Personal Embarrassment

Embarrassment, even the word is embarrassing to some people. Dissected, it comes from the Greek word meaning bare ass mention, which roughly translates into that time you went skinny dipping and your annoying friend couldn't help but mention it to people you would rather not have enlightened with such information.

My embarrassing story takes place when I was around 16 or 17 years old.

I was at a church camp-out up in the mountains with a bunch of friends. One particularly uneventful afternoon we decided to hop on the bikes and ride up towards Causey Reservoir. It was a couple of miles away and the mountain road was calm and quiet. We must have peddled our way about two or three miles before we stopped at a point one of the other guys was familiar with. We hopped off the bikes and walked them down the trail and into the bushes.

As the foliage parted before us, we saw the magnificent contraption, our mouths open with wonder and delight. It was beautiful. The metallic cord stretched across the expanse above the river coming out of the reservoir, and hanging on the cord was a metal cart. To a teenager, something like this could only mean one thing, ADVENTURE!

Two at a time we crossed above the river, one pulling the cable and rolling their way back across the gap to pick up another person, leaving one on the other side. We did this until we were all sitting on the other side of the river, enjoying the view and reveling in our adventure. That's when we discovered we were in a spot of trouble. The last person to cross on the cart had let go upon reaching the other side. The metal cart had rolled back to the center of the cable, the weight of it forcing the wheels that ran on top of the metal rope to roll backwards. We were trapped.

Being the daring sort I volunteered to recover the wayward cart. I gripped the cable and swung out over the water. One hand after the other I made my way further into the grand expanse, the water raged beneath me, my friends urged me onward and advised I be careful. It was about the time that I yelled back, "I'm fine!" that I realized the grand mistake I had made. It was too late to change my course and I stared, wide eyed, as the horrible seconds ticked by and my fate was sealed.

As I had traveled further across the river my weight had slowly shifted the drag on the cable from the middle, where the metal cart was, to the new heavy object moving towards the center. As that weight balance had moved to where the cable was loosest, I became the new low point. When that happened the cart had no choice but to roll down the slope of the cable as it had when someone had let go of it on the other side of the river. The edge of it slammed into my chest and nearly knocked the wind out of me. Had I not had that second or two of warning I wouldn't have been able to tense up and brace for the blow.

A few things at that point entered my mind as I groped for possible solutions to my newfound dilemma. My first instinct was to let go and allow myself to fall into the river below. It was a sizable drop and the water was moving somewhat faster than I would have liked, I opted to think of another solution. The next thought to enter my mind was that I should let go of the cable and grab the edge of the cart and pull myself up. If I could do this without accidentally opting for option 1, I could pull myself back to the other side of the river and we would have the cart, mission more or less accomplished.

"Are you okay?"

I didn't answer.

Alright, let go of the cable and grab the cart. Let go of the cable and grab the cart.

Uh, let go of the cable. LET GO OF THE CABLE!!! But I couldn't. The large metal wheels that rolled on top of the cable had rolled right on top of my hands. I had the entire weight of the cart resting on my fingers, the grooves of the wheels threatening to sever my digits for me, thus opting option 1, minus a few fingers.

"Are you okay?"

I didn't answer. Instead, I pulled myself upward and leaned toward the cart, freeing one on my hands. Then I grabbed the edge of the cart and pushed it backward off my other hand and slipped downward. The cart teetered precariously and I discovered that lifting myself up wouldn't be an option. Still not liking option 1 I shouted, "I'm stuck, wade out into the water and grab my feet and pull me back!"

I was facing away from them but the silence behind me indicated they were all probably all looking at one another, sure that they weren't going to volunteer, fulling expecting someone else to jump up to bat.

"Fall into the river!"

"If I do, who's going to get the cart?!" I retorted.

Silence.

"Fine! I'll do it!" Felicia shouted, more at them than me.

Felicia was the only girl in the group, and by far the shortest.

I asked, "Are you sure you can reach my feet?"

"I think so."

She slowly stepped into the water, careful to get good, solid grips with each step, lest one slimy stone send her down with the current. The water came to her belly button.

"I can just drop, Felicia, go back."

"Who will get the cart?" She asked. I couldn't refute the logic.

