My name is Christopher Fox and I’m a Great Writer
This week marks a very important milestone for me. Exactly one year ago I made a promise to myself. I swore I’d write every day for the next year. I promised I’d belt out at least five thousand words a week, for a total of a quarter million. I didn’t just beat my goal. I tied it up, beat the shit out of it and dumped it’s body in the river. My total for the year was 1.2 million words, over 600,000 of which was fiction.
In honor of keeping that promise I’ve decided to start a new tradition. Every February I’m going to reflect on my growth as a writer during the previous year. However, as this is the first post in my new series I’m going to start at the beginning and tell the tale of how I became a writer.
My interest in writing began when I was six years old, back when my biological mother sent me a set of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books. I fell in love with the fantastic worlds they offered, and quickly decided I wanted to create and share my own.
I started writing primitive stories, none of which I remember now. I knew my stories sucked, but that didn’t deter me. I kept writing and writing, hoping that one day I’d be good enough to see print. That day came eight years later when I turned 14.
The U.S. had just launched operation Desert Storm, and I felt so strongly about the war in Iraq that I wrote a letter to our local paper. The Herald Journal chose to publish it as an opinion piece, and I received a call from the youth director a few days later. He told me about something called the Herald Junior, a newpaper published by local teens for local teens.
So at age fourteen I took my first step into the world of writing. Over the next couple of years I published a number of articles in the Herald Junior and a few in the school paper. None of them were amazing, but seeing my name in print awoke a hunger for more. Articles were all well in good, but my real goal was getting fiction published.
I was a voracious reader, often finishing a novel every day. By the time I was fifteen I owned several hundred books, and had read hundreds more from the library. These books filled me with ideas and fueled the creation of my own fantasy world. I began taking notes, writing (bad) short stories and inventing characters. Much of my freshman and sophmore year were spent daydreaming in this world, and the more time I spent there the more fleshed out the world became.
In the second half of my sophmore year my gifted and talented class was given the chance to work with a professional in the field of our choice. Not surprisingly I decided I wanted to work with an author, and Mrs. Notcher (my G&T teacher) hooked me up with a professor at Syracuse University named Paul Griner.
He helped me pen my very first short story, a horror piece about a woman discovering the existence of werewolves. Over the next six months I learned to craft a story, create a compelling lead and to revise my own work. Paul’s guidance was invaluable, but not nearly so much as his encouragement. He told me something that stuck with me to this day. Never stop writing.
I wish I could say that I followed his advice, but my teenage years were a difficult time. I only had a single semester to work with him, because my family packed up and moved from New York to California. I lost my job with the Herald Journal and access to my writing instructor in one fell swoop. This put a major kink in my efforts, and for the next three years I stopped writing fiction entirely. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I found a new creative outlet, one that made me a far better storyteller.
I’d discovered Dungeons & Dragons when I was six, but I’d always been a player instead of the game master. That meant I was running around in other people’s worlds, seeing their imagination in action instead of my own. When I arrived in California I quickly found a gaming group, but that group consisted of four guys all interested in playing roleplaying games instead of running them. We had no gamemaster, without which playing was impossible. That meant someone had to step up and run the games. I’d never done it before, but I figured what the hell? It couldn’t be that hard. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Crafting a world for people to run around in was far more difficult than I’d ever imagined, but despite the massive amount of work I loved it. At first I used recycled plots from the many novels I’d read, but as time went on I began to experiment with stories of my own. There was something magical about weaving a story for my friends, and I ran campaign after campaign over the next several years.
My world took on more and more definition, and by the time I was eighteen my games were well known among the gaming community as some of the best to be found anywhere. When I ran a campaign with my friend Aaron at the local gaming shop we had over thirty players apply. That game lasted for nearly a year, and people were so impressed that even those who weren’t playing came every week to watch.
Yet as rewarding as being a great Storyteller was, roleplaying games didn’t quite scratch the itch I was looking for. In the back of my mind I was always aware that I’d given up my dream of being an author. I’d convinced myself that my work sucked, and stopped writing because I figured what’s the point? No one wants to read what I write. This was backed up by my friends, wife and family who all started backing away and looking for the nearest exit whenever I asked them to read my work.
This malaise lasted through my mid twenties, until I moved to Los Angeles. I’m not sure why, but I decided to belt out a short story for the Rifts universe. I submitted it to the Rifter, and was shocked when they picked it up. I’d expected a rejection slip, but instead found myself cashing a check.
This inspired me to keep trying, so my next piece was a novella set in the Exalted universe. It was hosted at a site called The Exalted Compendium, which had a feature that allowed users to review and rate stories. Flight into Darkness became the number one story, and the only one consistently rated 10 out of 10. It was the longest piece I’d ever written, and the best received out of all my work.
This spurred me to keep writing, but I was tired of playing in other people’s universes. I’d spent my late teens and much of my twenties creating the Faelands universe, so I decided it was time to write the novel that had been bouncing around in my head for years. The only problem was I didn’t know how.
I belted out 70,000 words before I finally gave up in disgust. My work was juvenile, cliché and poorly written. No one was ever going to pay money to read it. I might be a hell of a storyteller when it came to roleplaying games, but Robert Jordan I was not. So I gave in to the Great Lie. I decided that I’d never be good enough to get a novel published, so I stopped trying. After all, I reasoned, I’m just wasting my time.
The Great Lie is both evil and insidious. It claims that writers are born, not made. It is a complete and utter fabrication. Anyone can learn to write if they have the patience and commitment. Some people have natural talent which will accelerate this process, but even they have to put in the time to learn their craft. In my case I was trying to get by on talent alone, but it just wasn’t enough. I’d never learned the building blocks of great fiction, and without them I was doomed to mediocrity.
Twelve months ago I decided to give writing another try. This time, though, I went about things differently. I ordered several books on writing, and actually sat down and read them cover to cover. Then I spent a few months putting the principles I’d learned into practice. I ordered more books that covered different aspects of writing, read them, and then spent a few more months putting those principles into practice.
I repeated this process several times over the last year. I read over a dozen books on topics like Plot, Characterization, Point of View, Grammar and Dialogue. Looking back at everything I’ve learned I’m amazed. The quality of my writing has grown by leaps and bounds. I’ve had many more short stories accepted, and for the first time ever I’ve finished a novel.
Six months ago I turned my attention back to Faelands, my original world. I belted out a first draft to my novel, then a second. On January 20th I started the third draft. The work finally feels like its publishable, and by the end of march I should have a solid manuscript.
I’ve shown it to friends and family, and the feedback has been very positive. Instead of the cringing I’m used to they’re asking questions about the story. Even better they want to read more! The novel needs a ton of work, but I feel like I’ve gotten over the metaphorical hump. I now have all the building blocks to tell a great story.
I understand how to evoke emotion in my readers, how to write memorable characters, and how to build gripping plots. These principles are still new to me, and I’ll need a lot more practice before I can say I’ve mastered my craft. But at least I understand what they are, and know that I should be trying to create them. Before I didn’t even know what my work was lacking.
One million, two hundred thousands words. That’s what I wrote in the last year. I finished ten short stories, a complete novel and two drafts of another. I learned more in that time than the previous twenty years of work put together. I finally feel like I’m an author. Instead of worrying if I’ll get a novel published I now wonder when. I know in my bones, in my secret heart of hearts, that I was meant to be a novelist. That my work will make it.
I no longer believe the great lie. Great Writers aren’t born. They are forged in the fire of discipline, hard work, practice and diligence. Great Writers never give up. They never stop writing. They never accept that their work is good enough. They always reach for the next hurdle, the next story, the next novel.
My name is Christopher Fox and I am a Great Writer.
So what the heck is Zen Buddhism anyway?
I am often asked what it means to be a Zen Buddhist, and I am always happy to answer those questions. Very few people understand much about the religion, so I decided to write this essay. I hope it teaches you a bit more about Zen, and about my own personal quest for spiritual enlightenment.
My Quest for Answers
The great thing about my blog is that I can be as long winded as I want. So before I tell you about Zen, I’m going to tell you a bit about my quest to find religion.
When I was six my stepmother enrolled me in Catholic school. This was the first brush I had with religion, because my father was agnostic and hadn’t addressed the issue. At first I was both fascinated and excited. Great, my young self though, I’ve finally found the place with all the answers. They can tell me everything I need to know, and I’ll finally understand what happens when we die.
My enthusiasm didn’t last long. The problem I ran into was that the church didn’t like questions, and I was overflowing with them. I remember one of the sisters teaching us about the great flood and Noah’s Ark. I was horrified by the tale, and I made her clarify something for me.
Did god really wipe out everyone in the world, including all the plants and animals? The sister told me he had, but that god’s faithful and most of the animals were saved on the ark. Only the wicked were punished.
I was silent for a moment while I considered this. How could animals be wicked? All the cats and dogs and frogs and lizards had been bad? That didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
So I started asking questions. One question led to another, which led to another. Before long the sister was shaking with rage. My string of questions looked something like this:
If god is all knowing didn’t he know that people would be wicked? And, since god had made people and god was perfect, didn’t that mean he intentionally made us so we’d be wicked? So why did he punish us for being what he made us to be? If he was perfect than this was all part of his plan, wasn’t it?
So he’d planned to murder every living thing on the planet, except for the people and animals that got on one boat? I was horrified. God sounded like a pretty vindictive dude. All those dead children and animals didn’t seem fair and I told the sister that. I was made to sit outside in the hall.
Two days later I was told the story of Jobe, and once again was horrified by what I heard. God jacked the man over repeatedly based on a bet with the devil? Whoah, how messed up is that? Once again I was made to sit in the hall. Within a few weeks I was kicked out of the Catholic school, and dumped back into public school.
Yet the experience stayed with me. I’d learned the concept of hell, and I was terrified I’d be sent there. The more I learned, the less god made sense to me. All the sisters and priests could tell me was that I needed to have faith. Only, I didn’t know how to have faith. I really tried, but everything I heard about Christianity sounded like a bunch of made up stories. It wasn’t any more or less far fetched than Greek Mythology or Santa Claus, so why was one right and the others wrong? I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.
Finally I met my first athiest, my fifth grade science teacher. He told me that Christianity was, in essence, a crock of shit. He explained that people had made up stories thousands of years ago to help them explain the universe, but that they were nothing more than stories. He also told me that Christians taught that the world was about seven thousand years old, and pointed out that they couldn’t explain dinosaurs.
So for a few years I called myself an athiest. I felt much better, because I was no longer worried about going to hell. But as the years passed a nagging doubt grew in my head. How could the athiests be sure there was no god? There wasn’t any proof of his existence, but there wasn’t any proof he didn’t exist either.
