the damn things. I took upwards of 18 credit hours my second semester in order to get the crap out of the way. So that first year was a big review of a lot of the crap I’d just got done with in high school. The biggest difference was just how little anyone cared if I showed up to my classes or not. Most of my classes didn’t take attendance so it was on me to make sure I showed up and learned enough to pass my tests. It was also a lot less busy that high school. It was a strange adjustment.

So it wasn’t until the second year that I finally had my first programming course. I was excited for that and I was also excited to have a room to myself. Like most schools, it was nearly impossible for a freshman to get a single room. I was a sophomore now though. These turned out to be two things I would regret. For the room thing, I hadn’t realized how much my roommate and friend from my freshman year had kept me on point. We’d encouraged each other to go to classes when we would have rather stayed in bed or whatever. Without that encouragement I had a much harder time making myself go to some of my more pointless classes. Still, now I had a course for my major. Great right? Well, no. I don’t know about anyone else, but having a programming class in an auditorium with hundreds of other students was not conducive to learning such a complicated progress. I wasn’t new to programming or anything, but I was all self-taught up to that part. I had (and still have) a lot of holes in what I knew. So the class was already a struggle. Add the terrible format onto that and I was horribly discouraged. As that first semester drew to a close I realized I couldn’t stick with my plan. It wasn’t what I’d expected at all. I didn’t want to do it anymore. So I left. Dropped out and joined the work force.

This was a big decision for me but the job market was much better back then. With my computer skills I was still able to land decent, but not great jobs. I bought a house at 20 or 21 and had a steady job for several years. I worked, saved for retirement, paid my taxes, tried to exercise and eat right, etc, etc, etc. I played by the rules and followed the herd. I did okay for awhile, but it became evident that my position was a dead end. I got little raises but I was never going to have the big success I’d dreamed of there. I didn’t stress too much about it most of the time though. I had plenty of time after all. Then the company I worked for was bought out and the layoffs started. I lasted a little over a year after that. I was one of the last people to leave in fact. The whole thing was a depressing experience though, watching the new parent company destroy everything piece by piece. I heard later that they eventually sold off what was left a couple of years later. Fun times. So after that, I wasn’t able to land another decent job that would support my house. I had to sell it, cash out my retirement to pay for the closing, and moved to another state with my sister. I bummed around for about a year doing short contract jobs, trying to find something good while I waited to go back to school. That didn’t happen though and I ended up joining the Navy.

I did six years in the service. When I came up for re-enlisting I wanted to switch jobs. That wasn’t an option though so I got out and ended up doing the same work as a civilian. That was a strange experience. It was nice not being in the military while still doing the job, but my experiences with the contracting companies were pretty bad. I spent the first two months of this year waiting to get paid. Never a good sing when your company can’t afford to pay its employees. So yet another layoff later, I came to the decision that I was going to take this opportunity to make some changes in my life. I’d gone with the flow for a long time. A really long time. I’m more than a little tired of that. So here I am, back home near my family and friends. I’m living with two of the greatest people I’ve ever known and we’re all making a real go at this. I have a chance to go back to college. (Let’s hope H.R. 357 passes soon!)  I also have the chance to do something I enjoy doing and possibly make a living doing it. I just wonder sometimes if it’s a bit too late?

I suppose I’ve been having a crisis of confidence for a couple of weeks now. I have a hard time sitting down and getting any writing done. Part of it is I’m just not happy with the section of the book I’m in right now. I’m struggling to bring it together. I know where it needs to go and I have a pretty good idea for the climax, but getting there has been tricky. I’m happy that I still have a feel for my characters. When I do manage to get into the flow of things I have no trouble being right there with them as things happen. I guess I just feel a bit overwhelmed at times. There are so many things I want to do, not just with this book or Stephen’s story, but with my writing in general. I’m almost certainly dwelling too much on the big picture instead of concentrating on the day to day tasks. Self-publishing is fun but very intimidating. Writing a book is the same. The funny thing is, I had an easier time writing the first book when I was working full time. At least it seems that way.

I’m not going to let this self-doubt beat me though. I truly am looking forward to getting back to school. It will be strange being the old guy in the class. I remember sitting with and older guy in my math logic class back in the day. He was actually in the military though I don’t remember which branch at this point. He had a wife and kids but was also doing the college thing. I do remember being impressed. I guess I get to see what it’s like on the other side.

I just hope I can pull this all off.

Life, Unemployment, Changes, Career, General

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!

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

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

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?