What woke me?

Well, for some reason, as I was going to bed, my mind started actively trying to recall if it’d seen different books that I know I’ve purchased, in the past, used, and then kept as reference material for various jobs or … I don’t know … things. Specifically, it began to hover around a Technical Writing manual that I purchased when I took my first job, SENTO now iBahn, a book that cost me, as I recall, quite a lot of money, but one that served me well as I was adapting to a new writing style.

You see, a few years ago I went through my books and culled out the ones I knew held no real meaning for me. I got rid of the books that were pure fluff, were books where I had unintentional duplicates (can anyone say, Green Eggs and Ham?), and books that I felt didn’t fit within the mold I wanted to personally portray on my shelves. I think, of the two or three hundred dollars worth of books (if purchased brand new) I came away with about $75.00. However, at the same time I went from fifteen or sixteen boxes of books to something like ten or twelve.

My mind, for whatever reason it happens latched onto the idea that I’d somehow lost this particular book. It’s not one that I refer to very frequently, I can’t honestly say that I see the book when I look at the books on that particular shelf. The book is more of a token of learning rather than a reference I would actively pursue; but it is a reference that I can use when the need arises. And the need cold arise, again, in the near future.

Anywho, I woke up two hours after going to bed and lay in bed wondering about the book and other things. The other things aren’t important in this piece, but the book is. I lost my copy of Harry Potter and the Goblin of Fire which has really bugged me for a long time. I’d thought I’d lost one or two other books, but the outcome is that I’ve found or recovered the other books and still haven’t located my copy of Harry Potter IV. It’s frustrating to me.

At one point I thought I’d left it in Cortez, CO. But no amount of searching, down that way, has turned up anything. At another time I thought I’d shoved it in an odd box or crate and, again, nothing when I’ve gone through my belongings. Just about the only thing that is left that I haven’t gone through, yet, are the kitchen materials and I can’t fathom my putting a book in with a cast iron skillet. The two just don’t seem to work together in packing, if ya know what I mean. I mean, cast iron would be hard on paper and wood and books are pretty much paper, so….

Anyway, I finally pulled myself out of bed when I realized I was not going to go back to sleep, I turned on my light, and I glanced at that bookshelf only to see that, sure enough, the book I’d been thinking about was sitting right where it belonged, along with a dozen or so other books on the same, or similar subject.

I thought, at that point, that it would be easy to go back to bed, lie down, close my eyes, and fall back to sleep. Yeah! That didn’t happen. Instead I went downstairs, found my copy of James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, and began reading the final section I had to read for class the next day. Even that didn’t bore me to sleep – though it was rather boring, and so I then did a few things around the house, turned on the T.V. and surfed around until I located something that didn’t offend me to watch, and finally ended up with That 70’s Show which I think is mostly funny, but kind obnoxious depending on the season being shown.

On a said note, Jack said, once, that you have to think, “Kelso,” when dealing with Justin and everything would make sense. At the time that was true. I don’t really deal with Justin a whole lot anymore, and Jack’s statement was several years ago, so, can’t really say that I have any opinion on the matter one way or the other.

However, instead of sleeping or reading or sleeping I turned on my computer, which is not something I do a whole lot anymore except to write or research or to do school work, which is kind of frequently but not as frequent as it might’ve been once upon a September. At that point I opened the My Documents folder and started going through the documents. There was a point to what I was doing… specifically grabbing documents that I thought fell in line with a series of personal vignettes I want to write and then shove them all into a central location so that I could organize and write at some future date. Well, it’s rewrite in some areas, finish writing in others, and just plain write for a whole list of things that I’m not really certain I want to be working on. But the items that got shunted into a new folder included some poetry, a play I’d started writing in New Hampshire, and some personal essay’s as well as topics that follow a mental, central theme.

At that point, after something like two or three hours had passed and I’d deleted a lot of things that no longer mattered to me, I discovered that I was tired and could go to bed. The real problem came the next morning when my alarm (on my phone) had to go off for about two hours before I finally dragged myself out of bed and into the shower and out the door for school and work and … well, whatever else there is in my life.

There are some central themes that are running through my mind, and have been, for a few weeks now. One of them is what I want to accomplish, financially, personally, and professionally, out of life. Another is what kind of a life I want my future children to lead when I am no longer around and how I think, at this point, I want to set up my financial affairs. These are weird thoughts, to me, as I contemplate my current situation: not dating, in school, poor as a church mouse, etc., etc., and etc.

However, for some reason some of these thoughts have really become dominant in my mind especially as I think about a tertiary writing project that I am still unsure of writing. Yes, I started the project, but I start a lot of projects… the problem in this case is who this project can ultimately affect.

