While “what happens in Frisco STAYS in Frisco” I will share the following sequence of Wednesday night texts from a good friend and colleague of almost five years, unedited:

ME: Did we lose you?
HIM: Jiffy saute g’day HDTV
HIM: No
HIM: Sarah heftier jiggly
HIM: Fuck
HIM: Tree grey hoots
HIM: Fucjir I can’t tyie
ME: Where the HELL are you man??? That looks like a serious good time in progress!!!

I’m not going to lie, “Sarah heftier jiggly” became something of a theme and a mantra for the rest of that night. Was this a person, a place, an event? I won’t tell you the answer, but I will say it’s none of those things and all of them. And maybe the best auto-correct fail I’ve ever been a party to.

Enigmatic tales of late night adventures aside, it was a very productive meeting and it managed to have a bit of a theme. On the flight out for the east coast team we saw the movie “Moneyball” staring Brad Pitt and written by Aaron Sorkin based on a book by financial writer Michael Lewis. It’s the story of Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane trying to change the way the game of baseball is played from the foundation up. Surprisingly, for a movie about baseball, it’s not a “baseball movie.” It’s a business movie. A very VERY good business movie, and if I was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences I’d be voting for Best Picture and Best Actor without a moment’s hesitation.

While I won’t give any of the specific details away, I will share the finer points that a group of consultants in the financial industry took away from a viewing. This was the theme of our regional kickoff session, and I imagine these lessons are going to be very much in my mind as I move forward for the coming year:

1. The goal shouldn’t be to buy players, the goal should be to buy wins. In order to buy wins, you need to buy runs.
2. In order to score a run, we have to get on base. Do we care how we get on base? No, we do not.
3. We get paid to get on first, we do not get paid to get thrown out stealing second.
4. Sometimes we have to learn to play a new position. That’s not hard, it’s INCREDIBLY HARD.
5. They aren’t paying us because of the player we were or the player we could be, they’re paying us for the kind of player we are today.
6. The first guy through the wall always gets kicked in the teeth, always gets bloody. Always.
7. Losing is NEVER fun. We hate losing more than we love winning.
8. No one will remember setting records or great games or even a winning season if you don’t win the last game of the season.
9. How can you not get romantic about the game?

I don’t play baseball, but I do play the business equivalent of a full-contact sport at a professional level. I feel very good about my team this year, and I think there’s a very good chance we’ll win the last game of this season.

The other thing I did in my down time last week, was try to edit the first chapter I posted up in my last two posts. Editing is hard. Tracking your changes and writing up WHY you changed things is BRUTALLY hard.

I’ve gotten about the first third of the first half done. It only took me the better part of four hours. I’m 100% committed to getting this post done, but I recognize it’s going to take longer than I had initially expected. I’m guessing that it’s going to take the rest of the week and I also want to actually continue writing the next chapters too. So, to accomplish that I’ve decided to re-invest the rest of my writing time this week to finishing up the next two chapters and THEN going back and finishing the edits on Chapter One. It’s not how I thought I’d go through it, but I’m afraid of running out of steam if I don’t actually commit to more chapter writing and less poking at the one I already have on paper.

So, expect at least two more chapter posts this week, and hopefully the edit post will go up before (or during) the weekend. One of my “emails but doesn’t comment” readers asked if it was a romance novel like my mom wrote, and the answer is no. There are romantic moments in the first third, but they are counter-balanced by some very unromantic moments, and a theme that is not about how everything works out in the end.

After the third chapter I’ll post the synopsis of the book and the cover letter I stick on it before shipping it off to a slush pile somewhere. As a bit of social experience, I’ll post up the rejection letters and my reactions to them. I have a different perspective on rejection letters than many aspiring writers, and I think actually talking about the nature of rejection and how it may not actually be a personal attack on the author is worth putting into its own post one of these days. I figure I’ll wait until I have a specific example to work from. Shouldn’t take much more than six to nine months after I send it off, which at the rate I write should be just enough time for me to get it written.

[Word Count: 1055]

Stupid.

The jolt from a solar-powered box with a 2500 milliamp battery is basically equivalent to the zip you get from a 9v battery on your tongue times two. The jolt from an AC fence energizer that can power ten miles of fence and runs dedicated off a 20 amp breaker over 12 gauge wire is…stronger. Like, “red scorch mark on your hand” and “knee buckles out from under you” stronger. Let us just say that I didn’t have to test it a second time.

Anyway, the thing I didn’t do over the holidays was write. Anything. At all.

A couple of weeks ago I got a comment that, for a lot of reasons, hit a pretty deep nerve. Explaining why means opening up and sharing something very personal.

As I’ve discussed before, growing up my mom wrote novels. A lot of novels. And won awards. And spoke at conventions. And signed books for hours and hours at signings. And talked to a lot of aspiring writers.

