Category Archives: Writing

Am I Wasting My Time With This Blog (does anyone even read it)?

Computer Games, Memoirs, Relationships, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , ,

For some time now, I’ve been wondering how many people actually read my blog, if any. I mean, I know a few people read it, and those are mainly my close friends. But other than a half dozen, I’m not sure what I’m doing here really equates to a useful use of my time. Considering I’ve been doing this blog for years now, one would think that it would have received a bit better of a reception than absolutely little to none.

Strangely enough, I get lots of responses to my posts. But they’re all from spammers. And I mean A LOT of responses from spammers who are basically trying to sell their stuff, attempt to steal my ID, or whatever else they’re doing when they attempt to get people to click on their useless links.

But not so many people. Every now and then I’ll get a 1/10 vote on an old post of mine, where someone generally didn’t understand I was being ironic (or sarcastic) and then thinks that when I argue that Iran is doing good things by hurting women again, I’m being sarcastic, in that I don’t support them in their actions. Instead of any response from anyone, I’ll get someone who gives me a 1/10, a thumbs down, or a rant about how men like me are keeping women in the Middle Ages of sexual politics, meaning they didn’t understand the article, or didn’t read far enough into it to care enough to try to understand it. That gets really frustrating when that kind of stuff ends up being the only responses you tend to get.

This blog was designed as a place for a political scientist/communications person who sees the world through really bizarre lenses (including an anarchist one as well) to talk about all sorts of issues, ranging from politics, to game design (I used to work as a game designer years ago), to academics (I have more degrees than I can count, which is really an appeal to our horrible educational system that didn’t teach me to count very well), to humor, to my comic strip The Adventures of Stickman and the Unemployed Legospaceman (which you can access from the links on this page), to technology, to my unusual dating history (in which I end up having to fear almost every woman I’ve ever dated), to pretty much anything else. Yet, I don’t think this blog gets out to anyone. Or to very few.

I’ve tried all sorts of “have your blog seen by millions” techniques, but I’ve mainly failed. No one but spammers seems to know I exist. If others are seeing it, they’re being very quiet, like that strange person who sneaks into my house and steals all of my left socks.

The blog was originally a showcase for my novel writing, but that never seemed to do much either. Years later, and a dozen or so novels later, I’m as popular as someone who has yet to write his or her first word.

So, I’m going to throw this out to you all. If you read it, let me know. If not, I’m probably going to give this a few weeks to make its way into the cobwebs of the web and then close down my blog for good. Why waste time and money on something nobody is enjoying?

Author’s Guild gains class action status vs. Google but do they really represent all authors?

Books, Business, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , ,

There’s an interesting case that’s making headlines right now about how Google was attempting to push the Author’s Guild out of the suit to sue Google for its Google Books initiative (where they would be the end all source for practically everyone’s book material with their all-inclusive Google Library). Yesterday, a judge determined that Google can’t push the Author’s Guild out of the picture. On the surface, this isn’t all that big a deal, but there are a couple of things that are probably important to point out.

First off, most of the critics have already addressed the fact that not every author really wants to be part of this lawsuit, as quite a few independent authors have zero problem with what Google is doing. However, unless they personally choose to opt out of the action, the Author’s Guild is going to go forward pretending it has a lot more power and influence than in really does. And most people tend to ignore these sorts of things, so they’re now going to be “included” in this action even if they’re not really interested in what’s happening. This is one of those things that always bothers me with class action lawsuits because in cases like those against Apple and their antenna for the 4G debacle, a lot of us who owned Apple iPhone 4s didn’t really care that much for taking action against Apple. We were kind of happy with our products. Yet, a class action lawsuit moves forward as if it is representing a lot of people who may never actually be a part of the settlement. There’s a lot of presumptuousness that takes place with class action lawsuits, but that’s a completely different story.