That’s when I learned the word agnostic, and it made a staggering amount of sense to me. The fact that I didn’t believe in god didn’t preclude his existence. It just meant I’d never seen anything to convince me he existed. I still might find that proof, and honestly hoped I would. The idea of an all powerful entity watching over the world was comforting, and I had a number of very religious friends. They took a great deal of comfort from their faith, while I was left with nothing but cold hard reality.
I called myself an agnostic until I was twenty three, so just over ten years ago. That was when I discovered Zen. I worked as the head tech for a computer store, and one of the employees was a guy named James. James was a Zen Buddhist, and I asked him to tell me a little about the religion. He was more than happy to teach, and he became my mentor for the next few years. I owe him a huge debt that I can never fully repay.
What Zen is Not
Zen is a non-historical religion. It doesn’t have a timeline of when the world was created, and it has no stance on the existence of god. It doesn’t teach reincarnation (that’s Tibetan Buddhism). It espouses no beliefs.
Most religions try to propagate themselves through conversion. What I mean by this is that Christians, for example, have a duty to teach other people about Christianity. Zen has no such tenet. In fact most instructors will only teach you if you ask three times. They make you work for it, unlike most religions which have often forced their views on others.
There are no holy books for Zen, such as the Bible or Koran. In fact there are no official books at all. In Zen we don’t believe in the implied duality of right and wrong. There are no absolutes.
So what is Zen?
Zen is a philosophy first taught by a guy named Gotama who lived in or around India about five hundred years before Christ was born. He was the first Buddha and taught that we are all divine beings. The path to enlightment lay within each of us, and we can all find Nirvana by practicing a simple set of principles.
Earlier I mentioned that Zen has no religious books. What it does have are books written by some of the more prominent Buddhists like Steve Hagen. My personal favorite is Buddhism Plain & Simple, which was the very first book my mentor recommended I read. It utterly changed my life.
As good as the book was I eventually moved beyond it. One of the teachings of Zen is that any book, no matter how good, is like a raft. You use it to cross the river on your journey of spiritual enlightenment, but once you’ve crossed you have to leave it behind. The books are useful as a beginning guide, but after that you have to find your own path. No book or person can do it for you.
There are the general tenets that we follow though:
The Four Noble Truths
Truth #1- Life pretty much sucks.
Truth #2- Life sucks because of attachment. We either want to get things, like a new car, a better job, or a gorgeous spouse. Or we want to keep things away, like old age, death, or poverty.
Truth #3- You can end this suffering.
Truth #4- This is the meat of the religion, and is called The Eight Fold Path. It gives eight specific ways you can improve your life and end your suffering.
The Eight Fold Path
Right View- In a nutshell right view means seeing the world the way it really is. It begins with understanding the four noble truths, but progesses to an understanding of all things the further along the path you go. This is difficult to put into words, and the journey is different for each person that undertakes it.
Right Intention- Simply put right intention means that everything you do should be done for the right reasons. It’s a commitment to ethical and moral self improvement. Basically, you should be a better person for no other reason than to be a better person. Not because you fear hell, or because you want people to see you as a good person.
It means resisting desire in all forms, avoiding both anger and aversion, and avoiding cruelty, violence or aggression. Note that it doesn’t say any of these things are wrong, or that you’d never do them. Violence might make sense if you’re defending your home.
Right Speech- Avoid lying or telling falsehoods. Avoid slanderous speech and don’t talk smack about others. Abstain from harsh words that will hurt others wherever possible. Avoid idle chatter that serves no purpose. Don’t gossip. Simple stuff, but very powerful.
Right Action- Avoid hurting sentient beings including yourself. Try to avoid stealing, deceit or dishonesty. Basically, try to be a moral person who doesn’t harm others.
Right Living- Right living teaches that your job should allow you to sleep at night. If you’re swindling people, killing bunnies or doing something else that feels wrong then you should get another job.
This particular one has a lot of meaning for me, because I was making six figures in LA. I quit that job because I was hurting a lot of people by allowing them to get bad mortgages. Now I work for a credit union helping people recover financially, and its much more rewarding. I find I sleep much better at night.
Right Effort- This precept teaches that when you know something is bad, put it aside. When you know something is healthy, do it. This includes things like avoiding drugs or alcolhol, and working out to keep yourself healthy. It’s basically channeling your efforts into positive pursuits that will better yourself.
Right Mindfulness- This one is all about perception, and is also called true seeing. We have a tendecy to make assumptions and correlations about things when we see them. For example if you see a person you will immediate make judgements based on their clothing, ethnicity and sex. Right mindfulness teaches you to avoid doing that, and to simply observe rather than categorize as we so often do.
Right Concentration- This precept is also called meditation. Meditation is something I’ll delve into in a longer article, but I can tell you from experience that meditating daily will make you calmer, happier and more in tune with your surroundings.
Some notes about Zen
Thoughts on Belief- Zen teaches that you shouldn’t believe anything, instead you should perceive without judgement. What does that mean exactly? I’ll give you an example stolen from Steve Hagen. Let’s just say I hold out my hand in a closed fist. I might have a quarter in the palm of my hand, but you don’t know whether I do or don’t.
You can believe I do, or believe I don’t but you don’t know. You might be right, or you might be wrong but have no way of knowing for sure. However, as soon as I open my hand the need for and the usefulness of belief vanish. You can see whether I have a quarter or not, so what you believe is irrelevent.
In more practical terms instead of having beliefs, like a belief in god, we have ideas or theories. I might think something is a certain way, or have a theory about what happens when I die. However, if I turn those into beliefs I’m closing my mind to the possibility that I’m wrong.
It was exactly that sort of mindset that had Gallileo imprisoned in a tower for years because he said the sun was the center of the solar system. Because they believed the earth was the center of the universe, people were not receptive to such a radical new idea even though it was true.
Right and Wrong- In religions like Christianity you are taught that certain things are always right, or always wrong. For example one of the ten commandments is Thou shall not steal. Stealing is wrong, period. But what if you need to steal to feed your family? What if someone had a gun and you knew they were going to use it to kill someone you loved? Would stealing that gun be wrong if it saved a life?
Zen doesn’t believe in absolutes. You should generally avoid stealing, and generally avoid lying. However, since the universe is fluid you never know when it might make sense to lie or steal. Imagine you are in Nazi germany and the gestapo is at your door. If you were harboring Jews would it be wrong to lie about them being in your home?
Of course you’d lie, because in that instance lying is the compassionate right thing to do. This is why we don’t believe in absolutes. You should do the right thing in every situation, but ultimately only you can decide what that right thing is.
In Conclusion
There’s a lot more to the practice, of course. The more you learn the more truths become evident over time. It’s a never ending struggle, but the longer you go the easier things get. Learning Zen has vastly improved my life, and every time I stray and stop practicing for any length of time I regret it.
I began my practice in earnest again about two months ago, and have seen a tremendous difference in my quality of life and mental well being. I can’t believe how much I missed it, and am so thankful to have rediscovered my path.
If you are feeling lost spiritually, have tried other religions and they just don’t fit, or are simply curious I encourage you to pick up Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen. It gives a wonderful overview of Zen, and it changed my life. I hope it has the same impact on yours.
How Marijuana Effected my Life
Disclaimer: Yes, I smoked marijuana. However, for the last several years I did so legally with a doctor’s prescription. I no longer smoke, but wanted it clear that when I did I broke no laws. I know there are a lot of jokes about people faking ailments to get a prescription, but in my case I had a very valid reason. I used Marijuana as an anti-depressant, because it worked where prozac and zoloft failed.
I spent much of my youth growing up in upstate New York, which has the most rabid anti-drug propaganda I have ever seen. I remember watching a video in my seventh grade health class that claimed all drugs were as addictive as heroin. One puff of a joint and you’d go from an upstanding citizen to a degenerate junky.
We even watched that old Reefer Madness film put out in 1936. In a nutshell it taught us that marijuana would cause you to commit rape, murder and/or go insane. I accepted this as fact, because no other views were presented. The sum total of my drug knowledge came from outdated and innacurate propaganda designed to frighten children into obedience.
At first this tactic worked perfectly. I was terrified of drugs, and the last thing I would ever do was try marijuana. The problem with this approach is that it was based on lies. Smoking marijuana will not cause you to rape women. Nor will it cause you to commit murder or go insane. Mostly it results in you sitting on the couch and eating a lot of junk food while watching Beavis & Butthead.
I didn’t know that of course. When I was twelve I’d sooner have chopped off a limb than smoked a joint. This fear lasted for two years, when my father was arrested for possession of marijuana and methamphetamines. It rocked my entire world, because I idolized him. If he used drugs, I reasoned, how bad could they be?
My father held a prestigious position as a controller for a large company. He was the president of the school board. He was married and raising three children. How was that possible if he’d been using drugs? Everything I’d been taught suggested that he should be broke, peniless and alone. Drugs were evil. Weren’t they?
I was very logical at a young age, and the logic here was inescapable. My father was living proof that drugs couldn’t do what I’d been taught. Obviously I was being lied to. The question I kept asking myself was why? Why would my school lie about drugs? This led to a natural curiousity about what drugs were really like.
I didn’t act on this curiousity until I was sixteen, because of what happened to my father. He lost his position as the president of the school board, and was on the front page of the local paper. Everyone, and I mean everyone in our town knew what he’d done. Suddenly my friends weren’t allowed to hang out with me anymore. Our family was ostracized. Drugs seemed to carry a steep cost, and I had no desire to go down the same road.
Because of my father’s arrest life became so bad for my family that we decided to move. This was something we did every couple of years, so it didn’t surprise me. We picked up and crossed the country, landing in sunny northern California.
I quickly learned that California has a much different attitude towards marijuana. In New York it was a crime akin to rape, and people never openly admitted to drug use. In California just about everyone I knew smoked weed. Many of my friends even smoked it with their parents. I’d moved to the land where hippies go to die, and it had a vey noticable effect on the culture. Even those that didn’t smoke were usually ok with it, and only a bare handful had the rabid anti-drug stance I’d been taught back home.
When I was sixteen one of my new friends, a jovial guy by the name of Jacob Merriman, loved to smoke. We organized a camping trip and he brought along some marijuana. That was the first time I ever smoked, and I had an absolute blast. Getting high was more fun than I ever could have imagined, and the best part was that I didn’t notice any side effects.
I wasn’t addicted. I didn’t crave marijuana after smoking, though it was so much fun I looked forward to an opportunity to do it again. The experience was so positive that it shattered my confidence in the system. It confirmed the lies I’d been told in New York, and destroyed any respect I had for authority.
