Friends, Flipping and Forgetting

The word of the week is inestimable.

Oct 28 - Brevity

I'm cutting back on the blog's entry length for the next few months.

There's a lot for me to do and I don't have as much time as I'd like to do it in. So I'll have to find some time here and there every day and one way to do that is to spend less time writing this blog every week. Considering that not so many people are still reading the blog every week, compared to previous months or years, it's no great loss, I think.

Not to say I won't be putting entries, but as regular readers will know, I don't have a lot going on right now that's overly interesting to put in. Which means that apart from capturing a few of the more interesting thoughts gamboling through my head, I won't be saying much here until the new year.

At least.

Oct 29 - UnHappy

It's funny how sometimes you need someone else's perspective on your own life.

A friend of mine who read my blog on a regular basis sent me back a very insightful e-mail about my present state of mind. He said I'm not sad, but rather I am un-happy.

That's a very interesting thing to say, I think.

In contrast, a friend of mine posted this picture on FBook:

Right now, I know I'm not that friend. I'm quiet, introspective and live a lot in my thoughts while observing everything going on around me. When I do come out of my shell, I know my smile and energy can light up the room - I'm working towards making those two sides of myself into a whole.

Oct 30 - Forget Failure?

Friends are great: they send you links like this one.

That also relates to this link, which is all about understanding how fear failure is often worse than failure itself. Fear and worry quite often combine forces to dance hand-in-hand through my head and I have to find a way to march to a different beat.

Worrying accomplishes nothing save using energy that could be better put towards more positive things.

Have a look at both of those links, they're definitely worth taking the time to read.

Oct 31 - No Candy

Halloween was very, very quiet this year for me - same as last year.

I didn't end up going out at all and have shelved my costume until next year. Yet I really 

love this particular 'holiday' and it's grown on me even more since I was a kid. The idea of being able to take on another completely different persona by putting on a costume and going around in public among other people doing the same thing is breathtakingly refreshing.

Which is kind of like cosplay but sanctioned only once a year instead of at a convention. If I had more time and more money, I would definitely get into cosplaying, as it seems really have taken off in the last few years as more than just an odd hobby.

What I'll probably do is just compile a list of costumes that I'd like to create at some point and leave it at that. When my ship comes in, I'll be able to get right into creating a bit of my own fantasy in our shared reality - the thought really appeals to me.

Nov 1 - SIX years already?

Last year, I wrote a lot about having spent half a decade now in BC.

I won't go into any detail this year, as it would be just a little redundant and I'm sure by now some of you are sick of hearing about it. But I'm not sick of living in BC; not even close.

The climate, the people and quite a few other things all combine to make it a wonderful place to reside.

Sure, I'd love to be well into a writing career that pays all my bills and allows for comfortable lifestyle, but that's coming. I'm not planning on moving unless I have no other choice in order to make a living, which I don't want to do if it means taking somebody else's marching orders in order to get paid.

I'm at a crossroads right now: my writing has to get to the point where it's self-sustaining. Where I have the time and the energy each day to create something that will end up being worth selling as my creative work. Which I can do from anywhere in the world, when you think about it.

But I'd rather do it from right here in BC.

Nov 2 - Flip the switch

I really want to get better at my day job, but I can't spare the time.

There is the option to watch some of the hundreds of training videos that are available through the company website while at home, but I'm not convinced the end justifies the means.

Even if I watched every single video while taking copious notes, I still wouldn't be much closer towards making a better hourly wage when I was done. I'm certain that I would be better at my job, day-to-day, but there are JUST as many far more specific details that need to be learned while on the job that aren't covered in the videos.

The perfectionist in me wants to drive as far down the training road as possible, while the realist in me realizes that if I tried then the wheels would simply come off the car from the sheer amount of time and effort required - with results that aren't commensurate. Yet I still despise the idea that I'm not doing my absolute best at something... but I have other things to do that require my best.

Right now, I do my job well enough that it only generates some stress and friction every day.

That'll have to do while I focus my efforts on my writing and not on perfecting my personal performance needs for my rather paltry paycheque.

Nov 3 - All Over Again

Sunday nights used to be all about The Simpsons for me.

Not anymore. The shows been on so long that they've pretty much coverage everything that can happen to the average American family, even with all the craziness that a cartoon show can allow.

I pretty much lost interest somewhere around the 15th season, when the writing wasn't so sharp and you could see that the show was struggling to find itself a little each episode.

