I'm a failure.

I'm a failure, and that's a good thing.

I had a good start in National Novel Writing Month, staying consistently ahead of the goal for the first week. Ideas came fairly easily, kept flowing day after day with a good part at the end of each session to keep the story moving. The second week, I was going well, which is fairly unusual. The second week is typically difficult for people because they realize that the ideas aren't as smooth and that writing is hard work.

My problem was totally different. I got a job where they wanted me to start right away, work from 8 am to 9 pm every day, and take notes the whole time. By the time I got home, I didn't want to write any more. I ended up exhausted, I couldn't get back into the rhythm after that, and then I had a huge paper due for one of my school classes that took priority over the novel because there's a grade attached to the one for school.

This was a good exercise in priorities for me, deciding what's really important and what I can let go of for a little bit. Sadly, the event I'd been looking forward to for a year is what got cut this time. I also wrote more words for my novel in November than I had the entire previous year. I've still got plenty of the story to tell, so I can work on that in the next bit. I've also decided that I'm taking a totally different tack with next November. I think I'm not going to plan my novel at all next year. I may come up with a title and that's it.

Maybe. We'll see.

Holy busy November!

Happy NaNoWriMo! I'm right in the middle of writing my novel and things are going well. Next week, I'm going to feel stuck, I can just feel it coming. But as it is, I'm keeping ahead of the game, despite my life being completely crazy with school presentations, job hunting and being an attentive parent.

I've already done a couple of things with my story that surprised me, the biggest one being that the point of view is not the third person omniscient that's so common. It's not even the normal kind of first person narrative. It's so far inside the character's head like Catcher in the Rye. There's stream of consciousness narrating to some unknown party. Totally hadn't expected that. I was actually fully planning on writing the story in third person. But that's what the month is all about, right?

Here's my favorite little bit I wrote today:

Envelope safely tucked into John Tesh, I headed out of the store. Did I just say “envelope tucked into John Tesh?” There’s a phrase I hadn’t expected to say ever in my life.

Fun, right? If you're taking on writing a novel this month, good luck. And if you need some encouragement or maybe a suggestion to make your story better or keep it moving, please let me know. I like to help. Back to my adventure.

Here we go again

It's NaNoWriMo again and for me, it has been for almost 2 hours. I've almost hit the goal for the day and my eyes are starting to get kind of tired. I was feeling a little nervous about reaching the goal with the other things I've got to do each day, but my progress so far today has made me optimistic again. If you're participating this year, you can do it too. I'm certain.

By the way, I'll probably be tweeting more about it than blogging, so if you want to keep up with how I'm doing, my twitter feed is a good way to do it.

Remember, remember...

Yes, we're all getting excited for Halloween, right? But I'm also looking forward to the next holiday. You're thinking Thanksgiving, aren't you? Not me.

This next Friday is Guy Fawkes Day! I haven't decided what I want to do for it yet, but I love celebrating Guy Fawkes Day. Last year, we went to a cupcake party with some friends and made little bomb-shaped cupcakes in honor of the holiday (no one else did, which is fine) and one of the guys thought the sparklers we had for wicks was licorice. So he ate a sparkler and thought it was the worst licorice he ever tasted.

I enjoy celebrating obscure holidays, especially the ones that involve huge amounts of fireworks, like Chinese New Year. At least Guy Fawkes Day is on a Friday this year. It's hard to get friends to come over to celebrate Mardi Gras because it's always on a Tuesday and they always use the school night excuse.

"Remember, remember the fifth of November."

Duffy Moon

Image via Wikipedia

When I was in elementary school, I remember it was raining one day, so we couldn't go out and play on the playground for recess. (I grew up in West Texas. Rain's kind of a rare thing there. The picture here overestimates the amount of water in the city.) Instead, we all had to sit on the floor of the cafeteria/gymnasium and watch a movie that I honestly don't remember the title of. I remember thinking the movie was completely cheesy and I remember a single line from the movie, which I've repeated throughout the years and people have looked at me like I was completely crazy.

That's not an unusual feeling for me, but the other day, I decided to use our amazing finding stuff technology called Google and look up the statement "You can do it, Duffy Moon!"

A few years ago, all I could find was a couple of blog posts about the same thing: people who watched the movie as kids and remembered the line "You can do it, Duffy Moon!" and the same reaction from their friends. But today? Today was different.

I did a search for Duffy Moon and found the video, thanks to the wonders of YouTube. Here's the first video, and if you want to see the rest, I'll let you follow them through to the end.

You owe it to yourself to watch at least this clip so that you can be empowered to do anything, just like Duffy Moon.

You can do it, Duffy Moon!

Gearing up for next month

When it comes to working, writers are very particular about the way they choose to do it. Some are strictly pen-and-paper with a particular brand of each, some meticulously outline their novels before they write them (Vonnegut worked on the outline for Slaughterhouse Five for ages), some have encyclopedic backgrounds for all of their characters.

When November rolls around, probably my favorite tool is a writing program called Scrivener. I've been using it for a few years now and I love how it helps me stay organized, especially because organization isn't my strongest point. I can write sections, label them with themes and then move whole sections around as I need to. Really, I'm not doing it justice here. You should just try it yourself. Scrivener is one of the sponsors of NaNoWriMo this year and they're getting version 2.0 ready in time for November. It's been a Mac-only program for the last few years, but there's a Windows version in the works that should be released early next year. I know, not quite in time for NaNoWriMo, but if you're a PC, it's a good choice for you.

You can download a free trial for November here, or you can learn more about Scrivener here. Whatever you choose to use while writing this November, make sure you keep up. I'd hate for you to get left behind.