After a few minutes she reached out and grabbed my dangling feet and pulled me back towards the rocks where the rest of our friends were standing, watching. My fingers burned with pain and I struggled to hold onto the edge of the cart, half expecting to slip and fall into the water, taking Felicia with me as the current swept us away.

But we made it. We reached the other side.

"I'll go get the cart," one of the guys mocked.

"Shut up." I replied, rubbing my bruised fingers.


Creative Writing Prompt:

Blogrush? No thanks!

So, I have decided to remove the Blogrush widget from my blog. This piece of junk earned me maybe 5 clicks since the day I integrated it into HuntingtheMuse. Some people may be happy with whatever might come their way and choose to rejoice about the additional 5 visits. Not me.

If you figure that programs like these actually benefit from having their widgets on blogs and then figure your own rate of return, is it worth the clutter? One might argue that to make Blogrush work for you, you should post about how great it is as a blog promotion tool and encourage people to sign up through your widget. Are you kidding me? That's just not compatible with who I am or what I'm interested in.

What am I interested in? Well, writing of course! But it's been hard to write lately with all the hours I've been putting in at work. I had 29 hours of overtime last week and another 7 just last night. The rest of the week looks slated to be around the same. Welcome to Summer, right?

I need to write a short story before July 30th. That sounds pretty easy but I've still got the family and projects in my yard to look after. We've been trying to do more fun things to compensate for the extra work, so far it's helped a lot. The extra hours haven't been quite as stressful as I first expected, either. Which is quite surprising. But I am still tired and mentally drained by the end of the week. I'll just have to try to work through it and see what I can get.

Bottom line: I'm workin' my butt off here, Blogrush, no free lunch! You're outta here!

Creative Writing Prompt:

Looking for Recreational Property

As promised, I will be posting up pictures of our trip this last weekend! They are in no particular order, so don't be too concerned if the text doesn't match up with the picture. Also, feel free to click on the pictures to expand them. I've compressed them for size but you should be able to see them in higher detail.

We headed down to Duchesne, Utah (pronounced Do shane) to look at some acreage just outside the city. The kids had a lot of fun and we got to traipse around in the sun for quite a while. The property is HUGE!



I am at odds about the property as a whole. Tara and I both enjoy the quakies and pines, the loamy forest floor that crunches beneath your shoes, and the cool shade of the forest canopy. This area is more desert in nature, though the temperature really wasn't what you would expect from a desert environment.



There was ample sign of water runoff from the melting snow as winter had turned to spring, but none of that water seemed to stay put. What remained was the ghostly trails of dead stream beds.



The mature pinion pines and juniper trees were unmistakably charming in their own way. Some of the ancient trees stood over 20 feet tall. Cactus could be found in abundance with primarily yellow flowers, but every so often you could stumble across a cacti with red flowers. I'm not sure if they were different varieties, but the difference was intriguing.



There was also abundant signs of wildlife. Tracks in the dusty red dirt wound and wove a network of game trails throughout the property. There were both deer and elk droppings in abundance. Beneath the pinion pines you could see evidence of last year's pine nut crop. I've always fancied the thought of harvesting wild pine nuts, so the realization that I could do that on this property seemed somewhat bittersweet.



Could I see myself building a cabin on this property in 10 years or so? Kind of. I mean, it isn't my dream property, that's for sure. The size of it would make for a decent investment, especially if we did build a cabin on it. The round trip cost us about $60.00 in gas, which is a big downer. I really wish we had an alternate fuel vehicle, and not just for getting to the property. Where are the solar cars and solar parking canopies!? Let's get crackin', people!



The rock formations were really interesting as well. I could definitely see us having fun there, but I'm still torn. If I buy this property, am I giving up on getting something that is a little more suited to our desires? I do like the idea of gathering pine nuts in the fall and then selling them at the farmer's market, but is that enough?

Father's Day Cake

I promised last week that I would post up some pictures of my Father's Day cake that Tara was going to bake. She did make one to take over to her family as well but it wasn't a fancy one and it totally slipped my mind to snap a few photos, my apologies!

Enjoy!



Another view.





And a bit closer.