All of those aspiring writers had one thing in common, they honestly and truly believed they could write at a professional level. MANY of them would have my mom read something they had written and ask for advice. My mom was so good at saying positive things and encouraging them to follow their dreams. But there’s a dark side to that happy memory. Of the hundreds of people who asked her for advice, the exact number of people who had any conceivable chance of being published by a paying market was exactly zero. Not a one. Over twenty-five years my mom encountered exactly no-one with even a reasonable grasp of English and the ability to string words into sentences and sentences into something that anyone would willing pay money to read. Nada. Zip. Nil. Goose-Egg. Doughnut. ZERO.

But every single one of them believed they could. They looked at what they’d written and were completely oblivious to the flaws. Something in them said “this is good enough” and went out looking for confirmation.

In the years since, I’ve dabbled in the professional writing industry. I know editors and agents, and I have some pretty good insight into how it all works and I’ve done enough light editing and structure advice for others that I know how to critique, how to revise, how to take what is there and fashion it into something professional. Something people would pay for. I imagine that there are life choices I could have made that would have led me into the production side of the industry as an editor or agent (or at least that side of the industry, those jobs are tough as tough can be and I don’t have the hubris to believe I could have just moseyed in and magically gotten one of the premier jobs in the industry).

I know enough about the slushpile (the place where unsolicited manuscripts go to languish) to know that for every manuscript with the potential to be published that crosses the threshold, at least a thousand piles of dreck masquerading as written words crossed over before it. Piles of dreck that someone honestly thought was the best “synopsis and three” they could put out. Piles of dreck that someone believed in enough to put their name on and send out into the world.

I do not understand this.

Every moment of every day I have an insidious imp of self-doubt sitting on my shoulder and whispering into my ear all the reasons I’m not good enough. My greatest challenge isn’t believing that I’m “the best” or that I’m “good enough” or anything like that…my challenge is just ignoring the imp. I don’t have to believe I’m the best, I just have to believe I’m not as crappy as I’m afraid I am.

“Who would write this?” he says to me. “Who would be stupid enough to publish this where people could read it?”

I stopped answering long ago, but my silence is simply encouragement to him.

“You know you suck. You know it and you prove it every time you try.”

And because I’m afraid of him, I decide that the best way to avoid my fears is to do something else. He can’t taunt me if I don’t try.

Sometimes I do try, and that’s when he gets personal. You see, because he’s just a metaphorical manifestation of my own insecurities, he knows exactly where to hit me.

“You know what she said. She read everything you’ve ever written and then said that you should ‘keep practicing and just follow your dream’…exactly what she said to every other loser that couldn’t write their way out of a wet paper bag.”

And that does me in. Because it’s true. And it kills me.

Every time I read through my archives I hit some point where the writing just doesn’t shine and the taunts from the imp drown out the glow from the words that I’m proud of having written. Deep down I suspect that this will keep me from ever writing in a significant professional capacity.

Now, please don’t think this is some kind of reverse plea for internet affirmation because that’s the most insidious part of it, I don’t believe them. At least, not for long. Not in a significant or lasting way.

The last time I wrote about this, several people chided me for taking my writing so seriously, “it’s just a blog” and “write for yourself” are true and accurate statements; but they’re also just fodder for the imp. “It’s just a blog” can easily be appended with “because you suck” and nothing anyone can do can change that. Not even me.

When I first started blogging there was one thing that anonymity gave me, and that was insulation from the imp. You can’t take your writing personally when no one knows who wrote it. Which is dangerous. Anonymity may free us from self-doubt, but it also eliminates self-restraint and self-censorship, which are tools civilized people created to prevent the collapse of society.

Two weeks ago someone said exactly what I’m afraid of, that half the stuff I write sucks. I’m afraid of it, because deep down I know half of it does. Nominally, this doesn’t matter because no one (and I do mean NO ONE) actually hits it out of the park every time they swing the bat; and I’m smart enough to know that. But it’s fodder for the imp and that just beats me to the ground.

As I’ve tried to work through this over the last few days I’ve been confronted by a quote someone posted on Facebook:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” -Marianne Williamson

I think this is true. I think I’m not afraid of writing crap, I’m afraid of being a good writer who ALSO wrote crap. Really, I’m afraid of not being able to tell the difference. The imp would have no power over me if I didn’t care. And if I didn’t suspect that something, somewhere, deep down really was worth putting out there then I wouldn’t care at all. I’d do tax-automation integrations and drink a beer at night and worry about fantasy football and my XBox Gamerscore and writing would never cross my mind.

I know what I need to do, I need to write more. The more I produce, the more quality stuff comes out. The more quality I can see, the less power the imp has over me. If I can’t do that, then I need to accept that I’m not a writer and turn the imp loose and climb off this existential roller-coaster. Of course, I know I can’t do that. Without an outlet I become intellectually constipated, which makes me irritable and unpleasant to be around.

So I’m going to ramp back up the writing habit for a while, to see if I can get back to a place where writing happens more frequently if not necessarily more consistently. To that end, I’m considering some other changes around here. I’m going to reset the word count down in the bottom right corner and try to crank out about 20k words a month. As a short blog post from me cracks in at 1500 words that works out to about three posts a week. I’m going to try for a Monday-Wednesday-Friday pattern but we’ll see what we can do.