A more important issue to me is the one that isn’t getting any attention yet, and that’s the fact that the Author’s Guild, a writer’s advocacy group, is an extremely exclusive club that lets very few actual authors into its ranks. According to their guidelines for eligibility, if you want to be a member of the Author’s Guild, don’t even think about it unless you have been published by an established American publisher, and I mean VERY established. Using a subsidy publisher, Amazon Kindle direct services and such, or anything along those lines, and you’re guaranteed to be turned down by the Author’s Guild that keeps a tight hold on its allowance for membership. While their elitism has dwindled a bit over the last year (Matt Paust, who regularly publishes to Open Salon, updated us with an article on April 27, 2012, in which he pointed out that their new requirements indicate that you can gain membership if you’ve received at least $500 from publishing in the last year, although their web site is still heavily leaning towards pointing out its old archaic standards of exclusivity).

As a writer myself, I’ve been on the fence about the whole Google books thing. I sell books through Amazon Kindle as well as Barnes & Noble’s Nook, so I haven’t been all that focused on Google, as most things Google does tends to be overly complicated and often unusable (like their advertising service that I finally gave up trying to figure out one day after I ended up getting charged $5.00 to make a listing that could never be approved and then left me unable to even remove the ad that wouldn’t ever run). So, I’ll be interested to see what happens with this, as I’m sure a lot of others will as well.

The Final Season of Chuck (Season 5)

Television, Writing, , , , , , , ,

The final season of Chuck released a few weeks ago, and I picked it up on Blu Ray when it did. I finally managed to watch through it, as this was one of my favorite shows when it first aired. The last few seasons of it I kind of missed, mainly because it was difficult to figure out when it was on, and then other things took over as more important, so it took me some time to get to it.

In case you aren’t aware, Chuck is a one-hour long show that involves a friendly, yet nerdy, computer repair professional who works for the Nerd Herd crew of the local Buy More store (definitely patterned after the Geek Squad of the Best Buy stores). In the first episode of the series, an old friend of his from Stanford (where Chuck dropped out) mails him an activation virus that ends up installing the CIA’s entire database into Chuck’s brain, thus turning him into somewhat of  a walking super computer. Thus, the CIA sends a crack team to watch over Chuck, which becomes Sarah Walker (the hot blonde played by Yvonne Strahovski) and Colonel John Casey (played by Firefly’s Adam Baldwin). Sarah becomes his handler, and as you can probably suspect would happen, she ends up falling in love with the nerdy Chuck. As the series goes forward, the “intersect”, the device placed in his brain, becomes even more complicated so that it ends up giving him special skills he can draw upon at will, like the ability to learn Kung Fu instantly, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

Anyway, lots of intrigue, and four seasons later, the last season was the finale of the adventure as Chuck and Sarah continue their adventures and see if they can somehow find some kind of life together post-CIA.

The problem with the show is that the wonderful writing that is filled with comedic fun has gotten really stale over the years, and as the season began, I started to suspect that they definitely needed to end this thing. The first half of the season was atrociously bad in both writing and ideas. And then, almost as if they realized it, it kicked into second gear for the second half of the season and actually became quite enjoyable. At one point, it actually became unpredictable, which after the first couple of episodes, I was beginning to think we had a show that had seriously overjumped the shark.

In all, the 5th season was worth it, and let’s just say that there are a couple of episodes that were comedy gold, including one that included Bo Derek playing none other than, well, Bo Derek. At some point, the show became a meta-comedy, where it started even poking fun at itself, and when it hit those moments, it was brilliant. The whole episde with Bo Derek was genius level of comedy for the show, and for the first time in a long time, I found myself seriously laughing out loud.

Shortly after, the season ended, and the journey of Chuck was over. In all, it was a decent journey.

Creating Mythology

Religion, Writing, , , , , ,

One of my all-time passions has been the study of mythology. From the ideas of Joseph Campbell to the attempts of anthropologists to link ancient religion with ancient daily life, I’ve always been fascinated by the manifestations that people put into the study of symbolic metaphor and tying one’s behaviors to the perceptions of one’s surrounding universe. In all of that study, one of the things that has always intrigued me is the concept of unlocking secrets and discovering mysteries buried within ambiguities.