Skinny jeans

There are a number of things I do that aren't strictly hetero. Loving Lady GaGa and La Roux is one of them. Getting as excited I do about Haircut Day is another one. But there's one that I've recently realized and embraced, and that's my jeans.

Like most women, I have a pair of jeans that I like quite a bit, but they require some dedication to my appearance to wear it. Kind of like making sure you look good in that totally cute bikini you bought, I have to work at looking good in these jeans. Let me be clear, though, these jeans are not the kind that look spraypainted on that are so trendy among the high school crowd. Not like Howard Wolowitz. My skinny jeans are just a good pair of jeans that I need to work at to wear.

The last couple of years, I've been fairly sedentary, so I've gotten a little thicker around the middle than I usually am. (I know you're probably hating me right now because I've never really been big. A guy with a 31 inch waist can't complain much.) But since I have time during the day right now, I've gotten to walk my kids to and from school every day. A few days ago, I measured how far a walk it is and I walk about 2.5 miles every day.

Aside from getting to go outside and walk around a little bit, get some fresh air and sunshine, I've noticed that I can wear my jeans and not be in pain because they're way too tight around the waist. In fact, I've got room to spare.

It's amazing what a difference small changes can make in your life. Rhetorical question here, but you can share in the comments if you want to: What are your skinny jeans? What goal would you like to reach that you can make a small change in your life to reach?

A Mercy

Cover of A Mercy

I just finished reading Toni Morrison's novel A Mercy and thought I'd write a quick little review here. Why not?

When I sat down, book in hand, I had expected it to start with something horrible like her other novels do. I had prepared myself emotionally, but the beginning of the novel wasn't the same kind of jarring event. It was nothing like "They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time." On top of which, it takes off in the dialect of a character. That's not an unusual tack for her to take, but it made me concerned that the whole novel would be written in that dialect. Thankfully it wasn't, because I would have dearly missed Morrison's typically beautiful prose. (Pynchon's Mason & Dixon makes you work for every page and it took me about 2/3 of the book before I realized that the word phiz is face.)

The story was interesting, but I got lost as the point of view shifted from one character to another. I don't feel like I had enough time with each character to really understand what was going on with them before I had to move on to something else.

A Mercy was a good book, just not her best. If you've never read Toni Morrison before, this may be a good start, like easing into a slightly too-hot bath. If you're already a fan, you may miss some of the recurring character types and underlying themes, but it's still an engaging book. My favorite Toni Morrison novel is still Song of Solomon, but I recommend that one about as often as Gravity's Rainbow. Unless I'm sure you'll like it, I'll just keep it to myself.

NaNoWriMo is coming

This weekend, I registered for another month of insanity this November, since it's National Novel Writing Month. If you haven't heard of it before, you can learn more about it at www.nanowrimo.org.

In short, the goal is to write 50,000 words in the 30 days in November. Easy, right?

I've reached the goal two of the last three years, but that doesn't mean the books are readable. The year I didn't reach the goal, I didn't write anything useful. And the last novel I wrote was not a good one. It's on my shelf, but unless you come over to read it, no one will ever read it. I might be able to salvage it someday, I just don't want to make that effort at this point. It's that broken.

NaNoWriMo is good for me because I do a lot of editing while I'm writing, which means that I'm generally slower than most people and this is a good exercise to just get things on the page. A lot of things on the page. Sometimes, in an effort to just keep going, I'll throw a phrase out that I end up liking better than what I had been struggling to get just right in my head.

I'm more excited for this year's novel idea than I was for last year's, and I was excited last year. I thought it was going to be a winner of a story. The problem I had last year was that I got so enamored of the details I'd come up with that I forgot to think about the whole story. As a result, I got to what should have been the climax and realized that I hadn't built up to it at all. So the story just kind of dies. I'd like to avoid that this year, so I'll be spending time planning out how the story all works together.

If any of you are participating this year and want a writing buddy, my user name is cossackboy and you can find my profile here. I'd love to help motivate you and get through this crazy fun together.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Welcome to NaNoWriMo 2010! (nanowrimo.org)

Book Academy

Today I went to The Book Academy, a writing conference at UVU, and enjoyed myself. It was fun meeting with people like me who love words and nice to be around people who don't talk about their characters like that one guy in one of my college writing classes who said that his characters weren't doing what he wanted them to do. (My teacher looked at him like he had celery growing off his face and said, "You're the author. You get to pick what they do because you're God to them." And that reminded me of when Kilgore Trout gets to meet Kurt Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions.)

It was fun to learn more about the industry and though I would have liked to get more into the business end of things, the conference wasn't about that. It was still fun and I met some interesting people. Writers are a fascinating bunch. I don't just say this because I consider myself one, they really are interesting to talk to because they generally have more things going on in their heads than most people.

I'm also kinda bummed that I don't have enough of a handle on my place in the industry because it would change how I would relate to people. I didn't network as well as I wanted to, and I have no one to blame on that but myself. I'm not the kind of person who goes around the room like the typical business major. I've got to find my stride on that kind of networking and I'm not there yet.

Can you tell that I've discovered a number of weaknesses today? The trick now is to work on fixing them.

If you didn't hear about it, they're going to have it again next year. Come with me, will you?

What comes first?

Booking Eddie Van Halen or having a triumphant video?

That's one of the things I'm trying to figure out with what I want to do with this SixUnpossible site I've got. It seems like a classic Van Halen-and-the-video conundrum.



Kind of like why Facebook is so popular or why Paris Hilton's famous. Facebook is so popular because it's popular and Paris Hilton's famous because she's famous. It's tautological and kind of maddening. I'm thinking of doing something related to books, but I still don't know enough about the industry or have a clear enough vision of where I fit into the future of books to have a chance. I'm still learning, but soon, very soon, I think I'll have a plan and a vision and be looking for a place to make it happen.