We took the cake to the Drive-In movie and watched a double feature of Hulk and Ironman. It was a fun night! I hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I liked the cake! She's really quite talented, isn't she?

-Brady

I Been Workin

Oh my goodness... I've been working so much this last week. Tuesday was a 16 hour day, Wednesday was 17, yesterday was 14 and though I was sure today was only going to be 9 it quickly turned into 12. That's a lot of overtime.

In fact, I couldn't even imagine writing this post about 5 minutes ago. I have quite a bit to say, but have you ever felt like just being quiet and saying nothing at all, just you can listen to silence? Yeah, I guess that's just how busy this last week has been.

To console myself, I have been looking at recreational property. I found one piece out by one of the National Forests that has 50 acres, but they want 139,000 for it. If it were a 30 year loan I could probably swing it with no real problem, but since there are no structures on the property the banks treat it as a lot loan, and the term on that type of loan is generally around 5 years. That definitely isn't in my price range.

When I was in the military I spent four years up in Alaska. We used to go on these camping trips and pan for gold in the streams. Of course, we never really found any nuggets but the little flakes at the bottom of the pan were always so exciting to see. I could do it for hours and hours. The air smelled so fresh and the sound of the water was so soothing. I dream about having some nice land to be able to run off to on weekends to get away from it all. We're actually going to go on a little day trip tomorrow to look at another area. It isn't forested like the 50 acre lot, but it does seem to have quite a few junipers and pinion pines. That would be pretty interesting in the fall, I've heard people have a lot of fun going out to harvest pine nuts. I could definitely see myself doing that. The land is a bit... how can I say it? Scrubby? The ground has the red tint of desert to it, with bare sandstone type rocks jutting here and there. I suppose we will just have to wait until tomorrow to see it first hand. I'll take pictures and post them up if you'd like.

Anyway, that's been my hectic week so far and next week's schedule looks like it might be worse. Maybe I'll try to put some posts together this weekend so I can post them during the week. That way my blog won't seem so lonely, eh?

By the way, I know there are a few Canadians that visit from time to time. How about those homesteading laws? When we drove down the Yukon from Alaska, I couldn't help but admire how pretty the country seemed. Actually, another thing that was kind of impressive was the random road block in Alberta to check for drunk drivers. The police officer even gave us coloring books for the kids. I was impressed.

Creative Writing Prompt:

(Rocky Mountains in Ogden, Utah)

Into the Wild

This weekend I had the pleasure of watching Into the Wild on DVD. Since watching the movie I couldn't help but scour the internet for everything tidbit of information I could. This is one of those tales that truly gripped me. Christopher McCandless was a very interesting person in my mind, even more so after I took time to do a little more research about him after watching the movie.

One picture I found was a self-portrait, it wasn't in the movie but the picture defines him in my mind. I have so many thoughts swirling around in my head, but I simply cannot break away from just how much strength it would have taken to take this picture, knowing now the story behind it and what he must have been going through. The smile on his face tells so much about his character.



The picture at the end of the movie shows him in a much better light, it is also a self-portrait and shows him sitting outside the "Magic Bus" he found on his journey.



It should be obvious by this point that this movie is based on a true story. It covers the travels of Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp. The story takes place from 1990 to 1992 and director Sean Penn does a wonderful job of telling it, however some Hollywoodization of true events is somewhat expected. Also, Christopher didn't keep a very in-depth journal during his travels, so it's hard to say how real events played out during certain periods of time.

Some people have called him crazy, but while he may have been a bit ill-prepared for his adventures, I can respect the type of person he appears to be.

If you haven't seen this movie, please do. I will be picking up the book by the same name in the near future, I suspect it will be a very good read.

Creative Writing Prompt:
WATCH THIS MOVIE!!!!
Okay, okay, here is one of my pictures I took while I lived in Alaska. All hail The Last Frontier!

Stocks Falling, Solar Power Musings, It's Friday

There I was, sitting at my desk, staring at my work MacBook Pro screen, willing the migration of data to complete successfully with all my might, when my wife looks over at me and asks, "Do we have a spreadsheet that includes all our balances, like investments and stuff?" I stop and think about how that would be a good idea and reply, "No, but it sure wouldn't hurt."
When she leaves the room I look back at my chair to make sure there isn't a knife or hypodermic needle filled with air waiting for me to lean back on, it seems safe. I take a testing smell from the coffee cup she brought me up this morning. Odorless and tasteless poison, clever lass. Suddenly a flashback from The Princess Bride pops into my noggin, "Never gamble with a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line! Hahahahahaha-..."

