Spending Time

Spending time is an interesting expression. We use it so much that we don't necessarily think about what it really means. Rish once told a story on the show about how his rich uncle would pay him $5...or maybe it was $10...to wash his car for him. And Rish wondered why he wouldn't save that money and wash the car himself. His uncle's reply was, "Someday, when you get old enough, you'll find that your time can be more valuable than your money." Now, if you're not someone's rich uncle, this could be complete crap. When you're poor, and you don't have money for anything, people say things like this and it's just a slap in your face. But in America, in all the first-world countries out there really, it's most often true. We have wealthy lifestyles, and opportunities to make money that people in poorer, third-world countries do not have. But no matter where you live, you never have opportunities to extend your life, or earn back hours from your life that you have wasted.

Last week, my computer's hard drive crashed. These days, you can often get a lot of your data back when you have a crash like that. In my case, however, that was not happening. The guys at the computer repair shop couldn't retrieve one byte. So all the stuff that I had stored on my drive was gone. I've been trying to mentally catalog what it is that I've lost. For years, I've been pretty anal about backing up my data. I have a large number of DVDs and CDs with collections of my photos, MP3s, short stories and journals, and so forth. So the vast majority of my irreplaceable files remain safe and secure.

In my mental cataloging, though, I keep recalling things that I've spent a lot of time on in the past few years that are now gone. For example, last year I actually went through my entire music collection and labeled each song with the year that it was released. That took me hours of searching on Wikipedia and the like. And now it's all gone. When I think about re-doing that, the F-word comes to mind quickly and often. There's no way I'm wasting, yes wasting, my time on that again. And that's not the only thing I've wasted my time on over the last few years. Like wasting money, wasting time is a really stupid thing to do. At least with money, you can earn it back. With time, you'll never see it again. No matter what you do, it ain't coming back.

I have one life to live, and I don't want to find myself on my deathbed with nothing to show for my life but the most well organized MP3 collection around. So, hopefully I can keep this lesson in mind the next time I'm tempted to spend the evening wasting my time away surfing the net.

On Friday, after writing on a story a fair amount during down times in my day, my wife fell asleep early. She needed to work early in the morning anyway, so I couldn't complain...much. Here I was on a Friday night with nothing to do. Normally when this happens, I waste the night away surfing the net. But with my recent goals in mind, instead I sat down, and started plugging away on my story. By the time I was ready to hit the sack myself, I managed to put in another 860 words.

I am now at 3621 words. I originally thought the story would top off at 4000 words. It looks more like 5000 now, but it's getting close. And when I finish. I'm going to write me another. Because I would be proud to find myself on my deathbed with a lot of good stories to show for my life.

You Gotta Have Faith

Over the last little while I've done my fair share of whining about how hard the world is. I've blubbered about my computer breaking down, my car breaking, getting a speeding ticket and so forth, and having all those things happen one after another after another.

Then, this morning, I go out to my car, load all the kids in, and start for school. Halfway down the street, I realize that something is not right. The car seems to be driving strangely, or maybe the road is extra rough. I pull over, hop out and look, and my rear tire has gone flat on me. I got in the car and drove away without even noticing it.

It's times like these, with everything else dog-piling on, when I feel like I have to raise my fist and shout, "I defy you stars," because it seems as though the stars are all aligned, and they are aligned against me. Can there really possibly be another thing? At a certain point it starts to feel like the world just wants to mercilessly crush any spirit or life out of me.

Well, I got out of my car, and got into the trunk. A few years ago, my wife's parents gave us a portable air compressor. I hooked it up to my tire and started it up. It takes a while, but with the help of this device, I'd be able to get to the tire shop without needing a tow.

While I'm standing there, waiting for my tire to pump up, cars are passing me left and right. I'm at the entrance point to my neighborhood, and school starts in about five minutes, so a lot of people are running their kids to class. I'm hoping I can still manage to get them there reasonably close to on time and then maybe...well, no, it's not likely that I'll make it to work on time, but they'll be understanding I'm sure, so I'm not too worried. I'm mostly focused on the whole one-thing-after-another that my life is like right now.

Suddenly, one of those cars that is rushing past me taking kids to school stops. The woman inside, who I don't know, asks, "Do you need some help?"

I'll be mobile again in a few minutes, and I don't think that a woman with a mini-van full of kids is really likely to be able to do anything for me, so I say, "Thanks, but I think I'll be alright."

"Do you want me to take your kids to school for you?"