As a toddler I’d been lied to about Santa Claus. Now as a teen I was being lied to about drugs. It established a pattern that I didn’t like, and I quite rightly assumed that I was being lied to about other things as well. I became an anti-establishment pro-hippy rebel, with the full support of my father who’d long espoused the same views.
As the years passed I smoked off and on. Marijuana is expensive, and while it was fun to smoke it wasn’t as much fun as having money to buy roleplaying games. I often had to make a choice between weed and the latest gaming book, and gaming almost always won.
By the time I graduated high school I smoked almost every weekend, usually at parties. My parents decided to move yet again, and this time when they headed down to San Diego I stayed behind in Santa Rosa. The next few years were a smoke filled haze.
During that time I took a number of trips down to see my family, and on one of them I realized my father was still smoking. I confronted him about it, and he denied it until I admitted that I was smoking too. For the first time in my life I had something to bond with my father over. He was overjoyed, and I thought the idea of smoking with him was officially the coolest thing ever. My mother knew nothing about it of course.
Then my father ran into problems with his connection. His solution? He asked me to get it for him. My (ex)wife was understandably leery, but in the end she agreed. So we drove three hundred miles to the town of Buttonwillow in central California to meet my father. It was the midway point between Santa Rosa and San Diego, which seemed like the logical place to meet. I made the exchange, and my father told me how proud of me he was.
Before I go any further I need to stress how important this was to me. My father wasn’t proud when I was offered a full scholarship to Annapolis (which requires the sponsorship of a congressman), or when I got a 1390 on the SATs. When I had my first article published in the local paper at age fourteen he told me it could have been written by a five year old. When I hit the high honor roll I was given a grudging nod of respect, but instead of telling me he was proud he threatened to ground me if I got a single ‘C’ on my report card.
Yet me bringing him drugs made him proud. Looking back now I am filled with disgust whenever I think of my father, but at the time I would have done anything to hear those five little words.
My father smoked about two ounces a month. For those not familiar with marijuana that’s enough to supply your average fraternity for the same length of time. All of my friends put together would have been hard pressed to burn through that much weed. The idea that one person could smoke it was mind boggling.
As I’d now become my father’s source he expected me to drive down once a month to make the exchange. He lied to my mother, of course, so she had no idea what he was asking me to do. Darlene and I quickly decided these trips weren’t worth it, but my father worked me over emotionally. He all but begged, and told me that if I was a dutiful son I’d find a way to get it to him.
In the end he suggested I mail it. He wanted me to ship marijuana through UPS, even though he’d been busted for doing exactly the same thing ten years earlier. I knew it was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. I did it because I didn’t want to lose my father’s respect, and he made it clear it was at stake. My entire life could have been ruined, but he didn’t care so long as he got what he wanted.
This soured my desire to smoke so I quit for a while when I was twenty-three. That lasted two years until I divorced Darlene, which sent me into a spiral of depression. To be honest I needed something to dull the pain. I started smoking again, and buried myself beneath a haze of smoke because it made the pain of day to day life tolerable.
For the first time I wasn’t using marijuana as a recreational drug. I was using it as medication. Was it the best anti-depressant? I don’t know as I only ever tried Zoloft and Prosac, but it was definitely better than those. It balanced me out, and pushed away the depression.
Not long after that I lost my job and moved in with my family in San Diego. Being that close to my father showed me the man in a way I’d never seen him. I realized how toxic he was, and how much damage he’d done to me over the years. I didn’t care if I had his approval anymore. I just wanted to get away from him, so I moved in with my then girlfriend Brandy up in Los Angeles.
Moving took away my access to marijuana, which was fine because I’d decided I didn’t need it anymore. Instead of drugs I used success to stave off the depression. I had a meteoric rise through the mortgage industry, and within a couple of years was making even more money than I had as a software engineer. For five years I didn’t touch marijuana, except for my annual trips back to Santa Rosa to see Trevor, Jeff and Saul.
During my final year living in Los Angeles my best friend Jeff moved down and ended up in the same apartment complex. We smoked occasionally and I found that I really missed getting high. Sitting around passing a bong back and forth while discussing life was a hell of a lot of fun, and we really enjoyed it. I told myself I’d smoke moderately, and for a long time I did.
Then we moved back to Santa Rosa. Suddenly I reconnected with all my high school and college friends, all of whom still smoked. Much to my amusement most were still sitting in the same spot on the couch as when I’d left six years before. Having escaped the vortex of L.A. I told myself I’d earned a break, and decided to join them.
For the next several months Jeff and I lived in a haze of marijuana and World of Warcraft. It was an amazing amount of fun, at least at first. Like everything done to excess eventually smoking lost some of its appeal. I neglected many things in my life including my weight and appearance. Before I knew it I was wallowing in depression. Instead of helping me marijuana had become part of the problem.
For the two and a half years I smoked nearly every day, because I was caught in a vicious cycle. My life was painful, and the marijuana dulled that pain. Unfortunately a lot of the reason my life was painful was because I was high all the time. I hardly ever left the house unless it was to go to work, and pretty much became a hermit because of the massive social anxiety I felt at the thought of being around other people.
I began smoking less, and when Jeff and I moved out on our own we really cut down. I started taking week long breaks, and found I was able to accomplish a lot when I wasn’t smoking. The problem was that without the weed the full weight of the world came crashing down on me. All the pain and depression came flooding back, and each time it happened I quickly fled back into a smoke filled haze.
On one of these breaks I took a damn good look at myself. I was fifty pounds overweight, and even though I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world I didn’t ever see it. I was trapped in my house, and never got out to see the redwoods, wine country or the northern California coast.
My life snapped into razor sharp focus. I realized that while marijuana might help me deal with my depression the side effects simply weren’t worth it. The paranoia, social anxiety and loss of short term memory were hampering me too much. So was the fact that I was spending $250 a month on my medication.
In mid December I looked at what I’d accomplished in 2009 while smoking. I wrote a pair of novels, many short stories, got promoted at work and had a whole host of other victories. What could I accomplish if I gave up weed? How much better would the quality of my life be?
Here I am a few weeks later. I don’t miss marijuana at all, nor do I plan on going back to it any time soon. I’m losing weight and am more clear headed than I’ve been in years. Life is looking up, and while I wrestle with the depression now that I’ve stopped smoking I still think its worth it.
I used the new raise and the money I’ve saved from not smoking to invest in a new camera. Over the last few weeks I’ve taken it to Armstrong Woods, Sugarloaf Mountain and Goat Rock. I’ve had a blast hiking and taking pictures, and am finally losing the weight I’ve been trying to get rid of for so long.
I miss smoking, but I don’t miss what it did to my life. It’s time to face reality head on, and if I occasionally stumble because of the depression as least I have friends and family to help pull me out.
2010 is going to be a very good year
My last entry went over the goals and highlights of 2009. Now that I’ve spent time reflecting on past accomplishments its time to put together new goals. Last year I accomplished a lot, and 2010 will be even better. So without further ado here’s the list:
2010 Goals
- Lose 50 pounds
- Get in good enough shape to do rock climbing
- Get back into paintball
- Finish and submit The Bond of Jhordil
- Finish and submit 12 original short stories
- Learn how to use my expensive new camera
- Visit Yosemite
- Find a Gamer Chica who makes my blood boil and my heart sing
- Add $200 a month to my savings
- Pay my car loan down to $3000
- Be nicer to myself
Goal #1- Lose 50 lbs
This one doesn’t need much explanation. I need to drop fifty pounds and I plan to do it in 2010. I’ve created a page on this site to track my progress, complete with monthly pictures and weekly updates.
To accomplish my goal I’ll be going to the gym seven days a week. As of this writing I’ve been every day since January 1st. I’ve also signed up for Weight Watchers online, which has worked well for me in the past. Hopefully between the two I’ll see the results I’m looking for.
Goal #2- Get in good enough shape to go rock climbing
One of the monster boulders near Goat Rock
When I was a kid I lived in Scottsdale, Arizona for a few years. My father took my brother and I out to climb the rocks up to the caves that Navajo ancestors used to use. I was fascinated by them, and ever since I’ve wanted to take a trip to see the Anasazi caves in the southwest. For those not familiar Anasazi means ‘Ancient Enemy’ in Navajo. You can imagine how that fired my imagination as a kid.
Fat people and rock climbing do not mix, so in addition to losing the weight I need to pack on the muscle. To do this I’ve decided to hire a personal trainer to kick my ass three times a week. By this summer I want to be able to scale the massive rocks like this one, at a place called Goat Rock on the northern California coast.
Goal #3- Get back into paintball
I love paintball. LOVE it. It’s the only sport I’ve ever excelled at, and when I was playing it gave me motivation to stay in shape. Every weekend I’d come home covered in purple and yellow bruises, but I wore them like badges of honor. Every one of them was hard earned, and I gave far better than I got.
I still remember the game when Trevor and I drove up the field gunning down opponents. We snagged the flag and brought it back while still under fire. Effectively we won the game with just the two of us. It was a hell of a day.
I have all the gear to get back into the game. All I need to do is lose some weight, so if I hit goal number one and two this should be a snap.
Goal #4- Finish and submit The Bond of Jhordil
I’ve been working on my first wholly original novel since October. I completed the first draft in November, and am 45% through the second draft. I want to finish the 2nd draft by the end of February, and the third by the end of July.
After that I’ll shelve it for three months so its not as fresh in my mind, and then I’ll give it one final revision. By November I want to submit it to Tor Books.
Of my goals this is the single most important, and also the one I am most sure I will definitely accomplish. Writing has become a daily task over the last ten months, and now I don’t even think about it. I just do it. Now if I can just get Tor to publish the thing…
Goal #5- Write and submit 12 short stories
Finishing the novel is a must, but I also want to get my name out there and the best way to do that is with short stories. I have a billion and five ideas rolling around in my head, so this goal should be easy to meet as well. I just need to take breaks from the novel, and use that time to finish stories.
The added bonus is that every short story that’s accepted pays me at least $60. Some sell for as much as $200. Every time I get a check for my writing it fills me with pride, and motivates me to keep trying. All the more reason to submit as many as possible!
Goal #6- Learn how to use my expensive new camera
My new Cannon Digital Rebel
Last Sunday I went to the coast to do some hiking, and much to my surprise I saw an eagle. I named my new eagle buddy Fred, which has no bearing on this goal but hopefully made you snicker. Anyway Fred flew low over my head, and passed within about twenty feet of me. It was surreal and I desperately tried to snatch a picture of him. Unfortunately my iPhone just isn’t fast enough, and all I got was a black blur.
I decided right then that I never wanted to lose an opporunity like that again, so when I got home I started camera shopping. Amazon was having a special on the Cannon Digital Rebel, which is a beautiful entry level professional camera. I have no idea how to use it, but this year I want to start exploring photography and see if I can learn to take some amazing pictures.