Also, I’m going to actively try to ramp up the fiction writing over at serialstoryteller.com and include those words in the word count as well. That way even if I’m not blogging I’m still giving myself credit for writing, and that’s really what I need to be doing.

My goal for the next few months (before my birthday in April) is to finish my “What I’m Looking For” series and put up at least two short stories on Serial Storyteller. If I can do that and be around 75k words in the word count bucket I’ll be pretty happy with my progress. If I come up short, well, I’ll just have to buy imp-proof earplugs or something.

We’ll all see how it goes.

[Word Count: 1645]

Happy Birthday, and may all your pony/goat/chicken dreams come true this year! If I can keep from blowing away, your fence will be up/moved/”fixed” and your electrical run by the end of the day tomorrow.

Now sit back and enjoy your day!

[EDIT: This was scheduled to go up at midnight, but auto-post failed me horribly. Sorry, it was supposed to be more timely.]

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!

We’re right in the middle of moving seventy-five miles out to Monroe Georgia…but it’s worth it. This is the last move I’ll ever make. I’ve spent the last week working my ass off and NOT getting the packing done. This weekend, the office, the storage room, the kitchen and the dining room will be packed. OS has busted out our bedroom and the kids rooms already, and she’s well on her way to having the tack consolidated and the living room ready.

If I can get my stuff “done” then I get to sit on my vacationing ass and write and play Skyrim. There’s a LOT of incentive to get done before the Moving truck gets here Wednesday morning.

If I don’t post again before the big move (and let’s be honest, I won’t), then I’ll just say “Happy Thanksgiving” and “see you all online from Monroe!”

I have discovered a new passion, and that passion is a combination of soccer, rugby, a few dashes of American style football (the one not generally played, you know, with the foot), a few more dashes of American style basketball (no, I’m not kidding), and several very liberal doses of a game we played in high school called “smear the queer” (apologies for the politically incorrect name). I remember a few years ago there was a sports commercial that implied that US Football players were the roughest-toughest-most manly athletes in the whole world. That, was a LIE.

The men who play Australian Rules Football are, without a doubt, the most bad-ass mofos on planet earth. We’re talking the Seal Team VI of professional athletes. These guys play a more-than-full contact sport wearing only short-shorts, a tight tee-shirt, compression shorts (optional), rubber turf cleats, and a mouthguard (also, strangely optional). No body armor, no thigh pads, no shin guards, and for the love of all that is holy, NO HELMETS! I honestly expect at some point for the testosterone levels to get so high, the players will just strip down greco-roman style and paint their bodies in different colors of woad. Believe me, the current kit doesn’t offer any superior protection over the “warrior aura” of the gladiators and combatants of ancient times.

I’ll give the AFL (that’s the Australian Football League) one thing, they’ve got a very approachable sport. I’m pretty sure I’ve basically worked out the rules after watching less than a half-dozen games; and honestly, who can say that about the US counterpart? I’ll try to describe the general gist of an AFL match from an untrained american perspective, and if any real-life footy fans happen by and want to correct anything here, please drop a comment. I’ll correct as necessary.

Footy is played on an oval playing field approximately 185 meters (202 yards) long at its longest point and 150 meters (165 yards) wide at its widest point. In sheer surface area, that’s pushing up towards the size of FOUR american football fields. The layout looks an awful lot like a cricket pitch, and that may have something to do with the fact that it’s played on cricket pitches. Some of the largest cricket pitches in the world. The Melbourne Cricket Ground (or just the MCG, or “The G”) for example seats something like 120,000 people and seems to be the “home” field for about half of the teams in the AFL.

The field of play is marked out very simply, there is a 50 meter square box in the center of the field that I’m sure has a name, but I haven’t figured it out yet, so we’ll call it “The Lonely Zone” since only four players from each team are allowed in it when it’s in use. At each end of the field are four goal poles, set about six meters apart. The two in the middle are 15 meters tall (about 50 feet) and I think the two on the sides are 10 meters (about 33 feet)…but I’m not quite clear on that one. The base of the poles are wrapped in that foam mat stuff like you see on American goal posts, in what is, as far as I know, the only nod to physical safety sanctioned anywhere – at anytime – by the AFL for its pro league. Fifty meters out from the goals is an arc that is wisely called “The 50 Meter Arc” or “50m line” depending on the on-screen graphics. And there is a six meter square directly in front of the center goal that seems to be called “the land of death” or “the pain box” or “the glory hole” depending on which commentator you’re listening to.

The game is played by two teams of 22 players. Each team has 18 players on the field and 4 more on the “interchange” bench at any time. Player interchange is something I’m still not clear on. I don’t know who or when that’s allowed for, except for a couple of notable exceptions we’ll discuss later, and “breaking” the interchange rule seems to incite harsh words, a free kick to the other team, and some kind of suspension to the sin bin for the offending player. The rulings are arcane and unfathomable, and seem designed expressly to further the capricious mystery that is the AFL Umpire.

