The Sick Writer

Well, folks, I'm sick. All these bugs finally caught up to me. I feel like I spent more than I had to give on my technical writing at work today, but I slogged onward, focused on getting the mission done. Was it my best work? No. But, you know, it wasn't half bad. It was accurate, and that's always a huge plus when it comes to writing training and reference material.

After clocking out, I crashed on the bed for half an hour or so until the family got home. I could have slept for a week to be honest. I’m tired, scratch that, I’m dead tired! On days like these, man, it would be easy to retreat to the bedroom, snuggle up underneath those comfortable sheets, and call those 8 hours of research and technical writing my quota for the day. But I’m not going to do that, no sir!

As some of you may know, Jim Murdoch has been stopping by HuntingtheMuse for quite some time now. Putting it straight, I was absolutely floored this morning when I dropped by his blog, The Truth about Lies. It seems, unbeknownst to a lot of us, that the last few months have not been good for Jim. Every day this talented author has been fighting a plethora of maladies along with the depression he’s struggled with for quite some time. And yet, Jim’s writing transcends the murky abyss with all the lightheartedness of a conversation between old friends. It’s that welcoming aura that grabs hold of you and draws you in. Reading his post today wasn’t like sitting with that aunt who drifts off into dementia and relates all the illnesses and a few imaginary illnesses that she’s been burdened with. You know what I’m talking about. Those conversations that beg for attention and scream that we don’t suffer as they suffer.

No, Jim laid his humanity on the line and gave it to us firsthand. He told us of his struggle, not as a cry for attention and not as a means of perverse boasting, but as one old friend to another.

So, while I may only be dealing with a cloudy head that pulses with heat, and an achy back that screams at the slightest movement, even though my legs feel like boulders and my fingers think faster than my brain, and despite my ragged coughs, I will persevere today, and I will be thinking of Jim while I do.

Please take a moment to stop by Jim’s blog and take a look around. If you’ve never met him, today is a good day to get acquainted, he’s got plenty of archives to peruse through and many a fine read.

Vista Speech Recognition Blog Post

Tonight’s blog post will be a combination of efforts utilizing Windows Vista Speech Recognition and good old fashioned typing. So far my efforts have been using word to dictate this entry, however the learning curve is slightly greater than I would have hoped. Most of the problems I'm experiencing are rooted not in misinterpreted words, but instead commands overwriting what I wish to say.

This could be a viable way to establish drafts or quickly jot down an idea before it escapes into the ether. If only one were able to adjust to the commands and enunciate clearly, while still maintaining the train of thought necessary to keep the muse within arm’s reach. Though I must admit, as I continue on with this entry I am noticing that certain phrases cause more grief and others. It may be better, in some regards,to opt for one of the new, more technologically advanced, dictation devices that save recordings as .mp3 files which can be uploaded to your computer via USB cable. If you have a loving wife or husband or assistant, they could always help by dictating these wonderful ideas for you while you pursue the grandeur of your writing adventures or misadventures, whenever the case may be.

I will now stop dictating through the use of speech recognition, and return to the standard typing procedure. Thank you for bearing with me during this brief experiment.

I've been trying to think of alternate ways to capture my thoughts before they escape. Those of you who watched me suffer through last summer will understand when I say that beginning around the end of May through September I'm going to be very busy with work. I often refer to the three consecutive 20 hour days on the tail end of a ten day work spree where the fewest hours per day was 14 with an average of around 16.5... This wasn't exactly voluntary, now mind you.

While I do like the "niftiness" of Vista's Speech Recognition software, it seems like it might be too cumbersome of a process to adequately translate my musings. I will probably save up around 40 bucks and try one of the newer dictation devices with USB export function. It's important to me to be able to move these files over to my computer and organize them accordingly. Also, the portability would allow me to capture ideas while staring at the campfire if I can somehow manage to sneak the family away.