One of the struggles I had with writing one of my most recent novels, The Ameriad, was how to generate mythology in every day concepts that may not have existed, but could so easily mirror the past beliefs of other civilizations. While The Ameriad was developed with a sense of humor involved, it was still fascinating to generate an historical mythology that dealt with gods leading the first Americans to our rocky shores.

So why am I talking about mythology now? Well, it turns out that my latest writing project involves another aspect of mythological thinking that I haven’t had a chance to play around with, and that’s the idea of following up mysteries within ambiguities. In other words, I want to create a sense of mythology within the general world, yet touch on those mysteries with a sense of something bigger than the main characters themselves, something so strong and vivid that it literally takes a life of its own, hinting that it may actually exist outside of the book of fiction itself. To do this, I’m starting to explore the nuances of language, in how people talk to each other and often leave certain things out, while dropping hints of something slightly below the surface. To do this, I’m exploring several organizations that existed on the periphery of fringe communities in the 1990s that were often subjects that people talked around in ways that indicated some people knew a little more than they were revealing. An example is a religious organization that existed in the late 1980s that rose up to international prestige in select groups, yet was often difficult to contact no matter how hard you tried. There was a sense of guarded indifference to outsiders, so those trying to find out more information were often led down blind corridors and only the very devout were ever capable of getting close enough to discover more information.

That is the sort of thing I’m exploring with the topic I’m dealing with. Throughout history, there have always been fringe elements existing on the periphery of our society, and whenever people attempted to make contact, they were often frowned upon, either through strict membership rules or attempts to keep out the prying eyes of government authorities.

I’ll keep you informed. Or maybe I won’t.

Mainstream Smut & the Future of Cooperation Between Legacy Publishers and E-Books

Bizarre, Book Reviews, Books, Business, News, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,

There’s a book story that’s been making the rounds lately. It’s a book called Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James (a pseudonym). It started out as an ebook and then went through a huge bidding war before it was bought by a major publishing house. It’s been compared to the Harry Potter series and the Hunger Games series, which is why the big bidding war took place. But the history of this book is a little, well, um, interesting.

You see, the book isn’t a young adult book. It’s an adult book. A very adult book. It’s basically a book about bondage and discipline, where a young woman gets drawn into a world where some dominant guy becomes her master. Most of the time, a book like this ends up being marginalized and sold as ebook smut. Such a book is very, very difficult to sell mainstream.

Yet, it happened. It became that “book” that adults bought (most often the demographic of housewives, which is another story itself) but didn’t really reveal they were reading. Now, the big publishing companies AND movie companies, see this as the next big thing and are looking to market it because of its success as an ebook.

Well, that’s going to be interesting, to say the least. You see, the book did really well because it was an ebook. Think about that for a second. When you buy an ebook, you can read it in public, and almost no one has a clue what you’re reading. But bring a book onto the train (an actual book) and everyone knows what you’re reading. That’s going to make it really difficult to get people to want to read this book in public. That’s going to kill a lot of chances of selling it to the mainstream public because it’s going to be the equivalent of reading erotica in public. Good luck on that one.

Yet, the publishing industry it’s got the next Twilight on its hands.

What this is actually showing me is that the Legacy Publishers (the ones who still print books and then ebooks as an afterthought) are starting to realize that ebooks are a viable market that might slowly overcome the old style market. Yet, I don’t think they understand the nuances involved in ebooks versus mainstream books.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I also have an adult book out there somewhere being sold as an ebook. It’s written under a completely different name, mainly because I chose a long time ago to distance my writing name from that other stuff. It’s not that I’m not proud of the other novel, or even ashamed of it. I just realized that for simple, rational (and sometimes irrational) reasons, people are often more comfortable separating the two names for the types of books that are published under those names. Throughout history, mainstream writers have done this as a precaution to keep the two camps of readers apart.

