When I was in elementary school my teachers would often complain to my parents that I stared out the windows a lot and lost focus in class. I would focus, or rather lack of focusing, on nothing in particular as my eyes would slightly disjoint from any one person or object. I know when it’s happening, or maybe more truthfully, I have learned to recognize when it’s happening. It can be best described as the look a deer has before the beaming headlights of an oncoming car at night, a look of bewilderment and inability to react.

Reflecting back I can see how they, being both my parents and teachers, could think this wasn’t something to encourage. In my mind, and I still feel this way, these were not wasted moments but instead moments of epiphany.

Last night at our families dinner table I had one of these moments where I felt myself leaving the moment and lightly touching a higher understanding of something I had been pondering. My 8 year old daughter Megan saw me and did the ‘hand wave’ where you raise it up before the eyes of the person ‘checking out’. Of course I knew what she was doing and she accomplished what she was after, pulling me out of my moment, and got me to engage with her. “Daddy are you okay?”

Disgruntled, but trying my best not to show it as she is only 8, I answered her. “Yeah, just lost in thought.” But the truth of it was I wasn’t lost. I had been having one of those rare epiphany moments where things actually make sense. I was at one with the universe around me and it was… As best as I could describe it… Spiritual. I had touched upon an idea that often comes to most people when they are dreaming. The idea isn’t so much the important thing here as it is the moment of understanding. Often times in my dreams, or even shortly after waking when I’m in the shower and can’t really write it down, I make connections and discoveries in my mind which scream to be further understood and explored. Alas in my dreams I lack the means of doing this and being wet and in the shower doesn’t improved the situation much either.

I believe that all of us human beings have these moments. I believe my parents, teachers, daughter, all had the best intentions, however seemingly selfish, at heart. I also believe that these moments are needed. Albert Einstein, sitting in his patent office in Germany, had a good number of ‘daydreams’ where he would spend considerable amounts of time imagining the universe around him. He was quoted as saying “imagination is more important than knowledge” or something similar. As I am writing this on my own train on the way into work I don’t have internet connectivity to verify so I am going to leave it as that.

Now don’t go thinking that I am comparing myself to Einstein, far from it. I just believe that all humans, to a degree of self actualization, and ability to unplug oneself from their external stimuli, can ‘zone out’. Some just choose to think it trivial and adolescent. In fact I would argue that ‘zoning out’ is actually just the opposite. I find that when I allow myself to become unplugged from external stimuli I can instead focus myself in one whatever it was that I was pondering. In my opinion is it is more of a ‘zoning in.’

Now some may be wondering exactly what it was that I was focusing on? I was looking at my son’s milk cup and reflecting on the words of Carl Sagan when he said “we are all made of star stuff.” I was thinking that the atoms of that cup were forged in heart of a star shortly before it the end of its life where it would explode and spread its ‘guts’ across the cosmos. I was thinking that my entire family was made of similar elements and here we were carrying on a conversation like we were meant to be here. I felt as if life…. Had a purpose. What else can explain the guts of dead stars sitting around a silicate(glass) dinner table upon its iron rods, discussing our events of the day. Now I understand that life isn’t fair and we are fortunate in that we live in the united states and for the most part, in comparison to the much of the world, live an ideal lifestyle. I acknowledge that life itself is not always so benign as everything is fighting for resources of one kind or another. That is not where I was trying to take this.

Inert atoms from the corpse of a long dead star are sitting around discussing their day.

I don’t believe in any humanized religions. I think they are all so tainted and biased that they have all become nothing more a cruel joke that we as a species continually play upon ourselves.

Spirituality on the other hand…. I felt as if life itself was all part of…. This is the part where my daughter had broken me out of my zone.

As unsettled as I was with her at that moment I forgave her instantly. She is after all my favorite little girl in the whole wor- universe.

Selective intelligence and cherry picking logic/facts.

Yes I finally got around to doing some site maintenance and guess what I found. Nalo Hopkinson responded to my (humor intended) poke at her hair style.

EEK!

Now I feel like an ass about it but not a whole ass. It’s more like 95+% 😉

Once again bravo Nalo Hopkinson for being the still strange yet endearing you.

Can I dig myself a bigger hole here?

Better shut up before its too late.

Back in January while sitting in with my ‘live’ in person writing group, Amanda asked me “what’s new?”

I responded with “I finally started working on the second draft of one of my stories.”

She asked “what changed?” as I have expressed reservation to her before about not being able to focus myself and just “get-r-done.”

My answer to her was simply “it was about time” which seemed sincere at the time. In truth it was a lie but not intentionally as I didn’t fully recognize what it was that had changed.