Master of my domain

I know that all three of you are cringing about that title, but yesterday I took the plunge and registered a web domain that I thought suited me. Okay, so it's not the exact one I was looking for, but it's close and possibly better than the one I originally wanted. There are two next steps, I think. The first is to get a design for a logo. The next is to design a placeholder webpage and contact cards. Okay, so that's probably more like three steps.

Image via Wikipedia

Sir John Tenniel's Red Queen

But the new domain is sixunpossible.com. Because the Red Queen thinks of six impossible things before breakfast and it's kind of my natural state of doing things as well. What I'm going to do with it yet, I have no idea. But I've got email and stuff set up for when I actually decide what I want to do with my nifty domain. Don't go there now, there's nothing there yet. I don't know whether I want it to be a consulting business, publishing house, or even an online opium den where you can digitally drop in, tune out, have some pancakes and disappear from reality for weeks at a time and not care. Okay, maybe not so much that last one, but I'm hoping to have some reason for people to visit and say hey. Again, one of those things I'll have to work out.

In the meantime, I'm still looking for a job and still optimistic that there's a company out there looking for me. If you hear of something, let me know, will you?

I'm still here

I'm still here, just haven't been keeping up as well as I could have. I've been really busy with looking for a job, helping other people out with things (since I figure I've got time now) and doing school work.

I've been thinking a lot about Althusser's concept of hailing, about the power of naming things. I also think it's interesting that he seems to be the only person who's done significant work in this area and I'm thinking of writing something up about it as well.

In a brain flash I had frighteningly early this morning, I've come up with a name for my business, when I finally get around to starting one. It's vague enough that it can fit whatever I want to do and descriptive enough that it totally suits me. I'm not telling what it is until I've got the resources to control the identity. I may tackle it in the next few hours.

The other thing I'm doing right now, because I have time, is I've got a friend who's doing a presentation to the youth at church about dating. I figured I would also have some good insights, so I'm working on that. If you were giving a presentation to the teenagers at church about dating, what would you want them to know?

I'm out of shape

I haven't been out on my in-laws' boat in about a year and haven't been wakeboarding since then either. Last night, they felt guilty that we hadn't been out with them and so we went to the lake. Everyone did a great job out on the water, getting up on the first try (I won't mention who didn't) and dealing really well with the rough water. The water felt really nice, by the way. When I got out on the water and moving around in the wake, I could almost instantly feel my legs saying, "Really? You do nothing for a year and then expect that we'll just do this like it were nothing?"

I'll level with you, sometimes I'm afraid of crashing because it's like getting punched all over your body at once. Sure, I've gotten punched before and I can take it, those are more localized and it's just the kind of thing I try to avoid. Is that so crazy? Anyway, I crashed a couple of times and climbed back into the boat, with my legs aching all the way up and down. "And now you're going to pay," they said.

And so I am. I've been taking Aleve today and my legs still ache, but it's not completely the wakeboarding. Stupid old sports injury. I guess the moral here is not to let yourself slip so far into entropy that you can't do anything. I've never felt as much like the people in Wall-E as I did yesterday, so I need to come up with a plan to get out and do stuff. I just don't want to spend as much time at the gym as my friend Timmy does. It seems like he's always there.

I took a little break

Image via Wikipedia

I got a little frustrated yesterday, since I've been doing the same things and haven't seen any results. Einstein said that's the definition of insanity. So I decided to break it up a little bit and do something different. I ran a few errands and watched a little James Bond with the little boy. We watched the introduction to Octopussy, which he seemed to enjoy before his nap. Then I played Batman: Arkham Asylum for a while and read a bit. I got to turn off my brain for a little bit and then let some newer ideas roll around in it. I feel more relaxed and ready to keep going. I've got a plan for something I want to do, I just need to learn more about it and I'm looking for people who can help me find the right resources to learn them. I want to learn more about bookbinding and the marketing/promotion side of book publishing. If you know something about those and are willing to share or if you know someone who I can learn them from, let me know, will you?

Typography

I just read a book entitled How to Spec Type because I wanted to learn more about setting print and layout. But as I read the book, I noticed some suggestions that involved drawing lines and estimating character counts. What? And then there were comments about how computer graphics just couldn't look as good as hand-drawn pictures yet.

So I looked at the publication date. 1987.

Most of the things that the book was explaining how to do can be done automatically by most word processing programs on computers now. It was good to learn why and what the computer's doing, but I don't think I'm going to have to hand-draw a page to give an idea of what it will look like because I can move things around on the computer in 8 different ways, print out an example of each one and figure out which one I like the best.

Important supervillain planning complete

Image via Wikipedia

You know how people tend to work things out in the shower? Buckaroo Banzai says it's one of the three Bs, places where the best ideas are born: bed, bath and bus. Anyway, I was in the shower today, contemplating life, the universe, and everything when I had the most fantastic brainstorm.

I got my latest great idea for becoming a supervillain. I'd become Horst von Throatpunch and acquire both a European aristocratic title and a doctorate in something like biochemistry or international extortion by dubious means. Then I'd build a fortress high in the Alps with a helicopter pad and automated missile launchers and do evil things from there. I haven't exactly decided what schemes I would want to have, but that's the beauty of being a supervillain. I can have as many schemes as I want and one of them's bound to work sometime. I think that Blofeld would be a good example of plans that I might want to engage in like hijacking some nuclear weapons from NATO, biological warfare distributed by hypnotized socialites, giant laser in a satellite orbiting the earth, stuff like that. Those aren't clichés yet, are they?

