The · road · before · us

Well, I'm not really emotionally tied up in it. He kind of killed his idol status when he couldn't stay away from children. He was big in his time and I remember owning more than one of his records, but he was long over. He was addicted to plastic surgery, painkillers, and praise, and his sycophant doctor is MIA now that he's dead from starvation and god only knows what.

Sorry, World. I just can't get into this one. A strange, sick man is dead. Whatever inspiration he was, it was dead a long, long time ago.

I sat on the porch this morning smoking an Olivia G, my first real cigar in many years. At 3.5 inches, it's a stubby little stick that at nearing an hour I was only barely reaching the halfway mark. My son was sleeping with his mother in our bed curled around each other in a human Yin Yang. The sun was rising and it was already 70 degrees. Summer is whispering hello early.

I haven't been around online in any real sense in almost two years. My life changed so drastically with Ethan, really with moving to Michigan, that I haven't been able to put together any real text worth reading about. Most of my daily worries look mundane on paper/screen, and while I find I can write fiction again. It feels like a selfish endeavor. Well, it is, but it feels like I'm crossing the line family-wise. I work 9-12 hours a day. I see my son for only an hour or so before he's being rocked to sleep. Mary and I have weeks where we are ships slipping by each other in the night, touching for moments, then gone.

But, it is a good life.

We are moving back toward the hill country in a few days, which means my daily driving will be cut in half from around 80 miles a day to 40. I'll be near a river for my morning runs and some occasional fishing. We also stand a good chance of getting a roommate in the next week, a refugee from Michigan and an old friend of Mary's. And then Mary's mother will be flying in for Ethan's b-day on the 30th.

Hectic.

And, I may be in the market for a motorcycle soon, so that Mary will have her own vehicle again.

Life goes on.

Okay, so, I have this older computer that seems to have become unstable. She resets randomly, sometimes after hours of problem free operation, sometimes in quick succession. Since some of my tax info is on her and I don't want whatever is going on to ruin anything before tax time, I've moved over to using an old laptop for my web browsing and writing.

Inspired by a plurk by wendiigo, I pulled up a page on Linux. It claims Linux is super stable, never cheats at poker, etc. And it looks very clean. So, some questions.

1)Assuming the resetting issue with my puter is from viruses (which I had a month or so ago) or the like, or general system instability due to errors in some line of code, would Linux fix my problem?

2)Would it wipe my harddrive when switching over?

3)Why are you pro or anti-Linux?

Pro-writer career path meme via theferrett

Current Status as of this morning:

Short Stories:
* Nothing in the active pipeline in submission, but 3 shorts published (years ago).
* Halo in 3rd draft. I need to dig it out and beta it with a few readers
* Coffee Kisses: first draft, possibly part of the Mosaic project.

Novels:
* Sinner in the Big City: Unpublishable, manuscript lost.
* Sydney Carter and The Case Of the Black Whip: Dead and buried. Unpublishable.
* The Baker's Daughter: Still in first draft.

Age when I decided I wanted to be a writer: 6

Age when I wrote my first story: 8

Age when I got my hands on a typewriter: 11. An electronic typewriter, but with no memory. No clue to the brand.

Age when I first submitted a short story to a magazine: 16

Thickness of file of rejection slips prior to first story sale: A few centimeters? I have a very slow submission cycle, only sending out a few at a time.

Age when I sold my first short story: 20? Geez, that's been a while.

Age when I killed my first market: N/A

Approximate number of short stories/novelettes/novellas sold for copies (small press): 2

Approximate number of short stories/novelettes/novellas sold for cash money: 1

Age when I first sold a poem: 16. I wanted to be a professional poet. My parents were... displeased.

Age when I wrote my first novel/book: "Sinner" written at age 25. Yeah, this was my first Nano novel, and it was horrid. A Catholic Mafia battling a lesbian mafia for territory in a fictional Chicago. This later turned into "Sydney Carter and The Case of the Black Whip" which I had in contract as an erotica e-book but missed a deadline and was dropped from. I should probably blog about that one day.

Age when I sold a first novel: So close, but nope.

Novels written: 2. I'd like to get a few short stories in the pipeline before devoting more time to Baker's daughter.

Awards won: N/A.

Age when a work was first shortlisted for a Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy or Stoker award: N/a

Age when I became a full-time writer: A ways from that. One day I hope.

Age now: 30

Consider this a journal meme: if you write professionally, feel free to post your own equivalent of this list. (Obviously you'll need to customize it to track your career path -- but you get the idea.)

I failed this year. I know I have a day left, but it would be about 47k in 24 four hours. I just can't see grinding out garbage for a silly icon on my only day off. Still, I want to share what I did write. So please enjoy...

( The Baker's Daughter )

Now, I do have another project in mind. I like Baker's Daughter, but I'm not feeling it at the moment, so I'm thinking of heading back to shorts and working a novel based on vingettes. Something with several dynamic characters tied with a common theme. Maybe a novella? I'm not sure, but I'll start tomorrow.

