At least I did two of them. Yay me! Time for a nap.
My grand plans for taking time to write took a back seat to going out to the driving range. I had fun, though I still had to do some work prior to having fun. My project to clean up a ’93 Chevy pick-up is taking up a lot of my time, though where we are at now, my brother is doing the bulk of the work. I’m no good with body work, and he is. It’s been a slow and tedious task, but I think the end result will be awesome.
More than the truck, we had to unload some housing materials from a trailer, which may not have taken too much time at around an hour and a half, but the 4×4’s and siding material we had to move were not light. At the end of the day, after doing some work on the truck, and moving materials around, I felt great. Physical labor is good for the soul, and as a reward, me and my brothers headed to the driving range to hit some golf balls.
First I should tell you about my golfing skills: I have none. My ex-wife’s father took me golfing a couple of times, as did her grandfather. I had fun, but that was almost nine years ago. Crap, I can’t believe it’s been that long. Wow! Considering her grandfather stopped golfing around four or five years ago, that’s how long it’s been since I’ve been out. To put it succinctly, I sucked. It was rather embarrassing, and I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t laugh. It’s okay if you do, I did.
I did manage a few impressive drives, but nothing spectacular. My longest was around 150 yds, which isn’t very impressive, but compared to the others which only went a few feet, then yeah, very impressive indeed. I may not be very good, but at least I went out there willing to look like a fool, and it was good exercise. I hope to go out again soon.
So once again I let life get in the way of some quality writing time, though I’m not complaining. I spent almost three years not living by hiding behind the keyboard as I mourned the state of my life. Even if things are not as great as I would like it to be, I can’t hide behind that fact, bemoaning that my the women who did me wrong so long ago are doing better than me, especially since I have no clue as to how they’re doing. They don’t even factor into the equation anymore, nor will they again.
That’s life, and I’m living it in my fashion. I haven’t given up writing, just putting it into perspective in respect to my life. If I could, I would love to make it my number one priority, but until it pays the bills it remains a hobby and a dream. I just have to remember how important this dream is so that I don’t lose sight of my goals.
I plan to stay up a little longer so that I can get some writing done. I have a few problems to figure out as to how I will resolve the story. It’s moving in the right direction and I mustn’t lose that focus. It’s all about balance between the two opposing forces in the story, just as it’s about balance between life as it is and life as I would like it to be.
To write is my dream and my passion, but not at the cost of having fun, nor should fun come at the cost of my writing. I’m trying to find my equilibrium again, and as I teeter back and forth trying to find that balance, I’ll occasionally miss the mark, but again that too is a part of life. It’s just the price of being alive.
This is the first time since last May that I haven’t posted a book review. It’s a little weird. I had considered reviewing the Divergent series just for the hell of it, but time got away from me. I’m not committing myself one way or the other for now. I do need to get myself a book to read.
Actually, I don’t. I’ve focused so much of my energies to reading and reviewing, that my own writing has suffered. I need to get back on track and do some real writing. As you know, I pulled out a piece I started working on back in 2012, and I think I’m going to finish it. Then I’ll let a few people read it before deciding what to do with it.
But first, I have a book I’m beta-reading for a friend. Allan Krummenacker is working on his second book, The Ship. It’s a simple read and comment job, meaning I’m stressing out about it. I have a three-day weekend starting Friday, so I’m planning on taking some time out to actually read and take some constructively useful notes to pass along. I want this one to be better than his first!
Between you and me, I’m in an odd rut. I’ve ended my twice monthly reviews. I’ve stopped posting on a regular basis, and I’m not writing a diligently as I should. I have come to realize that my job will likely take me no where, that despite all the hard work I put into trying to move into full-time, the reality is that hard work is not rewarded at The Home Depot, cronyism is. That kind of bums me out.
So, my out is to write. Retail is a horrid environment, that offers only part-time work, and routinely cuts hours, further pushing me into poverty. I never had this problem when I worked at Wal-Mart. They gave me a chance and I moved up into management there, though I wouldn’t go back no matter what they paid me.
I’m going to work on my writing and hope this pulls me out of my funk. I can’t rely on employers to do it. They only feed the maw of poverty and the welfare state. I want out of the rut, and I deserve it, or at least I think I do.
Just some thoughts for me to consider while I drive to work this afternoon. Hope your Tuesday has treated you kindly.
I hate getting stuck, which is where I’m at on a project at the moment. It’s so frustrating but I felt I had no choice but to set it aside for a while. It’s now in the limbo where I consign half-written projects.