Being that I run a blog and live in one of the most beautiful areas of the world I figured it would be pretty handy! From Yosemite to Armstrong woods to the California coast to Lake Tahoe we have it all. I want to capture some of that beauty, and I finally have a camera that can do it.
Goal #7- Visit Yosemite
A shot of Half Dome with Yosemite Valley below
I haven’t been back to Yosemite since I was married, which was nearly ten years ago. I have some very fond memories of the trip. Half Dome, El Capitan and the sprawling forests are amazing. Now that I have my shiny new camera, I want to use it to capture that magnificence, and I want to do it from the top of El Capitan which I’ve never been brave enough to climb before.
Goal #8- Find a gamer chica who makes my heart sing
What I’m looking for is as rare as a unicorn and as ephemeral as a rainbow. I want a pretty gamer chick, who lives in Northern California and isn’t batshit insane. I’ve met many pretty gamer chicks over the years, but most suffer from one of three problems. They don’t live anywhere near me, they’re crazy and have a vortex of drama spinning around them or they’re already taken.
I’m not really sure where to look, but I gather they’ve come out with Gamer Geek dating websites so that’s probably a good place to start. I should get set up on Yahoo Personals, and post a good picture of me. The ones I have now don’t show me in the best light, that’s for sure. Of course getting in shape will help, so if I can accomplish that it will provide a better picture automatically!
I also have a ton of friends that are pestering me to go on blind dates. I suppose I could try that as well, the thing is I’m really picky. I want someone who understands me, and that’s not a common thing. I’m not looking for a mainstream chick who spends her time shopping for shoes and watching Grey’s Anatomy. I want one who’s impressed by my arena rating in WoW, and who’d be excited to play in my Exalted campaign.
Goal #9- Add $200 a month to my savings
My savings took a massive hit over the last three years. The good news is that I bought everything from a new 42″ TV to a top of the line computer I custom built, complete with a gorgeous 26″ monitor. I flew up to Oregon to see Megan, and she showed me around Portland which was an absolute blast (thanks Megan!). There was the move into the new place, a new laptop, a trip to Atlanta and a billion other things I’m probably forgetting.
The long and short of things is that this year I need to start adding to my savings again. I’ve recently gotten a raise at work, and since I’m dieting am spending a ton less on food. That gives me about $300 exta each month so I figured I’d put $200 into savings, and the other $100 into paying down my car which leads me to…
Goal #10- Pay my car under $3000 this year
When I first got my car in 2005 it was at a 23.9% rate of interest. The payment was around $400 and very little of that was paying down the principle. That was just over four years ago, and while I was able to get the interest rate down to 4.99% I’m mightily tired of having a car payment.
This year I’m throwing every spare penny at the loan. I owe about $6500 on the car, and I want to get it under $3000 this year. That would allow me to pay it off in 2011, and as the car only has 30,000 miles on it I’ll have a nice car that I actually OWN.
The car is my only form of debt, so paying it off means that I am completely debt free. I’ve got a blog entry queued on the evils of debt slavery, but I’ll give it the short version here. The real measure of wealth is interest. If you are paying interest you are poor. If you are making interest off of your investments you are rich. The first step to becoming rich is paying off all your debt.
By 2011 I’ll have done that! Add in the money I’ve got saved and I’m doing pretty well. As of this year I finally have a positive net worth, and it will only grow from here on out!
Goal #11- Be nicer to myself
Being a perfectionist has its upsides. I can accomplish things that many people would deem impossible, which feels really good when I pull it off. But it also has a serious downside. I’m never happy with my own accomplishments, and tend to shrug them off right after I finish them.
To give an example of what I mean, last year I wrote Yuri Silvertongue & the Violet Spire. It’s a good novel. The dialogue is witty and it has a lot of high adventure. Yet I bag on it constantly. To me it just isn’t good enough, even though its my first novel and was written before I really understood how to tell a good story. I hold myself to such a high standard that I expected it to be perfect, and because it wasn’t I’m disappointed.
If you rewound time to a year ago and told me I’d complete a novel in 2009 I would have been ecstatic at the idea! Yet now that I’ve done it my response is, “Meh, it could be better.” I wish I knew why I was that way. It is a major accomplishment, so why can’t I accept that? Why do I need to critisize myself over my first attempt at a novel? Shouldn’t the fact that I finished an entire novel, polished it and submitted it be a massive feather in my cap?
It should. I know it should. My Zen practice teaches me that self-deprication is not only pointless, but damaging. It’s ok to set high standards for myself, but I need to learn to give myself props for my accomplishments. I’m holding yet another contract from Palladium Books for one of my stories. I just cashed a $200 check for a story.
That’s a hell of an accomplishment. People are paying me money for my work. So, Chris, bask in that for a little while. Stop fretting over the next goal, and take a minute to celebrate your victories!
Well, that sums up my goals for 2010. It should be interesting to check my progress in twelve months time!
2009 A Year in Review
When I was fourteen I bought one of those mottled black and white academic notebooks from the corner store with a pile of change I’d scrounged from my paper route. I wanted to be a writer, and my gifted and talented teacher told me that all great writers kept journals where they revealed their innermost thoughts.
I loved the sound of this and while my inner most thoughts mostly had to do with girls or whatever novel I happened to be reading I eagerly recorded them every week. Within three months I’d finished my notebook, and coincidentally this happened just before New Year’s.
As the final entry I decided to create A Year in Review, my first stab at a column although I didn’t understand that at the time. That entry began a tradition and every year since I’ve spent the final days of the year reflecting on the previous twelve months.
I am a very goal oriented person, and there’s rarely been a time in my life where I didn’t have a slew of things I was trying to accomplish. My journal entries are the yard stick I use at the end of every year to measure what I actually accomplished. It only makes sense to continue that tradition on my blog, as that’s replaced the old hand written journals I used to keep.
What were 2009’s Goals?
In 2009 I set a modest number of goals, at least by my standards They are as follows:
- Move into a nicer place
- Figure out what I want to do with my life
- Put together a new gaming group
- Lose as much weight as possible
- Get back into paintball
- Decide if I want to date
- Work on my FICO
Goal #1- Finding a new place
The first thing I wanted to do was move out of the three bedroom duplex I was living in. The place baked you in the summer and was freezing in the winter. It had no central heat or AC, thin walls and tiny little rooms. The power was frightening, and we had to run extension cords throughout the house to preserve our delicate power balance. Even with the extension cords thrown breakers were a daily occurence. Our microwave sat on a chair in the dining room, because none of the outlets in the kitchen worked.
When Jeff and I first moved up from Los Angeles it was just us. We chose a three bedroom place, because we wanted to have an office where we could game. Both of our computers were in there, and that’s where we spent the bulk of every day. It was really nice to sit right next to each other when we played games like World of Warcraft.
Not long after that an old friend of mine needed a place to stay. This was problematic as two of the bedrooms were in use by Jeff and I, and the third served as the office where we gamed. Our first instinct was to say no, but Aaron agreed to sleep in the living room and set his computer up in the office. This preserved our game room, and since we didn’t really use the living room anyway it seemed like a good solution. All three of us would play World of Warcraft together, and it was an absolute blast being in the same room.
Adding a third person took the place from roomy to cramped, but we adjusted. The problems got more and more annoying as time passed, and as most of them stemmed from where we lived we decided to start looking for a more comfortable place. Aaron deserved his own room, and we desperately wanted a second bathroom. A place where turning on a light switch wasn’t a fire hazard seemed like it might be a plus, and not having someone sleeping in the living room would be a definite improvement too.
Instead of moving we added another roomate. Not only was there no room for a fourth person, but the guy in question wasn’t paying any bills. He just sort of…lived there. If you’ve ever seen the movie Half Baked we had our very own Guy on the Couch.
If I haven’t mentioned it the place only had one bathroom. With two people it was no big deal. With three it was a big deal. With four it was untenable. To make matters worse the kitchen was like a warzone. Every dish sat dirty on the counter, and the refrigerator usually required you to hold your breath before you opened it.
I hated it and it gave me bitter flashbacks to the final years of my marriage, when I lived in indescribable filth. Back then my floors were covered in fast food wrappers and other gargbage. The refrigerator had evolved into a new form of life. Trust me when I tell you the place was grim and you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.
When I realized what I’d let my living situation devolve into I was furious with myself. I’d made a promise that I’d never live like that again. Yet that’s exactly what I was doing.
Goal Resolution: 10/10
So how did my quest to escape the den of filth end? Very, very well. Jeff and I talked and we decided that getting a place with just the two of us was a must. In May we moved into a two bedroom place with hardwood floors and an indoor washer / dryer. We have heat and AC, and for the first time since moving home I no longer dread August.
I love the place and work hard to keep it spotless. The boost to my confidence and mental well being that comes from living in a nice place is immeasurable. It completely changed the quality of my life. I no longer fear going home, and when someone asks if they can come over I eagerly accept. I show off my place with pride instead of fumbling for an excuse so they don’t see the hellhole where I live.
Goal #2- Find my purpose in life
I’ve heard people talk about the dreaded mid life crisis, but I’ve never understood what they meant until this year. In my case the mid-life crisis was triggered by a sudden terrifying look at my life. When I left Los Angeles I was making a six figure income. I lived in a beautiful apartment. I had the respect of my peers, and ate at the nicest places in the San Fernando Valley.
I gave all of that up when I moved home. I told myself that money didn’t matter, and that true happiness would never be found as a yuppy living in LA. I was burnt out and tired and I knew I needed a drastic change. The problem was that while I had correctly identified the problem, I really had no solution for it.
When I moved back to Santa Rosa I took a low paying entry level customer service job. I turned down the promotion they offered me, because I was content to hunker down in my cube and stay out of the limelight. Instead of forging a path to the top like I had at every other job I was content being a peon.
Work had been a big part of my life in Los Angeles, but after moving home instead of a career I just had a job. I had also just broken up with Jen. The only things of any real meaning in my life were the latest video games, and the roleplaying games I played with my friends.
I didn’t look think about the future, because I told myself I’d earned a break. That might have been true, but losing sight of the future was damaging in ways I could never have predidcted. I had no purpose in life, no goals. For the first time in years I had no idea what I wanted to do.
This destroyed my self-esteem, and at first I didn’t even know why. When I don’t have goals I stagnate very quickly, and it wasn’t long before I fell into a depressed funk. I was miserable, but didn’t know what I could do to fix it. What was I looking for? A new job? A new relationship? Was I trying to lose weight? I just didn’t have the answers, and it drove me nuts because I desperately wanted them.