I hadn't considered this. Usually, I'm as paranoid as can be about letting my kids anywhere near strangers, and even people I know for that matter. It's hard to have kids in a world where no one can be trusted and your neighbor might be a complete psycho, but I do my best to protect them. But this is a woman in a car that is literally spilling over with kids (no not literally, that's not right. I hate when people do that, "I was so embarrassed I died, literally!" So, you're saying you literally died? Do you know what literally means? What's the word I want, figuratively maybe? Just pretend I didn't say literally at all. Anyway, aside over) This woman is in a car that is virtually spilling over with kids. I find it unlikely that she's the child murdering type. My son, while getting into the car, says hi to one of the other children, which eases my fears a little more. These kids, at least, are not strangers to him. And off my kids go to school.

I stand there for a few minutes longer, as the air compressor continues to fill my tire back up, and another person stops to ask if I need any help. I can't help but smile. It seemed to me that the days of stopping to help a stranger on the side of the road were gone, but apparently, human kindness and decency can transcend all the fears that are fed to us on a daily basis.

Once the tire is filled enough, I head to the tire shop. Inside, they tell me they'll get right on it and get me shipshape and seaworthy in no time. Hmm, maybe a bad metaphor, but you get the idea. I call into work and tell them I'll be late, and they are understanding, as I expected, but it's still nice.

After reading an article or two in old Sports Illustrated magazines (did you know the Saints won the NFC Championship? Who'd have ever thought that was possible?), the woman tells me my car is ready. She says, "We got your tire all fixed up. There was a nail in it, but the sidewall wasn't damaged." Then, out of a clear blue sky she says words I never thought I'd hear in a mechanic's shop. She doesn't say, "While we were changing your oil we noticed that your carburetor is shot, your radiator is completely rusted out, your brakes are going bad, your flux capacitor isn't fluxing, and your rack and pinion steering is out of fluid, all that's going to cost you around $2,500." That's what I usually get at the mechanic's shop, but today it was utterly different.

The woman hands me the key and says, "We won't charge you anything for it, just come and see us again next time you need something."

My mind is blown. I'm not sure how to respond, really. "Okay," I say weakly. Now, I realize that it's a bit of an advertisement or something. If they'd charged me, it would have only been something like $15, so they weren't going broke over it, and they've probably earned hundreds of dollars of business from me in the future. So it wasn't pure goodwill she was showing me, but after the time I've had recently, it felt like it. It was as if the clouds parted, and God winked at me and said, "I still love you; I was just joking with you before." Those stars that had aligned against me had been dashed aside, and my faith in the world, in people, in the universe in general had all been restored.

Things won't always be bad. Sometimes they'll be good, and other times they'll be bad. Sometimes it'll feel like more than I can handle, but it's not. And sometimes, I'll realize that, despite how sorry for myself I feel, it could be worse, and I should be grateful that it's not. Today I saw a news story about a family whose child died of swine flu last fall, and then, a month later, their house burned down. It puts my car troubles and computer troubles in a different perspective. What the hell does it matter that I lost some data from my hard drive compared to a person who lost a child. I am doing very well, because my kids and my wife are doing very well. That is something that really matters.

I'll talk a little more about some lessons I've learned in the last few days in a later post. I've already gone on too long. But know that I am happy and content. Life is good, and I'm happy to be living it.

So Yesterday

It wasn't too long ago that the world (or at least a small portion of the world) was focused on Hollywood, and their orgy of self-congratulation, the Oscars. In my opinion, the worst part of the Oscars is the pre-show red carpet bullsh*t. Every year we get to see the stars who are only at the Oscars because they will be presenting some retrospective feature not because their body of work merits their appearance at the show. The question that must be asked of each of these worthless stars and starlets is, "Who are you wearing?" (The question kind of creeps me out, because they say, "who," not "whose design," or "whose dress," or anything sensible like that. I can just imagine these women wearing their designer skinned and draped over their neck like women used to wear furs in the 1910s and 20s, with the animals head still attached and stuffed like a hunting trophy). The obsession with clothes and fashion is simply something I don't care about at all.

Therefore, Scott Westerfeld's So Yesterday was not the book for me. He's written steampunk novels, he's written novels about vampires (I'll be reviewing the vampire one coming soon), and I could easily get behind those books, but this one is about the ever-elusive and ever-bullsh*t quality of being cool--wearing the right clothes in innovative ways and so forth. I don't care. I could barely be asked to care when I was in high school, when most kids obsessively worry about that crap. Now, with years of hindsight to look back on high school with, I sure as hell am not going to worry about that crap. So, like I said, the book was not for me. I don't fit into the proper target audience.