However, I'm pleased to say that The Simpsons has managed to raise the quality of the episodes it makes in the last few years. My favorite parts though have always been the title intro, which always finishes with the family ending up on the couch in the living room watching TV.

Tonight's episode spoofed The Hobbit rather nicely:

Sad to say, this week the show lost one of their most recognizable voice talents: Marcia Wallace, who voiced the character of Edna Crabapple and many others. She will be missed.

I'm writing this brief blog in between getting home from work and going to sleep before getting up At 6 AM to work again. Today was a very trying day and I'm going to work hard tomorrow ( on top of working hard ) to take today's difficulties in stride while enjoying the fact that I'm employed. And that I can still write with my voice, at least.

Clothes, Costumes and Crystals

The word of the week is febrile.

Oct 21 - Equilibrium

I'm sleeping better this week - noticeably so.

My improved diet is definitely having an effect on my daily energy levels and overall mood. It's all about balance and getting the food I need to have every single day has meant that I've been less exhausted after work and more able to fully rest at night. My sleep tracking program has shown that my percentage of 'deep sleep' has risen in the last week from an average low of 50% to the mid-60s and even into the 70s, which is a fantastic improvement overall, at least in the physical sense.

The physical will also reflect on the mental, which is the other half of the coin.

Right now, I'm doing very little outside of work and writing, as I've already said in this blog recently. This past week, I realized that I don't have a circle of close friends here in Victoria, at least not in the sense that I do in Niagara. I don't hang out with people on a regular basis, even once a week, but instead see people here and there at parties or the occasional guests that I have over for game night - which is about once a month or so.

It makes me ponder on sociability and how it's changed for me in middle-age.

Without going into the deep ramifications, what I've discovered so far is that my social circle has thinned since moving to Victoria, which comes as no surprise. I've maintained the links to everyone I knew in Niagara, but they are a lot more tenuous than they were when I could get together in person, especially on short notice, with my friends.

Now that it's just me( and my immediate family ) here in BC, and without regular social group, I found myself playing the role of the observer( and hence the implied author) in my own life. Which is not ideal, but it certainly leaves me a lot of time to devote to writing.

So I'd better be about it, shouldn't I?

Oct 22 - Showgirl No More

Something odd in the news caught my eye this week.

It was an article about Elizabeth Berkley, of all people, who I wouldn't normally say is on my attention radar. Yet there's an odd resonance with her story this week and my own.

The horrible reviews that her movie Showgirls received( and is still receiving to this day ) greatly affected her career. Her talents as an actress( which I'm not familiar with I have to say ) have been overshadowed by this single film for two decades now, hindering her hopes and dreams.

Yet she managed to rise above the scathing shadow of Showgirls recently by putting in an exemplary performance on Dancing with the Stars and so put the past behind her - she earned a perfect score from the judges and proved that she was still to be ranked among the top dancers in Hollywood.

I'm very happy for Ms. Berkley in that sense, as she has managed to shake something that has dogged her for many years - unfairly, as I see it now. Being pigeonholed by a single roll and underestimated while being capable of change must have been devastating, to have carried that for so many years would have been crushing too many.

Now she can move on with her life - just as I have been looking to do.

Oct 23 - AuthorQuest Revealed!

I guess I can't keep it to myself any longer: here's what my secret project is about…

For the last few months, I've been working on something that I hope will turn into a full novel that will be published and read by tens of thousands of people in the near future…

I'm talking about creating a new novel for the Dark Crystal universe.

Henson Productions has put out an open call for submissions for authors of all walks. They're looking for creative minds to tell more stories based in the universe that Jim Henson created when he and many other amazingly talented people brought the world of The Dark Crystal to life a few decades ago.

Luckily, I am a big fan of the movie; I have several hard-to-find books as resources for my incipient story and I had the pleasure of meeting other fans in Phoenix late last spring. There's a plethora of information now available at DarkCrystal.com, so I have a lot of great material to work with in shaping my story.

Yet I'm only half done and the deadline is fast approaching at the end of 2013.

With that in mind, I've been focusing more on completing my submission for The Dark Crystal that I have on editing my own draft, if only for the reason that there are far more immediate and tangible results waiting for me down the one pass and not the other - for now.

I'll have to keep the actual story itself under my hat until the contest is over with and the top five stories are posted on DarkCrystal.com for fans to vote on.