Goal Resolution: 10/10
A great deal of soul searching later I finally found the answer. There wasn’t any one specific thing I needed to do to find my purpose in life. In fact my goals didn’t really matter at all. What matters is that I have goals. As long as I am learning and improving I am happy, but if I get to a point where I’m treading water I become depressed and listless. So I decided to test my theory by improving my life.
My first experiment was going back to school. I took an American history and a programming course, which were both amazing. Even better than the courses themselves was the immediate change I noticed. Being back in school awakened a long dormant part of me. It gave me direction and more importantly I was learning again. I’d forgotten just how much I loved doing that, and bringing it back into my life showed me what I’d been missing.
As much as I loved going back to school it was an enormous amount of work. I’m employed full time, and homework on top of a job was brutal. I learned a lot in both classes, but I knew there was no way I was going to go back to school for eight solid years. At two classes a semester that’s how long it would take me to get a B.S in computer science. It just didn’t seem worth it.
Knowing that school wasn’t the answer I considered my options. Learning was something I passionately loved, so whatever my purpose was it must involve that. I looked closely at my life and asked myself when I was the happiest. What did I enjoy most?
Those who’ve read the site for a while already know the answer, but at the time I was clueless. I meandered around for a couple of months, and in late February I started writing again. Within a few days a lightbulb switched on in my head.
I loved learning. I also loved writing. Why not learn to write? Some of my earliest memories are of wanting to be an author, and it’s a dream I’ve chased my entire life. I’d given up that dream, because somewhere along the way I stopped believing I could accomplish it.
That’s normal for most people, but not for me. When I was a child I was blessed with the sort of arrogance only gifted children demonstrate. I believed I could do anything, because by and large I could. I succeeded at everything I set my mind to, and this was even more true at a young age. In short I was used to being a genius and I took it for granted.
My early to mid twenties were a series of kicks to the balls that rudely disabused me of that notion. I divorced the love of my life, my high paying engineering job was outsourced, my cat died, I wrecked my brand new car and to top it all off I had to move back in with my parents for the first time since I was eighteen. The next couple of years were brutal, and shifted my entire world on its axis.
Somewhere along the way I stopped trying, and started acting like a beaten dog. My arrogance was gone, which some would say is a good thing. The problem is that it took my fire and my confidence with it. I became overly cautious and less willing to take risks. I stopped believing in myself. I stopped thinking I could achieve my dreams, that I was a badass capable of anything.
This understanding of what I had lost was both powerful and profound, and it only came about recently. Everything snapped sharply into focus, and I saw myself with a clarity that had been lacking for a very long time. Practically overnight I reclaimed what was missing. I found my fire, and it still burns with the same intensity it did when I was younger.
I can’t even express how good that resolve feels. I can do anything. I am a badass. I don’t care what other people say. I know who I am. I know what I can accomplish. In three years I went from the mail room to Executive Vice President of a mortgage bank. I’ve won just about every MtG tournament I’ve ever entered. In an afternoon I made a program that revolutionized my department at work. I wrote a novel and published several short stories this year.
I am filled to the brim with potential, and never again will I forget that. I can do anything, as long as I try.
Goal #3- Put together a new gaming group
The vast majority of people reading my site are gamers, so many of you will understand my next goal. I’ve played pen and paper RPGs since I was six, and I am still just as passionate about them nearly three decades later. I take my gaming seriously, because I like telling amazing stories. Doing so requires the right kind of players, and the sad fact is that not all of my friends fit that mold.
My old gaming group suffered from three major problems. First, there were just too many of us. If you haven’t played a lot of pen and paper games it might not be immediately apparent why that’s an issue. Playing an RPG is kind of like watching a movie. The more characters you have the less screen time each character gets. We had six players, which meant most of your evening was spent ‘off screen’. As you can imagine this gets really boring as you are essentially watching other people play while you sit around.
The second sticking point was that our group’s style tended more towards combat and rules mongering and less towards story and character development. We played our games more like a boardgame and less like living, breathing characters in a fictional world. People didn’t get into character, they talked about what their characters did. Both styles are good in their own way, I just prefer the latter.
The final kiss of death was that our group liked to get good and loaded before gaming. I ran more than one of these games so trust me when I say running a game while innebriated does not a good story make. For me these games are all about the stories, so this drove me nuts.
Don’t get me wrong. I had a great time with my previous gaming group. Most of them are very old friends, and I can’t think of a finer group to sit and round BS with. I love hanging out with them, and some of the games we played were a lot of fun. I loved playing with them. I just didn’t like running games for them.
Goal Resolution: 10/10
My own style tends towards smaller groups and more intense roleplay. Nor do I enjoy gaming while inebriated, so I had a difficult choice to make. In the end I decided to leave the gaming group and build my own. When our current campaign ended I started the long hunt.
I created a campaign website, a Meetup Group and I started advertising in local gaming shops. Within a few weeks I had three players who’s style matched my own, and my new Exalted campaign was under way. I miss hanging out with the old group, but my current one is amazing.
Our sessions are an absolute blast and I’ve been running the same game since July. Things only seem to get better the longer we play, and if I have my way this is the group I’ll be gaming with for years.
Goal #4- Get in Shape & Lose Weight
I’ve battled with my weight since I was eighteen. I’ve never been morbidly obese, but I’ve carried between 50-75 extra pounds for nearly my entire adult life. Every year I resolve to get in shape, and some years are more successful than others. This is a goal I think many can relate too, so most of you know how difficult it can be.
At the beginning of 2009 I weighted 250 pounds. My goal was to lose fifty pounds, and ending the year 200 pounds would have made me ecstatic.
Goal Resolution: 7/10
I didn’t come anywhere close to my weight loss goal. As of this writing I am 235 pounds, which is where I imagine I’ll finish the year. Still, it’s hard to be too disappointed. I did lose weight even if it as only fifteen pounds instead of my goal of fifty.
What’s more I started going to gym again in May. I was lucky enough to find one a few blocks from home, and have worked out pretty steadily for the second half of the year. I’ve started going every day and really notice a difference in the way I feel.
Goal #5- Get Back into Paintball
I was never the last kid picked for dodgeball, but I wasn’t the first either. I ran varsity track in high school, and played about ten years of little league. That was pretty much it as far as sports goes other than the occasional pickup game of basketball growing up.
Imagine my surprise when I found paintball. The very first time I picked up a gun I tore up the field. In my third game ever I took out seven opponents before they brought me down. This was done with a crappy rental gun that shot about as straight as most politicians. I fell in love instantly, and dumped a couple grand into a nice gun and a big pile of gear.
I played religiously for the first year, but after that I started going less often and eventually stopped entirely. Since moving home almost three years ago I keep telling myself I want to get back into it, but the thing is it’s hard to play if you’re fat. The weight loss goal goes hand in hand with this one, so you probably know how this is going to end.
Goal Resolution: 1/10
I gave myself a single point for actually getting the paintball gear out of storage and taking apart my gun. Unfortunately that’s as close as I got to actually playing paintball in 2009 =/.
Goal #6- Deciding whether or not to Date
I’m 33 years old, have no children and very little baggage. I’m not bad looking, intelligent, reasonably witty and I make decent money. I’m a published author, have lived all over the country and am a good conversationalist. I’ve been in several longterm relationships, and many short term ones. I don’t have any problem meeting new women. I’m not shy and have never had an issue landing a girl when I set my mind to it.
So why have I been single for the last two years? Because I’ve had no desire to get back into the dating game. Not because I’m afraid or because I worry about being rejected. I’ve stayed single because I’m just so weary of getting burned. I’m tired of winching up the gates to my heart, only to leave myself open to inevitable heartbreak. I know that’s a rather cynical view, but in my case its accurate. I’ve been burned badly, and I’m not eager to repeat the experience.
I’m one of those people with the good fortune to have fallen in love not once, but twice. I don’t mean the kind of love that grows over time, the way warmth seeps into you when you lay in a nice hot bath. No, I mean the all consuming passion of knowing you’ve met your other half. The person you were meant to spend your life with.
The first was my ex-wife Darlene. After my divorce I had a hard time getting back in the game, because Dar was something special. She connected with me on so many levels that we regularly finished each other’s sentences. Looking at her filled me with something beyond happiness, beyond contentment. I loved her with the purity of innocence, and she returned my feelings with the same ferocity. It was heady and intense, like a drug.
My second love was a straw haired beauty named Jen from the corn filled state of Iowa. Not only was she gorgeous, but she has the kindest soul I’ve ever met. There was a gentless to her like dew on a spiderweb just before the sun crests the horizon. Fragile and fleeting, but beautiful in a way that catches your breath.
She was too perfect for this world, or at least too perfect for me. In our case the long distance killed the relationship, and when I lost her she took something that I haven’t been able to recover since. Something precious and unidentifiable.
Jen and I broke up almost three years ago. Since then I’ve dated other women, none of which lasted more than a few dates. None of them kindled the fire that I felt with Dar or Jen. None caught my interest, and while the sex would have been nice I cut each of them off before it got to that stage.
So that’s the story. Now you know why I asked myself whether or not I wanted to date, or wait for the Japanese to perfect robotic women instead. It’s a question I spent a lot of time mulling over this year. Even as pain fades I still remember the horrible damage the end of those relationships wrought.
Yet I often wonder if such a negative outlook keeps me from seeing the positives. When I was in those relationships I woke up every day feeling like I wanted to sing. I loved with an intensity that defies description. So the ultimate question, then, is the pain of the inevitable breakup worth the initial bliss?
Goal Resolution: 8/10
My final answer is yes, it is worth the pain. I want to find a woman who makes my heart sing. Someone who cups my soul between delicate hands, whose smile makes the sunrise pale. If a relationship with such a woman eventually ends it will have been worth it for the wonderful memories. If not, maybe I’ll find ‘the one’ and actually grow old with her.
Unfortunately this decision wasn’t reached until I flew out to Atlanta a few weeks ago, so I haven’t had a chance to act on it. I gave myself an 8 out of 10 anyway, because even before I knew the question I was working on a solution.
I knew that if I was going to date there were many things about my life I’d want to change. You’ve read where I lived. How many women do you know who’d walk into a house like that and not immediately turn around and walk out? That wasn’t my only problem of course, but it was a big one. It was fixed by moving into my new place, which any date I bring home will love.
I also am wise enough to know that the crap we’re taught about women is just that. Crap. Women aren’t after a man who’s funny or nice. Those are both perks, but the fairer sex are just as shallow as we are and don’t let them tell you otherwise. They want Brad Pitt not Danny Devito. A nice set of abs goes a lot further than a funny joke.
