Tag Archives: life

general posts about my life

The Importance of Emotional Balance to My Writing

For me, this has been a real roller coaster of a year. The sudden los of gainful employment in April sent shockwaves throughout every aspect of my life. When I found myself with loads more unaccounted for time I really thought I was going to get loads more writing completed.

The plan had been that the mornings would be dedicated to job searching (as task made much easier by the internet) and the afternoons would be spent writing. Boy, that plan never worked.

The stress of not having a regular job really took away my ability to concentrate. While I did get some writing done, including I think one of my strongest stories even if the coordinating judge at the Writers of The Future Contest disagrees,  by and large I got very little written. Certainly my novel suffered.

Two months ago I landed a job as a temp at the healthcare giant, Kaiser Permanente. I almost passed up on the job as the offered pay was barely more than the unemployment compensation I was receiving, but I did take the job.  (One reason was that I prefer to work to no and another my belief that having a job makes it easier to land another.)

While I am still a temp, things are looking optimistic that I will transition to a regular full-time employee at Kaiser. This is very good. We’re talking good pay, good benefits, and a union to help protect me for the inconsistencies of poor management.

Currently at Kaiser we are doing a lot of overtime. This is the busiest time of the year for my division. For the last three weeks I have been working 10 hours a day for 5 days a week, and then putting in a half day on Saturday. It would be expected that so much overtime would be an additional drag on my writing, but that would a conclusion at odds with my observations.

I purchased a backpack – I need to walk a mile and a half everyday to get from work – and began taking my MacBook Colossus with me to work. Even dead tired and working like a dog, I am writing every day on my lunches and my breaks. I’m not yet back to thousand words a day, but I will be hitting that goal and exceeding it soon.

It’s not the tiredness; it’s not the hours, it is the emotional stability of having my problems in my rearview mirror that seems to be the singe most important factor.

I must say, it feels good to be back.

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My Sister-in-Law

Monday morning Juanita Evans, a member of my family for many many years passed away.

Juanita came to our family when she and my brother Lonny married. He was taken too soon from us in 1980 in a act of senseless gun violence and now they are reunited. My heart goes out to their two children, my nephew and niece, smart, talented people.

Juanita was a kind and loving woman of deep faith and though her life was one that witnessed many periods of darkness, she never lost her ability to smile or bring a smile to others. She will be missed.

I live on the other side of the continent from my family, and artifact of my time in the United States Navy, but distance does not diminish the bond of family. I hope she find peace, and love in the presence of the God she believed in.

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A real test today

I needed to keep the car today as I had a job interview. After dropping my sweetie-wife off at her job I headed home, fighting enormous hunger pains. I’m trying to be very good about the zero sugar and very little carbs requirements of my new diet and the desire for a McMuffin was nearly irresistible. I decided that more normal breakfast,a very modest thing simply would not do, and stopped off at a supermarket to picked up a small steak so I could have steak and eggs for breakfast. (My favorite breakfast meal.)

I didn’t get the steak but I did get sausage and and made a nice sausage omelet. I managed to shop and get home with giving in to those carbs that were ever so testing my WILL save.

The interview went well and now the waiting begins. You would think that as an aspiring author I would be better at waiting, but I am not.

 

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My brother

Yesterday my brother, Jimmy ‘Ace’ Evans died. He was a good brother and a strong man. Throughout his life he endured many trials that would have sundered other people, including myself.

He fought a war against cancer, but it was not the tumors that took him from us but  pneumonia. During our conversations while he battled the disease and when he conquered it he told me that he had made peace with his mortality. He accepted that life ends with a grace, dignity, and calmness that astounds me and fills my heart with pride. I hope that when my time comes and that terrible news is given to me that I can accept it with half the strength he showed.

He was an artist, captured nature with a camera. Birds were often his subjects and on his facebook page he shared with us some astounding images. He was a poet, a talent I deeply respect as I have no ability to craft poetry. He was a philosophical man and a political activist.

My brother always encouraged and supported my feeble attempt at prose and I will miss him dearly.

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The blind spots left behind by my life

Another thing I discovered from the feedback luncheon was where I have blind spots in character development due to the particular nature of my life. One of the characters in this novel has father issues. His father is driven by legacy and trying to maker sure his son can be the powerful politician the ensure the family’s long term placement in the history book. The son wants to be a military officer, but follows his father directions because no one ever disobeys father.

The guys, and they were all guys except for my sweetie-wife, mentioned that that they expected or wanted see a moment when this character basically tells his father to shove and goes off to follow his life and not the one his father has planned for him. They discussed how they saw this this is an important aspect of establishing your own identity as a man.

The thought had not occurred to me. My own father passed away when I was young, my mother did not remarry, nor did she date, so after Dad died there was no father figure in my own life. I never had to rebel to establish an identity distinctly from my father’s.

The plot element is a good one and I plan to incorporate it into the new revision, but I can’t help but ponder what other blind-spots are waiting to surprise me?

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Not the best week ever, but then agin not the worst

So on Thursday I became one of the unemployed. This is course a stressful time for and my sweetie-wife. However I look around at the finances and I do not see any disaster on the horizon.

I have already filed for unemployment, updated my resume and performed a basic job search. I See plenty of possibilities and currently I remained in a guarded optimistic state.