Duke Dr. Horst von Throatpunch, undisputed ruler of the Western Hemisphere. Has a nice ring to it. Maybe that's what I'll put on my business cards.

Big blog changes

If you've read this blog in the last few months, you'll notice some big changes to the way it functions. I've updated the look because my editor complained about having to read white on black. Also, you'll notice that the RSS feed has the full text of the blog posts. I realized it was dumb to make you click through to be able to read an extra 4 lines. It's not like my thoughts are earth-shatteringly important enough to make you have to click through one more time. I'm thinking of making a couple more smallish changes still and those will probably happen sometime between now and the next blog post I write, if I actually decide to change.

Image via Wikipedia

The other thing I wanted to mention today is that I've got an idea for a paper, treatise, thesis, whatever you want to call it, about the continuation of the narrative in Thomas Pynchon's novels and how it relates to TV. You know there'll be a reference to Hector Zuñiga in it. I just looked for a web link to help those of you who don't know the reference, but I couldn't find anything particularly helpful. This is the best I could do. Anyway, I think it'll be a fabulous paper, I just want to talk with someone about where would be a good place to get it out for people to read and put into their literature papers about The Crying of Lot 49 or Gravity's Rainbow. You know, the four people each year who actually decide to write papers about that. And they probably all read this blog. (Actually, it's highly unlikely, but I'd like to think that.) Anyway, I'm excited about the idea and when it's a little better-formed, I'll bring you into the WASTE system.

Archiving

Have you figured out that I really love books yet? After reading a book called Print vs. Digital a couple of days ago, I've gotten into studying the topic of archiving. So as I usually do, I jumped straight from normal academic writing straight to the killers and am re-reading Jacques Derrida's Archive Fever. One of the interesting thoughts from it that keeps rolling around in my head is that the form, the structure of the archive itself depends on the contents of the archive. Sure, this means that art museums and libraries have different structures from each other and from concert halls, but it also means that the form of the texts (used in a very broad poststructural sense) for each kind of art vary from one another.

I've been thinking about the changing storage of information and how that is manifested in the shifts in libraries, which are our repositories for knowledge. Should they have data centers that back up the information they hold to make sure they always have access to the information they've spent many resources in acquiring and generating? And if they don't get books for you anymore, what should librarians be doing now? Do we replace librarians with computer search terminals? Of course not. They're going to become curators of the knowledge resources at the library, whether those resources are online, printed or kept in the office of some professor who's currently working on something new.

The real reason

I've been thinking a lot recently about books and their future (or lack of one, depending on your camp). Then I started trying to figure out what is it that makes me inclined to keep the printed dead trees around and the answer's rooted in the ridiculous (like most of my thoughts) but at second glance is really very practical and realistic.

Big Brother is watching.

Come on a journey with me. It starts with Winston Smith, the protagonist of Orwell's 1984, which if you haven't read, you absolutely must. No hyperbole here because the book has so completely become part of our cultural heritage that you can't consider yourself culturally literate without having read it. From this point on, I'll just assume that you've read the books I refer to and if not, you can add them to your list of things to read. Winston's return to humanity, his reconnection with beauty is possible through his connection with Julia and with information outside the system, information not created (or more importantly, uncreated) by the Ministry of Truth.


That led me to the similar society of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Montag makes his living by burning books, routing public information and molding public opinion through the wall-sized televisions that are ubiquitous. Depictions of complex emotions and dissenting viewpoints have no place in the tele-plays and it is Montag's job to make sure that any books found don't complicate society's complacence. The parlor is the ultimate in simulating a connection between people, but it lacks any emotional content, which is one of the reasons Montag decides to read one of the books. The emotion rekindled in him and the questions he asks of his society are results of his relationship with literature.

The Eloi watch someone drown

Next, to the Eloi in H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. They had no books, were perfectly content because they didn't have to do anything to provide for themselves and they still had everything they needed. Initially, their society looked like a utopia, but the lack of curiosity and mysterious appearance of food leads the traveller to look a little deeper at what's behind it all. After returning to his own time, he goes back to the future of the Eloi with three books from his shelf, the book ending with the question of which three books he took with him.


I thought about the stories I heard while I was living in the former Soviet Union about how certain books or albums were illegal to possess and they got shared in secret, passed from one person to another under fear of the KGB finding them. The literary situations are not outside the realm of possibility because I've heard stories from people who lived through it. I think that's why I believe in the future of printed books; there are still unanswered questions about the lifespan of a digital book. What happens when a powerful group gets control of the Kindle distribution system and deletes copies of 1984 from everyone's Kindle? Don't roll your eyes, that one already happened. What happens if the government decides that it's finally going to do something about Allen Ginsberg and puts something like a wiretap on the internet but rather than intercepting information, it removes all of his writings? What if something catastrophic happens and we don't have batteries or a way to charge up our e-readers? I admit that last one is a pretty remote possibility, but it's still possible. Even less possible is that you may come into possession of a time machine, travel to a future where humans have lost their curiosity, creativity and emotion and need to have some references to help them regain their humanity. But still, that may come up.


The value of printed books is in their permanence and reliability. They can be moved around outside the quick and light regular system of information, they resist revisionism, they give voice to the unpopular. It's an enduring record and fulfills the need that Writing the Body literary critics give for male authors to leave a creation that's undoubtedly theirs. It's an object that effectively conveys the declaration of the author that "I was here and I created something."

Julia Kristeva

Sure, it's convenient to have such easy access and portability of a text by using something digital, e-readers are getting cheaper to the point where they're almost disposable and the texts are infinitely reproducible at almost no cost, but there's something to be said for having a copy of something in a format that's a little harder to wash away with an errant magnetic field or some computer algorithm.


