Martians, Machinations and Miscommunication

The word of the week is propitious.

March 24 - Personal Progress

Timing is everything this spring.

My schedule has thankfully fallen into a perfectly practical regular rhythm, where weekly I work three days on and have four days off to write my novel as well as catch up with my life.

In terms of having a life, I've been working steady weekends and that's not been so great for getting out to meet people. All the same, my hourly wage isn't exactly ranking in the 'disposable' category currently, so perhaps it's for the best that I've not been going out much of evenings.

Yes, it's an e-card. No, I couldn't find anything that wasn't less lame.

Right now I'm not feeling the lack. I have a job, I have my novel and I have my family here in BC, all of whom are doing well. I've set aside almost everything else that I could be doing to focus on what I need to be doing and that's enough. Material things are not even on my radar anymore and I haven't watched any of the many TV series or read most of the books I own practically since this time last year. Heck, I still haven't seen a single second of the third season of Game Of Thrones( which I love! )and the fourth season is starting anytime now. Perhaps I gives you an idea of how I've disassociated myself from most everything except what I've already mentioned I'm up to this spring.

Finding a better job is next on my priority list, as soon as I've finished editing my novel's third draft. Once I've established a better pay scale, I can spend my non-day-job time working on the next book in my trilogy. It would be wonderful to be able to take three months off as I did back in 2012 - I am confident that I can put in the time day-to-day and still manage to get similar results within a similar time frame later this year. 

 I haven't set a goal yet but I'd very much like to make a good start to the second book by year's end while I shop my first book around some agents to see who might be interested.

March 25 - Shock

Today found out my granddad had a stroke, several weeks ago. Two strokes, actually.

He's still with us thankfully and has suffered no major effects, but I was shocked by the news! Nobody on that side of the family had told MY side of the family, not even a hint.

That's not the way things  need to work in a close family and I'm horrified that weeks have gone by with my family here in BC having no idea of what happened.

Needless to say, while I talked to my grandfather today I had a decent chat with him about less-weighty topics, to be sure and he sounded much cheerier by the end of the call. As he's my only living grandparent left, it's weighing on my mind that in all the years that have passed, I've seen very little of him or my late grandmother, for that matter. You can't get back the time that you didn't spend with someone and while I'm not one for regrets, I wish that family matters had worked out differently and that I could have a little time back to spend more of it with that side of my family.

Don't wait until it's too late. I'm hearing that loud and clear.

March 26 - More Of The Same

My workplace is chaotic.

That's a rather charitable description and in no way reflects anything about the character of the people who work there. It's just a simple fact that the store could be run much more efficiently and given the current way that it's going day to day, I find myself with little desire to dive into the chaos in order to 'fix' things - that's not my responsibility.

What it does bring to mind is leadership.

There are thousands of books about leadership out there, many of them very well-written and all of them espousing various Rules and Insights into the seemingly magical or mystical methods of inspiring people to work harder for the same pay. I've read more than my fair share of them and no two books are the same.

Essentially, it boils down to this: you're either a good leader or deficient one and oftentimes it's difficult for you to tell the difference. Good leaders might not be efficient whereas deficient ones might very well be efficient in some ways but don't realize they're sorely lacking in others.

When I think about leadership, I think about the people I've worked for that I respected and inspired me to want to do my very best. Others make me want to watch the clock and become very good at my job so that they don't breathe down my neck every 5 minutes to make sure I haven't made yet another tiny mistake.

Good leaders make better companies and better people. Who doesn't realize that?

March 27 - 1/4 done!

At the end of today, I finished editing the first 10 chapters of my novel's third draft.

This was the most difficult part of what I had to do for the book, in a way, because of the almost total restructuring that every scene and every chapter had to go through.

Now that that task is done, I am FAR happier with the way the book reads from the very start. I've also been able to insert and tweak many more layers and aspects of the story overall, meaning that little seeds are planted earlier in the book that will grow throughout much more naturally.

I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say I'm energized to finish the rest of the book over the course of the next few months. I'll be plugging away every week, solidly turning the words over line by line and scene by scene in order to make them the best they can possibly be. I'm taking pains not to obsess over any particular part but to look at it as needing to progress steadily on the project as a whole.

That's all for now. Back to writing...

March 28 - New Writing Tool!

