Category: work

derailed

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I hate in-office. There’s so much extra (unnecessary) shit to do. And there are things that you have to be in the office for, but honestly, so much of it could be automated, or done by the group that is in office all the time, and with what they’ve assigned me this week, there is absolutely zero reason for me to be there.

It’s just so goddamned unnecessary – a time suck, a morale suck, a tension raiser because I don’t like being around all those people (I’m not a crowd guy). I work less efficiently, it raises my stress levels and the extra time I need in the morning, afternoon and lunch to travel, get lunches, get things ready for dogs, cats and whoever, the whole fucking week just becomes a drag, literally, slowing down any momentum I might have had with the extra time and energy I have from a work-at-home week.

Any why? Because they want federal employees to stimulate the economy by spending money on gas?

Polluting the fucking planet when we don’t actually need to?

It’s so goddamned irresponsible, fiscally and morally, and as human beings.

Ridiculous.

Target: 600 words
Written: 60 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tales
Comics: American Vampire: The Long Road To Hell, American Vampire Anthology 1, American Vampire: Second Cycle 1-2
Music: The Observer, Bjork

office days

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Well, every third week, my days get a little tighter, when they can no longer stand to be.

The noose scratches at my neck.

I don’t remember who put it on, but everyone that comes by seems to give it a solid yank.

To nudge the chair under my feet.

How soon we do swing.

Today’s dark musing brought to by L7 and One More Thing.

Target: 600 words
Written: 94 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Carrie, Stephen King
Comics: Tom Judge: End Of Days 1
Music: Virus 100, L7

spiralizer

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I use it mostly to create zucchini noodles, but sometimes, it likes to take up residence in my head, and spin me out of control, akin to a piece of fluff floating on top of a bath, that’s being rapidly drained out.

Where does all that water end up? The sewer?

Am I a piece of fluff, doomed to hang out in the shit the rest of my life?

I used to think I’d like to aspire to living in a cardboard box, but it’s a hard life, feeding yourself and begging for enough money for booze and drugs. Too responsible.

Then, I thought I’d like to be super rich, but rich people are always fighting off scavengers for their money, and there’s a disconnection and cruelty that festers beneath the freedom, and that’s not who I’d like to be.

Plus, there’s all you have to do to get there. You have to, at least, go to the convenience store attached to the gas station and buy the lottery ticket.

There’s no escaping responsibility.

The only way out is through.

Or death, but that’s a whole other topic.

Target: 600 words
Written: 725 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Five Weeks In A Balloon, Jules Verne
Comics: Monstress 35-38
Music: Very Proud Of Ya, AFI

seeding

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I’m seeding herbs today, and it makes me think that maybe I’m seeding stories, little poems and things to grow my writing career.

However, like seeding, one needs the right fuel and the right ground, the soil, the nutrients, in order to sow the ground with something fertile enough to allow things to grow.

And I’m not a green thumb.

But I think that’s how I need to start thinking of my writing career. Create fertile ground. Find the right nutrients, the right level of sunlight, water as needed.

Pay close attention if the leaves are wilting.

Pray for little babies to push the soil.

Target: 500 words
Written: 818 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 9-12
Music: Vanishing Point, Mudhoney

i guess i shouldn’t write at night

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Maybe late at night if it’s been a not-so-bad day, and I’m all keyed up and need a release.

But writing after a long day of a hard mental slog? It doesn’t leave much to be desired.

I had a thought about writing of wanting to be bigger than you are (on the inside! And not in the squishy, gooey, fatty way), but that’s too big for me now.

I am small.

My words are small. My works are small.

I am a haiku; flash fiction.

A one-shot comic.

A short story.

A novella, bordering on novelette.

What’s a novelette you say?

A book that wears heels and kicks up its legs in a line with its fellow works, all tits and fishnet, grinning to hide the awful realities behind it.

Target: 500 words
Written: 307 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Welcome To Night Vale, Night Valia (I did like it, but the near constant podcast references slowed it waaaaaaaaaaaay down, making me wish time was as weird as they say it is, and thereby I could skim through it a bit faster.  It got to be a bit of a slog.)
Comics: East Of West 5-8 (way, way into this)
Music: Kid A, Radiohead

tedium

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So, the new training is SO. FUCKING. BORING.