Gameplay is divided into four 20 minute periods, and the TV clock counts down and stops for stoppages (injury, out-of-bounds, restarts after a goal) but the players only see a clock on the field that counts UP and does NOT stop for stoppages. So, players have no idea when the train whistles will blow and the period will actually be over. With stoppages, I’d say the average quarter takes about 30+ minutes to play. There are no stoppages long enough for a commercial break, so the action does run for the full time alloted, which is something I like. When it’s on, it’s ON!

I’m not sure how long the break between periods is, but I’ve timed the half-time break to be just a tad longer than the Precambrian ice-age. If there’s one thing that would make the matches move quicker (and I know the AFL is considering these things), not waiting for children who are in Kindergarten when the match goes to half-time to graduate from university before playing the second half might be something to consider. The broadcast of an average AFL game (including pre-game and post-game commentary) comes in at about 3 hours and 50 minutes, with a couple pushing the 4-and-a-half mark. The bright side is that the AFL broadcasts are a lot of fun and the stuff “around” the game is almost as interesting as the kinetic action on the pitch.

It’s Full Contact, at all times. The rules say that you can only tackle “between the knees and the shoulders” and no direct “head on” collisions (this is called “shirt to shirt” which is complete bullshit, because shirts are in contact constantly). There is also some kind of rule about hands to the back, but its implementation is so rare and unpredictable, it’s not really a rule and just more of an excuse to award a free kick and change the direction of play when the whim strikes.

The game itself is relatively easy to follow. The entire sport seems to be based on two guiding principles; first, the oblong ball the sport is played with (which looks like the bastard child of a rugby oval and an american football including the laces) exists for the express purpose of punishing and being punished. No piece of sports equipment has ever been a greater subject of abuse or cause of more human suffering. Second, the entire sport seems to waffle between a Mixed Martial Arts grudgematch and a more traditional team sport as the match progresses. I’ve seen a player back-kick a player from the other team square in the groin so hard the injured player collapsed to the ground and threw up. A free kick was awarded to the kicker for a “hands in the back” violation and the kicked player (with his own puke on his face) was promptly ordered to “stop being a pansy.” By the umpire. I shit you not.

Play is started in a way very similar to a basketball tip-off. A player called the Rucker from each team (who is generally about 6’11″ and built like his day job is portraying a hill giant at the Lord of the Rings theme park in New Zealand) stands inside the center circle. Around him are a couple of players who are called Ruck-Rovers or Rovers or Followers…or something…and then outside the center 50 meter square are the rest of the players on each team just itching to reenact the storming of the Bastille or the invasion of Normandy. The referee then takes the ball, holds it over his head, and then (as though it had committed some kind of unforgivable sin) slams it down on to the ground so hard it bounces up about 30 feet in the air. The two hill gian…uh…ruckers then leap skyward like the were blasted from a cannon, perform at least one round of matrix-like aerial interpersonal combat, and then attempt to punch the ball towards one of the ruck-rovers/rovers/followers who have begun to lay into each other like Spartans and Persians at Thermopylae.

Once the ball ends up in the hands of a player (any player) the full brutality of the game becomes apparent. The player in possession of the ball becomes “marked for death” and the only way to transfer this death sentence is to either punch the ball with a closed fist at another player or else kick the ball. If you kick the ball and it travels more than 15 meters, AND if another player catches it cleanly they have “taken the mark” and are awarded an uncontested transfer of the ball (and it’s death sentence) to someone else. I think the free kick has something to do with honorable death and sacrifice, but those details are lost to the ages. A player attempting to take the mark is at risk for any kind of physical contact except for the already stated verboten tackles and no chopping of the arms during an attempt to catch the ball. There is no concept of offensive pass interference. Particularly impressive marks are referred to as “speckies” and often include the catcher literally climbing the back of some poor defenseman (referred to as a “stepladder” and no, I’m not making that up to be funny) and leaping off of him before catching the ball and plummeting eight to ten feet to the ground. Often landing on his head, back, or ass.

In an attempt to find a better angle to deliver the ball/death sentence to a teammate, a player can run for up to fifteen meters before bouncing the ball on the ground. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to dribble a football at a dead run, but it’s ridiculously hard to do. If you want to really understand the experience, try dribbling a football on a grass field while several 250 lb homicidal track stars run you down with the intent to crush the very life from your bones. There are some fun details to this, if a player is spun 360 degrees without coughing up the ball he’s brutally punished (often by two or three opponents) and the referee will award a free kick to the other team. If multiple players are all in some kind of joint scramble for the ball and two or more of them become locked in an intractable death grip, preventing further progress, the referee will stop play and restart it by again slamming the ball in some kind of sick punishment of the now truly abused piece of equipment.

If the ball goes out-of-bounds because a defensive player effectively prevented his enemy from making a forward progress play, the boundary linesman will stand with is back to the players as a sign of their shame, and then fling the ball overhand in a high arc, and once again giants and mortals will begin to battle it out on the field of honor.

An interesting tactic added to the mix is the concept of shepherding, where a player who does not have the ball will protect a teammate, who is playing the ball, from the enemy by tackling, shoulder charging, mugging, assaulting, or forcibly sodomizing enemy players. Though the camera tastefully cuts away before that final option can be performed; based entirely on the amount of times you see players pulling up their short-shorts after a particularly brutal take down, that seems to be the only logical conclusion one can draw.