In college I had a History of Civilization class taught by the Special Collections librarian. He showed us the oldest text the university library had in its collection and he walked around with what looked like a little rock. I'd seen pictures of cuneiform writing before, heard about it in high school history classes, but here it was. A document surviving from the Babylonians, thousands of years old! Someone asked the question we all wanted to know, "What does it say?" The librarian looked up and smiled. The oldest document in the library of the most stone-cold sober university in the United States was "a receipt for beer." There were a number of ironic things about that, the first being that the university was so pleased to have this "book," which was actually a receipt for beer and anyone drinking beer at the university would have been in violation of the strict Honor Code. The other irony for me was that of all the things that could have been preserved for future generations, reflections of life and humanity from the time, we were looking at a receipt for beer. I'm concerned for the future, when our greatest thinkers and writers may have become obscured by a receipt for beer.

Play ball!

A couple of nights ago, our neighbor across the street, Tom, came over and gave us tickets to see the Orem Owlz play. That's our Pioneer League baseball team, part of the Anaheim Angels group. So yesterday, we went to the game with Tom and had a great time.

The kids had never been to a baseball game before, so they weren't sure quite what to expect. We were also a little concerned because the game started at the kids' bedtime, but we had a blast and they were such troopers. We got all the way through the tenth inning and then just couldn't keep it together any longer, so we took the kids home. But we had all kinds of fun and are so happy to have so many really nice people around us. It's making this rough time so much easier for me.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Blessings (web.me.com)

The future of books

One of the nice things about being a university student again is that I have access to the university library again, which has books on more academic subjects, like the future of libraries. Before my accounting class one day, I ran down to the library to find books about books. I just finished one about how print and digital media fit together in the environment of a library and how libraries are changing to fit the new relationship between the two kinds of media. It was an interesting read and I've seen some of the changes already in libraries around here. I have some questions about using digital media and I think if I can come up with an answer to a couple of them, I may have a nifty business idea. Yay for text!

Books aren't dead; they're pining

Remember that blog post I wrote a little while ago about where I think books are headed? Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks that paper books aren't going away, just changing purposes. I read this blog post today and found that my view of the future of books isn't unique, which is just dandy. Here's to still having heavy cardboard boxes and large shelves to move when I decide to live someplace else. Because digital files just don't have the same smell, feel and sense of being well-loved and worn-in.

I saw Inception

So today my brother and I went to see Inception and it was great. No really. Great. I'm not going to share my theory about it with you (I definitely have one), but I'm going to just say that it would be really great if Christopher Nolan would make more action movies like this one. With the Batman movies and this one, I really would like to see him do a James Bond movie with a very cool political thriller edge. Please please pleeeeeease!

Holy busy coming up!

Next week, I have an accounting test and then the accounting final is two days later. Two accounting tests in two days. Ask me how excited I am about that. Go ahead, ask. I'm actually looking forward to it because that means I'll be finished with my accounting class. I can apparently do it, but it's still not my favorite thing to do. And then I'm going to take some other classes this fall. I don't remember what I'm doing this fall, but it'll be interesting.

So sleepy

This is a dangerous habit for me to start. Last night, I wanted to watch one of the movies on my list that I knew no one in the house wanted to watch with me and looking at the running times for each of them, decided that I'd watch the longest one since I didn't have anything pressing going on this morning. That way I could sleep in if I wanted to. Having justified it, I pushed the play button and watched The Unbearable Lightness of Being for about 30 minutes before I got interrupted by the need to be a sociable human being when my brother-in-law wanted to video chat with us. I stopped my movie, knowing full well that I had another two and a half hours left to watch whenever our chat was done.

We chatted for awhile and then I got to go back to watching my movie about Prague and the Soviet occupation. I liked it, for what that's worth but be warned that it's long. Long enough that I was up really late and now I'm going to take a nap and try to remember this for the next time I think it'd be a great idea and I don't have something important to do the next day.

Let the rejections start

The job prospect that was looking so promising the last week or so decided that I wasn't the right person. That's fine because I wasn't sure how well I'd fit into the culture. This reinforces a couple of things I've been pretty sure of. It was a good idea for me to be applying for numerous jobs in the meantime, I need to work on my job hunting skills even more, I have to find another recruiter looking out for me and it just had to be more difficult for me than it was looking like it would be.

I'm expecting to get a bunch of rejection letters in the next two weeks and a handful of interviews. I'd love to find a place where my charming personality will fit right into the culture, a place that values people who ask "why are we doing it like this?" Wish me luck.

questionable career path

Ages ago, I was in an engineering physics class at the community college where I grew up and there were a whopping six people in the class, not counting "the old guy" who was auditing the course. He was there for every lecture, did the homework, just didn't come to the tests and we always wondered why you'd choose to audit a class like Engineering Physics. Anyway, that's not the point of the story. So there were a half-dozen of us in the class and we all knew each other fairly well.

One time, as the professor was handing out one of our tests, my buddy Patrick turned to me and said, "Okay, if we both fail this test, let's move to Europe and get jobs as gigolos." Apparently he was as unsure of his performance as I felt. "Sure," I said, fully expecting to drop school right after the test and start somewhere like London or Paris. Amazingly, when the grades came back, I had passed comfortably. I'm not sure how Patrick did, but he stayed in class for the rest of the year.

Now, though, I'm revisiting the idea. Not that I'm seriously considering it, since I don't have the body for it anymore, just wondering how robust that job market is. I would imagine the sex trade is fairly stable, since everyone wants to feel loved, even if it's just an illusion of love. We want to feel someone close, someone who cares. I guess I'll keep looking for a company that needs me to help them with their work. I know there's work out there that I would be good at, it's just a question of finding it at the right time.

Be an author?