Anyway, I won’t talk about that. Needful to say, that night seemed to solidify some things in my mind and as I don’t believe in coincidences and I am suddenly reminded of something I heard the other day, e.g. when you receive inspiration you should act upon it within two weeks or it will leave you (I don’t know about this… per say), I believe that it may be time to at least pursue the idea, pursue other plans I have, and see where it lands me.

What all of this really means is that I go to school full time – and am now changing some personal plans on where I will be attending come next fall, I work full time, and I have been trying to tackle the feat of writing a solid first draft of a novel in the hours between school, work, sleep, and my church responsibilities (i.e. councilor in the elder’s quorum).

The thing that has happened, of late, that really bothers me (and I am not bothered) is that I have tried to toss dating (on occasion) into the mix and finding a suitable car for the money I have (on hand) that I can invest in said. The car, just so that people know, is my means of further establishing some measure of independence and personal worth over having to bum rides places from Andy and Debbie. Fortunately, since getting out here, my needs have been pretty small, light-weight really, but with dating, work, school, church, and the feeling that I need to start mentally moving in a slightly different direction than I had been – along with the writing, school, and work – I am a little swamped. Sunday roles around and after church I pretty much wind down, try to nap if time permits, and pretty much don’t think of anything because that is the one day of the week that I don’t do school work, I don’t work, and (gasp!!!) I don’t write. It’s become a sort of sacred day of literal rest for me. In truth, eventually I would like to get to the point where I don’t use my computer or get online either.

Now, I know that this is my place to tell you all about my life, about writing, about the future and what I believe it holds for me – as well as what is happening in other avenues of life; however, life has to change slightly before that can happen. Truth told, I am literally searching for a miracle to happen so that I can slow down just a little and focus on what I keep thinking I need to focus on. The fact that my life was tossed into the stratosphere this past week first by the girl I went out with (did you know I have a lot of unresolved, personal issues (and no, she doesn’t either)?) and secondly by an unexpected revelation from my brother Justin that was confirmed by my father and then, once I can get down the broad details (e.g. that “it” happened) he decides that after being closed mouthed about it for 40 or so years he is going to tell all of the siblings. As a result of things like that I have not written this week, I’ve been reticent to go to school and do the necessary work there, and going to work (outside of my spending three days sick in bed – literally) I’m now a week behind on my deadline with Debbie.

You see, the cool thing there – and I truly believe this may be the key to what is happening right now – is that Debbie and Andy have told me that they will float me for a couple of months if I can show them that I have a solid first draft of a publishable book. The book, just so you know, is highly publishable and is somewhere around 55% to 65% of the way done (first draft wise) I just have to get back to work on it. Given that I have/had some personal issues, I have to deal with seeing my father in an entirely different light, and, well, life is pretty much always throwing me curve balls when the expectation is supposed to be fast balls or knuckles or I should stop trying to write a baseball analogy, I think I am handling things pretty well.

Oh, and if I don’t update every so often and someone, for whatever reason, logs into my account (Jack) then the screen will show only the latest entries that are not older than two or three weeks… I don’t remember how long. Give me another two weeks and we will see how well I can update and keep people informed.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/11/needed-update/feed/ 0 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/10/its-october-now-and-i-needed-to-do-an-update/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/10/its-october-now-and-i-needed-to-do-an-update/#comments Mon, 04 Oct 2004 05:18:45 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=24 It is Sunday and the LDS General Conference has just ended. This is the first time in a lot of years that I have not watched or listened to all of the sessions. I do not work, as a rule, on weekends and in coming to New Hampshire I’ve discovered that this rule, of mine, is neither hard nor fast as I now work Saturday’s. In fact, the days off I seem to be getting, at present, are associated with my school schedule and Sunday’s. I refuse to work Sunday’s.

This leads to a conversation, rather one sided I am sure, on work. Work is what it is: meaning, that I stand for about eight hours a day at a register and act as pleasant as possible to as many people as possible and, at the same time, encourage those same people to purchase as much as possible. Lately, that goal has extended to selling a pair of lightsabers we have on display for $99.99 a piece. Several times a day, when crowds are around, we have the tendency to pull one, or both, down and show the people what they can do. You would think, given the nature of impulse buying that goes on, that it would be easier to sell something like that. So far, within the store, the only person who has been successful in that regard is a rather well endowed blond (meaning she has large breasts and it shows) who is also somewhat personable and has this uncanny sense as to what to suggest to people… guys, and then the ability to get them to purchase that same item. Watching her is both impressive and sad all built into the same mold.