The end result of the carnage and combat is the attempt to earn glory and honor through the forcible punting of the ball between the two tall goal posts. This results in a “goal” of six points. If the ball is touched by a player, or touches a goal post, or misses to the left or right but passes through the shorter posts, a “behind” is tallied for one point. Scoring often gets listed as goals.behinds, for example 10.15 for a combined total of 75 points.

I have no idea what the points are good for except determining the final winner of the conflict so that the losers can be summarily executed. Or something. Based on the bloodthirsty and gladiatorial nature of the battle being played out in the round, one could make a reasonable assumption that the sport had its roots in Australia’s “convict” heritage. I’d speculate that it was originally some kind of gladiator game where the victors were allowed to live to fight again, and the weak were winnowed from the pioneering gene pool. But that’s just a guess.

As I said, there are four substitute players on the bench, and the only time I’ve ever seen one come on or off the field was due to an injury. The AFL takes the American idiom “no blood, no foul” to its logical extreme. But, players who are visibly bleeding are required to sub out until such time as the flow can be stanched and they can return to complete their sentence in the games. A player who is felled by a brutal collision or particularly hard landing (or drubbing if the ref wasn’t looking) has few options. If he can leave the field under his own power, he is allowed a substitute. Players rendered dazed or stunned but still mobile are escorted from the field and not allowed to continue due to the unsporting nature of slaying the disabled. Though I’ve not seen it yet, I assume that a player who is conscious but unable to move under his own power is presented by the ref to the assembled crowd for a thumbs-up or thumbs-down decision, as in the Colosseum of ancient Rome. I seems reasonable that a player who did not acquit himself honorably on the field of battle would be summarily fed to the Brisbane Lions (players who were particularly dreadful are likely fed to the Geelong Cats or the Adelaide Crows). Again, I’m just speculating.

The AFL is, to my knowledge, the last great inheritor of the glorious traditions of old. Battle played out for the amusement of the crowd, fought man-to-man and hand-to-hand. The only weapons being a fit body and a sharp mind. If athletes are truly demigods, than the mightiest of them all battle for supremacy upon the hallowed grounds of the southern continent of Oz.

—

While it’s fun to joke and compare to gladiator combat, I’d like to speak seriously for a moment about the AFL and it’s teams and players. The game is actually quite fun to watch, the tackles and hard play do seem to get the blood flowing and the passions high, but I’ve never seen a serious fight. There doesn’t seem to be the hockey-like moments of pent-up rage spilling over. Most of the time there is a LOT of shoving and bumping and chest thumping bravado, but when the whistle blows they are professional sportsmen who behave like sportsmen. As with all things in sports there are exceptions, but those exceptions are certainly not the rule.

The game is quite strategic without being slow or ponderous like American football, and it’s not as randomly kinetic as European Soccer (the other football). While the scrum might look a bit like Rugby, it really doesn’t share much with rugby from an actual gameplay perspective. The ball spends the vast majority of the time in motion, and other than a set kick earned from a mark inside the 50 meter arc, there aren’t really “set plays” to slow down the action.

I often find the reffing abstractly mysterious. But based on the commentators and fan reactions, I’m not alone in that.

If sport is supposed to be the ultimate combination of competition and athletic ability, then for my money I’d say Footy is the pinnacle of that aspiration.

[Word Count: 2705]

Still, a friend of mine pointed out a few days ago that thirty-five is “the age when even the elderly don’t think you’re young anymore.” That kind of hit me.

I’ve spent the last couple of birthday’s a bit depressed or pensive or just sorting stuff out. I’m not really in that place this year. The year I turned 30 my marriage of 11 years fell apart. The year I turned 31 I ended up in the hospital. The year I turned 32 I was unemployed and struggling to find my way forward. The year I turned 33 my daughter moved across the country. And last year I took Sarah back to the airport to fly home after spring break.

Of those years, when I turned 32 (which feels like several blogs and lifetimes ago) I did something I don’t usually do, I made a list of things I expressly wanted to accomplish. I didn’t accomplish some of them because they were essentially abstract and therefore essentially unaccomplishable. But on the other hand, the more concrete ones, like get a job with a specific salary, buy a nice camera, use my passport, scare the shit out of myself…those I did manage to accomplish. In no small part because I wrote them down. I made them concrete. I had something to work towards and compare against.

There are 1827 days until I turn 40.

There are things that I believed would be true about myself before I was 40, things that I feel are now starting to slip away.

