Tag Archives: Introspective

(Insert Obligatory Post About New Year’s Goals Here)

Karen and I were driving home from our weekend grocery shopping expedition on Saturday evening when we decided to stop by a restaurant for dinner. We arrived to find the restaurant closed at around 5:00 p.m. on a Saturday.


Why? That’s strange! 


Then, realization dawned.

It’s New Year’s Eve!


Sadly, that epiphany has escaped  me by Saturday evening. I had an engagement mixing audio early on Sunday, and was planning to be in bed by 10:00 p.m. A quick perusal of Twitter left me wondering what the #NYE hashtag was supposed to indicate, until I read someone’s tweet that actually mentioned New Year’s Eve.

Oh! Realization dawned again, somewhat begrudgingly due to the fact that it had to show up twice. It’s New Year’s Eve! 


And, for the first time that I can remember in recent years, I was sound asleep some time before midnight. Ah, parenthood.

While the whole Holiday season felt at best delayed, and at worst anti-climactic this year, I truly did not recognize that Saturday night was the conclusion of 2011. And, Sunday did not feel like the beginning of 2012. Had I at least watched the ball drop, I would have had a marker, perhaps. Instead, I was completely adrift, floating through the transition from one year to the next nearly unwittingly. I haven’t been careless of any thought for 2012, though, so, along the lines of what is apparently a bit of an obligatory post in the blogging circles I frequent, here are some of my hopes and goals for 2012.

1. Finish a complete draft of my first novel. It’s a near-future, dystopian speculative fiction novel, and I finished Part I in September. That leaves Part II (about 150 pages or so) to go before I begin some serious editing (during which I will follow a process).
2. Change careers for my day job.
3. Maybe even make some plans for a PhD? I have a promising lead, but my new role as father to my beautiful daughter complicates this significantly. Hmmm…
4. Become less task-focused and more focused on the things that matter, primarily my family, friends, and faith (this goal sort of flies in the face of the first three).
5. Relax (this also flies in the face of the first three…I’m contradictory right now).
6. Read more.
7. Write more. And publish something, because its been a few months, now, and I miss it.

What are your goals for the new year? Here’s to hoping that 2012 greets you with much opportunity, happiness, and dreams come true.

Image attribution: Creativity103 under Creative Commons.

Decompression?

Mondays are the worst for it. That feeling that, by 9:00 p.m., I’m screeching to a halt with the remains of the various clutter that was in the moving vehicle of my day falling on the floor around me as I realize that, much to my chagrin, I have to pick it all up and make some neatness out of this before retiring for the night.

Those close to me say I’m too tense. Its a valid criticism.

As much as I make concerted efforts to slow down, to incorporate contemplation into my lifestyle, to limit the amount of media intake I experience and carefully balance productivity, the truth is that I still remain tense. Life isn’t as bad as before I stopped listening to the “writers must write every day” gospel, but still…I’m tense. I realize it the most on weeks like this, when I return from a holiday that was relaxing and that permitted me to unwind from all of the obligations and schedules and stressors of the average week and enjoy my family, a good book, and a few good movies. Only to return and be launched right back into Monday.

Mondays are the worst for it.

I made a reference this week to how I needed to get moving on a book that I started over the weekend, because it is my bookclub’s choice for November, and so I’m on a deadline to finish it by Wednesday. Karen responded that the great thing about books is that you pick them up and put them down as you have time. I insisted that I have a deadline. (And, besides, I find this a bit hypocritical of someone who read like half a novel in a single sitting on Sunday, to tell the truth. Grumble grumble grumble).

Now, I haven’t always been like this. In fact, its come and gone in phases around the academic cycles of my life. During my undergrad years, when I juggled two majors and major design work in every show my theatre department staged, sleep was a luxury that occurred on occasion. Then, once I entered the professional world, life became less stressful. I worked my nine-to-five, and returned home to my personal life, which was largely fun and un-rushed. Then came grad school, and I was plunged back into the world of homework and research, but at a level of intensity that I had never before experienced (it was my bright idea to pursue my master’s degree full-time). All the while maintaining employment and working as a teaching assistant in order to go to school for next-to-free. I became stressed. I adopted coping skills of extremely disciplined work schedules that involved almost no relaxation time in order to make good grades and still make a living. I had very little personal life. I always had a book by my bedside that was a class assignment, another in my bag, and a paper on my laptop.

Oh, what I wouldn’t have given to have had e-reader technology a couple of years early.