My goal is to be one of those top five! Stay tuned!

Oct 24 - Disney Halloween?

What would Halloween be without costumes?

For that matter, what with Disney be without costumes? I'm glad to see that some artists combine Disney in Halloween each year in interesting ways, as always bring something fresh to the table.

This year I point to the work of Isaiah Stephens, who has re-imagined a bevy of Disney beauties as different characters from various other franchises in fascinating ways. My particular favorite is this one, of Tinkerbell as the Bride from Kill Bill:

Part of what makes an artist's vision unique is finding the subtle ways that different subjects can be matched up. In Isaiah Stephens' case, his artistic eye is rather sharp as he's managed to capture the essence of both characters - in most cases - and translated that into a rich gallery for us to enjoy.

Oct 25 - Honor Harrington

I have a confession to make this week: I've started reading again - regularly.

Not that that's a bad thing, but it's taken me by surprise in that I've been fixated on one author's creation: the Honor Harrington military series by the prolific David Weber.

In early September, I noticed that the first book of the long-running series, On Basilisk Station was listed as free on the Amazon Kindle site - my favorite kind of price point! After I downloaded it and read a few chapters, I was hooked: it was exactly my kind of military space opera, with lots of action, memorable characters and dynamic plots with good pacing. I found myself quickly downloading the next book in the series( also for free! )and within a week I had read them both.

Soon after that I downloaded the next book… and the next. And the next. I was soon up to the seventh book in as many weeks and that's only with my reading the stories at night, on breaks at work or while I sat out having tea a few times during the week. It's been gratifying to know that my reading speed has not diminished during my hiatus from devouring novels and that I'm still able to finish them off without skimming at a pace that I'm used to. I could do a book a day if I put my mind to it and had 4 to 6 hours to devote solely to reading - I'm THAT quick when it comes to something that I enjoy and that isn't heavy going with lots of mental gymnastics and troublesome phraseology.

However, I have a book of my own to write and I've been making sure that when I read of late, it's only to relax and not to take the place of my own writing - tempting as that is correct.

For now, the Honor series of books is the perfect escape for me. It's exciting, able to be taken in digestible chunks and there's a LOT of books remaining. Wonderful!

Oct 26 - Fashionable, me?

I received an unexpected and wonderful gift today: clothes!

My wonderful sister dropped by briefly with a bag full of stylish things for me to wear, completely out of the blue. I was told simply that I was due for a wardrobe upgrade and she decided today was the day.

It should be noted that I buy close as often as I buy cars, that is to say almost never. My closet is not something that I consciously look to fill with new things but rather instead think of it only when something wears out to the point where a noticeable draft gets through the holes and so alerts me.

To have five new shirts to wear is an unimaginable luxury to me and I'm just thrilled with them, especially as they were a total surprise. The phrase that springs to mind is "The clothes make the man" and the reason that it sticks in my head of late is that I've paid very little attention to how I look, apart from my usual shaving and showering - it's always been the same clothes, in different combos, that I spend almost no time selecting in order to save energy for other things.

An outward appearance reflects the inner and for me that's been fairly utilitarian. I know that I've been blessed with decent looks and need little upkeep to be presentable, but when I don't spend the effort, it definitely shows. Especially now with my longer hair, but that's another story. I'll definitely be showing off my new fashions whenever I get the chance soon - something totally new to me and an area of myself I'll enjoy exploring.

Though I don't expect to turn into a clothes horse anytime soon

Oct 27 - Work, Home, No Problem

Today was a good day at work.

There was no crazy rush of people the whole time, though I didn't take my first break until four hours into my shift as it was very steady. I talked to quite a few folks, doing my job by matching their needs to various tech products that were on the floor for sale and generally being my genial self.

I'm not a natural salesperson, but I do have my honest integrity that I wear on my sleeve and that's usually enough to let me talk easily to people. I certainly wouldn't make a living if I was selling things on commission, but my current job means that I do well enough that I've yet to be brought to task for not living up to perform its expectations. Considering that I am making very little in terms of an hourly wage, working on commission might be better for me but that won't happen where I am right now and to be honest I don't want to make a living as a salesman.

What I do want to do is to do better at my job without spending excessive amounts of energy doing so. I need to find a mental switch to flip to see my job as a means to an end and not a drain on my resources that precludes devoting my best part of my energies in a day to my true passion: writing.