What follows is the list of forty things that I want to accomplish before I turn 40:

1. Be selected for and attend Viable Paradise.
2. Have a short story published in an SFWA qualifying publication.
3. Have a novel published by a SFWA qualifying publisher.
4. Join the SFWA.
5. Have a short story published in Electric Velocipede.
6. Have a novel published by TOR Books.
7. Visit the TOR offices in the Flatiron Building in NYC.
8. Meet PNH and TNH in person. Tell them thank you.
9. Meet Catherynne M Valente. Try not to go fanboi.
10. Meet Neil Gaiman in person. Get him to sign my Sandman #1 and Fragile Things.
11. Meet Russel T Davies. Tell him thank you.
12. Write a screenplay for an episode of Doctor Who.
13. Go to a sci-fi/fantasy related convention (ComiCon, DragonCon, etc.)
14. Buy a current generation Mac.
15. Buy a late model-year car/truck.
16. Buy a project car.
17. Buy the tools to fix up a project car.
18. Actually fix up a project car.
19. Take the project car on a serious, multi-day road trip.
20. Buy a motorcycle or officially give up on that long-held dream.
21. Buy a decent acoustic guitar.
22. Learn to play Fields of Gold on the guitar.
23. Learn to play Fragile on the guitar.
24. Learn to play Saint Agnes and the Burning Train on the guitar.
25. Learn to speak French well enough to understand a French film without subtitles.
26. Learn to read French well enough to read Dumas, Casanova, and Voltaire without a French to English dictionary.
27. Learn to speak Italian well enough to understand a Roberto Benigni film without subtitles.
28. Learn to read Italian well enough to read Umberto Eco without an Italian to English dictionary.
29. Visit France.
30. Visit Italy.
31. Buy L-series lenses: Telephoto lens, Wide-Angle lens, Macro lens.
32. Buy a Speedlight, remote, and diffusers.
33. Improve my photography skills.
34. Upgrade my camera to a level appropriate for my improved skills.
35. Run a 5K.
36. Run a Marathon.
37. Run a Triathlon.
38. Take Communion on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter, All-Saints Day, And Christmas in the same year.
39. Spend a school-year with my daughter.
40. Buy a house.

I might not do all of these things before I turn 40, but I’m not going to turn 40 without trying do do all of these things.

[Word Count: 695]

So I do what a good father does, I take pictures, hug her close, tell her again how much I love her and how proud I am of who she is RIGHT NOW because I never want her to worry about who she thinks I want her to be. A few more minutes for me to make sure she knows that I love her right now, just as she is, unconditionally. It’s what a father should do, for a nine-year-old or a nineteen-year-old or a forty-nine-year old…no matter what age, it’s what a father should do.

So we sit for a while, and I capture the moment.

Then they put a green band on her wrist,

And a matching one on her bag.

One final look back after one final hug,

Then down the jetway and safe in her seat.

Once everyone boards they push back the plane,

And I stand and I wait as it taxis away.

Someday, when she is an adult, perhaps a mother to children of her own, I wonder if she will understand how difficult it was to smile when she walked to the waiting attendant, to blow kisses as she waved goodbye, and not to cry when she told me she loved me and that she’d see me next time. Because in the English language, there just isn’t a word.

For once, I’m trying to be realistic about what comes next. In under 24 hours (more like 17) Sarah will walk back down a jetway and board a flight back to her mother. I always try to convince myself that “I’ll be fine” and it won’t really affect me, the practical part of me knows that tomorrow I won’t feel like blogging. At all.

So, I’ve decided to ask my blog-friends for help. When you read this tomorrow (as I assume most of you will), would you please remind me to write more. Write something. Write anything. I always feel better when I do…and I’m gonna need all the kicks in the pants I can get to push me across the chasm between writing nothing and writing something.

I’ve got the genesis of a music-based post largely inspired by finding that picture of my 1974 Van, as well as the next few “What I’m Looking For” lines in various states of done (and by done I mean partial drafts and/or fragments) so I should be able to wrap myself around something.

Or I can just go off on my opinion about substituting “Young Earth Creationism” for science in school curriculum. I’ve got a good sized blog post about that built up after a week with Sarah and “I don’t need to learn that because GodDidIt” being a good enough excuse for a nine-year-old lacking a fundamental understanding of things like heliocentrism, what stars are, the minimal basics of biology, or the fact that atomic particles aren’t imaginary and just made up by scientists who refuse to believe in GodDidIt.

Anyway, I could (and just might) go off on that for quite the spiel but now isn’t the time.

Now is the time to ask for help. Tomorrow will suck, and I need people to remind me to do the things that help me get past the suck that I never remember to do when things suck.

So…please…start reminding me tomorrow. I will deeply appreciate it.

I will say that organizational awards, like any peer award, carry a certain amount of politics. I will also say that there were others in attendance who deserved the award just as much as I did. I will ALSO say that it felt DAMN nice to receive. Oh, and I had absolutely NO idea I was getting it, so that made it a really nice surprise.

Anyway, from now on, when I say “sorry, I was busy with work” I’ll at least have something to look at and know that the people who pay my salary and write my performance reviews recognize my commitment and contributions. And really, that feels by far the best of all.

[Word Count: 235]

In 2009 I racked up 68,000 frequent flyer miles with Star Alliance (United and Continental) and about another 32,000 with Delta/Alaska for about 100k in a year. It was miserable. There isn’t time for much in life when 80% of it’s spent waiting to board a plane, flying on a plane, or travelling from an airport to a hotel.