In my current situation, I'm thinking about what I would do with the rest of my life if money weren't a concern. I know, it's the kind of thing you're supposed to figure out when you're in college, and I did that, but it seems like a good exercise to revisit periodically, to see if you're on the right track. Ask yourself "If I didn't have to work for the money, would I do this or find something else to do?"

I keep coming back to the romantic idea of moving to some European city with history deep in the stone buildings, finding an apartment downtown and wandering around the city while I write a bold novel. And then I'll sell it and move somewhere farther east while I write another one. I'll keep going east until I decide it's time to stay in one place. Then I think I want to have a boutique book publishing company. Maybe I could do that the other way around and be a publisher while I travel around, writing. In any case, I still think I could be a writer.

Yes, I realize this doesn't mean I can just decide to be a writer and have that just be my new profession. That reminds me of when Michael Scott declared bankruptcy.



What this means for me right now is that I need to learn significantly more about both professions while I finish my master's degree and find a job in the meantime. Thoughts?

P.S. You know I have a book for sale, right? You can get your very own copy at a little bookstore called Amazon.com.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Letter To A Debut Novelist (mjroseblog.typepad.com)
• Kickstartup: Successful fundraising with Kickstarter (craigmod.com)

Yet another benefit

Image via Wikipedia

In working to find a new job, I've found another benefit to not having one at the moment. Because I spend large amounts of time in front of the computer every day in job search mode, I get tired of staring at a screen. As all the ergonomics sections of computer owner's manuals tell us, we should take regular breaks to keep from hurting ourselves and I don't think moving from the computer to watching a movie on the couch really counts.

So it'd be good to break and read a book. I'm currently working on Oakley Hall's Warlock, which is not at all close to Harry Potter. It's a Western set in the fictional town of Warlock. Good book, but with my homework and job, it was hard to find time to read it before and I had to take it back to the library. Now that I only have the job hunt and accounting homework, I can squeeze a chapter or two in to the times I don't want to be staring at an LCD screen.

Now before I sign off today and move onto the daily job hunt, let me make a plug here for your local library. Sure, you can read all kinds of things on the internet, but there's something to be said for getting information from books. And not only does the library have books, but you can also join a summer reading program, get suggestions from librarians (professional book lovers), do homework, get useful community information (bus schedules, tax forms, local news, etc.) and become a better person. For free. If you haven't been to the library recently, you should go. I guarantee they have something that will interest you.

Ooh, dream job

Image by cesarharada.com via Flickr

Yesterday I was playing around online, poking around available jobs at companies I'd like to work for and found a position doing what I was doing before at the company I think I'd fit in stupendously well: IDEO. The downside? It's in Palo Alto, California, which means I'd have to move. Not my favorite thing to do, but to work there, I'd totally do it. The other downside? My MBA would either not get done or have to wait or something.

Of course, the first step would be to get an interview. Then I'll figure out the other things that come up. In the meantime, think good thoughts my direction.

Reward lunch

Because it's summer, the kids had to take swimming lessons. As much as both of them love splashing around in the bathtub and generally making the bathroom a dripping mess of bubbles and puddles, I had expected that given a much larger amount of water, they'd absolutely love being able to splash as big as they could without a disapproving dad saying "Well, this is a mess."

Boy, I was wrong. They both hated swimming lessons, the little girl outlining in detail all the reasons she was justified to hate swimming lessons while she got ready to go, all the way to the pool and even while she was in the pool. Then she analyzed how her reasons were valid all the way home and pouted while she put on dry clothes. That's when Chelsea did what most exasperated parents do—bribe your kids.

"If you go to all of your swimming lessons, at the end, we'll go to Pirate Island Pizza." Well, that seemed to work and yesterday, as all three of you who read this know, was the last swimming lesson. So that's where we went for lunch today and had lots of fun while we were there. If you're tired of going to Chuck E Cheese, do yourself a favor and hang out with the pirates instead. I think you'll be glad you did.

Swimming

Today was the last day of swimming lessons for the kidlings and I got to go with them. I had lots of fun and it makes me sad that I don't have a pool in my backyard that I can just go swim around in. I like swimming and I'm pretty good at it. I swam across the pool, holding the boy and he didn't even go underwater. My rusty lifeguarding skills at work there. Also, once I got across, I turned around, ready to go back and Chelsea said that she was tired and needed to practice swimming more.

I miss playing around in the water for hours at a time in the summers. The one thing I don't miss about swimming a lot is getting water stuck in my ears, which is what I've got going on right now. I can only hear out of one ear because the other one's full of water and I can't get it out. I turned my head and jumped for a bit to try and shake it out; that didn't work. I put some of those nifty drops in and turned my head to let them drain out and inadvertently took a nap on the couch. Still didn't work. I'll give it until about tomorrow and then I'm going to bother a medical professional about it. This happens almost every time I go to the pool and it's completely obnoxious. Maybe one of these days I'll wise up and put in some kind of plug to keep the water out. But when I go swimming so infrequently, it's just not something I think much about. Maybe I should change the frequency I go swimming, since it's something I enjoy and by all accounts, I should exercise more. I'll have to think about that one some more. In the meantime, if I ignore you, it's not that I was trying to, I just have water in one of my ears and I probably honestly didn't hear you.

some thoughts from today

I was looking at some of the books on my bookshelf today and decided to take To Kill a Mockingbird down and flip through it. I've had that book for years and read it a number of times. It also accompanied my sister to her English class in high school where she had to read it too.

As I flipped through the (clearly) well-loved pages, I started getting excited to talk about it with my kids in 10 or so years. Then I looked at the other books on that particular shelf, all of them exciting that I'll get to share them with my little clones.