I'm a writer with a day job. While it doesn't pay my bills, it does pay and for now that will have to be enough while I continue to get my feet under me in various respects. I'm definitely looking for another job, yet I know that finding something measurably better is extremely difficult here in Victoria. Spending a year looking taught me that I need to make a more networked contacts in order to track down positions in the hidden job market if I want to make a decent hourly wage or salary.

Or I could land a publishing contract. The choice is mine: it all depends on how much harder I want to push myself and how much smarter I want to go about it.

My days off are for writing; that's the promise I made myself in October and so far it's been rather hit and miss. With the end of the year approaching, I can no longer devote energies to anything other than my writing and getting through my workplace. There's nothing else in my life right now.

Confusion, Criticism and Clean Air

The word of the week is ideating.

Oct 14 - Wha?

I think I'm confusing the universe of late.

What I mean is, my world has contracted to work and writing. My social life is rather nonexistent, with the occasional coffee and movie with a friend being the exception. While such a contraction feels out of character to me, it's something I know is necessary in order to give priority to my writing. I still have to figure out how to balance my day job with my personal goals( which include my writing projects ) and once I have that hammered out, a social life won't really matter until a few of those goals are realized.

That's not a bad thing, albeit it will be a bit socially stifling.

It should be noted that around a dozen people visit my blog every day, which is very gratifying. While I do keep track of the total number of visitors, from previous experience I know that about a dozen of my friends drop by once a week or so to view my blog, which is all I can ask. I don't pretend that I am interesting enough to have all of my friends visit even once a month to see what I'm up to, but I'm honest in what I put into my blog and I do my best not to turn it into a personal journal that would record all of my churning thoughts from day-to-day.

Right now, there's not much else that I should be doing save paying my bills and writing. By doing the latter, the former should follow naturally if I can transform it into a way to make a living.

Oct 15 - Quiet Time

Of late, my days off have been precious.

Unlike my previous job, my days off are not islands of refuge in a sea of unrelenting stress but rather time that I can use to do other things. I'm not bringing home the job like I used to, always at the mercy of a ringing managers phone, though I have been attempting to complete some training courses online on the side - both for my own interests and for the courses offered by my workplace.

What hasn't been happening is writing.

I've been too exhausted and my mind has been working over conflicting problems that I just can't find resolution to. Some of which has to do with relationships and a lot of which has to do with defining my own perception of success in relation to the world, my peers and life in general.

Which is why quiet time is important. Everyone needs time to themselves to reflect, to regenerate and replenish their inner resources with which to face the challenges they encounter everyday.

For me, the accumulation of those challenges have been such that I suspect my mind simply can't let go of them. Being able to just simply set things aside and to step into another headspace to do my writing would be wonderful, but it hasn't happened and I'm finding it to be very worrisome.

There are bits and pieces that I've written in the last month or so, but the headlong rush of creativity that I enjoyed last summer in completing my novel has thus far eluded me in editing its third draft.

My self-imposed deadline to have the third draft on is approaching a few months. At this point, I'm not sure that I'll even be half-done by then. Work has been very much on my mind, in terms of having a day job and what it pays and I think that more than anything else is where the measure will be taken.

As the old saying goes, you shouldn't quit your day job to be a writer. What's not well known is that it should be a decently-paying day job and right now that's not the case for me, which is causing stress.

Oct 16 - Working Lots

I failed a few weeks ago, at work.

Not in terms of customer service or and doing my job, but in terms of promotion and challenge. I took a test as part of my training to become Copy Lead, which involved various questions in a live online seminar as well as the production of a test booklet. I was the only one of the group to actually produce the booklet( and correctly, I might add! ) But I failed three questions and thus the test itself.

For me, failure is something I take very personally.

It's not the same as making mistakes, which everyone does and we all learn from. No, for me failure is that complex mix of reaching for a challenge and not succeeding through a combination of lack of preparation, skill, or desire. In this case, it was definitely a lack of preparation, as I had little warning that the test was coming up. Though I have so far done my job fairly well on a daily basis, there are many areas that I have not been fully trained in or feel comfortable in my overall skill set.

What really bothers me is that the people I work with know that I'm not as capable as I appear. My own personal self-worth and self image is based on capability and to have failed has run cracks through that solid foundation to my personality. Those cracks attempted to join others that are already there: my inability to find ANY sort of job for year despite my skill set and experience, my inability to form a long-term relationship, my inability to do any of half a hundred things that I think I should have accomplished by now my life… you get the picture.