In 2010 I traveled to Chicago, Columbus, Minneapolis, Chicago, Bentonville (for the better part of 6 weeks on three subsequent round-trips), Dallas, San Francisco/Oakland, Huston…and then no more. In June we moved from Portland to Atlanta and I traveled exactly once since we got here, the first week we were here, for that final trip to Huston. For the last six months I have worked from my home office, and it has been wonderful.

At one point in March I was flying through a connection (in Huston) and realized halfway down a concourse that I had no idea where I was. Not just “where in the airport” but actually “where in the country” based on my unfamiliarity with the layout. It was a shock. Riding down an escalator I found myself asking a fellow business traveler what airport we were in. A dozen people around us laughed the uncomfortable laugh of people who travel too much and barely remember their homes. I do not want to go back to that again. I like waking up at home. I like working from home. The road is great, and travel was a perk for years, but I’m ready to travel less.

While a lot has happened in the last year, this will always be the year that we “moved to the south” in our minds. We left our very beloved farm among the vineyards, sold our chickens and re-homed our goats. That same day in Huston, when I realized I had no idea where I was, was the day my boss’s boss called my cell phone as I sat waiting to board my connecting flight and asked if I’d consider a relocation to Atlanta. Three months later, we were in a Ryder truck moving across the country. Despite some hiccups, it’s been a good thing. There are many things about being here we want to “fix” but overall, I feel very good about Atlanta and Georgia and being on this side of the country.

And flying less. I feel very good about flying less.

So now, in the spirit of other bloggers I follow, here is a recap of what I did in 2010 (all ratings are on a ten point scale):

Books I Read:

• Russell T Davies – Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapters
• Lars Brownworth – Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization
• Robert Strassler – The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories
• Gordon Dahlquist – The Glass Book of the Dream Eaters, Book 1
• John M Ford – The Apocalypse Door
• Johnathan Barnes – The Somnambulist
• Johnathan Barnes – Domino Men
• Jane Austen – Persuasion
• Neil Gaiman – Fragile Things
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – The Land that Time Forgot
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – The People that Time Forgot
• Edgar Rice Burroughs – Out of Time’s Abyss
• Charles Dickens – The Pickwick Papers
• Charles Dickens – Sketches by Boz
• Charles Dickens – Edwin Drood
• Dan Simmons – Drood: A Novel
• Vitruvius – The Ten Books on Architecture [Granger Latin/English Interlinear Edition]
• Moses Maimonides – The Guide for the Perplexed
• William Prescott – History of the Conquest of Mexico c.1843, B&N Library of Essential Reading; 2008 Paperback Edition
• Samuel R Delany – Dhalgren
• M. John Harrison – Virconium
• Gail Carriger – Soulless
• Gail Carriger – Changeless
• Ekaterina Sedia – Alchemy of Stone
• Dante Alighieri – The Inferno, Translation by Robert and Jean Hollander

Movies I Saw – How I Saw It – Rating:

• Sherlock Holmes – Blu-Ray – 8
• Easy Virtue – In-Flight Movie – 9
• Alice in Wonderland – Theater – 7
• When in Rome – Theater – 8
• Kick-Ass – Theater – 8
• (500) Days of Summer – Blu-Ray – 5
• Food Inc. – Dish Network – 8
• The Boys are Back – In-Flight Movie – 8
• Dear John – Redbox – 6
• The Time Traveler’s Wife – Redbox – 7
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid – Theater – 7
• How To Train Your Dragon – Theater – 9
• Iron Man 2 -Theater – 8
• Despicable Me – Theater – 8
• Killers – Redbox – Blu-Ray – 5
• Leap Year – Redbox – 10
• The Bounty Hunter – Redbox – 8
• Letters to Juliette – Redbox – 9
• Clash of the Titans – Redbox Blu-Ray – 6
• Temple Grandin – Redbox – 10
• The Back-Up Plan – Netflix – 5
• Hamlet (BBC w/David Tennant) – Netflix – 10
• Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) – Netflix – 9
• Changeling – Netflix – 8
• Fanny Hill (BBC Miniseries) – Netflix – 10
• August Rush – Netflix – 8
• Did You Hear About the Morgans? – Netflix – 7
• The Blind Side – Netflix – 8
• New In Town – Netflix – 7
• G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra – Netflix – 8
• Young Sherlock Holmes – Netflix – 10
• Firefox – Netflix – 10
• The Phantom of the Opera – Netflix – 6
• Chicago – Netflix – 9
• Nine – Netflix – 5
• The Governess – Netflix – 9
• The Duchess – Netflix – 7
• X-Men – Netflix – 8
• Mama Mia! – Netflix – 8
• In the Name of the Rose – Netflix – 10
• Prince of Persia – Redbox Blu-Ray – 10
• The Last Airbender – Redbox Blu-Ray – 6
• X-2 – DVD – 8
• Sweeny Todd – Netflix – 6
• A Shot in the Dark – Netflix – 7
• 84 Charring Cross Road – Netflix – 11

Games I Played – Platform – Rating:

• Mass Effect 2 – Xbox 360 – 10
• Crystal Defenders – iPhone – 8
• Brutal Legend – Xbox 360 – 6
• Dragon Age: Awakening – Xbox 360 – 8
• Bioshock 2 – Xbox 360 – 9
• Limbo – Xbox 360 Live – 9
• Braid – Xbox 360 Live – 8
• Dragon Warrior VIII – DS – 8
• Fighting Fantasy – DS – 5
• Angry Birds – iPhone – 10
• Cut the Rope – iPhone – 9
• Halo: Reach – Xbox 360 – 10
• Halo 3: ODST – Xbox 360 – 9
• The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition – iPhone – 8
• Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge Special Edition – iPhone – 8
• Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition – Xbox 360 – 10
• Minecraft – PC – 20
• Infinity Blade – iPhone – 8
• Dungeon Hunter 2 – iPhone – 8
• Robot Unicorn Attack! – iPhone – LOL

Goals for 2011:

One year from now, you will wish you had started today.

-Elenore’s Trousers Twitter Re-Tweet

I know that resolutions don’t tend to work out for me.  I make them with the mental equivalent of crossing my fingers because I know that sixty days from now life will be so different from life today that resolving to do something is essentially an unpredictable crap-shoot.  So I will not “resolve” to do things, I will simply put out to the universe the following desires and hope that the Law of Attraction (which I don’t “really” believe in as anything more powerful than the placebo effect) will convince me that some of these things might be improved over last year.

Write More
Yeah, yeah; this is a bit of an old saw for me at this point. I get that. But I’d like to get better about this now that my time on the road is greatly diminished. Blog more, write more fiction, comment more on the blogs I read, etc.

Draw More
I realized late last year that I had stopped drawing out of fear. I was more afraid that I would discover how bad things had become than I was of the actual limitations I face. That’s just stupid. The other day I saw Don Kenn’s Post-it-Note gallery, and I was in awe. I love this SO MUCH it hurts. The guy just draws on what he has when he has almost nothing at hand to work with. I have about $5k in professional art supplies sitting in a corner of my office that I haven’t actually used in half a decade. I just schlep it from place to place, house to house, pretending that someday I’ll magically be better and use it again.

This year I want to use it, limitations and all, and let the results fall where they may. Create for creation’s sake, and not refuse to try because perfection isn’t guaranteed. I forgot that art isn’t about making it perfect, it’s about making the mistakes beautiful. I just want to make a tiny bit of beauty again.

Photograph More
I have a camera that I love, some nice glass, and a bag to carry it in. I have reasonable Photoshop skills and I know how to get the most out of my photos when I try.

Again, I just haven’t bothered. Some of this was depression after leaving Oregon, but for the most part it’s just sitting beside a bookshelf waiting to be used. I want to have a collection of photos at the end of the year that I can actually look back on and pick from. I’ll blog a few of the best as time goes by. I won’t turn this into a photoblog by any means, but pictures always make a blog post better.

Read More
I read quite a bit in 2010, but I’d like to be more consistant. A lot of my reading went in chunks depending on my travel schedule. The one good thing about all that travel was all the reading I did. The last half of the year slowed down considerably, and I want to reverse that trend as this year starts. I’m leading off with “The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo” as it was a Christmas gift, and I already have a large queue to work through, which makes me very happy.

Eat Better and Exercise more
Last year I wanted to lose a ton of weight and run a triathlon. Which might have been doable if we hadn’t uprooted our lives. My goals this year are a bit simpler. I want to exercise more (running is my prefered exercise, but just more of anything would be a good start) and I want to eat better.

Eating better is actually more nebulous for us. I’ve started to feel pretty strongly about moving away from a preservative filled, over processed, globally produced diet and more towards a natural semi-locovore diet. I’m not exactly on a high road here, I still eat danish butter cookies and drink coffee from columbia; but my coffee is fair trade and preservative free and when I cook I try to use the entire animal and get it local. I am trying to move towards more natural ingredients and experimenting with more types of food.

Oregon Sunshine and I have decided to start a blog specific to our culinary adventures. It’s up, but we have almost no content on it yet. We’ll be posting recipies, photos, and our reviews of how it tastes and how cost effective it is to eat more local and less processed.

Wear My Contacts More
I can actually hear the collective “what???” from the five of you that read this…so let me explain. I have slightly different perscriptions for my glasses and my contacts. I notice that I have fewer headaches when I wear my contact, and I feel better about my appearance. I have nothing against my glasses, they make me look professorial and bookish and whatnot, but I like the look of my face without them on just a little bit better. Not wearing my contacts is essentially pure laziness. It’s just “that thing” that I never bother to do. I’d like to get better about putting in my eyes instead of just putting them on.

The more things change the more…no, that’s not it…

The more things stay the same, the more likely it is that a major change is about to sneak up and whack you in the back of the head.

-Me, and you can quote me on it.

What amazes me about life, is that I know that I have NO IDEA what will happen in the next twelve months. I might want to accomplish or change a lot of things, but I know that the only thing I’m resolved to do is roll with what life throws at us. It’s what we did last year, because change is the one thing that never seems to go away.

[Word Count: 1900]