In any case, my point is that I became very, very driven. I couldn’t permit myself to relax if I was to keep that schedule. In retrospect, I should have altered the schedule, but there you have it. Three years of almost no relaxation. The problem is that I haven’t been able to let go of it this time. I haven’t learned to relax, unless I’m on holiday or vacation. I consider every book I’m reading to have a deadline, and I’m stressed if I haven’t reached a designated chapter by the end of the day. Or if I haven’t reached a word-count on a writing project by the same time. Or if I haven’t made it through my to-do list.

The problem is that I think I’m missing a lot of life by keeping all of my self-imposed deadlines.

So, I need to relax. I think we all need to relax. I’m glad that the Advent season sort of builds in time for us to do just that, and, as we’re nearing the time for New Year’s resolutions to occur, I’m going to toss mine out now. I’m going to relax. Really, I am. Learning to relax is now on a list, with a deadline, color-coded and prioritized.

Wait…that may not work…  

Photo Attribution: Kimmo Palosaari 

To Twist, or not to Twist?

I wasn’t planning on expanding on my last post, but I just found myself inspired.

When I say inspired, I’m talking about my work in progress, which is a science fiction novel. I met my self-imposed deadline, and finished Part I just before the new addition to the family arrived, working under the assumption that I would only have to time to edit for about a month after she was born, if I had time to do that. So far, I’ve squeezed out about an hour to tackle some editing, only to discover just how enormously monumental a task this is going to be.

When I say “rough draft,” I didn’t realize just how rough it is.

Tonight, though, I was finishing playing catch-up on Haven, which I blogged about at the beginning of the week. This season has ended with some excellent plot twists that I just didn’t see coming. I respect the writing a great deal, and I’m very much anticipating next season (we had to wait for season 2 after a cliffhanger, and they’re using the same approach between seasons 2 and 3).

I remember these sorts of plot twists in Heroes, as well…back in its first two seasons when it was still an excellent program. Unfortunately, it didn’t survive the writer’s strike, but the show was known for outstanding and inventive teasers and plot twists that kept you hooked from week to week. In that way, it left me in mind of the comic books to which it paid homage.

And, since those comic books inform my own work in progress, I’m wondering if that specific type of foreshadowing and twisting is even possible outside of a serial. That is, since I’m writing a novel, I wonder if its possible to include that in a novel’s format? Certainly, there are writers of various genres that have reputations for keeping the reader guessing as to what’s really going on. Yet, when I think of the great writers of speculative fiction…the Asimovs and Henleins…I don’t really see these types of plot twists in their work.

Not that I’m thinking that I could even possibly be at the level of those writers. I’m just inspired with these sorts of surprises in story arcs, and I’m left wanting to re-visit the ideas that I formulated for the second half of my work in progress. My concern with this project from the beginning has been that the plot is interesting, but not gripping. I’m inspired to explore the possibility of twisting the plot around a bit. Yet, I don’t want to impose something onto the story that doesn’t belong there. That is, I don’t want to try to make it something its not, but I don’t want to hold it back from reaching its potential, either.

Decisions, decisions. And that, of course, is assuming I have to time to explore any of this any time soon as I’m busy exploring my new role as “daddy.” Here’s to the weekend!

Boo!

Every now and then, I find myself right in the middle of a trend that I always vowed to avoid, and am amazed at myself. “How did that happen?”, I think to myself. Its not always a bad thing…typically pretty innocent, to be honest, and often, in the interest of being genuine about life, I just sort of roll with it.

Actually, “trend” isn’t really the right word choice there, because that brings to mind fashionable clothes and colloquialisms that could invoke images of me speaking vacuously and parading tight jeans down a catwalk (actually, if it brings that to mind, I’m sorry. So, so sorry). I guess “finding myself interested in something popular that didn’t interest me before” might be the better phrase, but it just seemed too wordy.

In any case, I’ve always avoided horror movies and slasher films. They’ve never interested me. And they still don’t. Its just that I typically avoided their close cousin, suspense, as well.  Ironically, I’ve always been heavily drawn to dystopian literature, specifically dystopian science fiction. I like the “this is what’s going to go wrong if we keep going the way we’re going” warnings that these stories present. I like a good action film as well as the next guy, as long as its not blowing things up for the sake of blowing things up. But suspense I’ve typically stayed away from, with only occasional exceptions in the past.

Lately, though, without realizing it, I realize that I’m into suspenseful tales. I first noticed it while watching  Dr. Who. Karen comments on random episodes that she doesn’t want to watch them because they look too scary. When I watch them without her, I realize that there is a suspenseful element to them…the sort of “jump because something just popped out of the closet” suspense. No violence, no bloodshed, just real suspense of the sort you would find in a good children’s tale.