I'm not allowing myself to widen this particular crack further; despite the insidious nature of my minds whisperings, I don't believe that this particular failure is a major one in my life. Yet it still goes on the list of failures and I'm not going to forget it anytime soon.

Oct 17 - Energy Lack-ish

I'm feeling a little better this week, with a little more energy than usual.

My diet has changed, in such that I'm having more protein and I'm eating more often - usually it's two or three hours in between meals or healthy snacks. Just as I've minimize sugar and meat in my diet for the last year, so I'm now increasing things like eggs in what I eat in order to try to even out my wobbly energy levels. As my shifts are now going to be split between Copy and Tech, I'll be working a lot harder some days as I rush about the floor instead of standing in Copy and that's going to be tough on me in terms of having anything left at the end of the day for my writing. And for all I know, it's my adrenal glands:

That's just the way it is.

Also, I've broken out the sunlamp and I'm spending a few hours every day under its full-spectrum light. We're due for a solid week of sunshine this coming week here in Victoria and I'm very much looking forward to the energy boost that such wonderful weather will give me. Given that I'm moderately sensitive to the weather in terms of SAD, being able to spend time out in the sunshine will definitely pick up my mood.

Oct 18 - Clean Air

Just a brief entry today about air quality.

For the last six months, my next-door neighbor has been smoking in his apartment. Which he's entitled to do, as it's his own personal space. Yet due to the poor seals around their door, the stench of his particular brand of cigarettes permeates the entire hallway outside, necessitating the placement of an air cleaner in the front hall of our apartment. We're not just talking a whiff here - it stinks, like an ashtray that hasn't been emptied in months.

It also means that my sister and I have to hold our breath every time we enter or leave our residents, which I don't think is fair in the least. And I won't get into how many times we have to close our windows during the summer months whenever people step outside onto nearby balconies to 'enjoy' the privilege of smoking a cigarette. The same thing happened to me when I was first living here in Victoria on Moss Street, where I suffered in a stiflingly hot apartment with the windows closed rather than let in cigarette smoke from the smokehole below on the front walk - directly in the path of the prevailing wind, right into my window.

While it's galling to me that many smokers seem quite indifferent to where their secondhand smoke drifts, there does seem to be some improvement in local smoking bylaws here in Victoria. A recent change to amend the distance that smokers can linger around windows or doorways as well as parks and playgrounds, is a step in the right direction I believe. 

Being as sensitive as I am to secondhand smoke, I'll be glad to see the day when entire swaths of the city are declared smoke-free, hopefully including most rental properties.

Oct 19 - Dressed up, Nowhere to go?

After last year's cobbled-together costume was received with some success, I decided to put together one for this year with a little more forethought. I won't reveal what it is until my first blog entry of November, but suffice to say it's one I've been looking forward to for years, even though long practice of the accompanying voice has thus far eluded me. Hint: it's a character from a popular 80's cartoon!

Unfortunately, even at this late date I have nowhere to go to show my costume. The party I attended last year at a friend's place is going on again… but unlike 30+ other guests, I haven't received an invite.

That's… disappointing.

I hope it's an oversight, and I'll send the hosts a message a few days before the party date, but I don't want to be 'that guy' who is invited because they don't want to hurt my feelings.

I'd rather be the guy that they WANT to have there in the first place, and not have just forgotten. Which, I am WELL aware, that I am guilty of having done on at least a few occasions of my own over the years. So perhaps this is cosmic karma kicking in; we'll see.

It's still a cool costume though.

Oct 20 - Depth

I worry.

Which I shouldn't; Neil Gaiman himself has said that if there was one thing he wished he could change about his own life, it would be to have spent less time worrying and more time DOING.

Getting things done, is always the trick, isn't it? There's always so much going on in one's life that half of what you think you should have done last week is still waiting for you to get to next week. And so it goes.

Worrying about such things just uses energy I don't have right now. It's enough that I work pretty much full time every week during the day( no more night shifts! )and take care of my small domestic responsibilities during the evening. Worrying that I'm not eating properly does help keep me honest, though my mindset still hasn't developed the proper habits over the last while to make healthy and timely meal preparation part of my daily routine. I think that I'm a grudging the energy it takes to do anything else, including preparing meals, as taking away from time I could be writing.

