What Was Will be No More

2010-07-19T21:34:00.001-07:00

I used to get IM's all the time from people I knew online. Now it is as if the world has forgotten me. Why? Because I got a life, a wife, a job, responsibilities... I can't spend much time on the computer unless I can do it from my phone when I'm in line or other such things. I used to have people that I would talk to, now all those avenues have gone dark as well. I get it, I wasn't there the way people needed me to, they had expectations of me that went unfulfilled for too long. Everyone has a breaking point where they just can't take it anymore.

Tonight... Tonight I could use a bit of that conversation, someone else to share a few triumphs with, someone else to share a few downfalls with. Nothing heavy, nothing earth shattering. Some light conversation would do me some good right now. Is it too much to ask? Seems like it.

However, tonight - like last night, and the night before - the global web is a void for me. Oh well I guess... I suppose I should just blame my wife and be done with it, but somehow I can't do it... I can't blame her for what is not her fault, so I guess I deserve what I get.

Don't we all though.

A New Job

2010-04-19T19:13:00.001-07:00

So, I am starting a new job. That new job is at the Census doing the 2010 Enumeration of the census. Basically my job will be to go to places that did not return a census form for whatever reason, ask them questions, and turn in the paperwork associated with the answers. For anyone who doesn't know, these numbers are used in determining funding for schools, number of representatives, etc…

So far I am doing orientation / training today. I find it interesting that the training information they are giving us is being read directly out of a booklet word for word. I can understand it, but I can't imagine how tedious it is for the people running the training. It is a job though, and it is a surprisingly well paid job, $11.50 an hour. Now my part in this job won't last longer than June and may end before that. I personally find that this sucks but it is what I expected. It is funny, already the imaginary carrot is being dangled in front of us with the suggestion that we can keep positions if we do well enough, even though the position of enumerator is going to have ended there could be other positions for us to move into if we like our jobs and do well at them. Carrot, carrot, carrot. See the carrot? Go for the carrot!

It reminds me so very much of Charlie Brown and the never-ending football placed by Lucy. It always amuses and annoys me how very much like that analogy the real world is. There is always someone dangling something in front of you that you want, want it bad enough you have to chase it. Always it is with the promise (either by yourself for others) that this time it will be different, this time it won't be for nothing. It is hard to keep together a real sense or hope and improvement when everyone uses the carrot but so few people ever actually plan to let you have the carrot.

Troubles with my Untrained Writing

2010-03-26T06:20:00.001-07:00

Lately, I have been trying to write something better than just armature fiction. So far my writing experiences have been less than good. I have always wanted to write something that was… Not immature, a story that does not read like it was written by a student doing the end project of a high school creative writing class. I feel as if I have, so far, written nothing more than that level (if that) of creative tripe. Worst of all the writing I have done remains largely unfinished. The attempts to finish or even add to the things I have already written simply exemplify my already basic knowledge of the issues I have in writing.

My basic issue seems to be that my ideas come through clearly but when I try to impart those ideas into something cohesive the ideas break down. I have an idea for the scene or a concept that I would like to explore making a story into. It used to be I would just start writing; this is how I came up with a few of the ultra-short stories I have done. For example at one point in time I took the basic concept of my Blue Team storyline and injected that into the idea of medieval wizards and such. What I came up with was an idea that got away from the ideas of technology and science fiction and I thought it would be able to get a good feed on characters; I had images of the people involved in the effort.

What did I get? I got a very short story without depth that was finished in haste and really didn't go where I wanted it to. This is the same story with a great deal with the other writing efforts that I have undertaken. I start with an idea I like and go to put that idea into words and in the end I don't get anywhere near as deep as the idea I had on the page. So, I changed tactics then and started to kind of brainstorm it a bit, I would wait before I tried to really get an idea onto the page. This primarily lead to a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head all the time but with nowhere for them to go. Of course, I don't need to write really but it really does make me happy to be creative like that. Writing gives me the same kind of creative happy glow that I would get when planning out a computer program I wanted to write. I don't really write software anymore but writing doesn't require a purpose other than to write.

What was I to do? All kinds of ideas ranging from the good to the horrible floating around in my brain and I really have wanted an outlet for them, if even for a few of the ideas in my head. Something to really express that side of my personality and the ways I have of brainstorming or outlining have always seemed to me to be, well, less than efficient to say the least. Those that are around me for any length of time knows that I am a technocrat and thus I enjoy technology, embracing what technology can do for a person. I don't like doing things on paper that are temporary. I have always felt there is no point in creating a hard copy of ideas and such that are ephemeral.

I have had a ton of outliners, some powerful and some not so powerful but overall I don't like them for this kind of purpose. I don't think entirely in an outlining kind of way. I have also had a lot of not applications from Microsoft OneNote to database style variants of notepad allowing free text to be entered into an application and be indexed. Additionally I hated the idea of having to create document files that then get referenced by OneNote instead of all being in the application. I want one file that contains any notes I have for a particular project I am working on. I also want to be able to open up a single bit of my notes individually, the closest I came to that was text files or word documents being placed in a single directory and just carting that directory around.

I don't want this entry to read like a software review but my new approach and the problems it has revealed kind of go hand in hand, it is likely that with my love of software and such I have been a bit too wordy about what I use and why. Suffice it to say that currently I am using Evernote to keep all of my notes because the combination of the tagging system with the organization of putting sets of tagged notes into notebooks makes a lot of sense to my brain, allowing me to find any information I want easily and from anywhere. That being said, the organization this has provided has helped a lot in getting my ideas saved and flushed out better. However, the base problem still remains.

The central problem of my writing seems to be following through; right now I am trying to work on two and a half projects. I say two and a half because I am still kind of back-burner working on the Blue Team series of stories - mainly reworking the originals into something not quite so… Middle school in nature. The other two deal in entirely different concepts, I am doing a story that is set in modern day using magic to do a Blue Team style time travel story that is not going well at all. Next is my other project that just really got started, it was born of two ideas that I merged together a bit. That being of a lone man living in space, quite but slightly tortured and self-isolated existence and the idea of a creature of the night possessing a young girl who has been brain damaged and cannot exist on her own without help. These merged and I really like where my ideas have taken me. I have started to really outline out how I want things to go before I start on a new section with largely positive results. Before I started Chapter 1 of either project I started with a clear idea of what I wanted the first chapter to be about and what I wanted to cover in that chapter, this has given my drafts quite a bit of promise as far as fluidity and structure.

Structure never has been the problem though, the problem has been really connecting all the bits and pieces into one, my stories end up disjointed. I jump from topic to topic in my head and my outlines really show that, Evernote allows me to keep editing the outlines and brainstorming notes so that it looks more fluid when I'm done editing them but I find myself really having trouble. I am having a hard time connecting the dots, I know what I want to get to in the middle of the story and what things I want to introduce in the beginning to set that up but then stringing those together is really getting me. I want to write in a linear way but I am starting to wonder if perhaps I should write say… Chapter 7 before Chapters 4 and 5, this seems contrary and problematic to me but I have not yet tried.

I'm sure I will figure something out, though I'm not sure what that will be yet. Suggestions are welcome.

In the Shadow of Titans

What Was Will be No More

A New Job

Troubles with my Untrained Writing