After a minute I get to thinking about it and decide to log in to my 401k retirement account and notice that the balance isn't exactly what I had expected. I lost a little ground, it would seem. I do a quick check on each of the funds that I've picked and the last 3 months have shown a 10% average loss. Eager to remedy the situation I start to browse through the other funds available and realize that with the exception of a cash fund, they are all losing money. Some as high as 23%! The cash fund isn't even making enough to account for inflation. The law of averages over time says that I should keep an eye on the goings of things but that a 10% loss right now just means my buy-in will give me more value over time. I decide to wait and watch how things unfold.

I live in Utah, for those of you who don't know. I'm not a Mormon and I don't have multiple wives. But I do have a love for the beautiful scenery and above all, the mountains. I take my own pictures for my Creative Writing Prompts, so you can usually see a glimpse of what I live around from time to time.

Utah is primarily desert, though, so sometimes I wonder why we can't develop solar stations to harness all that sunlight for energy. I actually emailed my district Legislator this morning to express my interest in a program designed to promote college and university level research for alternative solar energy programs. It's one of those things where we could very easily get ahead by developing renewable resources, but expecting it to happen is a bit out there. Corporations make so much money and alternative energy sources like solar would cut profits significantly. We've got to try though, right? If we do nothing it's just another easy win.

Is ethanol the answer? Not by a long shot. Right now it's nothing more than easy money...
Read this article and think about the implications.

It's enough to make me consider going into politics. There has to be something I can do to make a difference. So far I've tried to pitch in by planting 17 trees in my yard. We've also started the garden this year with a vow to stay away from non-organic fertilizers, bug sprays, and weed prevention. It's not much but it's a step in the right direction. I've also considered the idea of solar powering my shed we built in the backyard. The original plan was to tie it to the house power but it seems like a good place to consider a move to green energy.

I am so thankful today is Friday! I'm sitting on 5 servers I need to finish up today. It seems like this batch was trouble from the start. I actually ended up having to uninstall the application on one this morning and then started the whole thing over. What a time dump! Luckily I was able to get it going and it isn't one of the servers that takes foreeeeeeeeever to migrate. Had it been otherwise, I could have kissed the first half of my weekend goodbye. Sure, it would be good for the overtime, but I got plans I tell ya! PLANS!!!!

In related news, my wife is making me a cake for Father's Day. If you haven't seen her cakes, she does quite well! I will do my best to snap a picture before it gets devoured. I think she's also planning on making a cake to take up to her family on Sunday, if so I'll have to post two pics! What a treat!

To all you fathers out there, Happy Father's Day from HuntingtheMuse!

Creative Writing Prompt:

Creating a Writing Plan

I wrote up a post on creating a writing plan and sent it to Tam at Fighting with Writing Please take a few minutes to drop by and look it over. While you're there you might take a look around. He's a nice guy and hasn't bit me yet, though if you're into that sort of thing he might be persuaded... gotta love a challenge!

Successful Blogging?

I have no misconception that I am anything other than a beginning blogger when it comes to my online presence. There are, however, little bits of knowledge that I have picked up along the way. Like shiny stones, I can tell that some concepts are like roughly shaped diamonds dancing around in my pocket as I travel the path I have chosen. Some of the stones might be classified as quartz or pyrite, these would be the habits I have developed that don't really aid me or assist my progress. In fact, if anything, they only succeed in weighing me down and slow my progress.

I have come to terms with the fact that I will most likely never become a professional blogger. The tempering of my thought-process has not been one of defeat, but a realization of what this blog means compared to my end goals with writing. But what if you do want to be a successful blogger?

I can tell you right now, HuntingtheMuse.com is not going to be your one-stop information resource, but I do have some tidbits of advice that you may find useful.

Blog promotion starts within.