That’s why I hit the gym so heavily this year. If I want to meet the woman who’s going to blow me away I need to look my best. In addition to working on the weight loss I redid my wardrobe, dropped my glasses in favor of contacts, and snuck into the dentist for the first time in over a decade.
I feel and look better than I have in a long time. I live in a nice place. I drive a nice car. I have a nice job. My fiction is finally taking off. More important than any of that I have the resolve to keep bettering myself, because I know she’s out there somewhere and I think I’m finally ready to go out and find her.
I sincerely hope 2010 is the year I meet her, but if not at the very least I will be in a position to snatch her up if she appears.
Goal #7- Work on my FICO
If you’ve ever had bad credit you know the fear that lives in the pit of your stomach whenever it comes up. From hunting for a new apartment to applying for a loan, if your FICO sucks you feel that awful mix of embarassment and despair that comes along with bad credit. I know, because in my mid 20s my FICO dropped to 580 and lived there for several years.
When I bought my car in 2005 I was genuinely worried if they’d approve me at all, and was quite relieved when someone did. They charged me 23.9% interest, and if you work anywhere near the world of finance you probably cringed when you heard that number. If you didn’t then you should have, because it means I would have paid about 180% of the car’s value in interest. So my $13,000 Elantra would have cost me over $30,000 once interest was factored in.
Goal Resolution: 10/10
Fortunately, I worked for a mortage bank and understood the important of my credit score. I also knew how to raise it, and that part of doing so meant suffering through my horrible interest rate. Within a year my credit improved, and I refinanced down to a 16.9%. I kept up the hard work, and last year I refinanced my car to a 4.99% loan. It took nearly five years, but I finally have good credit.
My FICO as of this writing is 776 and for someone who’s long suffered from a dismal score you have no idea how good that feels. For the first time in my life I have good credit. I don’t stress when the subject comes up anymore. I don’t worry about being able to get a cell phone, or an apartment or a loan. I even set my sister up with a cell phone, because her credit was pretty poor. This is one of the areas I am proudest this year, because it’s the culmination of a five year journey. I can’t believe I finally made it.
Way to go me!
Unexpected Achievements
If you’ve made it this far I’m both surprised and impressed. You’ve waded through a 4,000 word wall of text! Don’t worry we’re most of the way done. My unexpected achievements section is the final one every year. It came about because I realized that much of what I accomplish happened either by accident, or happy coincidence. Not everything I achieve is a goal, so this area recounts the unexpected things that happened this year.
UA #1- My writing carreer
Every English teacher I’ve ever had has told me that I was meant to be a writer. By the time I was 18 I was so certain of that fact that I had all but cashed my first royalty check without even picking up a pen. There was only one problem. My writing sucked. I was devestated when I belted out fiction, only to realize it was flat, lifeless and boring. None of my friends and family were even willing to read it, and as this was before the advent of the web I couldn’t even go online for help.
So I gave up. I’d given in to the Big Lie, which is that writers are born not made. Oh what a lie that is. Some writers are born with talent, but even the best of us needs to hone our craft to realize that potential. My problem wasn’t that I lacked talent. I’d just never learned how to tap into it. So this year I decided to remedy that.
In February I started working on an Exalted novel, since it was an established world and would be a great place for a new author to practice. Up to that point the longest piece I’d ever written had been 35,000 words and that was over five years ago. I wanted to see if I could better that, and resolved to learn as much as I could about writing.
Six months later I’d read a dozen books on writing. I learned about characterization, plot, and many other fundamentals that helped me learn how to tell a good story. These principles have transformed my writing, but none as much as the last book I read. It was called Line by Line, and is only 150 pages long. After reading that book my command of the English language leapt to a whole new level.
I put my new found skills to work and belted out a 160,000 word novel. The average novel is only 100,000 words long so that’s quite an accomplishment. I’d have been happy if that was the only thing I wrote this year, but it was just the tip of the iceberg.
I completed the rough draft of my first original novel, The Bond of Jhordil. This is the novel that’s been kicking around in my head since high school, so that’s a major, major feather in my cap. Especially when you consider that I wrote TWO novels in one year. That’s nothing short of amazing.
Nor is it the only thing I wrote. Revenge of the Gamer was born this year, so every article and page on this site was created in the last twelve months. The same holds true for my other two blogs, the Unconquered Sun and The Bond of Jhordil.
I submitted a story to the Dragonmount Anthology, which looks like it will be accepted. I also sent several stories and a slew of Evil GM articles to the Rifter, all of which were accepted. I wrote a column for one of the largest gaming sites on the internet www.rpg.net, and continued submitting my Evil GM series to Gamegrene.
All told I wrote more than 1,000,000 words in 2009. That’s right, a million words in a year. That’s about 3,000 words every single day for a full 12 months. For the first time in my life I can call myself and author, and know that it’s true.
UA #2- Meeting Brandon Sanderson & Harriet McDougal
This achievement is tangentally related to my writing. Back in high school one of my favorite series was The Wheel of Time by a guy named Robert Jordan. In 2007 he passed away, leaving his masterpiece unfinished. His widow Harriet selected a successor, and she chose Brandon Sanderson for the job.
This year Brandon released book 12 of the Wheel of Time, A Gathering Storm. I applied with Tor books to be a Stormleader for the book signing. Basically I worked the crowd while he signed books, and afterwords we got a chance to go out to dinner and play Magic the Gathering.
It was an amazing experience, and it gave me a glimpse into the shoes I one day hope to fill. I got a chance to see Brandon, and realized that he wasn’t much different from me. That made me more sure than ever that I can publish novels, and in a year or two I’ll stand beside him as an author.
UA #3- Getting Promoted
I’ve been working for Redwood Credit Union for a little over two years now. About eight months ago I was drafted into the Financial Assistance Department, which is a nice name for collections. At first I dreaded the work, but in time I adjusted. I’ve done cold calling before, and this is far easier than calling brokers ever was.
A full time position opened in that department, and as I was already doing the work I decided to apply. They accepted me, and I ended up with a nice fat raise while still doing the same work I was before. Now that’s the kind of promotion I can get behind!
Overall Score: 9/10
2009 rocked. It was a far better year than either 2008 or 2007, and has paved the way for 2010 to be even better. I still can’t believe that I wrote over a million words, or that I wrote and submitted a novel. This has been the best year for me in a long time, and I’m entering the New Year not just thankful for what I have but also excited about the possibilties in store for me!
Keep an eye out for my next post, 2010’s goals!
Dorothy Diane Fox, In Memory
I had a bombshell dropped on me last Friday. My brother sent an email containing three simple words. Mom is dead. It hit me like a kick to the chest, and honestly I’m still a little numb. It was a lot to take in even though it was somewhat expected.
Writing is a cathartic experience for me so I’ve decided that the best way to deal with the tumult of emotions is to post about my mother. I wanted to tell the world a little about her so that she’s remembered in some small corner of the world.
My earliest memory is of a tall dark haired woman with a brilliant smile and the kindest eyes you can imagine. It happened when I was two. I was standing outside of a courthouse playing with the fountain while she and my grandmother discussed momentous things in too quiet voices. I was too young to understand what was going on, but I knew she was sad. It wasn’t very long until I found out why.
My father had filed for divorce, and she’d fought for custody of my older brother and I. She lost. It was a landmark decision that set precedent in California, because in the 1970s custody of children nearly always went to the mother. Losing us devastated her and I’m not sure she was ever the same afterwards.
For the next several years we lived with my father. Because we’d moved to Arizona and she still lived in California it was difficult for her to come see us, and I don’t remember her ever making the trip. As a result I didn’t see my mother for the next few years.
As we grew older my father decided we needed time with her, and arranged limited visitation with the courts. This went well so eventually we were allowed longer and longer visits, and by the time I was six we were spending our summers at Bethel Island.
Bethel Island was a magical place that nearly defies description. It was a tiny island in the river delta of central California, and to reach it you either needed to take the ferry or use the island’s one small bridge. It was largely isolated from the surrounding area, and felt wild and untamed to my young eyes.
My mother’s house was even more magical. She lived on a house boat, and I found the concept amazing. I nursed dreams of it breaking loose from its moorings and drifting out to sea. I told myself I might awake on any given morning to find ourselves blown to some magical island across the sea where we could live together without ever having to worry about returning home to my father.
I was too young to fully understand how poor my mother was, or how close to the edge she lived. To me cooking spaghetti every night was fun, not the only option because she couldn’t afford anything other than cheap pasta and cheaper sauce. At age eight staying home during the day with my eleven year old brother was an adventure, not my mother unable to afford child care for her two children.
Don’t get me wrong I knew we weren’t rich. I saw the sad look on her face whenever we asked for something and she couldn’t afford it. I still remember sitting home fishing instead of watching cable, because I thought cable charged by the hour and I didn’t want her to have to spend any money on me.
To me such things were insignificant. What did it matter if my mother had money? She had her smile and her magical ability to take away my pain and to make everything make sense in the world. She was a source of comfort, and I loved her dearly. Leaving that house boat every summer was the hardest thing my young self ever had to do.
My final visit came when I was eight. It was the third year we’d gone, and the place was fast becoming my home away from home. I was so excited by the time I boarded the plane that I could barely sit still, and my older brother Brian felt the same. My mother picked us up as usual, and we enjoyed the best summer I have ever had.
We spent the time fishing, talking, watching movies and being a family. I remember my mother showing me Jaws that summer, which in retrospect probably wasn’t the best movie for an eight year old living on a house boat. We sailed around on her boyfriend’s yaught and sang together. It was a magical time and one I will never forget.
When the summer ended my mother was heartbroken. She couldn’t bear to be separated from us again, so she sued my father for custody. Her case was based around what she perceived as child abuse. To be fair my childhood was pretty rough, and I had the crap kicked out of me by my father on more than one occasion.
This never happened randomly though, only after I’d done something monumentally stupid. Today it would be called child abuse, but in the early 80s it was just discipline and the courts saw it as such. My mother lost her case and the judge left us in our father’s custody.
On the day the verdict was read my brother and I were left home. Around noon the phone rang and my mother told us to pack whatever we could carry and run to her boyfriend’s house. She’d decided to kidnap us rather than give us back to our father.
I loved my mother with a ferocity that I cannot adequately convey, and I wanted to protect her at any cost. More than that I cherished the summers at Bethel Island as they gave me freedom from the strict home my father and stepmother maintained. As you might expect I did exactly as my mother asked, because I wanted to stay with her.
My brother and I wanted to live with her as much as she wanted us there. We dutifully packed a little clothing, and since I was the brains of the operation I thought it was a good idea to pack food as we had no idea when we could get more. What did I bring? About a dozen Twinkies.