That's when I had the realization that I'd been kind of looking for. Every time I've gone through a job search, and this is probably true for most people, I think a little bit harder about what I'm passionate about. What kind of work would get me out of bed in the middle of the night because I couldn't sleep? What do I feel passionate about to the point where I would actually try to convince someone who didn't like it that it's wonderful? I feel that way about books. I have very few emotional connections with things, but books are one of the things I'm most passionate about.

I know some people say it's a dying industry, replacing these piles of paper and ink with digital text files you can read on a low-power device that'll hold thousands of books. Amazon even announced that they've started selling more Kindle versions of books than they have physical books. I don't think books are going away any time soon. No one has the same emotional connection to a digital file as they have for a physical object. Pictures of your family seem more real when they're printed on glossy paper than they do on a computer screen. Don't they? People have no compulsion about deleting old MP3 files but we hang on to the old LPs we have because by touching them, seeing them on the shelf, we reconnect with that person we were and the people we were with when we put those records on the turntable years ago. Never mind that you don't have a turntable anymore or that you have a digital version of the album. The same thing goes for books. By thumbing through the pages, you remember the journey you emotionally went on as you smell the same pages and feel the paper in your fingers. You see the notes you wrote in the margins, the highlights you made years ago and smile at the things you thought were so important. It's like a flash of vacation pictures from the trip where you floated on the Mississippi River with Huck and Tom in an instant.

The other reason I don't think physical books are going away is that there's a status attached with having lots of books. Some people pay big money to have libraries full of matching, leather-bound volumes just for the symbol of having lots of fancy books. So what if my shelves are full of paperbacks that I've had to masking tape back together? It doesn't change the fact that there are books on shelves. What's better, I've actually read mine. In any case, there's a social currency in having lots of books and I don't think that's going to change soon either. It's much more difficult to show off your collection of digital texts when you have people come over to your house. You can't have your digital copy of Ulysses staring at people from the shelf in the corner while they admire your Ayn Rand collection of text files.

I'm realizing that I should probably be looking for something having to do with books, since they affect me so much. And apparently Kanye says he does just fine without them. Exasperating.

Business cards, part 2

I've been thinking about them for a little while now and had just recently asked a designer friend of mine to help me come up with something awesome so I can sound like this guy.

Not really. No one should sound like this guy. But I'm still pulling together ideas for a contact card. I don't want my cards related to a specific business or job, just something I can hand out if someone wants to find me somehow. Not that I don't have an online presence, it's just that physical reminders help me remember things better. That's one of the reasons I'll never get rid of my 14th Edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, but that's another story for another time. I realize that business cards seem to be moving into obsolescence, but if they're done well, they can be really great. Progress on my cards isn't coming quickly, but so what? I'm not in a rush. Also, it gives me a chance to work on getting that job title I really want.

So while I'm collecting ideas, what kinds of things have you seen on business cards that you've liked and what things should I absolutely avoid?

My thoughts on Twitter and food

One of the most common complaints about Twitter from people who haven't used it much is that it's mostly completely banal things like "best ham sandwich ever" or "Who doesn't love ice cream?" You'll also find the same thing on Facebook with people's status updates. After thinking about it for a bit, I've decided it's because most of us don't have completely thrilling lives. For most of us, the delicious food we eat is the most exciting thing that happens all day. Most people like the food we eat and we generally like to share food that we enjoy. It's one of the ways we bolster our relationships. How many parties do we go to that don't have some kind of food or tasty treats? Not many.

It's also a safe thing to send out to the world. It's a form of self-censorship. Not many people are going to send things out to all the internet things like "I totally drank myself stupid and have a wicked hangover. I need to stop doing that," or "my girlfriend did some crazy things to me in bed last night." Not the kind of thing most people want to share in polite company. Or on the internet either. The internet has a long memory and it can resurface any time, usually at the wrong time. So by posting about culturally safe things like food, people can still have a presence without posting things that may come back and bite them.

The last thing I thought about posting about food is that it's one of the regular things that happens to us all that has relatable emotions attached to it. We may not be in a relationship, not have kids, don't share the same political views, have the same hobbies, but we all have to eat and whether or not you want to admit it, we all have emotions connected with what we eat. That's why there's even a term for "comfort food." If we didn't feel anything about our food, it wouldn't comfort us.

I, for one, am fine with people posting things about their food. It keeps me from having to see uncomfortable posts about "I did something with the thing and it was fun!" or getting way more information about people than I ever wanted to know. As Robert Frost said, "Good fences make good neighbors," and in the case of the internet, I think that information left unshared makes good relationships.

I have trouble gauging things

I just realized that I forgot to write a blog post yesterday. Have I mentioned that I'm crazy busy without a job? This isn't what I expected, but I'm pretty sure I'm alright with it.

I had an interview yesterday with a recruiter and that meeting made me realize some things I think most of us have trouble gauging. While we were going through my resume and talking about what I do in the course of a week or so, she said "So you worked full time, go to school in the evenings, help the Scouts and do things at church and then you have a family that you spend time with? Do you sleep?" I didn't think I was quite that busy. I mean, yes, I'm busy but I don't feel like I'm insanely busy. I just chalk it up to the fact that we don't watch TV, which leaves me with some extra time. I just assume that everyone works as hard as I do, which they apparently don't.

The other thing that I'm not particularly good at gauging about myself is how much I'm worth in the marketplace. The recruiter and I were talking about salary requirements and I said I was looking for something roughly close to what I was earning at Ancestry. She looked over my resume, at the other information I've sent her and said, "Okay, but for someone with your experience and skills, I think you're worth more than that." I'm thinking that I probably have no idea how much I'm worth on the market because I don't have to set the price very often, and the last time I did, I didn't have quite the same set of skills.