There are many different ways to get people to visit your blog or website, but one of the most valuable ways of getting someone off the street is from internet search results. There is a lot that can be said for this, and so much that I really have no idea about, but one thing is very clear: do not write for SEO (this is basically a search engine ranking system, in layman's terms). That said, you probably should take a moment to think about your post title and some of the key words you can sprinkle throughout your post to help as breadcrumbs for people searching the internet for information you are trying to share. This obviously has a lot to do with what kind of blog you have, if you are just writing about your tuna fish sandwich and how your boss likes to pick his nose, you may have to rely on social networking to attract the voyeuristic following that will enjoy your blog.

To be honest, I have not done so well with the titles of my posts and key-word saturation would be easy enough if I set my mind to it, but I haven't ever given it a whole lot of thought.

Content is key? A Question of Authority

The content of your blog should be somewhat consistent. Some of the fairly successful blogs I've seen have actually been static content blogs that provide a step-by-step 'how-to' of sorts. If done properly, this model can expand to additional blogs to form a sort of 'How-to Network'. Many blog owners that I have stumbled upon have been multi-blog bloggers. If you have a few blogs that all link to each other, you have theoretically increased your SEO standing as well and provided a way to hold on to visitors who might be interested in the related content that you present.

To pull off this sort of content-centric ring-of-blogs, you really need to be able to demonstrate to your visitors that you have some sort of authority on the matter. This is why HuntingtheMuse has shied away from being an information resource and has more recently veered in the direction of a "this-is-me-and-my-quest-to-becoming-the-writer-I-want-to-be" sort of blog. Without a decent credit to my name, I am not a viable source of trial-tested writing information. I can vocalize what my current methodology and beliefs are, but I can honestly say that if I were you and you were me, I probably wouldn't take your advice either. That is the question you have to ask yourself, can you demonstrate that you have the authority to be an information resource?

If I were showing you how to build a deck I could use a pictorial type of How-To design and you would believe that I knew what I was doing based off the demonstration of my work. The pictures of each step would speak for themselves.

If you have an informational blog on SEO and I search for you and can't find you in the search results, I'm not sure how much stock I'll be able to put into your advice. The bottom line is, what makes your content worth reading, and can you prove you have the credentials to be giving advice?

Promotion and the Blogging Network

Be prepared for the beginning. The first thing you will realize as you begin your adventure in blogging is that you will need to build a network of links to funnel traffic to your blog. If you are part of a few forums you can attach your blog address to your signature in most cases without angering anyone. I highly suggest you do not create an account on a seemingly related (or unrelated) forum for the purpose of site promotion. If I'm on a forum and I see a post-count:1 advertisement ("Hey guys come check out my writing blog at www.idontreallycareaboutyoupeople.com/blog...") I know two things right off the bat. 1: Not only will I not click your link, but most others won't either. 2: You will very likely never even come back to participate in the forum.

So, where are we at now? Other bloggers are a great resource for building a social network around your blog. At first you may trade links, you may even like the content on their blog or website and visit regularly. This stems off into participation in blog networks like Blogrush (not worth beans in my experience), Technorati (while I get very little traffic, I do like the site and what it offers), and Entrecard. (Entrecard is a very good networking resource that allows you to meet other bloggers and see blogs based on content. I have done very well with Entrecard and only got burnt out once I joined the click-fest group where I had a list of blogs to visit every day who I could also expect to have visit my blog. This took a lot of the fun out of the system and soon I found that the traffic this group was providing was dwindling at an alarming rate until it was near non-existent.)

Another way to interact with other bloggers is via the "me-me" which usually takes the form of a sort of chain-blogging activity where you complete the objective post and then pass it on to any number of other blogs, I usually see that number as around 5 or so. The problem with this is that you are just starting out and unless you feel you really know someone, it may be hard to just drop by unannounced and say, "Guess what, I want you to post about this silly 'me-me' and then pass it on!" I don't like chain letters in my email and if you don't either then me-me's probably won't be for you. One good thing to come out of a me-me was a story I wrote and submitted to the Ohio State University writing contest for The Journal. I had to take the story down to submit it, but you can read the post here.

Of course, there are a lot of other tools at your disposal... Digg and StumbleUpon come to mind, but there are so many others out there that I'll just have to leave it to you to find out what will work best for your blog.