Similarly (because Karen didn’t want to watch an episode), I’ve discovered the same thing about Haven. If you’re not familiar with Haven, its one of the more original concepts that the SyFy network has produced lately, and an unlikely addiction for me. The gorgeous location shots are enough to bring you back for each episode (the story is set in Maine, and filmed in Nova Scotia), and the plot is based on the works of Stephen King in very original ways. I’m not a Stephen King fan, and I’ve only ever seen one of his films that I can recall (and didn’t finish that one). Like I said, its just not my genre. I’ve never read any of King’s work, either. If I had, I would probably thrive on the hidden references that are sprinkled through the show that link back to King’s work and, as I understand it, thrill his fans. Still, Haven isn’t frightening or anything close to the horror genre. Its good science fiction, just dark and spooky enough to pique my interest from week to week.

I’m not sure why I’m drawn involuntarily to suspense and spookiness of late. It hasn’t shown up in my writing, at least not that I’m aware of, but I’ve noticed it popping up more and more in the things I enjoy watching since Karen has pointed this out to me. Its even popped up in recent reading choices. I’m interested to see where this goes in my story interests in the future.

Are you into scary? If so, I want to hear to hear about it…

Photo Attribution: The Intrepid Traveler

Looking Different

There are these occasional moments in life that are simply and absolutely too surreal to ever just forget. They are the moments that are inscribed onto the parchment of our memories in permanent ink in the instant that they happen. You’ll never lose them, at least not normally, and you know that. Some of them are events that were momentous or tragic, and unexpected…you know, the ones to which you can immediately answer the question, “where were you when (fill in the blank)?” Others are things that you knew were coming, and that you were anticipating, but that you had no clue how they would cause your entire life to go sideways. As much as you sort of knew that you would never be able to wrap your brain around the rest of your life afterward, you just didn’t know to what extent that you wouldn’t be able to do so, or how little, in that instant, you would care that you couldn’t.

When Karen called me at my day job nine months ago as she was leaving her doctor’s office and told me we were expecting, something happened that rarely happens with me. I was speechless. I was, in fact, stupid for several minutes, unable to do basic tasks like talk on the phone with any sort of proficiency. I remember driving home that afternoon, and thinking that life literally looked different to me. As strange as it sounds, the vehicles in traffic around me looked differently, the people around me as well. And here any skills I have as a writer fail me, because I couldn’t describe how they looked different, only that they did.

Last Wednesday, after a long and arduous labor, I was sitting at Karen’s side, able only to see her face among all of the accoutrements of the operating room as a C-section was performed to deliver our little girl.  I’ve jokingly told some friends since that night that, up until then, our daughter had sort of existed only in theory in my mind. That is, all the business and painstaking care of preparing for her arrival had busied our schedules, brought our friends rallying, and taxed our bank account, but, not only have I never had a child before, but neither have I spent any significant time around them in my life.  Not only did I not know what to expect, but I didn’t even a referent for what this could be like, outside of the stories of others.

The cry came out of the blue that night, piercing the room while yet being melodious, and I saw my tiny little girl for the first time. I’ve experienced my share of moments in which I felt the Divine reach into my daily life, and certainly that was one of them. I was exhausted, with no more than three hours of sleep out of the last twenty four, and had honestly become emotionally flattened until that moment. Then, all at once, all of those months spent talking to my Karen’s stomach paid off, because my daughter knew my voice! Due to some complications, I went with our daughter for her physical, and stayed with her for the nearly three hours of recovery until Karen could join us. In that period of time, she came to trust my voice, to calm when she heard my voice, to focus her wide and inquisitive eyes on her daddy, to orient immediately to the sound of my voice. Since then, when no one else can console her, I can. As overwhelmed and maddening and stressful as the last few days have been, as poorly as I have coped with the chaos that has descended on the household despite my best attempts to curtail it, the protective instinct that I have for my daughter is at times overwhelming. I have had, and continue to have, moments in which I’m irrevocably convinced of my own ineptitude, as well as the knowledge that I cannot possibly continue this for another day. Yet, I know her face, I can discern her cries, I let her grasp my  finger in her tiny hand, and I get to know her better daily.

For the rest of my life, I will be getting to know her. She isn’t just a theory anymore.

I don’t think I have to describe a faith metaphor about this…I think you can get there from here. I just know that while I knew my life would never be the same upon returning from the hospital as it had been when I left for it, I didn’t have any way of predicting that it would be this different. And, if I thought that everything looked different on the day I found out, that pales compared to the way things look today in a such an extreme as to be nonsensical.

I have a daughter. I’m a father. I’m not just married now, but I have a family of my own. There’s so much that goes with that, that I can’t even begin to unpack it yet. And I’m not sure that I ever will.

And, somehow, I’m beginning to be okay with that.