The word of the week is dichotomy.
Aug 19 - Symptom of a Down
Lately, I've been feeling rather down and blah, not just
because of the cold I've had.
I think it's a case of my subconscious and my conscious minds
battling, with old habits fighting the new positive inputs that I've had in my
life this year. Stress is, of course, a constant companion and again I've been
dealing with that in new ways instead of letting it take over as I used to
sometimes.
It's a strange thing. On the one hand, you could look at
things is still being rather unstable in my life, with no solid career, house,
family, kids or many of the things that people my age look on as the natural
progression of things. I'm certainly not in the same place that my parents were
at this point in my life, nor similar to the parents of most of my friends.
Only some of my friends have some or most of these things, but I don't feel
like I'm missing out; my life is my own and I'm living it now as I believe I
want to.
Of the other hand, trying to tell my subconscious that
everything is looking up has been challenging. As I've been struggling to learn
at work, I've also been trying to shake my decades-long habits of worrying over
things like money and direction for my talents. The money issue has receded
into the background once again with my sister having secured a well-paying job,
but it's been very difficult for me to get my mind around that given that my
own job pays so little yet demands so much of my time and energy to perform. As
for the directional issue, I've been getting a better handle on that with the issuance
of my book's second draft this month. It's been a lot of work to get everything
organized but most of the books have been handed out or were mailed out this week,
so the ego boost from having people reading my work is wonderful. I can only
imagine what it'll be like once I get the next draft finished and published.
One thing that has been very much on my mind this year has
been the subject of relationships. I won't get into that this week; all I'll
say is that my subconscious really has its claws dug into that topic.
Aug 20 - The Return of Cable TV
Sometimes timing is perfect, sometimes it isn't.
This week, I got a call from Shaw Cable, telling me they had
an offer for me yet again. I sat patiently through the first few minutes of the
call but as it turns out, it was worth taking. They had a deal to combine a cable package with a free HD PVR for the next six months, hoping to entice me
back into the boob-tube world.
Surprisingly, it worked.
Normally, I wouldn't give a foof about cable television but
we are heading into the fall season with some new shows - no Game Of Thrones on my budget lineup, though. I'm no longer feeling
overwhelmed by my new job which I've been at for over six months now and my
sister has a day job for the next little while, which means she has some free
time in the evenings. Both of which add up to neither of us minding being able
to flip the TV on for an hour or so an evening a few times a week, with a lot more choice than just a
half-dozen channels that are in French over the air.
While some people might not like the current cable television
landscape, I don't really care either way. As I've said before in this blog,
most of the television I want to watch is already on DVD or digitized on my
computer, awaiting my available time and not the other way around. I have a lot
to do and while I appreciate the hard work that the creators and cast of the
shows I like have gone to, I don't really feel that my time is best spent
nowadays watching somebody else's work when I could be creating my own.
Aug 21 - Riddick is REAL?
It may be that mutants ARE real. Maybe.
There's a story out of China from 2012 about a boy with bright blue eyes who has the ability to see in complete darkness, just like the main
character from the Riddick series of films.
Yet I always take stories out of China with a grain of salt,
as their media tends to sensationalize things with an odd spin in order to draw
world attention and not pay so much attention to the facts. Not that everything
out of China is laced with falsehoods; there are quite a few interesting
stories that have come out on a regular basis… but in this day and age of
instant sharing before fact checking, I always like to do a little bit of
background digging before I take things at face value.
In this case, numerous publications have written about this
boy's unusual ability and I find it fascinating that his unique genetic gift
has developed. Perhaps it's a sign that the human race is still evolving and
changing at a fairly rapid pace, so that we may see more unusually gifted people
appear in the near future. Or it could just be another hoax, as some people claim.
Blue eyes, man. The LOTR movies were full of them...
Aug 22 - The Writing Edge
A phone call led me to make a new friend today.
Oddly enough, it was another call for my technical
assistance skills, this time with repairing a printer for someone in my
building. As I was working on the printer which had slipped a belt due to a
jammed piece of paper, the older gentleman got to talking and I discovered that
he was a writer. He also paid me a compliment by saying that I reminded him a
lot of himself when he was younger. I was also amused when I had to correct his
estimate of my apparent age from mid-20s to my actual 40s, which again was complementary.
It's interesting how life can be serendipitous at times; in
this case, I randomly ran into someone that I share a lot in common with as a
writer. This very senior man has written several books, one of which he gave me
a copy of and it's amazing how parallel is to my current situation: it's about
a young writer on the West Coast in the 1940s who's trying to make his way in
life with the written word as his calling.