Bloggers Need Love Too

Not only will you need to make sure you post regularly, you will also need to give love to your new blogging friends. Ghost browsing isn't enough, you'll need to give out some comment love here and there to let them know you are still hanging around. You may not get out what you put in, but you will seldom get more than you give. Once you develop outside traffic sources and become big, maybe then people will understand. Until then, be mindful of the people who visit your blog and post comments, they are your friends.

Good luck and happy blogging!

Creative Writing Exercise:

Writing Plans

Well, it's Saturday, can you believe it?! That means I actually made it through the week! I think I put in a total of around 12 hours of overtime. I was kind of stressed out about trying to get everything done in time to be able to go with my wife to her brother's wedding yesterday too. Neither him nor his wife seemed to care much that I was there, I felt a bit snubbed when they came up and talked to Tara and pretty much ignored my existence. On the bright side, though, my daughter and my son were wonderful. They looked very nice in their outfits and made a perfect Flower-girl / Ring-bearer.
At the reception they had a fountain with Belgian chocolate that you could dip strawberries and marshmallows and several other things in. It was delicious! Now, I've seen and tasted the regular chocolate fountains, but they could have very well been flowing with liquid charcoal compared to this fountain of tasty goodness. Everything was beautiful. It was a very nice ceremony, the reception had a wonderful atmosphere. There was even a 4-person orchestra playing in the corner. I was impressed.

So, about being snubbed... It happens. In fact, it happens to me quite a bit. I think it's my not-so-sunny disposition, in most cases anyway. My wife's brother is the type of person who will be talking with you and when you are in mid-sentence he will turn to someone else and start talking to them instead. I hate those situations. You really want to finish verbalizing your thought, but you know any attempt to do so would be in vain. He's gone. So, you let your voice trail off and look around contemplating what you should focus your attention on so as to appear totally consumed and unaware that you were just the victim of certain rudeness. It's awkward.
There are certain circumstances where you just can't help how people will act towards you. Other situations can be changed greatly by the way you carry yourself and your general mannerisms. I am actually quite aware of these things. Unfortunately, coping mechanisms we develop to protect ourselves in bad situations can bleed over to situations that should be good and generally wholesome. When I was in the military I began having trouble breathing around jet fuel. I was one of the guys that drove around in big green trucks with 6,000 gallon tanks and pumped fuel into the jets and cargo planes. I was the all-American supa-troop until I started having problems. I went from the model Airman to the Dirtbag. I was openly accused of faking my problems by upper management. A Senior Master Sergeant had no qualms telling me that as soon as my condition cleared up, I could get back to normal duties and non-extended work hours. The Chief Master Sergeant told me to my face that I was a liar. It's funny, I probably wouldn't have minded as much if he told me that he thought I was lying, but when you are called a liar by one of the top ranking enlisted members, it has a different effect than you would have previously thought.
Anyway, as time wore on I stopped being as outgoing and started being more withdrawn. My constant smile that I had perfected over years of hardship turned hard and instead of a look of empathetic inquisitiveness my eyes glared with suspicion. People who had been my friends before now laughed as they made me take out their trash and snickered before walking across the floor I was mopping with their muddy cold-weather boots. I lived in that atmosphere for over a year before they finally completed the medical disqualification process and had a training date for me to change jobs. Over a year of being a sub-form of life and being hated for what they believed was a conscious choice. To them I was just a selfish person taking up a manning slot. The weakminded were quickly convinced that I was causing them each to work extra hours and making their lives miserable. They didn't care how many times I missed lunch or how many Saturdays I worked after a full work week without even a full day's notice.
I guess I started 'looking angry all of the time' because I got tired of people thinking they were better than me. Looking back, it was the lazy thing to do, I changed because I couldn't change other people and dealing with it every day hurt. Maybe saying it was lazy isn't being fair... but saying I did the best I could isn't exactly honest, is it? Old habits die hard and being closed off and not vulnerable seems safe enough and it's easy to sit and observe things without being bothered. I queitly watch people and situations unfold and I absorb mannerisms and determine motives, I can roll these things into believable characters because I have an understanding of how and why people do a lot of the things they do. I used to be empathetic and I tried to listen and be there for people. Somewhere along the line that became bothersome, probably when it felt hopeless that anyone would ever reciprocate for me.
So, what does it take? How do you break out of that shell you've created without exposing too much and risking an ultimate withdrawl back into the shadows? It requires effort and consistent kindness. Notice I didn't say constant kindness. No one should ever be expected to be constantly kind, but kindness on a consistant basis never hurt anyone. Also, the knowledge that kindness is not weakness, but a subversive demonstration of strength is a wisdom that must be tempered by fire. Anyone who believes a kind person is a weak person, an easy target for manipulation and exploitation, should question their own intelligence. They have confused 'kind' with 'simple' - a mistake that could prove deadly, after all, we've all heard that some experts can kill with kindness, a more clever weapon has never been forged.
Perhaps that would be a good subject for a piece of writing... a person who kills with kindness, and not in the way that people like to say when they are normally oppressed. Being nice to people who are being rude to you takes a resolve much greater than I possess. I think I would rather actually kill someone with kindness, literally. It would be amusing to find out how someone would go about killing with kindness and how they would come about such a course of action. Would it be a result of seemingly dim-witted do-gooding or would it be the result of perfectly planned good-doing? Interesting.