That being said, Scott Westerfeld, however, is a bang-up writer. The book, despite being about things I couldn't give the slightest crap about, was engaging enough to keep me reading. There were dozens of clever things he did in the writing of the novel as well to keep me smiling and paying attention. For example, he purposefully left all brand names out, but he would describe the brand in a way that would tell you what the name was all the same. For example, when describing Nike, he eschews their name but says, "They were a certain athletic shoe company named after a certain Greek god." There were many more that were even more entertaining. It was a fun game sprinkled throughout the book to identify the brands (which included TV and movie franchises as well) that he was speaking of.

I look forward to reading more Scott Westerfeld in the future, because I know he's written several books to which I would be in the target audience. I just couldn't recommend So Yesterday to you, unless perhaps you watch fashion shows on TV instead of reality shows or narrative shows (they do still do narrative shows on TV somewhere right? Some obscure cable channel or something?) or the red carpet is your favorite part of Oscar night. If that's the case, then this might be exactly right for you.

Friday Progress

Just a quick update on my Friday progress.

Another 650 some odd words today. It's coming along. It may run longer than 4,000, but what else is new?

I Wasn't Just Blowing Smoke...Like I Usually Am

So, after being so inspired by Mr. Tobias Buckell the other day. I used any free time I could scrounge to do a little writing. It was a little difficult, because I had to stop in the middle of some dialogue, but I still managed to get 500 more words written on the short story I've been working on. I'm calling it The Tenth Album. It may not be great, we'll see, but I'm moving forward, getting practice and going somewhere.

Here's a little word count meter thing that I found online and am going to post each day. I'm expecting the story to go 4,000 words, so I'm halfway there already.

I need to submit some stories, though, as well, if I'm going to get my 100 rejection slips by the end of the year...hmmm, maybe I could submit my story Black Angel to see what some folks will say. That's a story that I'm happy with, and done with, never to be revised again. I think I'll try Strange Horizons first. Off we go!

Inspiring

I couldn't sleep last night. I was reading Tobias Buckell's It's All Just A Draft, a how-to-write guide that he has been serializing on his website. There's only something like twenty-five or thirty pages available to read so far, so I read it all in one sitting. When I was done, it was almost 1:00 am, but I couldn't sleep. My mind was buzzing with excitement. The stuff he'd written about really resonated with me and my quest to be a writer. Let me blather on about some of the things I especially liked.

1. Buckell says that for someone to become a master of any skill, be it a doctor, lawyer, writer, racecar driver, whatever, it takes approximately 10,000 hours. He also mentions that a writer will write approximately a million words of crap before he gets good. In other words, you got to write and write a lot, to be a good writer. Something I really need to work on. I've written perhaps 100,000 words of crap in my day. So, I've got a lot to go. The thing about this, is that it made me feel a little less worried about how my stories turn out. I'm a little afraid to write my ideas, because I feel like they might just suck massively. After reading Buckell's words, however, I feel like that should be expected. There's going to be plenty of massively sucky things I write. Even ideas that I've cherished in my mind for years will probably suck. But at least they'll be somewhere other than an unused drawer in the back of my mind.

2. He talked about how he used every spare minute growing up to write. He wrote his million words while sitting through boring lectures in high school and college. It's too late for me to do that, but I sit through my share of boring events. I am now determined to use that time for good (or evil...depending on your point of view).

3. He talked about goals. Writers often make a goal to be published by a certain time, and then get really frustrated and bitter when it doesn't happen. The problem is, no matter what you do, you can't make an editor publish your story. It's just not up to you. You can do your best, but a million different things can stand in the way of that happening. So you have to make a goal that depends entirely on you. His goal was to get 100 rejection letters a year. That means submitting a lot and writing a lot. I'm going to make that my goal. I'm starting a little late in the year, but I think I can still manage.

I'll report on each rejection. You guys can watch my tally grow as the year goes on. We'll see what I can manage. I think I need to make a goal as to how many stories I will write in a year too. But I'm going to have to think on that. I'll get back to you.

I want to really encourage everyone who harbors that desire to write to go over to Tobias Buckell's site, and read that stuff. He's adding to it all the time too, so there's likely to be more fun to come, and many more inspiring insights.

The Stopgap

So, while we try to figure out what to do with my ailing iMac (do we take it in to see what the repair guys say? replace it with a used one? Give up and go PC?), we picked up this little Compaq laptop computer.It was cheap (relatively), so now at least we have internet access at home and so forth. My wife has gone a little gaga for this thing though. She forced me to run out to the open-late Walmart to buy a wireless router. She just can't wait another minuter for "her" computer to do what it is designed for. She wants to be able to sit in her bed, watching movies off of Netflix.com or surfing the net. And yes, she did call it "her" computer. I've already been evicted from this thing before I could even move in. I'm not too upset though. I'd like to be able to stay Mac if at all possible. We'll see. I think I'm taking the old computer to the shop tomorrow.