Since I work four days out of seven and my schedule is all weird I don’t get a lot of time to sit down and work on other things. My goal for this weekend has been to edit a story I started, and then finish the story, so I can submit it for consideration of publication. Basically, it is a scifi story dealing with a post-dark ages earth where the inhabitants had developed so far that they literally caused the cataclysmic events that turned humanity backward for more than 700 years. The story follows “Ed” who is a survivor of that period and, seeing an end coming, develops a ’stasis’ booth that keeps him alive for x-1000 years in a specially built cave in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico somewhere. In essence, he’s cheated death and returned to life in a time when technology does not exist, outside of blacksmiths, etc. And those who live near the old cities (or on top of them) believe that the ’spires’ and ‘columns’ and ‘blocks’ of the old world are haunted and dangerous and therefore lend themselves to a religion (that religion or those beliefs changing on region, area, distance, etc.)

Anyway, Ed is looking for his wife who was supposed to be in the cave with him but was not there on waking and her chamber was also missing. In his searches he believes he’s located her, but, at the same time, can’t get to her. There are very real dangers that lead to the mythology and folklore that the people, living above the city, have created; and which, only the people who live above the cities can go through – if they had the right knowledge and abilities.

As I’ve been reading the material I wrote a month or two ago I have discovered that it is not the material I’d thought I’d been writing. This goes back to the philosophy of successful writing where no first draft is ever a good draft. William Forrester in Finding Forrester said, “The things we write for ourselves are so much better than the things we write for others.” I wonder if what is meant in this is that the things we write for ourselves, that are intended for eyes only are really only meant for the authors thoughts, not meant for distribution, and therefore are much better as a result.

Since I had written that in the creation of a document meant entirely for my use, purpose, etc. it is interesting to me to walk back through it and think I have thousands of words of usable material to find that I have hundreds of words of usable material and other areas that, in hindsight, need to be fleshed out. I have thousands of ideas and I want to expand on the ideas so much, for this piece, for other pieces, and yet, I am stepping back, literally, and saying, “I can write this much here, this is what I want to do to introduce this world to my audience, and then I will stop for now.”

My thoughts have never really worked in the direction of multiple plots/subplots in a story before. Sure, you have the main plot, which is what the story is about, and then subplots, which exist to support the main plot(s), characters, events, settings, and dialogue; but through it all I guess I’d thought that the process was a little less… involved. That isn’t to say that I didn’t understand that the writing process wasn’t involved, but rather that the elements worked together, differently, to form the finished product.

There is a significant difference from reading amateur fiction and fan fiction than from realizing all the parts and how they compliment each other and then, in turn, how they end up creating a full end story. My intent, with the story I am talking about, is to introduce people, and myself, into a whole new world and see where it takes me. There are a couple of other ideas that I want to throw out there, see where they lead, but right now this one will work for me.

Outside of all that, I did get some positive news at work the other day. Specifically, that we are having a 40% off weekend in two weeks on almost everything in the store AND as employees we get to cull the shelves for the next two weeks for items we want. I am buying books on writing and mythological storytelling, finishing some book collections I’ve got, and trying some new things. The weekend should prove to be expensive but not as expensive as it could be.

As a final note: Having moved from Utah where the majority of people are all of a religion and have missions, church, family, friends, church as a common denominator to somewhere where people know each other principally because they work together or go to school together, they don’t know families and they don’t go to church together; I’ve discovered that the common conversation among people is relationships and drinking (as it applies to having sex and relationships). Further, there is a lack of understanding among a certain age group of one person’s willingness to be himself in the face of overwhelming peer pressure. The experience is interesting.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/10/its-october-now-and-i-needed-to-do-an-update/feed/ 0 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/09/what-a-weekend/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/09/what-a-weekend/#comments Tue, 14 Sep 2004 04:58:16 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=15 I took Andy, Debbie and the girls to the airport last Friday. On the one hand its nice to not have to deal with the shrieking and screaming of two little girls, on the other I’ve discovered that I don’t like being alone. Being alone is no longer very comfortable to me. This is new, maybe it is a surprise, probably not but maybe, and sitting around has only caused me to consider the cosmos a little more of late.

Considering the cosmos is really not a good thing. I mentally head off to a place that most people don’t understand and cannot relate to. I start to ask questions and pose problems that sometimes may broach on anti-religious, anti-social, and anti-everything else. There are a lot of other indicators of my slipping into cosmos mode, but they aren’t important.

Anyway, spent Saturday working on a new idea that is directly connected to a vein of thought that has been a recurring dream for years now and got some good pages written, I think. I opened up a couple of other writing projects and didn’t do much with any of them – though I did start a second draft on a science fiction short I’ve been working on for a while, thinking about, creating back story of, etc. Don’t know why there is a lot of work going into something so short, but here, I am planning on submitting some of these things for publication (read money) and the better it is the more likely it will be published.