So, this post has been full of things I would normally never tell any of you and things I should never tell any of you. Pain is best left unspoken and talked about only after you've died. Thus far the post has naught to do with the title, Writing Plans. Here it is, this weekend I will be putting together a few posts for Tam at Fighting with Writing. Tam's been going through some tough life changes recently and I've always enjoyed his blog. Sometimes when life is at the forefront of your attention, a blog seems an insignificant responsibility. An unfortunate side effect of putting a blog on the back burner is that people stop visiting when you stop updating. When people stop visiting it's easy to decide to throw in the towel and focus on other things. While I admit that I do see a day when I will no longer be blogging, I am not ready to see that day come for Tam. That's why I am going to give him a few guest posts that he can mix in with his regular updates so he can take a day off here and there without suffering too many blogging set-backs. He can use them at his discretion and I am not doing this to promote my own blog and won't mind if he chooses never to publish a single one. This is just a gift from one guy who has been through a period of hard times, to another guy who is going through a hard transition.
If you get a minute, and you've enjoyed Tam's blog in the past, please drop by and give him some words of encouragement.

Creative Writing Prompt:

Blogging for Escape

I've been throwing down the hours at work this week, and if my assessments of how long the rest of my duties will take to complete are accurate, I can expect to have amassed 12 hours of overtime by Friday. If you add to that the fact that I have been sick the last few days and my brain has felt like mush, well, the hours just seem to drag on and on and on. I have been surprisingly productive, though, and have accomplished most of my work much faster than I initially expected. I ran into problems but resolved them very quickly. I was even able to guess the user name and password for a server when one of my customers entered it on their checklist incorrectly and indicated they were at a seminar when I tried to work with them to resolve connectivity issues. Needless to say, they were way off, but the user name and password were set to a variation of one of our default schemes. It was an incorrect scheme, but I've run into the deviation before. All in all, I've handled the workload quite well for the circumstances, but the drawback is that I do work from home. This means that while I save on gas and commute time, it is hard to find a good separation between the work and the home life.
Usually everything comes to a head on Wednesdays. This is the hellacious day of transition where the servers I began migrating on Monday are finishing up and the new servers I have been assigned must be underway. This week I had a total of 8 overlapping schedules but yesterday turned out to be much more productive; a product of the extra time I spent ensuring the previous servers were progressing per my standards, the preparation work I completed before the start date of the new servers, and of course a great amount of luck. But, where yesterday was a grand success, today has tried my patience and left me mentally sloggish once again.
I am taking a momentary reprieve to collect my thoughts and summarize how I'm feeling with this blog post. For one part, it gives you an insight into my professional life, and another, it allows me to have some controlled venting. I'm not really angry at all, but the excuse to write about it is quite welcome.
I recently partitioned my trusty laptop and tried the new release of Ubuntu as a dual boot partner with Windows XP. I tried this last year with a previous release but there wasn't a good graphics driver that worked with my ATI Mobility X1400 card. This has since been resolved and I was able to find an open gl driver that worked fairly quickly. I now have windows that shimmy and shake when you move them. The 8.04 release came with Open Office already installed and, as before, my onboard wireless was automatically detected and easily configured with my WPA passcode for access onto my home network. That in itself is a painful process when I reload Windows on the machine without the drivers on a pen drive.
Why is all of that important? Well, when you spend 10-13 hours a day at your computer desk working your guts out, you don't really feel like spending a whole lot of time writing at that same workspace. At least I don't. Moving over to the Linux build on my laptop has also taken time from my writing as I customize my desktop with widget-type Screenlets, such as Word of the Day and the system resource indicator HAL9000, modeled after our favorite computer icon from Science Fiction. But these are necessary distractions that add to the ambiance. Even my weather Screenlet in the lower right-hand corner adds to the atmosphere. (Awkward pun intended.)
The end result gives me an alternative work environment that I can use to escape the excuse that I just can't sit at the same desk for hours upon hours a day and expect to be able to transition from the Technical Project Manager to the Writer effectively. And to be perfectly honest, if it were between my love for technology, and even green technology, and my love for writing... writing would win. I just need to arrange my habits around that mindset and keep on writing.