It's just hard right now to find a smile for each moment that deserves a instead of just getting about doing things. There's so much that I am grateful for and that I should be grateful for and that I should recognize as being just the first steps on a long road toward success, yet the immediacy of my present situation weighs on me. I know it sounds awkward and depressing and frustrating, but that's just how it is for me right now - maybe it's my constant low blood sugar. Who knows?

We'll see how I am next time I check in here.

This week, I discovered a new word: ideating, which means to create or conceive an idea. It was purely by accident, a word misrecognized by my voice recognition software yet it led me to discovery. It's strange how these small missteps in life can lead you to new understandings and I think that's an excellent way to sum up this week's blog.

Time, Turmoil and Thanksgiving

The word of the week is solitude.

Oct 7 - Little Progress

I've only been able to work on a few chapters of my book to date.

It's intensely frustrating to spend so much time and energy at a day job and not have much left over to do what I really want to: edit my novel so that I can send it out into the world with my head held high.

I know that I'm capable. I know that the book is in me. I know that it's going to take a lot more than I've been able to give up to now in order to make that happen.

The stress of not working versus the stress of working are two sides of the same coin. Not having an income versus not having any energy and still not getting ahead makes me just close my eyes and wonder about the world some days. I can understand why some authors took years or decades to finish their books, given the circumstances of their lives at the time.

I want to finish my book and get it out into the world. Whatever that takes, I'll have to find a way to make that happen. I only hope that I have the energy and willpower to sustain me on that journey of an unknown length.

One of the reasons I write this blog is to get these feelings out there, to give them voice, so to speak. Sometimes this blog contains a little of my inner monologue, sometimes morseo, but always it's honest and always it strives to inform as to what's going on in my life.

Never to complain; who wants to read that?

Oct 8 - Voices

I'm still working on my voice acting abilities, on the side.

Admittedly, my voice does not have a vast range, though I haven't explored much of it by practicing at any length. I do some decent impressions of people and characters, but in the main I haven't practiced much beyond ones that are fairly easy to imitate.

Some people are very good at this and you can find examples of great imitations all over the Internet, including YouTube and other more specific sites dedicated to voice acting in general.

Wired magazine recently published an article entitled Top 10 Most Recognizable Pop-Culture Voices. It has some very recognizable characters from the last few decades, one of which I am trying to practice with as it's my Halloween costume this year. Of course, it's a very difficult voice and very few amateurs would be able to imitate it perfectly, so I'm doing my best.

Oct 9 - What have you read lately?

How many books have you read in your lifetime?

That question arose in my mind this week and I surprised myself by being unable to answer it right off the bat. Numbers are a tricky thing to put into place when it comes to quantifying the number books someone is read in their lifetime, as there are many factors that can be read into that - pun intended.

Stephen King says that he reads 80 books a year. As the famous authors turning 66 this year, if we extrapolate 50 years of reading it works out to 4,000 books, give or take, that he's read in total.

For myself, I believe the number is far higher, as I devoured books from an early age and only really saw my reading numbers decline when I got to work on my novel in mid-2012. I probably averaged about two books a week from when I was 10 years old, sometimes going up to a book every day when I was really into a series or just had the time. If we put it down at 100 books a year over 30 years, then that works out to only 3,000 books, which again I think is a very low number considering the amount of knowledge that I know I've stuffed into my head. I'm not counting magazine articles, textbooks, articles read on the Internet or from other sources - just novels and full-length books.

The fact that I own 2,000 books personally and have read every single one of them, then I have to consider that I've read at least that many more over my lifetime and I'd peg the number at closer to 8,000 books. Which still seems conservative to me.

How many have you read?

Oct 10 - Living Under The Line

It's not easy right now for me, but I'm used to that.

I'm speaking about income, which I don't usually do. The topics been on my mind for months and while I'm not wont to discuss such things here my blog, I'm learning that it doesn't do a lot of good to keep so much to myself when it doesn't really matter in the long run.

My current job doesn't pay very well; despite my having near full-time hours, hourly I'm earning about half of what I was at MMart even before counting the overtime that was added on to my regular hours. All told, I'm bringing in a little over a third of what I was earning previously, which is in no way helping me get ahead in life.

According to a current article about living wages here in Victoria, I should be earning about $18 an hour as part of a couple to be able to 'get ahead' in life. Yet the article states that the monetary budget doesn't allow for major things like home ownership or saving for a child's education.