An example: Some years back, there was a series of books written by John Norman (the pseudonym of John Frederick Lange, Jr.) about a mythical land called Gor. It was one of those series that had a huge following, basically taking a complete life of its own. The premise of it centered around a civilization of highly structured slavery. This series has spawned into a lifestyle culture of people who partake in the culture of living a Gorean lifestyle, which generally revolves around a strong master/slave society. Sometimes the genders are mixed (as in sometimes its female controlled, but most often it tends to gravitate towards a male dominant household). Anyway, because the ideas of his novels were so against the mainstream thought, Norman remained the header on all of these stories and Lange made every effort to keep his secret identity. During the 1970s, as the series was at its zenith, a woman I knew named Laura figured out who the author was, including where he was teaching and confronted him directly about it. For years, he protested his involvement but then eventually he gave in, realizing that secret was quickly catching up with him. Today, pretty much everyone who has ever read these books knows exactly who was the author. Fortunately for him, he was already so famous as a writer that it didn’t actually affect his teaching career.

The same kind of thing happened when vampire-story writer Anne Rice was revealed to be writing under a number of names that published books on male and female lifestyle slavery. Because she was already so famous as a novelist, these revelations didn’t hurt her career, and then soon after her identity was discovered, she started writing religious fiction, and her career has really never returned to the power career it once was.

What is interesting to note about all of these cases is that the stories themselves never really became mainstream. Even Rice’s book, Exit to Eden, which became a major motion picture some years ago starring Dan Ackroyd and Rosie Odonnell, never really became the hot seller as a mainstream novel. And the reason is simple: It was perceived by mainstream America as smut. Which is sad because it’s a brilliantly written novel (and a horrible movie adaptation that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of the book).

So, as this “new” series moves into mainstream writing, I’m wondering how it is going to do in that realm. All attempts to bring S&M into mainstream have never succeeded. Madonna tried to do it for years, and every time she did, she continued to remain famous, but those attempts (including a picture book, several songs and videos and even a major motion picture) continue to remain obscure in her collection of mainstream releases. Recently, even Rihanna tried to present such material to a mass audience, and she was criticized for responding badly to her scandal of how she had been beaten by her boyfriend (which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, as her adventures in that realm only served to be used as continued criticism…making some kind of weird connection to PTSD from being beaten by Chris Brown as her motivation behind why she’d do a move into S&M music video…yeah, the argument didn’t make a lot of sense to me either at the time).

The upshot of the whole thing is that no matter how hard people try, fringe sexual activity is rarely ever going to be seen as acceptable by sex-obsessed Americans who pretend to be shocked when they secretly covet all sorts of different sexual material. It’s like a politician who screams “sinner” at random strangers while having an affair with another woman to hide his predilection for having sex with children. America has never really made a lot of sense.

But expect to see a lot of shocked faces when people start to realize what they actually bought into now that everyone has jumped on the popularity of a bdsm book that publishers are convinced is ready for the mass public. I think they’re ready, but I’m pretty sure I’m wrong.

Struggling to Find a Purpose

Memoirs, Writing, , , , , , , ,

Well, after the whole losing a crown on my tooth thing and the identity theft incident, I’m now back at work and moving forward into another day. It sucks that there are thieves out there who will steal you blind (just because they can), and it sucks that random health concerns can really mess with your day. But really, what can you do about it other than just get through it and move onto another day?

Which brings me to another day. And realizing that, I’m back to the same quandary in that I really don’t know what to do with my “other” day now that I’m there. My life still sucks. And I really don’t have anything to look forward to, other than more days of dealing with the fact that there are more sucky days after this one.

My life isn’t bad. Or horrible. I mean, I don’t live in an environment where evil, brutal masters are flogging me on a daily basis while I work in the salt mines. My biggest dilemma on a daily basis is deciding between paper and plastic, and I’ve sort of solved that by buying reusable Meiers bags that I bring to the supermarket with me. Basically, my day consists of figuring out whether a colon, a semi-colon or a gerund phrase are used correctly. And even then, who really cares?