Why not just write it down? That's a good question. I actually think better with a pen in my hand. My dictation of creative endeavors is riddled with uhm's and uh's and swirling phrases as I turn ideas over in my head and think on the fly, pealing away layer upon layer of the onion that encompasses my creation. In honest truth, I would like to just write it down, and draw little doodles as my mind works out each process and develops each morsel into a crumb and each crumb into something more. But this summer will not afford such opportunity. In the hectic fight to get everything done in the seemingly impossible flurry of scheduling nightmares and admins who don't have their act together, there is little time for the creative musings. If you don't catch them as they speed through your thoughts, they go, they leave you feeling lost and alone and wondering what the future may have held if only you'd been able to grab onto them.

I fully intend to keep working on my current project, even through the tortuous schedule that invariably awaits me. I will do so through fatigue, and mental cloudiness. I will do so on the darkest of days when I fight for the mental fortitude to ask myself why I bother. I will do it because it's what I'm programmed for and anything else but writing is a step in the direction of something else. It's a winding road, but it is the road I travel and I have the power to change my course.

Thanks for 'listening'.

One Jet at a Time

It’s 5:40 AM and I can’t sleep. My wife and I are at The Alaskan Inn, she’s asleep next to me. The cabin is nice, a rustic touch of romance to celebrate an early Valentine’s Day. We’ll be getting breakfast delivered to the door of our cabin in about four hours and my stomach is growling in anticipation.

After I write this blog post, I’ll work on my current project. I’m still drumming away at chapter two. The changes I want to make to chapter one are fresh on my mind and nagging. I must move on, though, and leave the rewrite for once I’ve finished the draft. I suppose I could go back and rework it a bit if I get stuck somewhere, but I’m hoping that doesn’t happen for a while.

My responsibilities at work have been evolving as of late. It still seems odd to be the Team Mentor, but now I am saddled with producing and / or updating all of the guides for every operation we perform for the new training program that will be rolling out soon. I have client-facing work scheduled for all of this upcoming week and I’ve had to fight to get the old, outdated documentation. That is a hurdle in and of itself right there.

From time to time I get frustrated because it seems like I’m not being given the tools I need in order to succeed, and instead I’m forced to rely on my own resourcefulness to get the job done. That’s all well and fine when the day is over and all the tasks are complete, but it wears me down to some degree – more so than is necessary in most cases. I’m willing to admit that sometimes the extra stress is of my own making. Surely that was the case a few times during the summer when tensions were high and my nerves were on end. Working 14-20 hours a day throughout a normal work week and sometimes through the weekend and to the end of the next week, well that would be stressful to most people, I’d wager.

Up until this point, I’ve tried to keep most things related to business out of my blog in case anyone from that circle decided to make their way here to sate some profound curiosity. I do see this blog as a form of release, a bit of a way to vent sometimes, and I do enjoy posting. I’ve found that it becomes harder and harder to post when I’m not writing about what’s really on my mind. Right now I’m thinking about the mass of documentation I’ve got to produce while also performing my normal duties. Sure, I’m supposed to be the last one assigned, and any minute not used to perform those functions are supposed to be dedicated to this new venture, but two guys are out for training for the next week and we no longer have the staffing we used to. That puts me on the front lines.

When I was in the military, my first few years were really rough. There were many days that I was given the opportunity to spend my lunch hour on the flight line, snagging bites between aircraft refuels with jet fuel soaked hands. I’d finally come in off the line after my shift had ended to see a garbage can full of take-out containers from some of the local restaurants and as a lower grade enlisted member it was my duty to take those out to the trash before I could head home. It’s all part of the “rank has its privileges” game so many deal with on a day to day basis, but it didn’t make it any easier to console myself that I wasn’t alone. Whether warranted or not, I’ve always tried to take pride in who I am and it was quite humbling to be treated as a lower form of life, unable to enjoy the same courtesies that people around me seemed to take for granted.

I later learned that this environment was not necessarily reflective of my branch of the military as a whole, but it was too late. I’d already seen enough to know that any organization where power was abused so badly to the constant detriment of its members was not for me. But on those blistering days under the wavering heat of the sun and the bitter nights of the frozen North, where you huddled in front of the exhaust pipe of your truck for any warmth you could steal from the darkness, I comforted myself in the mantra that I could only do what I could do. No matter what the size of the list that I was given, I could only refuel one jet at a time, and so I did, and so I made it through each night – one jet at a time.