If you need a bit of time to escape, you can always turn to your blog and blow a little steam, or take a moment to read my latest short story, "The Boy in the Window". If you're feeling really froggy, drop the excuses and write a story of your own. If you do, comment with a link, I would love to read it.

Creative Writing Exercise:

The Post After.

Ah, the post after the story. What is there to say? It's like waking up to find yourself naked and in bed with a bunch of clothed people. Of course, the first question that goes through your head is, "How much did I drink last night?" But then you realize that you shared a part of yourself with the world and you reassure yourself that this is all okay.

When I began writing "The Boy in the Window" I had nothing more than a mental image. I started out with the memory of when I was about 3 years old. I found my mother's camera, a big and heavy thing with an attached flash, and figured that I could take a picture of myself by pointing the lens at the mirror. I could barely see over the counter and the results were quite shocking. I had pretty much forgotten the incident until my mother exclaimed with delight when she had the pictures developed. There in the photo a miniature Brady had been caught red-handed, barely visible behind the hulking silver and black camera, peeking into the mirror over the edge of the counter-top, fingers like spider legs as they groped for the button.

It was with that image that Andrew was born. The story was told with his perspective. The way a boy sees things. The story itself is about transition, about life. I wanted to write something that would make people feel. What I ended up with was something that made ME feel. That made the story so much harder to edit. Every time I read and reread, the magic diminished. It was hard to watch it shrivel and die. I submitted it off to the Bebo contest, but missed a good number of typos and silly mistakes. I even read the thing aloud, very slowly, but still missed them.
A few weeks later I took the story with me to my new Speculative Writing writer group and had it critiqued. One person found the piece of paper that Phineas placed into the book a bit distracting and wondered if there wasn't more to this red herring. That was a bit of a surprise to me. The piece of paper, instead of a bookmark - in my mind, said something about his practicality, but was only really there to be discarded, to show his defeat after hearing the test results. It was a significant gesture, he was prepared to die on the battlefield, he had given up.
It wasn't until he realized that he had an audience that he could accept his fate. He needed Andrew to help him through the hardest part of his life. The other critique found a few grammatical problems and I was a bit upset that even after my round of corrections after I submitted, some still managed to escape me. It wasn't until a few weeks later that I made the corrections and was thankful for them.

At the end of it all, I enjoyed writing this story more than any other. It was sad, yes. But I felt it was a good sadness, one not without meaning.

The title was a toss up between "The Boy in the Window" and "The Gift." Both of them still fit pretty well, but I think I made the right choice.

Here are a couple of posts I made about this story while it was still under wraps:

http://www.huntingthemuse.com/2008/03/attempting-impossible.html

http://www.huntingthemuse.com/2008/03/something-deep-and-touching.html

Well, at least someone decided to get naked with me and throw their heart on the line. Ken Armstrong at Writing Stuff posted his short story, "Visibility", this weekend. Click on the link and check it out.