The real dilemma is that I don’t have a purpose. Nothing I do really matters. No one cares. Oh sure, someone might throw a fit if a memo doesn’t go to the correct audience, or another person might somehow come unglued if the wrong font was used to explain an osteometric procedure. But in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter. No lives will be saved, made better or worse, or otherwise seriously inconvenienced.

And personally, besides not having a purpose, I don’t have really anything going on in my life. And I’m not under-exaggerating here. There’s NOTHING going on. My writing career is not a career. It’s not even a glorified hobby these days. I have no girlfriend, mistress, or flirting affair with the girl down the hall who thinks I’m somewhat okay but would rather date anyone but me. I don’t even have that. I don’t party. I don’t even have a drug problem, which ironically might be something to bide the time as people who do drugs at least have something to occupy their time.

I sometimes think I grew up during the wrong period in US history. The amount of technology we have today has made interaction with other people almost inconsistent or nonexistent. Sometimes, I think it would be really fascinating to just up and walk off, wandering the lands as a Kwei Chang Caine or Jack Kerouac, starting over at practically every “Welcome to….” city sign. It’s like there’s a whole world out there to experience, and I’m sitting at home playing Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Years back, I kept thinking I was going to be changing the world. Then I learned that’s not likely to happen. The world doesn’t want to change. And you know, I’m sort of fine with that. However, perhaps it’s time to change me, and being what I am really kind of sucks.

Whatever I’m doing right now certainly isn’t working.

The Process of Writing That First Novel

Writing, , , , ,

Often, my many adoring fans have asked me what gave me the inspiration to write my first novel. Well, actually, I should probably mention that when I say “many adoring fans” I’m referring to my stuffed bean bag frog named Elmer who really doesn’t care why I started writing, but I figured that starting with that wouldn’t cause you to be all that interested in what I had to say later (note to editor who doesn’t exist: remove this last aside before allowing this blog to go to print). Anyway, years ago, when I was a very young adult, I decided that I was going to sit down and write my first novel. It wasn’t “officially” my “first” novel as I had written probably five before it, but it was the first serious novel that wasn’t designed to go right into a drawer to remain until the end of time.

The novel was Innocent Until Proven Guilty, which you may remember as the novel that fought in there up to the last round for the Pulitzer Prize, right before losing out to some novel about some guy who realized something at the end of the book that somehow seemed really significant. Okay, the Pulitzer people weren’t considering my novel for the prize, but they could have been. If they’d ever heard of it. Which they probably never have. But I’m digressing again, and I fear my medication may be wearing off soon.

So, as I was saying, early in my adulthood, right about the same time I was in the Army in Germany, I decided to write my first novel about corporate intrigue and murder, or it might have been about corporate murder and intrigue; I kind of forget. But anyway, it involved a corporation, a murder and intrigue. And not necessarily in that order. But considering that I had never worked for a corporation, had never murdered anyone (not that anyone can prove…although you cops sure tried but boy did I get over on that one…oh sorry, the meds again), and really didn’t know much about intrigue other than have an overly active imagination, I figured it would have been a pretty easy novel to write. And it was.

But one of the things they tell you when you first start writing is that you should write what you know. Well, we kind of went over that. Three strikes there, but I’m okay with that. They also say that a writer’s first novel is almost always about the killing of his or her parents (kind of a growing up kind of novel). But my parents died long before I started writing that novel, so that didn’t seem all that necessary. So this was basically a raw attempt to just show that I had an idea of what I was doing.

One of the interesting struggles of writing a first novel is to actually get through the process of finishing that first novel, which while it sounds kind of obvious, is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. When I started writing it, I had a general idea of where it was going, but I’ll let you in on a little secret: There was a second shooter on the grassy knoll. No, wrong secret. I mean, I had no idea where I was going the entire time I wrote the novel and I sort of let the story tell itself. And it did. Wonderfully. Even after I finished it, I kept thinking that somehow I cheated because the damn thing practically wrote itself. The characters came to life and did their own thing, the plot developed all on its own, and everything sort of fell into place. For the longest time, I was convinced that I had written what is often referred to as “that one novel he had in him”, convinced I’d never be able to do it again.