This does kill plans for worldcon this year as even if I find a new job quickly it will be highly unlikely that I would have the paid time off for the convention.

To console myself I submitted two short stories to markets on Friday and monday, in addition to resumes, I plan to start sending query letter for my novel to agents and editors.

 

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Drugs, Pain, and Sleeplessness

Last night after I got home from the Mysterious Galaxy Writers Support Group meeting, my side was blazing with pain. On Saturday i injured one of the incision site from my surgery and it is letting me know, daily, that I should not do that.

So I had a late night meal to go with my prescription pain killers, and I watched bonus material from the film ZULU while I waited for the drugs to begin working. Twenty-five minutes later I went to bed, my head fuzzy, my pain dulled, and desperately tired. (I had slept poorly the night before.)

Sadly I was unable to fall asleep. Instead I laid there my mind rushing like a swollen river, the banks flooded with images and ideas for new stories. The one that haunts me today is sort of a retelling of the battle of Roark’s Drift (On which ZULU was based) but set in the same fantasy universe as my experimental prose piece, The Haunted Wood. The idea keeps deepening and widening, but it doesn’t have any characters yet, so it is far from being a story. However I can’t rule out that I might attempt a fantasy novel — shocking.

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The ever shifting identity that is self.

I have been doing a thinking lately about the nature of a person personalty and just how much it can change over time. This has been prompted by a short story I will start soon, and one that more ambitious that nearly every other one I have attempted.  The changes that a person evolves through over the their lifespan is at the heart of the conflict of the story, and that has made me look at the changes I have experienced.

I not even talking about the changes that can come about due to sudden and powerful trauma. I know that my personality changed due tot he loss of my father when I was quite young. My shyness is an outgrowth of that trauma, I have no recollection of shyness before that terrible event.

No, I am speaking about the slow, truly evolutionary changes that occur as we live, meet people and change due to those interactions.

Consider a single point, musical tastes. In 1978 I never listen to rock and roll music, my radio station of choice was a country western station, and when that didn’t suit my mood I would listen to pop music. The rock music of the period held no attraction for me, yet while I write this post I am listening to rock music from 1977. Even stranger is just before I sat down I was listening to Bossa Nova jazz, and that is something else that used to have absolutely no interest for me. Yet, Country and Western has nearly disappeared from my pallet, with what little I listen too being those songs of my youth, with all the powerful emotions of adolescence holding it fast to my tastes.

You could not have convinced my younger self he would be listening to this music. He simply would not have believed it. That doesn’t even begin to touch on a whole host of things, politics, religion, sexual attitudes, all these things have changed greatly over the years.

It seems that we are not contiguous individuals, but an ever changing collection of traits and attitudes. What if anything is at the core?

 

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Mini-Review 2: Forks Over Knives

Those who know me know that I am a meat eater. I love a good steak, well cooked chicken, or moist tasty chops, so to find myself watching a film about the advantages of a vegetarian diet was quite surprising.220px-Forks_Over_Knives_movie_poster

The premise of the film is that the Western diet, heavy in animal material, is bad in terms of health outcomes for people, leading to diabetes, heart disease, and cancers, and that a diet based on plants yields better outcomes. To support the premise the filmmakers utilized a number of lines of evidence.Primarily two medical doctors who have been researching this line of thought for years, the doctor’s patient’s as case studies, and large population studies, particularly in the east as diet there has changed from  one based on traditional meals heavy in plants to one more like the west and heavy in meats, and dairy.

Continue reading →

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My poor neglected blog

Life has been so topsy turvy of late that I have failed to do any updates to my personal blog. So here’s a quick update of what’s been happening in my life.

Feb 2, Superbowl Sunday, I took a solo trip to Universal Studios Hollywood.This was a blast. Because it was Superbowl sunday the freeways were clear and attendance at the park was light. I never waited very long for shows or rides and I had a wonderful time. I bought a year long pass and  plan two or three more trip during the next twelve months. Hopefully a few with friends.

Feb 3rd was the beginning of the crisis period. I woke with extremely bad stomach cramps and called in sick to work. But mid-morning I knew I was in serious trouble and through my wife arranged to see a doctor. (At this time I feared food poisoning.) The cramps did not go away and I was unable to eat. The doctor’s officer grew concerned and on Weds ordered me to an emergency room as they had been unable to get a diagnostic test approved. (see there are ALWAYS bureaucrats between you and your doctors, they just aren’t always government ones.)

I was scanned at the E.R. and admitted straight into the hospital for surgery the next day to remove my Gall Bladder; the third organ now removed from my original factory specs. (First being tonsils and second being my appendix.) Because I apparently had a nasty infection with the gallstones,  I was on IV antibiotics for a day and half and spent both weds night and thursday night in the hospital. I was released Friday morning with holes in my torso, pain pills prescribed, and an order for a week of rest.

I’ve been watching a LOT of documentaries on Netflix, and Amazon Prime — god damn this is so much better than cable TV — and trying to daily cut down my use of pain meds. The dosage I am prescribed is 1-2 pills every four to six hours, what I have been maintaining is 1 pill every 4-5 hours and today I tried to go without, but I wasn’t ready for that.

Soon I’ll start posting mini reviews of the Documentaries I have been watching.

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