From there we crossed Bethel Island in search of her boyfriend’s house. My brother was eleven and I was eight, and today what she asked us to do would have been called reckless endangerment. To us it was normal. She knew we were responsible enough to take care of ourselves, and that we could reach her boyfriend’s without getting into trouble.
She met us there a little while later, and for the next several months we were on the run from the law. We used assumed names and never stayed in the same place for very long. Our first stop was her boyfriend’s 180 acre ranch down in Arizona. It was isolated and as safe a haven as we could find, but it was also stocked with a healthy supply of guns and Playboys.
My mother was less than thrilled with the latter so we fled to Yuma to stay with my grandmother Mary and my grandfather Merle (known affectionately as grandpa Snoopy). Now you have to understand how desperate my mother was to reach the point where she asked them for help. My grandfather was the sweetest man alive, and I cherish his memory. But my grandmother was a different story.
Mary Mitchell was a vile woman who wasn’t happy unless she was making someone else miserable. She taught my brother to tie his shoes by making him stand in the corner day after day until he got it right. She didn’t actually teach him to tie them. She just expected him to learn on his own. That should give you some idea of how horrid this woman was, and she gloated over the fact that my mother needed her.
Seven months after I’d been kidnapped my mother couldn’t take it any longer and fled from Mary Mitchell. She brought us back to Bethel Island, the idea being that we were going to stop home just long enough to pick up a few things before heading to the next destination. You can imagine how it worked out.
The cops had been watching the place, and within an hour of our arrival they swarmed us. My mother was dragged off to jail, and my brother and I were placed in foster care. Not only did I lose my mother, but in the same blow I was placed in the most corrupt, horrifying situation a child can be.
I won’t speak more about the horrors that occurred in the various foster homes we stayed in. If you’ve ever lived in one you know what I’m talking about. It more than scarred me. It forced me to become an adult when I was eight years old.
By the time I was nine my father had gotten custody back. We were taken from the horrible foster homes and placed back in his care. I was terrified he’d be angry that we’d chosen to stay with my mother that summer, but quite the opposite. Life improved for us because I think it was a wake up call to him.
Things did not improve for my mother. Not long after we came home my family moved to New Hampshire. My father wanted to take us as far from my mother as possible, because he was terrified she’d kidnap us again. My mother might have, so it was a valid concern. Instead she was left behind in California with a felony arrest record and a crushing amount of debt she could never hope to pay back.
She called us once, but that was the last I saw or heard from my mother for the next decade. I spent a lot of time wondering why, because each and every time we moved my father dutifully made sure we saw him mail her a letter giving her the new address.
I often wondered if she’d stopped loving me, or if she’d found a new family. I was lonely and bitter and I missed her terribly. My brother felt the same and somewhere along the way we forgot about her as best we were able. It was the best way to manage the pain.
It wasn’t until just after I’d gotten married that I heard from her again. I had just turned nineteen, and had plunged pretty heavily into the world of drugs and parties. I was hurt and angry that she’d been gone for so long, and when I asked her why I was upset because she had no good reason.
My mother told me that she hadn’t been able to find us, but when I asked how she’d finally tracked me down she admitted that a friend bought her the services of a private investigator as a gift. Apparently the man found me using my social security number, and had my phone number within two days of starting his search.
By this time I’d spent nearly fifteen years living with Maryann, my stepmother. She was the woman who’d watched over me while I was sick, made my birthday cakes and picked me up when life knocked me down. Maryann was more my mother than my biological mother ever could be. That’s true to this day and blood be damned.
I was angry with my mother, and things were made worse by some of the wild claims she made. She told me that my father had taken us away from her, which was understandable. What was less easy to accept was that she said my father had bugged her house, and that it was still bugged over a decade later.
My father is many things and I’d count asshole among them. Even he would never stoop that low, and even if he would he lacked the means. My father was too busy getting high and avoiding the real world to do anything as elaborate as bugging his ex wife’s house ten years after the last time he’d seen her. Yet she persisted in these claims and our conversations devolved into bitter fights about him.
In the end I couldn’t handle the stress and I cut things off. In my mind she’d been gone for over a decade, and hadn’t made any serious attempt to find me. That didn’t leave her much room to attack my father, who for all his flaws loved us as best he could. He’d been there. She hadn’t.
Fast forward another ten years. I’d just turned twenty eight when I received a call from my brother. He told me that D.D. had been diagnosed with Lupus. She wasn’t doing well, and he asked me if I’d give her a call as he felt it would lift her spirits. Of course I agreed and for the first time since I was eight I re-connected with my mother.
She lived up in Washington and I lived in Los Angeles. Fortunately for me I had a six figure income and a company that was understanding about vacation. I flew up to see her several times over the next year. It was without a doubt the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, but I did it anyway. I did it for her.
What made it so difficult to see her was a mix of things. First and foremost was my mother’s health. Gone was the vibrant smiling woman I remembered. In her place was an old woman with swollen legs who found walking difficult. She smoked like a chimney, and her entire house was a constant cloud of smoke so acrid my eyes burned. That was far from the worst of it though.
My mother was insane. I’m not talking about a little crazy like your eccentric aunt Freda. I mean so off that it’s immediately apparent, like a fence with missing posts. My mother believed every crazy conspiracy theory out there. She believed that she’d been kidnapped by aliens, that my father still had her house bugged (she showed me the bugged phone and spoke in whispers around it) and that if you wished hard enough you could find a magical world full of hobbit holes.
It wasn’t a malicious sort of insanity, but not all of it was as benign as the examples given. One manifestation tore me apart inside, and every time I heard it a little part of me died. My mother believed that it was my fault we’d lost touch after she was sent to jail. She believed that as an eight year old I should have found a way to cross the continental United States to find her.
No amount of reasoning with her worked, because as I said she was crazy. She believed what she believed, and I think a part of her mind recoiled at all that had happened back then. D.D. was meant to be a mother, but through circumstance she lost her children and I think that started her on the road to insanity.
In the end I couldn’t take it anymore. I spent too many nights crying and had too much heartache. One day she called me and we got into a huge fight, because I was so tired of being told I’d failed her as a child. The fact that she expected me to have figured out a way to come find her infuriated me. I was the scared eight year old boy wishing for his mother. She was the adult. Yet somehow it was my fault.
I knew she didn’t really mean it, and that it was her mind’s only defense against the truth. Just like my father bugging her house, it absolved her of responsibility and made it not her fault. Logically I can say that, but emotionally I couldn’t face it.
That final conversation took place three years ago, and I’m ashamed to admit that I never spoke to her again. I don’t blame myself. The last time I dealt with her it sent me into a crippling spiral of depression. As much as I wanted to be there for her at the end I just didn’t have the strength.
Whenever I think about her it makes me sad. She had so much pain in her life, and endured more humiliation, shame and heartbreak than anyone should have to. My mother did the best she could in a difficult world, and I will always love her for that.
Wherever you are now Mom I hope you’re happy.
Sarah Palin & the Best Troll Cave on the Internet
Going Rogue, Palin's new book
To date I haven’t posted anything I’d consider political, so this will be a bit different than anything you’ve read on my site. Today’s post is about Sarah Palin’s new book Going Rogue.
Let me start by saying that I am about as far from a Palin supporter as you can get. I don’t hate the woman, but she is in no way qualfied to be either vice president or president of the United States.
In reading the book something very rapidly became clear. Sarah doesn’t accept responsibility for anything. Katie Couric was mean to her, and the interview was ‘taken out of context’. McCain’s staff caused each and every problem the campaign suffered. (In a whiny voice) It wasn’t her fault.
The prank call from the Canadian radio station? Yeah that was a staff member’s fault, not hers. Troopergate? That was the evil liberals trying to take her down.
Quitting her job as Governor and forsaking the oath she swore? Of course that wasn’t her fault. She had to deal with *gasps* lawsuits and ethics probes and it was hard. The last is my favorite and I’d love to see Palin talk to Bill Clinton about frivilous lawsuits.
The bottom line is that she took responsibility for nothing. Now don’t get me wrong, everyone makes mistakes and Palin was obviously new to the political scene. This book was her chance to own up and pave the way for the future.
Instead she comes out looking like a whiny victim, and the ugly reality is that no one likes a loser. Yet somehow she still has her diehard supporters. People like these tirelessly champion her, yet as you can see from the link not a single one can say why.
They can’t name a single one of her positions. They can’t say what she would do as president or vice president that might save the country. They can’t say why she’d do a good job. In the end they can’t really say anything except we love Sarah!
So, where am I going with all this? Well, when I first heard about the book I went to amazon after reading my pirated copy. I took a look at the reviews because I was curious to see what people thought of the book.
As you can imagine things were broken into two camps. Many of the reviews were five starred. They had nothing to say about the contents of the book, and basically consisted of We love Sarah and her book is GREAT!
The other camp were one star reviews by liberals who’d read the book. One of these reviews was particularly interesting, because it was posted by a man who’d lived in Alaska for 55 years and who gave a real assessment of Palin. Having actually lived in her state while she was governor it seemed like his opinion would carry some weight.
The conservatives came out of the woodwork to attack this man, and I jumped in to defend him. That’s where the title of this thread comes in.
If you’ve watched the clip of the Palin supporters earlier in this post you have some idea of their mindset and intellectual capability. They can’t carry on a rational debate. Instead they parrot soundbytes picked up on Fox news or from Glen Beck.
I subscribed to the conversation so that every time someone posted I’d get an email informing me. This allowed me to easily keep tabs on the review comments and for the past couple of weeks one of my recreational activities has been utterly destroying Palin supporters.
It’s been very amusing. They all lead with the same argument, which is how Obama is the antichrist/muslim/liberal/insert insult who is dooming our country to destruction. Then they move on to anyone else who’s ever said anything negative about Palin or even about Bush.
For 23 pages (so far) I used the sword of logic to crush their arguments. I point out that Obama’s failings do not make up for Palin’s. I explain the multitude of ways in which Bush damaged the United States during his two terms. But the most enjoyable thing was the challenge I posed over and over.
Why do you support Palin? Is it because she would fix the economy? Make abortion illegal? Deport all the evil muslims? After twenty three pages and hundreds of angry responses not a single person has successfully answered the question. They literally can’t tell me why they like her, beyond saying that she’s real.
Then they launch right back into attacking Obama. This is especially amusing because I don’t like Obama, and actually voted for Ron Paul. I don’t support him or his actions, which confused the hell out of the conservatives attacking me. They couldn’t wrap their mind around the fact that I didn’t support Obama.
Long after I’d agreed with them that he is doing a poor job they still fell back on attacking him as their only defense. They like Palin because Obama is evil.