I like to think I’ve lived a life free of trauma, though not drama, though it often feels like a trauma lurking around the corner.

Something repressed, guiding my moods and thoughts subconsciously, ready to jump out and smash the dinner spread just as I’m about to eat.

It feels like I’m barely allowed to eat, and alternately, stuffed of the point of nausea and vomiting.

Fucking mental illness… it’s a real son of a bitch, and the sneakiest motherfucker you know.

Target: 400 words
Written: 234 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Welcome To Night Vale, Joseph Fink/Jeffrey Cranor (did I spell that right?)
Comics: Tokyo Ghost 1-4 (FUCK.  YES.)
Music: KEROSENE HAT, Cracker (one of my favourite southern alternative albums ever, if not the top dog - fucking brilliant)

back to training

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I guess I’m doing something right, because I’m being trained on special tasks yet again.

It’s funny, when I was younger and more oblivious, I knew I was a hard worker and a smart guy, but I didn’t believe in my own fallibility; it was a problem.

When you won’t accept that you’re a fuck-up who can be lazy at times, no amount of nose-to-the-grindstone and feeling responsible for everything around you will help.

Now that I am older and officially know that I am imperfect and know very little about pretty much everything, I feel like I’m not being responsible enough.

And now I feel like it’s okay not to be responsible for everything.

Is wisdom actually saying fuck it? Let’s do what we want and let it ride?

Is true wisdom giving up control and accepting the peace of kicking back with a whiskey sour?

As the song says, “All I know is that I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t know nothing.”

Target: 400 words
Written: 2296 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: If Chins Could Kill: Confessions Of A B Movie Actor, Bruce Campbell
Comics: Chrononauts: Futureshock 1-4
Music: Just Can't Get Enough New Wave, Various (my jams)

back to work

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No rest for the weary. No breaks for the forlorn.

No quarter given to the depressed.

Life is a cruel motherfucker. Part of me wonders if I died when I was younger and this was my own personal hell, offering me chance after chance for happiness, but then inflicting such insecurity and depression to fuck them all up.

Life gives us joy only so we know the pain of taking it away (thanks, Kelly).

Life shows us joy so we know what we’re losing.

Target: 400 words
Written: 1030 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Fire Starter Sessions, Danielle Laporte
Comics: Nailbiter Returns 2-5
Music: Julian Plenti Is... Skyscraper (love, love, love the atmospheric nature of this album. Skyscraper is definitely getting use in the Mungk playlist)

workload

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It’s an irony that the only thing I want to do is getting somewhat squashed by the thing I have to do.

I set my writing targets intentionally low, because I know, until I’m actually supporting myself full-time with the whole storytelling thing, I have a job to do. Family to support, all that stuff.

If you see me not hitting my target each day, know that there’s actually a bigger target, an overall target, that I’m exceeding.

For example, this year, if you were to count up the number of words I set as target each day, it’s not quite eleven thousand words. That sounds like a lot, but come on? Over a month and a half?

It’s nothing.

In reality, I’ve actually written closer to thirty-five thousand words, which while still kind of low, is more respectable over that period. Some established authors only do five hundred words a day; I’m averaging somewhere between seven and eight hundred.

Of course, some of those five hundred a day-ers are agonizing over each sentence, spending an hour on a paragraph, an afternoon on a page, and they’re coming out brilliant.

Me? I’ll fix it in post. A first draft is nothing more than an overwrought outline, as far as I’m concerned; an extended method of finding out how the characters want the story to go, and where your plot holes make themselves known (although some sneakier plot holes will slither their way into your second, third or even sixth drafts, crafty buggers).

Some plot holes you’ll never see.

I certainly didn’t.

Target: 400 words
Written: 215 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Sex Rx, Lauren Streicher
Comics: Hunter Killer 4-7
Music: Jello's Revenge (Bootleg!), Dead Kennedys

end of training

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And I’m on my own.

Spreading my wings. Still learning, taking tentative steps, shaky in the knees, and all that.

But luckily, I have a headache and exhaustion to go with it.

Target: 300 words
Written: 146 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Sex Rx, Lauren Streicher
Comics: Sex Criminals 21-24
Music: Jar Of Flies, Alice In Chains