There are a few authors out there who I often think of as an author who had one novel in him or her. Alice Sebold is an example. She wrote a brilliant novel (that was turned into an semi-okay movie) called The Lovely Bones. Since then, she’s written generic stuff that hasn’t resonated anywhere near as well as that one novel. And there’s a reason for it. The Lovely Bones was one of those novels that needed to be told. She just happened to be the one to tell it. But even as I read it, I kept thinking, wow, this is a great book, but I’m not sure I’d really want to read anything else she has to write, thinking this was definitely a one-hit wonder. And it was. Now I could be wrong and next year she may come out with the next War and Peace, but I don’t think that’s going to happen any sooner than James Frey is ever going to become best buddies with Oprah Winfrey again.

Anyway, so what I discovered was that after the book was finished, I was ready to start tackling my second novel, and I did. But as I wrote the second one, it took a lot longer, and I realized then why Innocent went so easily. I had already written the novel in my head before I sat down to write it. When I finally did write it down, it was like I had been one of those wandering minstrels telling the story of the Iliad before someone figured out how to invent actual writing. Then it was jus a matter of doing it.

Sometimes that happens. Most often it doesn’t. Most often, I’m plotting out the whole thing chapter by chapter, constantly struggling with where the book needs to go next. Other times, I sit down and a novel comes out. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever truly figured out the science behind it. But I do know that I love to sit down and write novels.

Right now, I’m working on a rewrite of a novel I wrote years ago (the third one) that takes place in 1991. Strangely enough, the first edition was written in the 1980s. It took the future happening before the novel actually found its time and place.

Writing is strange and can be that way. It’s why I love to write. It was either this or be a male prostitute because those were the only two skills I was good at: Writing and charging people money. What? Were you thinking of something else?

The Energy to Post New Blog Content Just Isn’t There

Education, Memoirs, Relationships, Writing, ,

I haven’t posted anything in awhile, mainly because I rarely get any actual responses on my blog itself. A couple of my feeds move onto places like Open Salon and other such places, and they get a few responses there, but overall, my own web site sometimes feels like a graveyard.

Not really a lot going on these days. I’ve been voraciously trying to find a decent teaching job, but I’ve completely failed at almost every attempt. If lucky, I get a form letter rejection thanking me for applying. Otherwise, I get nothing. Not a damn thing. It’s not like I’m not qualified. It’s not like I’m not a damn good teacher either. I just get no response whatsoever. Or I’ll get a nibble, and then that nibble will run away, convinced that there is probably tastier bait out there somewhere else.

Lately, I’ve been working on a writing project with a former friend/romantic interest/really hard to define but always a positive attribution regardless. Our project is something that’s definitely up our alley, but our schedules don’t really seem to be all that copacetic, which means that I’m suspecting that as good of an idea as it is, it’s probably going to end up not working out in the long run. And that’s too bad. I’m slowly putting work back into energy towards one of my previous novels, mainly because I don’t feel right unless I’m working on something that’s moving forward. And I’ve been meaning to rewrite one of my old novels for many years now, especially now that I have the proper time and place for it.

I recently read Stephen King’s book on the JFK assassination, and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at how well he carried that book through its entire process. He sometimes has a habit of becoming too wordy and sometimes “too Stephen King”, but this was one of his rare wonders. I can say that I’m very happy I read it. I immediately recommended it to Rick, and he read it too, thinking pretty much the same thing I did. I haven’t read too many great novels recently, and I was glad this one came along.

Which got me thinking about my own writing again, because it’s always a continuous work in progress that never seems to go anywhere. Unlike other writers who want to be writers but never write, I’m one of those who wrote a lot but never got anything for doing it. And I still continue to write. My writing has probably evolved to a point where I’m pretty much at the top of my game right now, and it’s almost completely useless. It’s like pissing in a fan, for lack of a better (or graphic) metaphor.

