The following is an excerpt (1st draft) from my current work in progress (StarName)

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[Hi, you’ve reached Jackie, David, and Shaun. Please leave a message at the beep.] - [BEEP]

Sebastian paused as he wasn’t expecting to hear a strange man’s name. He knew his career, especially lately, 
kept him busy but now he was questioning just how long it had been since he last called. These last six months 
had been especially hectic but now he feared it had been longer than he had realized. He hadn’t even been 
aware of her seeing anyone. Doing his best to push down his initial fear and resentment, he tried to focus on 
her being happy and finding somebody to share her life with, even if the world was on the verge of ending. 
He felt a surge of panic as he considered just what kind of issues might be going on between this new man 
and his son. He started to speak and found that the words coming out of his mouth were born of his suspicions, 
“David? Is there something I need to know about?” He immediately felt guilty and knew he had no right to 
question Jackie’s choices and he just made himself sound petty. “Damn that came out wrong. Sorry.” He exhaled, 
“I don’t know why you still have one of these archaic machines when the rest of the world uses stuff technology 
that allows me to erase stupid gaffs and rerecord themselves.” He gave a quick laugh, “Sometimes I think you still 
use it so you can catch me when I’m not at my best.” His voice then softened, “Which is probably more often than 
I would like to remember seeing how we aren’t together anymore.” He paused and his brief moment of silence 
started taking root and growing. “Anyway...”

“One person’s craziness is another person’s reality.” – Tim Burton 

I read this somewhere online and couldn’t but help think of my work environment. Somebody there is just so off in her own reality she can’t see can’t see why nothing is growing cause she just keeps poisoning the soil.

I swear…

So a couple of days ago she calls me into a 1on1 little meeting and tries to play nice. I play along and as the conversation turns to morale type issues she asks my opinion of something. I explain to her that she has this habit of only hearing what she wants to hear and then gets fixated on it like a pitbull and doesn’t let go. In truth, I didn’t use those exact words, but you get the idea. She asks for an example and my brain starts going through a rewind. I bring up an incident of topic “A” and then seven words in say something like I’m sorry that is a bad example, let me start over with topic “B”. I didn’t realize it at the time but she had already locked her jaws onto addressing topic “A” and didn’t hear a damn word of topic “B”. As she is ranting away I try telling her “You’re doing it again, right here, right now” and of course she can’t see it because her mind is locked. How to you tell a stupid bitch of a mutt to let go of the thing she has locked her mouth around when it’s not even what’s there?

How does that phrase go? You can bring a horse to water but you can’t make them drink?

How do you get a deaf person to listen to you? Keeping poking them? Hey, lookout! We are heading towards a tree!

How do you get a person with blinders on to understand what they are doing wrong? Put in on your blog on the web?

Oh and then she gave me this spiel about us being there 8 hours a day and therefore we are required to produce 8 hours worth of work. It took everything I had not to break out laughing at her. She is such a tool…

Do you want to know why nobody likes you? We can’t stand you. People are human beings with unique personalities and problems and issues and we aren’t worker drones. We are organic and squishy and have weakness and strengths. You think we all need to match some automated mold you have envisioned in your mind. It don’t work that way and the sooner you figure that out the better off your life is going to be. Yes some of us have room to grow. Yes some of us like to goof off now and again. It’s called being human.

I came up with another example I can use with her. Let’s say you are a child at the dinner table, let’s say your parent/boss says “Finish your broccoli before you go.” Let’s say you do finish your broccoli. Does she let you get up from the dinner table? Hell no. She’s standing right there with another scooping of broccoli.

She has lost it.

I have tried working with her in the past but every time I get something done she is ready there was her serving spoon.

Screw that.

Oh… I had three interviews the week before this last one. Two were at the same agency (same day, two hours apart) and the third was at another office. I got word back from the other office that I wasn’t selected but she told me I interviewed great and it was a close call. That is both promising and depressing at the same time. I’m happily defeated?

I’m pushing out applications. 🙂

It’s been a rough couple of weeks as I’ve moved my hosting from one provider to another. I think everything is up and working again. 🙂

So what else is new? My brother’s daughter is almost a year old and he’s been flooding us (the extended family) with pictures of her and let me tell you she sure is cute. She is so cute it’s borderline tasty.

http://healthland.time.com/2013/09/26/why-moms-find-that-new-baby-smell-so-delicious/

Now I’m not trying to out myself as a bisexual or anything so much as to say I have to agree. I’ve often found my own kids feet somehow find their way into my own mouth plenty of times 😛

We even have a video of my daughter, around the age of four, on video, scolding us with a scowl on her face about eating her newborn brother as she said, “Babies are not food! Babies are just babies!”

Ahhh…. the memories.

We lost one of our cats a few weeks ago. He was 13 years old. We had raised him from the bottle as he was part of a spay/neuter program that fixed his momma but the vet tech, my wife’s sister, decided this group was viable and so kept them alive. From him being just hours old I helped raise him until he became the awesome cat he would become. About a year and a half ago we got a cancer diagnosis so we knew this day was coming but through the use of medication, we were able to stave off his cancer for far longer than we would have expected. Now we are down to three (all being rescued cats).

StarName is still getting worked on. Some days are more productive than others. I’m still plugging away and I know I will reach my “The End” soon. It’s funny how some days I can get 3,000 words down and on others, it’s 300 (or less). I’m sure I’m around 110,000 words at the moment and am still hovering around the 90%+ mark. I’m still working on bringing in loose threads and pushing it all through to the end. It’s funny how my mind keeps finding all these new and interesting ways of making things streamlined and more efficient.

What else? I think I could go on but my bathroom hideaway time is coming to an end. I have to get back out there and attend to the laundry and playing with my son as I’ve spent much of the day doing errands and fixing some of the last sprinklers out in my yard. He just called in wanting to know when I would be out again.

Ha!

I swear if you don’t take some mental time off now and again you can find yourself going crazy. People need to stop and smell the roses every once in a while. (Yes I know where I’m sitting right now.)

Even a baby portion break is better than nothing 😉

🙂

Hello World

And I’m not talking about hitting your thumb with a hammer.

I’ve reached a point in my StarName story where I have the World Council President is addressing the world itself over some recent developements and I started to make myself cry.

Wuss? Delusional wuss? Delusional wuss who thinks my eventual readers will have the same emotional impact? Honestly the third one there is the most hope/hurtful. I don’t mind being weird. I don’t mind being soft. I do mind living in a delusion that nobody else can grasp or understand for that means I am bitterly, truly, alone. 🙁

HI DWIGHT!

Today has been a really productive day for writing 🙂

I kinda feel like celebrating… How about some Ferris

Today ive started the climatic buildup for the end of my story. 

More to come 🙂

Today has been a good day. Ive managed to pickup from just before i lost my prior work and pushed through into new teritory again. 

I can say I’m very fluent in #1 (self-amuse)

#2 Practice reframing negative situations in a positive light. (Me, not so much. This is where my realist side kicks in.) I believe in balance and not ignoring the obvious. Hey, you are heading towards a tree with your car, maybe you should think about changing your direction??? Instead of “Oh yeah! I love trees!”

#3 Crack jokes that build people up instead of tearing them down. I would like to think I try to do this.

Overall I would give myself an average score of  6.66 of 10 (#1 is 9of10, #2 is 4of10, #3 is 7of10).