I bought a laptop today. Well, I started interest-free payments for one, that is. 

My workplace sells laptops by the job-lot and there's been a little ultrabook sitting at the end of an aisle for longer than I've been working at the store, unsold. Yesterday its price dropped yet again and as it was the last one, on clearance, I bit the bullet and put in to buy it on our company Computer Purchase Plan. I was approved for the CPP( heh )today, meaning that I'll be paying a mere $40/month, sans interest, to own this sleek bundle of techno-joy.

Why do I need a newer laptop, you ask?

The key word there is 'need' - it's for my writing and for the last half a year, the hand-me-down laptop from my parents has been a struggle to use. It's slow, quite heavy to carry around and prone to overheating; all those factors don't help my creative workflow. The same goes for my 3-year old ASUS Transformer, which I originally hoped I could tote around to write wherever and whenever I wanted, but again the tool wasn't right: it's even slower than the old laptop and multi-tasking? Forget it.

The Acer S3 is a tool suited perfectly to my writing needs: it has an 'instant-on' feature I've not seen in most any other laptop I've sold at my work. Meaning I can flip it open and start writing within seconds, which I could kind of do with my slower ASUS; something I still love about that machine. Here's a picture of all three units, with the Toshiba on the left, the new Acer S3 in the middle and the ASUS Transformer on the right:

Left: Big and bulky - Middle: Best! - Right: Better but backward

Needless to say, I'm over the moon at being able to get such a stellar laptop( ultrabook! )for such a tiny monthly outlay. It will make editing the remainder of my novel this spring a MUCH smoother process and getting started on my second book all the simpler.

A final note: turning the Acer S3 over, I noticed to my delight that the unit was manufactured on August 29, 2012, only 24 hours before the day I finished my novel's first draft! It's as if the universe anticipated my needs and gave the order to create this particular Acer S3 when it did, harmoniously for me to find it this spring and put it to good use for my writing.

I think that's an extraordinarily cool coincidence!

March 29 - Blossoms

Victoria's beautiful in the spring, more so than any place I've ever seen in my life.

The blossoms here are what makes it so lovely. The city had the foresight to plant thousands of cherry trees decades ago and every year they bloom, as I've mentioned here in the blog before. The expectation of such sights each year still doesn't take away from its majesty. Just have a look at this picture that a local photographer posted of a random city street here:

Stunning.

On my way to work today, the wind had picked up ever so slightly. Small swirling vortices of blossoms accompanied me as I cycled along streets, dancing around in ahead of me in pink choreographed chaos. It reminded me very much of the scene from American Beauty, where a plastic bag was filmed as it played with the wind: enchanting and unique and inspiring.

That's Victoria. I love it here.

March 30 - Mars

Four years.

In less than half a decade, the next step outwards from our planet will take place.

Mars One will launch the initial stage of what will be the first manned mission to Mars. Unmanned ships will preceed the habitable trans-solar vessels that will carry the first permanent colonists to the red planet.

It's mind-boggling to think that in a decade's time, humans will be walking on the red planet. Permanently too, I might add: everyone who's going to Mars is taking a one-way trip, leaving everything and everyone they know behind in order to take the next giant step for humanity. Naturally, there's nothing saying that if those first brave colonists are still alive in another 30 years then there might be more regular travel between Earth and Mars to allow a return trip, but that's just speculation right now. Besides, if they're willing to leave the earth behind, why reason would they have to come back at all at any point in the future?

Lots of 'ifs' go through my head when I think of the Mars One project. If my situation here on Earth had been different, if I had no permanent ties here and if I had a skill set next that would let me be considered for the mission, I think I would have volunteered. One of the few regrets I have in my life is that I likely will never travel in space, between the planets or the stars, so setting foot on another planet would literally be a dream come true for me. Perhaps in another 40 years, I'll be able to afford a ticket to Mars to go and look for John Carter's footprints among the red dunes of that distant, alien world.

Not so alien, though, if humans are walking its surface soon.

It's a weary me who's wrapping up the blog a little after midnight this week. My left side is still aching now and then, depending on what I've been doing. I have an appointment next week to get an ultrasound, which I hope will have nothing to say save needing more time to heal. All I want to do now is write; work's been less real to me than the words in my head fighting to be realized and the clock's ticking to get my stories out into the world.