It's nice to be able to get feedback like that from someone who sees all kinds of resumes and meets with tons of people on a regular basis.

Holy busy!

I hadn't expected to be quite so busy this week, but again, that's where I am so we're going to move forward with it. The picture you see is from my adventure yesterday. If you hadn't heard already, I went to see Paul McCartney in concert at Rio Tinto Stadium. My friend Jeff came down to see it with me and I got to spend most of yesterday with him and part of today. Here's hoping it's not another 8 years before we spend time together again.

Back to Paul McCartney, the concert was fantastic! The weather was beautiful, the venue was nice and the experience was pretty near incomparable. How often do you get to spend time with someone who completely changed just about everything in their field? It's rare and I'm so happy I got to see him perform yesterday.

The job hunt is going pretty well. I've got lots of suggestions of jobs I should look into and just haven't had the time to look into them very closely yet. I'm hoping to get around to about 4 or 5 more because they sound like they'll be good opportunities for me to grow some more. What I'm finding in all of this is that I may have been wrong about my networking skills. I clearly have some, since I've got more suggestions at the moment than I have time to work on. I think I need to reconsider my definition of networking. Sure, I still have to fill out the applications and send out resumes and do the work, but the ideas and suggestions have largely come from other people. (Thanks to all my friends goes here more than I want to spend time writing up right now. Accounting homework's waiting.) As a result of all the love you've been showing, I'm still feeling very optimistic about this. Something really good's about to happen, I just have to find it.

There are upsides

As awful as it is to not have a job, there are upsides. For example, I didn't set my alarm clock to go off this morning, didn't get dressed until about 9:30 this morning and I get to wear my Spice Girls T-shirt all day. My friend Jeff is driving from Idaho today and I was going to have to get together with him after work today, but now I get to spend most of the day with him. I get to spend the afternoon in Salt Lake, which means I'll get to spend time with my friend Christian (with whom I don't get to spend enough time).

I've got plenty of time to do my accounting homework and do a few of the things around the house I just haven't had the time to do recently. But in all reality, my full-time job at the moment is to find a new job. I've decided to dedicate the time I would normally spend at work to finding a job.

Just not today. Today, I'm spending a decent chunk of the day with Jeff and going to see Paul McCartney in concert. I'll definitely have updates on that for you tomorrow. And regular updates on this blog is another upside of not having a job at the moment.

Free agent

I have totally neglected this blog, which I apologize for. I know that all three of you were holding your breath, hoping that I'd update it soon. Well, this is your lucky day. And you may wonder why today is so blessed.

I lost my job today. It went one way, I went another way. I had no idea that today was my last day, but it was and that's where I am. Sure it sucks but on the positive side, there's something else out there that's exciting and will be a better fit for me. I plan on working hard to find that new job. So if you hear of something that you think I'd just be excellent at, let me know, will you?

Between now and the time I find that job, I'll definitely be more regular about writing these blog posts. I have to allocate time to completing homework for my accounting class, but I'll make time for this too. Why am I in an accounting class? you may ask. The answer is that I've been accepted to the MBA program at UVU and I'm finishing prerequisites so that I can start the actual Master's work.

Tomorrow, though, I'll be doing something purely fun and not feeling at all bad about it. I'm going to see Sir Paul McCartney in concert in Salt Lake! Uh, yeah. Way excited about that. I'm going to have some dinner right now, but I'll definitely see you soon.

Sharing book notes

At work, I've been assigned books to read as part of my professional development and am going through them like crazy. Seriously, crazy.

That'll probably slow down once I start my MBA classes, but for now, I'm reading tons of books. And while I was reading this last one, I had the brilliant idea of making a place where I can share my notes with the people I work with (who also have books they're reading), since I'm not going to talk about some of these as much as others and the less-talked about ones may help someone else way more than they help me.

I've kicked around the idea of putting those notes here to share with more than just the people at work, but that would also subject them to reading my rants on other topics. Not that I necessarily mind that. They might, though. The more I think about it, though, the more I'm thinking I'll just post them here. That'll hopefully get me back in the habit of posting things here.

I could clearly be persuaded that another solution would be better. If you've got an idea, let me know in the comments.

Photo by Flickr user eclecticlibrarian.

I've created a monster

If you've read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, you know that the monster is way cooler than the one Boris Karloff played in the movies. The monster I created is more like the slow, ugly kind that I would rather not have around.

I reached my goal with the NaNoWriMo novel, but as I was writing the climax of the novel, I realized that I hate it. It's not a good story. I've decided that I'll finish it up and print a proof copy for myself, but no one else is going to read it. It'll sit on my bookshelf as a monument to the work I did and a reminder of what not to do in a novel. In the end of the story, I didn't care about any of the characters, there was no growth, no emotion and no change.

It ended up as a sad story, not because some tragedy befalls the characters, but sad because it was weak. I'm counting it as my own personal Plan 9 from Outer Space. The next one will be better.

It's good to see old friends

Tonight, two of my good friends came over and we got caught up with what we've been doing since we last got together and chatted. Daniel gave me some great feedback about one of my greatest weaknesses and gave me a way of overcoming it.

There are a couple of great things about what happened there. First of all, it was nice to get an honest, loving assessment of one of the reasons I'm not as savvy as I could be. Daniel's a very nice guy and tends to be far more complimentary of me than I deserve, so it was great to get some criticism. The other great thing is that my weakness is one of Daniel's strong points, so it was like getting a master class.

I'm clearly a bit leery about telling you what my weakness is, partly because I'm hoping I can take make it more of a strength before too many other people realize I have it.

There are very few things more valuable than people who love you enough to let you know why you suck. You can tell they love you when they help you find ways to fix it.