I know most people look down on trolls, but I’m hoping in this instance you’ll forgive me. Sarah Palin’s book review is the best troll cave ever and I plan to live there for some time to come.
If you find yourself bored at work I encourage you to read the thread, and jump right on in if you enjoy trolling the Palin followers as much as I do.
Amazon is a big site and Palin is obsessed with how she is viewed. I have this little fantasy that she’ll actually see my posts, and that somewhere she is cursing my name.
Meeting Brandon Sanderson & Harriet McDougal
Me with Brandon Sanderson and Harriet McDougal
It isn’t often that we catch a glimpse of our childhood dreams once we’re adults. Between grocery shopping, soccer games, work and balancing our checkbooks we lose the magic and wonder we felt when we were children.
One by one dreams fade to might have beens, and we’re left with a sense of nostalgia and loss as we try to figure out how we got here.
Once in a while we undergo an event so magical that it recaptures our fire. It renews our drive to fulfill those childhood dreams, and reminds us what we can accomplish.
Saturday was one of those events. I drove down to San Jose to be a Stormleader for the signing of the twelfth book of the Wheel of Time, A Gathering Storm. I knew the second Brandon spoke that this day was going to change my life.
He began with a pair of stories which showed what a regular guy he really is. The first could have come from my own life. Brandon and I are the same age, and like me he devoured every fantasy novel he could find as a kid. He also had a paper route, and used every spare dime to buy more novels.
The Eye of the World
Brandon went to the bookstore every week to see what new books had come out, something I remember doing at the same age. On one particular trip he found a fat book with a blue cover, the Eye of the World.
Like millions of fans the world over that book excited Brandon’s imagination. In it Robert Jordan created a living, breathing world and it inspired Brandon to want to tell similar stories. This floored me to hear, because it’s s exactly the same reaction I had when I discovered the book back in high school.
Brandon’s second story was about how he was chosen to finish the Wheel of Time. I’d always assumed he’d applied for the job, but apparently he woke up one day to find a voicemail from Harriet. He was just as shocked as any of us might have been in his shoes, but also elated. It isn’t every day you’re asked to complete the fantasy epic that inspired you to become an author in the first place.
Harriet definitely made the right choice. Having read the A Gathering Storm I can tell you that not only does it do the series justice, but has me more excited for Towers of Midnight than I have been for any book I can remember.
So, back to the signing itself. As I mentioned I was selected to be one of five Stormleaders who were responsible for keeping order and making sure things went smoothly. My job was simple but far more rewarding than you might think. I took the books from fans and handed them to Brandon.
For three hours I watched hundreds of Wheel of Time fans approach Brandon all wearing the same rapt expression. They shared a love for the world Robert Jordan created, and nearly every one was grateful to Brandon for picking up the reins and seeing that we get the ending we’ve craved for nearly twenty years.
The fans asked questions about the next two books, about mysteries from the series and about his other books (most of which I have to admit I haven’t yet read). The crowd was excited and some even took the time to dress up. My favorite pair were a Whitecloak and a Redarm featured in the picture below.
A Whitecloak and a Redarm walk into a bar
I was surrounded by people who loved the series like I did. They brought gifts for Brandon ranging from a hand crocheted tapestry to a minted Tar Valon mark actually cast in silver. And, of course, our illustrious leader Mary even brought giant cookies made in the form of the Aes Sedai symbol.
By far and away the most popular character was a balloon trolloc that Jason from Dragonmount brought with him to the event. Harriet dubbed the trolloc Bubbles, and he was definitely the show stealer for the day. You can see how intimidated Jason is holding him.
Jason and the evil trolloc Bubbles
The love people have for the Wheel of Time continues to amaze me. It borders on reverence, and for good reason. No series I’m aware of is as long or as detailed, and I’ve never seen any series bring together such a disparate crowd. The youngest was about six, and the oldest was pushing eighty. One woman even brought a french copy of the book, and it was clear that the Wheel of Time has lost none of its meaning when translated to other languages. I feel priveleged to be a part of it, in my own small way.
Earlier in the article I mentioned how this was one of those events that recaptured my sense of wonder. Seeing Brandon sit at that table and share his love of the Wheel of Time with so many fans was inspiring. It showed me what I wanted to do for a living, and reaffirmed that I am on the right path.
I looked at this man, who was by his own admission a regular nerd just like me. I looked at what he’s accomplished and realized, wait a second I can do this too. I should be doing this. I was meant to be an author. I will get my novel published. The whole day fired me up, and Brandon’s encouragement was priceless.
I’m going to follow his advice. Never give up, keep writing. One day it will be me sitting behind that table signing copies of my book, and when that day comes I’ll owe Brandon a thank you for renewing my drive to live my dreams.
It was a hell of a weekend. Thanks for everything Brandon.
I spend 30 hours a week gaming
I’ve played video games for decades and roleplaying games for even longer. During my tenure as a gamer countless friends and family have asked me how I can waste so much time. This question usually comes when they realize that I spend 30 hours or more a week gaming.
On behalf of gamers everywhere I’m posting this to defend my position. I want to explain why I spend so much time gaming, and why I think its not just ok but beneficial.
How much TV do you watch every week?
Everyone has a routine. We get up, go to work or school, and then come home tired at the end of a long day. An unscientific survey of my friends and family reveals that they do exactly the same thing when they get home each evening. They collapse in front of the television.
They watch everything from Dancing with the Stars to John Stewart to the evening news to the latest episode of Heroes. But they all spend a few hours each evening watching television. In adding those hours up many of my friends found they spent 25-50 hours a week watching TV.
To all those who are shocked at how much time myself and others spend in front of the computer staring at virtual people in World of Warcraft I have to ask, how many hours a week do you watch television?
Why Gaming is Better than TV
Television involves staring at a screen digesting content without thought or interaction. Contrast that to a game like World of Warcraft, which nearly everyone out there has at least heard of.
In World of Warcraft you log on to hundreds or even thousands of people enjoying the same hobby. Instead of staring at a TV you have the chance to forge friendships with people from Germany to Austrailia. These friendships can provide a unique glimpse into other cultures, and even if they didn’t they are still a much more social activity than checking out the latest American Idol.
I’ve met many friends playing video games. I’ve even met girlfriends and know many people who’ve found and married someone after meeting them online in a video game. Have you ever found a girlfriend / boyfriend while watching Dancing with the Stars?
The Other Benefits
Video games offer quite a few other benefits in addition to meeting people. Studies have asserted that children who play video games perform better in hand-eye coordination. Whether or not that’s true, I can point to many other benefits from my own personal experience.
I can type over 100 words a minute. I’ve never had a typing course. So where did these miraculous skills come from? Lots and lots of video games. The longer I played the faster I got until one day I realized I was no longer hunting and pecking. I didn’t even need to look at the keyboard anymore. This skill has been invaluable in my professional career, and once was the reason I landed the job over someone else.
Video games also teach problem solving. Whether you are trying to guide Donkey Kong up a series of ladders, or are gathering twenty-five people to raid Uludar in WoW, you are identifying a problem and actively trying to solve it.
This sort of problem solving is invaluable in the work place. I am often surrounded by co-workers who don’t game, and I see a marked difference between us. When a new piece of software is introduced, or a new procedure is unveiled they tend to look like a deer in headlights. They don’t do well with change.
My gamer friends at work, on the other hand, tend to adjust quickly. We master new software easily, and have no problem adapting to new procedures or other changes at work. Why?
We spend our free time being challenged in exactly that way. We enjoy challenges, and whenever we log into a video game we are intentionally picking a series of challenges to beat.
Social skills revisted
Hand-eye coordination, typing and problem solving are three of many benefits that you can gain through gaming. But none of them are as important as the social benefits.
It’s less true now, but when I was growing up gaming was a closet hobby and most gamers were social introverts who’d blush and stammer if confronted with a *gasp* girl. Some of them were overweight, but most were just shy.
Video games changed that for several good friends. Online they found they could open up and chat more. They branched out and met friends. Many got involved in large guilds, which opened up another beneficial avenue of gaming.
Running a guild is a -ton- of work. It requires being able to juggle quite a few balls at once. You need to take care of 25 or more people every day. Personality conflicts, scheduling issues, petty gripes…all of these situations will arise and as a guild leader or officer you will need to learn to deal with them.
If you are running a raid guild you have to teach all 25 people to function as a team, exactly as if you were the coach of a sports team. This can be incredibly rewarding, but takes enormous effort and a diverse skill set to pull off.
For those who don’t game online when was the last time you were involved in a group activity, much less saw the same group of people very day outside of work? Raiding in games like WoW teaches you camraderie and teamwork.
These benefits translate very well into real life. I know one friend who was almost paralyzed by shyness when we were in high school. His success in running a guild filled him with confidence, and within a year he’d gotten his first girlfriend and was promoted at work. Video games transformed his life.
Stop knocking our hobby
I hope I’ve shown at least a few ways that gaming can be beneficial. If you aren’t willing to accept that, I’m hoping some of the naysayers can at least see that gaming is no worse than watching TV, an activity that most people partake in.
Whether you play the Sims, World of Warcraft, Borderlands, Dragon Age or pen and paper games like Dungeons & Dragons be proud of your hobby. Don’t let them make you feel embarassed, because at the end of the day gaming gives us things most people will never find.
There’s nothing like the internet to make you feel stupid
There’s nothing like the internet to make you feel like an ass. I posted the Gender in Gaming- Equality or Special Treatment thread a couple of days ago. I also posted this on my blog.
The women here posted a letter asking for a number of changes in the gaming industry. I took issue with a part of the letter that suggested that the current trend of advertising was putting women in danger at conventions and other gaming venues.
This sounded ludicrous to me. I couldn’t imagine the cover of an RPG driving men into a sexual frenzy, and I was right. The thing is that’s not the type of advertising they were talking about.
What they were talking about are things like this:
This is the single most tasteless piece of advertising I have ever seen. In a nutshell its asking men to run around and get as many pictures of sexual acts such as kissing and groping as they can. Then they twitter these to prove that they did it.
Now any sane person wouldn’t expect this to cause a lot of issues, and I know I didn’t. I was wrong. This ad very much placed women in danger, as one man came forward to post on my site told me. David tells a frightening tale.
While at a con a man ran up and grabbed his female friend’s breast. The bastard doing the sexual harassment had his friend take a picture of this, per the advertisement you see above. So in a nutshell EA’s advertising caused at least one woman to be brutally groped at a convention. This poor woman is probably scared for life, and may never come near another event like this.
This does incalculable damage to our hobby and it makes all of us look bad. So I came back to say I was wrong. Very wrong. Adverstising can and does hurt women, and really this sort of shit needs to be stopped.
I apologize for my earlier post. I have definitely changed my opinion.
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