I know that as a single person without a well-paying job I can't even afford a car, let alone a house. Just for fun a few years ago, I worked out what I would need to earn on my own in order to have a modest two-bedroom house, a car and a conservative yet decent lifestyle that includes savings, travel, entertainment, hobbies etc.. Given that the current 25-year mortgage in Victoria works out to around $1500.00 per month, any guesses as to what I need to be earning an hour?

I'll bet you didn't know I worked it out to around $30 an hour before tax.

You go ahead and think about that. I'm done with it, for a while.

Oct 11 - Happiness

Nobody's looking over my shoulder to make sure I'm smiling these days - except my sister, and I'm so very grateful to have her doing so. When she's around.

It's all part of being an adult: if you're not in a relationship, there's nobody to be there every day to get used to your moods and to be able to tell when they're off. If you're the kind of person who brings their moods to work, then your coworkers will probably not appreciate such after a while, as they have their own things to work through everyday.

Being an adult means being happy or sad or angry or any combination thereof are all YOUR responsibility. Were all in charge of walking our own road and while some of us are lucky enough to have someone there with us every step of the journey, others have to take many of those steps alone.

I'm fortunate enough to have many fantastic friends and a supportive family. Yet I'm still subject to many days where I wonder where I'll be and what mental state I'll be in while I'm there. I'm cursed with, and fortunate to have, a mind that's constantly working on many things at once and I'll tell you that it makes it really hard to focus when there's a lot of problems to be solved that don't have easy answers.

Then again, who wants easy? Nothing worthwhile in life is ever easy, to use the old tired phrase. Personally, I'd really like a few stretches of easy to come around, as all the hard sections I've walked so far have made me well able to recognize the easy when they come along and I definitely appreciate them.

I have my good days among the deplorable and the desperate. Those days that are a wondrous combination of happiness, energy and creativity have been too few in my estimate in the last few decades. There's always too many things dragging me down compared to those that bouy me up and I'm so very tired of trying to see sunshine no matter what.

Maybe I should have moved to Arizona?

Oct 12 - A Year Ago, Again

One year ago today, I finished the second draft of my novel.

I'd spent at least a dozen or more grueling hours every day for six weeks refining it from the first draft, so that I could submit it within the deadline for the open submission put out by Harper Collins Canada.

As it turned out, they turned down my submission, but that was a good thing in hindsight, as I feel the tremendously positive feedback I received plus the critical review from my critique group meant that I could make the book so much better still. The fact that I came down with pneumonia after pushing myself so hard isn't lost on me and I'm being careful to keep that lesson in mind as I work my day job while creating the third draft in my free time, such as it is.

I'm as excited as anyone to be able to read the third draft in its final form. I can feel its general outline in my head as I slowly chip away at each chapter, making the words and ideas flow together as perfectly as I can.

I want it to be the best that I can possibly make it.

Oct 13 - Thanks

This week's blog hasn't been a happy one, sorry to say.

Yet it's Thanksgiving, so let's brighten the mood a little. It's the time of year to be thankful for what we have and, when I think about it, most everything in my life could be so much different. I have no worries for my immediate family anymore, just myself, and my friends all seem to be doing just fine in their own lives.

I was at two Thanksgiving dinners this week, which is two more than I thought would happen. I had a lovely turkey dinner on Thursday with my parents and sister at Denny's, with a wonderful waitress and just basking in the happiness of my family. It was fantastic to just reminisce and not let the worries of the day intrude but rather spend every moment enjoying each other's company. 

As it should be.

Yesterday night I went along with my sister to a combination birthday party / Thanksgiving dinner with her group of friends, who were all very successful people yet all very down to earth. It's enlightening to spend time in the company of such people, whose lives don't revolve around trying to get ahead but rather enjoying life on their own terms instead of letting their paycheques define how they see the world. It was refreshing to simply talk to people whose interest in the world takes a close measure along what their own perspectives bring, whose worldviews are shaped by what they choose to surround themselves with. I had a wonderful time just talking to everyone, who seemed interested in me just for me, including my aspirations to be an author. From what I saw, everyone there followed their own dreams and they view of my own desires to make my words my living as perfectly possible.

There can be no better way to spend a night than in the company of good dreams.

Every day from here on in until the end of the year is precious for my writing. When I'm not working, I'll be writing or sleeping - that's all I've got planned and whatever else comes up has to take a back seat to that. There's too much else on my mind to focus and I need every erg of energy to put into my book's third draft. That's all.