So here we are, another Thanksgiving gone by, leaving most of us and our 'fridges stuffed with turkey. Most of us took a moment to thank a higher power that we are so damn lucky, that we still have a job, a friend, our health. As I've been reminded by numerous pieces in the press, we SHOULD feel damn thankful, since the world is such a shitty place that even our new president might not be able to pull us back from. Hell, we just might be too close to the event horizon, and even with our robot servants floating near, the fact is we're going to have to brave the mouth of hell and see what's on the other side.

Instead of bringing you all down with even more reflections on this day in particular, or our national situation, or the difficulties facing the new administration...

I'm thankful for you.

All of you. Each one of you who bothers to read blogs and comment and contribute and remind each other that we are not alone. It's simple, and silly, but it true. Fuck it all, you matter to more people than you know, and the world is better for having you in it.

Except for you. Yeah you.
Fucking pervert.

Missed a couple of runs this last week due to the WOW expansion release and a flat tire, BUT

I ran a 9 Minute mile!!!!!

For a lark I ran to a cd of Army Infantry Cadence. What a difference! I won't be abandoning my current running program, but on the alternating days I'll probably keep the cadence program loaded. I'm still running around the apartment complex. Really need to find a nice smooth out and back or a track nearby. Also, I need to be aggressive on my dieting. I need to lose around 50 lbs. FAST.

My latest workouts:

11/7/2008
Run: 2.3 Mi

11/6/2008
Run: 1 Mi

11/5/2008
Run: 2 Mi

15 runs down. Working on getting my min/mile down to about 9 mins.

It looks like there's a real possibility that I may be entering the U.S. Army again in a few months. Mary and I are talking it over, and since we would really like to move up north again, and the only jobs really allowing us the freedom to pick and choose would be going over the road trucking, or spending a few years learning administration or medicine from Uncle Sam... well.

Assuming neither career path results in fatality, I have to ask myself, which leads to a better future? Which will make me feel fulfilled in serving the community? What would I like Ethan to tell his classmates his daddy does?

Originally, we thought we might transfer with my current company to PA. And that's fine. I don't mind my job. It pays well, and it will keep us comfortably. But it is what it is, namely the same thing every day, the same routes, the same customers calling in to say you missed a pick up because they're remodeling their bathroom and just dumped 80 pounds of tile in their tote. And that doesn't bother me too much, but... I'm a sanitation driver. A garbage man. Sure I get paid better than most teachers, but there's a stigma.

Trucking leads to trucking. Sure, you might go from company driver to owner operator, and the pay can be very good, but you are going to spend at least a month at a time away from home for at least two years or more. And home time constitutes only a couple of days, and then you're off again. On the whole, it's the same thing I do now, except fewer stops, longer load times, and less time at home. And it's at least as dangerous as my current gig playing with hydraulics, putting out chemical fires, and breathing in fumes of god knows what after being splattered with week old food stuffs with liquefied old folk diapers.

The Army. I spent a couple of months in the Army about 6 years ago. I signed up on my 24th birthday at a very bad time in my life. I had just caught my girl-friend of 7 years (engaged a couple of times) cheating on me... again. I was ready to get away. I scored high on the ASVAB and dropped 30 pounds in a month, and the recruiters loved me... and told me to lie on my app. Lying always makes me anxious, and add in the fact the sudden weight loss destroyed my immune system, and we got problems. I spent my whole time at Basic sick with Bronchitis, Anemia, and breathing issues probably just related to being in Kentucky during summer/fall. I made it nearly through the second phase when it all caught up with me. After being pulled out of regular excercise/duty and being reinstated (after sweet-talking a Colonel) I had to face the fact my body needed more recovery time. The Doc wanted to send me home and told me I could reup later, and since being recycled appeared to be a torturous and fun-filled stay with twice a day PT sessions... I relented. But only after my Platoon Sargent pulled me aside and talked it over with me.

It was hell on earth. I was scared, lonely, and frustrated. And not more than a couple months go by when a challenge comes up in daily life and I think back to jumping walls, climbing ropes, diving into sawdust in the pit, sweeping floors, doing drills with rifles. And I scoff at the daily life challenge, because quite frankly... it's easy as hell. People makes their own lives complicated with complaints and thinking they deserve this or that, that they're better than having to stoop low and just deal with a situation, even though if they just dealt with it the drama would have been minimal.

Back here in the present, life is good. No, really, it is. Sure we don't have a ton of money, but we're happy. But, the call is there to be something more. Every time I see a veteran or a service bumper sticker, I think "That could be me. That could be one of my brothers." I think that I would have completed my contract by now and could have been working in a medical facility. And I regret the missed opportunity. And Mary seems to understand that.

We would like to move north. The Army could give us the opportunity, and a rent allowance to pay for our apartment while I'm serving. They would set me on a career path. I would have the opportunity to surpass the challenges that previously delayed me.

Nothings decided yet.