Perhaps we will chat again soon and I'd be interested to
compare notes with him about the writing life, as he's had quite the breadth of
experience with making a living at words. Again, I wonder about how people's
paths cross and how you might find just what you're needing at a certain point
in your life just around the corner, when you're not looking.
Just remember to keep your eyes open.
Aug 23 - Legacies
Everyone wants to leave something lasting behind.
For me, that's my writing; I hope that someone in the future
will read my work, some part of it, and feel a connection to me and what I've
related through my words.
But that's presuming that I have time to write a
lot of things.
For some people, time is not in great supply, yet they do
great things with what they have been given. In the case of Zach Sobiech, by
age 17, he'd done more than most to share his gifts. Watch him soar:
http://www.upworthy.com/this-kid-just-died-what-he-left-behind-is-wondtacular-rip
Aug 24 - Voices
This seems to be my week for
compliments, which I don't mind at all.
Despite my having a rather froglike
voice this week due to my cold, I was paid a compliment today by customer. She told me that I
have a wonderfuly unique voice and that I should do voiceover work, as I'd be
excellent at it. She made the point of saying that she was a professional
singer and thought that I had a voice that in her words "has something
very special about it" which really tickled my vanity, I have to say.
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| This message was waiting for me on the way home today - click to zoom! |
So there's another direction of my
talents that I've been reminded that I need to explore and not neglect. Adding
voiceover work to my writing skills might just be the double whammy that will
take me along career-wise towards making a living with my abilities. To ignore one or the other might be foolish and to be honest I really don't mind the
way my voice sounds - when I pay attention to it, that is.
The difference between having good
voice and being professional voice actor is very large however. The main thing
is to have the ability to take direction with one's voice, which entails at the very least
having some acting lessons in my future. My brief forays into voice acting in the
game world made it quite apparent to me years ago that I need to be able to
modulate my voice just as an actor does in order to convey emotion effectively
through just the audio medium.
Otherwise it's just me reading the
phone book, which is pretty darn boring.
Aug 25 - The Keys to Losing It
Sometimes being nice backfires a little; that's just life.
Such was the case today, and I found out that my sister had
lost my keys last night. She wasn't able to locate her own and she was being
picked up right at that moment, so she has to borrow my set until she could
locate her own in her purse( there's another story right there, but we won't
get into that ). Being the good brother that I am, I agreed and she was on
her way with a smile on her face.
This morning she told me she couldn't find them and after we
both searched the apartment, I was in agreement, as well as not being pleased.
I never loan my keys to anyone and the one time that I do, this happens; this
perhaps maybe a lesson of some kind. It also may be a sign that we really do
need a Lockitron on our door ASAP, so that keys become a moot point and all we need
are our cell phones to enter and leave our apartment securely. But that bit of
tech is not going to arrive for another month or so.
Keys aside, we went out for breakfast to Jam, a highly
regarded local eatery that specializes in an all-day breakfast with some
fantastic menu items. We didn't wait in line any longer than it took us to walk
there on the other side of the downtown core and it was busy enough that we
decided to be seated at the bar. My sister ordered the red velvet pancakes while I had
the biscuit( singular ) with sausage gravy. Both arrived in good time and
stunned us with the massive portions for the price: the biscuit was easily the
size of a saucer and filled with delicious gravy and scrambled eggs. My
sister's order was also fantastic: fluffy red velvet pancakes that tasted similar to cake
with a delicious sour cream sauce. We were both utterly stuffed when we left
and will be going back again soon-ish, which means probably next month. Eating out is a treat, not a daily or even weekly thing for us.
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| As big as THIS picture is, the portions were even BIGGER - click to zoom! |
The rest of my day was a relaxing one, with a few hours
spent taking a walk through Beacon Hill Park for an ice cream and then a tea over
at Moka House. I didn't stay very long on the patio there however, as clouds have
rolled in and the temperature dropped fairly rapidly from the lovely afternoon
with its sunshine.
Good news when I got home though: my sister called to say
she had found my keys! It was even better scenario ending than I'd hoped, for
though I had a War Amps keytag on the ring, there was no guarantee that someone
would have known enough to drop it in a mailbox in order to get it back to me.
I'll be sure to duplicate my bike lock key this week, as it's the only one on
the ring that I don't have an extra of. Not being able to bike to work would be rotten.
I'm feeling almost normal again, with the cold finally giving up its grip on me after nearly two weeks. I seriously have to get healthier, as I've never had a summer cold before and this one was a doozy. In the meantime, I've managed to injure my right arm, something to do with the tendon, so I'll have to see the doctor ASAP; it's been well over a week and its not improving. Unlike the cold, I can't fix it with rest, fluids and chicken soup - my arms just seem to be out of whack all the time. Maybe I should learn to use my feet as I do my hands?