There are a couple of other writing projects that I’ve spent time on. One of them, if I gave the working title would give to much of the story away, so let’s just say it’s speculative in an interesting direction. And the other stuff, single story right now, is for children. “You know, for children.”

About a year ago I was thinking about writing a series of stories based off of experiences and observations on my older sisters children. The idea wasn’t something I abandoned and it’s not something I’ve pursued either… until lately. Just remember that names have been changed to convict the guilty.

I also received the registration information for StandingWater Creations for the state of New Hampshire.

Sunday saw me awake about two hours before I needed to and at church about 40 minutes early. I like to get to church early. Got to give the opening prayer in sacrament meeting and finally received a calling – not that I’ve been in this branch very long. I was hoping to see the CES fireside and tried to find a place to watch it, but found out that this stake doesn’t show the firesides on the days they are broadcast, saving them for a break the fast get together later on. This was VERY frustrating.

I did get to spend a lot of time during the day contemplating my place in life. It gets frustrating to be 30 and single. Especially in a Mormon environment. My contemplation wasn’t directly related to my singleness, and it didn’t exactly stay away from the subject either. One of the biggest frustrations with this move has been that I am single, I just moved to New England from Utah, and I have not been on a date since two days before I moved out here – and that was a blind date with a girl that thought I was all peaches and cream and totally loved talking to me. During that meeting that I should never have let happen I realized I was going to be bored so I told a lot of stories. I made her laugh and kept her laughing. Guess there are reasons why some people, a lot of people, call me the life of the party. I don’t believe it, but then I live inside my own head.

Contemplations extended to other areas. You know, all of those important things. My weekend. What has been happening? Why me? Why now? Why here? Why. Why. Why. I can probably ask that question a million-million different ways and never get tired of doing it. Part of the problem with asking that question, though, is that if you ask it to much you start to sound like you are totally dependent and faithless. I believe that I have a right to ask and pursue answers, but at the same time I understand the need to show some measure of trust in the system.

By the time I was done I’d written pages in my journal, added some impressions I’d received during the day, wrote down some other stuff, and had some feelings in areas that get to sit on a shelf indefinitely because I’m not sure I like the feelings. Okay, it has nothing to do with liking or not and everything to do with my personal ability to accept what is going on. Needful to say, Boston isn’t out of the mix even though I am living and going to school in New Hampshire, I think I have found a small bit of direction toward a career (though this will undoubtedly change) and then there were feelings about things I may do someday that I thought were in my past rather than still in my future. Sit them all on a shelf, wait, pray, contemplate, go to the temple (not as easy out here as in Utah), and wait. In truth, a lot of things just get to happen before I may ever know.

Oh, and I finished ripping most of my CD’s. Now I have a series of classical music CD’s that need to be ripped, but I don’t recall where that CD case is so… it’s not imperative at present. And I would really like to start acquiring heavy beat, fast, dance music. Saw an ad on television the other night for some compilation CD’s and considered buying them… but not one second before I acquire the next expansion for Killer Bunnies with the Zodiac cards.

Because I received the registration certificate on Saturday I was able to go and finish setting up a business checking account. What this really means is that I have one more checking account I have to pay attention to.

When I got home from the bank the phone was ringing and it was Borders books. Borders actually broke the silence and interviewed me maybe a week ago and I had pretty much written them off as an employment possibility. Garth, the manager who did the initial interview, called to offer me a part-time position with that company. Because I need to be working somewhere at something I accepted the position. It will be a hybrid position between the cash registers and the café. I am a little tentative about this, but at the same time I need to be doing more so here it goes.

I did write a piece on one of the tellers. This lady was… uhm, stacked. When she walked past me I saw her headlights before I ever saw her. On top of that there was this hottie who stood right next to her and in the end (I got to wait for over an hour) I created a comparison between the two that seems like it belongs in some kind of a story. Truth told, I will probably save it and sit on it indefinitely.

Justin called last night to tell me he was sending me a paper he’d worked on. My opinions don’t matter, but I did rework large parts of it, sent him the process I use to write and the drafts and questions I asked to get to what I was working on, and he said he was going to call me but that hasn’t happened.

I did start to read, out loud, Much Ado About Nothing a Shakes piece that is due for my Lit class this week. Reading out loud, for me, doesn’t always denote getting what I am reading. Reading to myself is a lot faster and I get a lot more of it. But, the teacher likes to pick on me, I like to pick back, and he has me read when I am sitting there. Have to get used to Shakes and his writing because last week it was A Midsummer Nights Dream and we will go through Richard III, Hamlet, Julius Ceasar, and others. Two months doesn’t seem like enough time to go through Shakes.

Beyond all of that I am ready to find something… and I sorta know what that something is, but how to get to the something I don’t know.

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