I figured it out just today. You see from Oct of 2013 I had been using a Acer c720 chromebook as my primary writing machine. It was great for doing first drafts using the google docs offline feature but when it came to editing, it just didn’t work for me. Can you say “1WP” (1st world problem)?

Well in December I began starting to transition myself into using the x205ta more and installed LibreOffice, Dropbox and Hemingwayapp and soon found myself feeling good about being able to tackle my secondraftaphobia.

I also installed scrivener (spelling? yes I suck) but have yet to mess with it to learn its functionality. Still its there if I can ever find the time to tinker/learn how to use it. I think with my time so limited that I would rather write/edit than fiddle (I am a bad geek).

As i’ve been writing this i’ve been tucked away in my office (the can) and my time is just about up as I can hear them calling out for me with some “emergency.”

TTFN (Ta-Ta-For-Now)

It goes from Kanye West, a “1”, to Neil deGrasse Tyson “9”. What no “10”? Oh it’s in the scale but I just don’t use it as pobodies nerfect.

‘Anonymous’ Message To Kanye West

Stupid computer crashed on me in the middle of editing one of my stories chapters.

I lost about a half hours worth of work. Not that much but still enough to razzle frazzle me.

I swear i buy far more books than i have time to read on my kindle. (Shakes fist towards the amazon god in the sky)

Im reading this one and will give a review of it when im done.

So I’m on my lunch hour walking to get something to eat when I walk past a middle age man who looks like he has a ‘little bit more in the middle’ than is healthy for his age. I have my headphones in which are hard to spot if you don’t know what you are looking at, and he says to me “why hello sexy.”

I don’t think of myself as “bear bait” but I turned to face him and gave my best look of ‘nodding to say that I heard him speak but was uncertain about what it was he actually said.’ I’m not expecting any kind of academy award for my performance but it was the best I could come up considering the situation.

Now the question… ‘Am I a liar?’ and ‘was it that I was I afraid?’ My best answer(s): Kinda… & no not really. Confused yes, liar not really- kinda sorta-??

Well this is my admission of sin for the day.

Also… I think I really want to watch Kevin Spacey in Se7en again. I haven’t seen it since the 1990’s and feel the need to get my psycho on. Its partially for a new book idea i’ve been pondering.

Still working on cleaning this monster up.

I have posted all of my first draft chapters on the forum of my online writing group and so far they have reviewed up to 16 of the entire 33 chapters. Of these I have been cleaning them up, just finished chapter 4, and have been resubmitting these second drafts to my in-person writing group. With the in person group they are a bit slower and are currently working on chapter 1. When I get these back and clean these up I will consider this to be my third draft. Eventually when I have this all cleaned up I will compile the whole thing and do maybe start sending it out or just submit it to amazon? I might do both. Haven’t fully weighed the pros and cons. I am also thinking of submitting to publishers with a mix of the 3rd draft beginning and a second draft later half. Of course I would flag where the split takes place.

Pondering….

So I started fiddling with writing about ten years ago.

it took me some time to come up with “my zone” for what works and what doesn’t for writing but here it is.

I require…

TIME. A friend of mine and former boss (his works) once said “Anything can be done in fifteen minute intervals.” While I can see this working for something like digging a ditch, no real thinking involved, it doesn’t work for me when I need to load my story into my mind and try not to unbalance the larger story in what I am writing. I have found that it takes me a good 5-10 just to settle in and load up my various documents (word/excel/browser) and then it takes a bit more re-reading where I last left off. So in the span of an hour I can say I can do a good 45 minutes worth of work.

SECLUSION. I need to be left the F alone. I can’t have my kids coming up to me every ten seconds with a constant series of *issues* like; “I can’t flush the toilet”, “I forgot how to walk”, or whatever else is an emergency right then and there.

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. I *LOVE* trance/techno music that has non or at least limited vocals. I tried getting into classical music but it just puts me to sleep unless it has a fast enough tempo. I don’t even know if tempo is the right word since I am musically challenged beyond knowing what I like. Typically I listen to the likes of DeadMau5 or Armin van Buuren. That is not to say I limit myself to them but since they are probably the most recognizable I just used them.

MENTAL ENERGY. I need to not be tired. I find that if I take a shower after waking up that this puts me into focus but the longer the day becomes the harder it is for me to want to write as I become progressively dumber. My bed time is typically between 10-10:30 at night. Depending on the day and hour the latest I can possibly *start* to write is around 8pm. Anything past that is pissing into the wind as there is just not enough mental juice left to be productive.

So today was the day to log in and wait within the digital waiting room to get your tickets to the event.

I logged in the gods of randomness sorting order were not good to me. I failed to be achieve a random placing that allowed me to purchase tickets for any day.

So 2014 was a bust and now 2015 is a bust.

🙁

Going to try again for next year.

Back to the editing.