While I was in the limbo department, I decided to check out something I began writing back in the summer of 2012, and Young Adult book about a former Angel of Death who is now trying to bring about the end of the world, and the girl who stands in his way. It’s always a girl, isn’t it?
I opened it up and began reading from the beginning, and I like what I have so far. What sucks is that it ends mid-sentence, and now I have no choice but to finish writing the damned book so that I’ll know what happens. It’s actually okay with me. I had always intended to come back to this piece eventually, and apparently eventually has now arrived.
I like the general tone of the book. It’s not too dark, nor is it too saccharine. It begins after the death of my main character’s seemingly neglectful mother and my m.c.’s reunion with a father she hadn’t seen in six years. Understandingly, there’s some bitterness about the separation, but she soon discovers the truth behind her parents divorce and the estrangement it produced.
Where it goes from there is still uncertain, which is why I stopped writing in the first place, but I have a few ideas that I’m entertaining. I would like to write this as a series, and I have a few ideas about what I want in the third book, a look into her mother’s decision to divorce her father, and the last moment of her life, when she gave up her will to live, and surrendered to Death’s embrace.
Maybe it’s a little to heavy for a Young Adult books series, but I don’t think so. I hope that I succeed in writing about the power of love and the need to accept death as a continuation, and not an end. We’ll see.
I just got done watching the series finale of How I Met Your Mother for the second time. It’s been two days since it aired, two days since fans felt betrayed by the show’s creators, two days since fans had their hearts broken by the revelation that the eponymous mother was in fact dead.
It took eight seasons to meet her, but it wasn’t until the end of the finale that we are finally introduced to Tracy McConnell. What should have been the satisfying conclusion, and ultimately the beginning of a modern-day romantic fairy tale, became instead the requiem song of a lost love, of a man still in mourning but who wants to live, a man who feels compelled to ask his children for permission to move on.
The ending upset a lot of fans, and I want to say that that’s a victory for the creators of the show as well as the writers, the crew, and especially the cast. Together, they made us care about a group of five friends trying to make it in life and in love. Together, they made us root for them, to laugh and to cry with them. We fell in love with their journey, and it’s a journey most of us can relate to.
From the start, we knew it’s about Ted Mosby’s journey to find the great love of his life. We know that Ted will find her, and that they will have been blessed with two children. Still, we came back week after week for nine seasons, to finally have the answer as to how he met this mystery woman. We have the answer, and we are upset because we discover that the real reason for the story is not to tel about meeting the mother, but because it’s about asking for permission to date again.
Check out Twitter, read the countless other blogs and articles across the web and you will see what I mean, if you haven’t already. In light of all this anger, how can I say that this is a success? Easy, because we care enough to be angry. We care about Ted, seeing the ups and downs he had to endure on his way to meeting his wife, that we were blindsided by the fact that it ended so soon. Happily ever after only lasted about ten years, then the end.
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The real reason we are upset is due to the success of the writers in creating wonderful characters, rich in history, their eccentricities on display, unique in a way that made them relatable. We know people like them or wish we did, and many of us would like to know them or to be in a group with them. They were our friends.
We saw in their struggles many of the same things we struggled with in life. They faced fears and doubts in their professional lives, in the personal love lives, and with each other. Not one of the five was one-dimensional. They were all complex, and had a range of attributes, some great and others quite ugly.
They became real through the telling of the story so that nine years later we felt a very real emotional connection to them. We were shocked by the mother’s death, a character we didn’t even know, because we cared for Ted and knew how hard he fought for his ideal of love.
It’s not an easy feat to have an audience accept a cast of characters to be genuine, but we did for them, and that’s a legacy that Bays and Thompson should be proud of. For all the writers out there, this is something we all want to emulate, to create characters that pulls the reader into the story we are telling, to make them care enough to laugh and cry, to feel joy or to become angry at our decisions.
On Monday, we finally became privy to the story HIMYM had been telling us for years. I hope those of you who were fans can take a moment to appreciate the magic we witnessed. Had we not cared, we would not have become angry when the moment of the grand reveal happened. For better or for worse, this was the story that they had wanted to tell all along. I for one applaud them, though I would have loved it if Ted would have been granted his fairy tale ending. He deserved it, as did we all.
In Memoriam
In Loving Memory
Tracy McConnell Mosby
We hardly knew you
Joe Hinojosa 