Today is the 20th anniversary of my first day in the Marine Corps. If I had stayed in and made Gunnery Sergeant then I could retire today with a pension of $2000 a month.
Totally not worth it.
Not that saying in was an option, I was ready to get out within a year. Even with the long periods of unemployment that I’ve had to put up with I’m better off, financially and physically. I think back about the lifers that I knew back then and how they looked so goddamn old. These guys weren’t even 40 yet and they all looked like grandpas and worn out leather boots.
The Marine Corps taught me the value of freedom, but not the way they advertise.
The inside poop that’s got me down: sub-genre saturation. Picking Up the Ghost started as a manifesto that started as a list of things I didn’t like about Harry Potter. But inverted or not it’s too close to it’s inspiration. “…it’s the misfit teenager who is secretly communicating with a ghost … I’ve seen it all and I’m seeing it often.” Ouch.
Well I’ll keep pushing it as long as I can but I’m also resigning that I might have to get my second novel published before I can get an agent to take a real look at my first. In the meantime I’m going to try writing short fiction pieces. Experiment with forms of speculative fiction. Maybe I’ll get lucky and grab the attention of an agent. I’ve been fleshing out some ideas I had for Alejandro’s Ocean, the time travel game of Lexicon that petered out. And I might try to convert the first issue of Seize Him! into prose.
When life gives you discouraging inside poop, make poop juice.
Wednesday evening I was watching Samurai Champloo, downloading Window 7 Release Client and developing the characters of my next novel when I was reminded of my A B Project limitation. Project A is what I have to do, what makes money, the job. Project B is what I want to do, what satisfies my creative needs, the writing. Ideally someday Project B will become Project A and then I’ll take up restoring antique birdhouses or something, I’ll worry about that if the time comes.
But lately I’ve been thinking about Project C, which has a better chance of becoming the new Project A but has a steep learning curve and start up time. No job lasts forever and it’s better to be prepared, I just don’t want to risk losing Project B.
Google Wave looks like it’s going to replace Google Notebook. And maybe Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and a bunch of other stuff. I figure I’ll be moving a bunch of my own notes and information to Wave; The Board of Debt, The Well, Milazziki, notes for work, etc. Most importantly to the wider world, I think this might be the biggest leap in communications since email.