Relationships are still a dead zone for me these days. I live in Grand Rapids, which seems to be the furthest place of finding anything I’m seeking. I’d move anywhere else, but I’m like some unemployable crazy guy that will never get another job no matter how hard he tries. So I’m kind of stuck here. And stuck is probably a very apt description.

Not much else going on. Another semester is almost over here at GRCC, and my students probably couldn’t care one way or another if I was teaching them. It’s not like they’re bad students; they’re fine. It’s just that I don’t seem to be making much of an impact or a difference these days. That’s generally the story of adjuncts everywhere.

Well, have to head to class for the night. What fun.

Another Birthday, and now it’s Monday

Memoirs, Relationships, Writing, , , , , ,

Yesterday was my birthday, or at least the anniversary of my birthday. I’m a year older. I forget the actual age but it’s somewhere between 18 and the age of the planet, which if you believe in science is billions of years old, and if you don’t, then it’s slightly shy of 4000. Either way, my age is somewhere in there.

I didn’t do anything for my birthday. I never do. I don’t have a family, a girlfriend, or friends who hang out with me, so my birthdays are mainly spent alone, doing alone things. Like playing a computer game, watching a movie on DVD, or reading a book. That’s pretty much the sum of my every day, so my birthday is rarely that much different.

I did take the day off of work. Well, actually, I took Friday off (as yesterday was Sunday). I like to take a day and “celebrate” my birthday, even if that celebration consists of doing nothing. But it means that one day out of the week when I should be at work, I’m not. So it sort of works itself out.

But I’m definitely realizing I’m getting older. My back hurts a bit these days, and I’m not as agile as I used to be. The other day, my foot hurt really something awful. I’m not sure why. I think it’s just one of those: “You’re getting older, duane” sort of things. Later on, it felt fine.

As I start to get older, I find myself with a bit more time to regret the things that didn’t work out in my life. I think about relationships that didn’t work out, and I kick myself a lot about those. I mean, I totally blew it with Marisha, and then turned around and destroyed a bizarre, yet somewhat productive relationship with Sally. Sure, Sally was nuts, but it kind of worked out. I just wasn’t ready for that relationship at the time, and then I sort of burned that bridge where it stood. I regret that a lot. Oh well.

I regret that my writing career has never taken off the way I hoped it would. I remember teachers telling me when I was a little kid that I had the “gift”, that I was going to go far with my writing. I soaked those comments up, too, and I really believed them. And when I received my first book deal, I was overjoyed. And then the publishing company tanked before the book was released. And then my agent got into an accident and disappeared, showing up years later and no longer remembering who I was (after her head injury). My second agent represented me for about six months and then kind of stopped answering all correspondences. Obtaining a third agent has been somewhat elusive. And then the Internet happened, and the Kindle, and then the industry changed to the point where I don’t think I’m ever going to have a writing career. Ever. I kind of regret that happened.

I regret my music career never started off. Back in my young days, I was a soloist, and my singing was pretty damn popular. I had a great voice…still do. But I never did anything with it. Instead, I joined the Army and put all of that behind me. I’m a bit too old for that sort of thing now, so it’s another one of those things I regret.

I sometimes kick myself that I dropped medicine as a college career and went into political science instead, and then communication. I’m a genius with mathematics, yet I’ve done nothing math or science-related with my life. I even developed a mathematical, game theoretic social model for compliance negotiations between nations. Never did anything with it. Gave up trying to convince people it was a better alternative than the current losing strategies we use with diplomacy today.

I regret that I haven’t dated in over a decade. And I don’t see that changing any time in the future. Everyone around me is married, unavailable or simply not interested. And there aren’t that many around me as it is.

Secretly, I keep telling myself I need to pick up and move across the country to some place I’ve never been before and start over there, but I’ve become somewhat of a coward these days. In my youth, I’d jump up and go anywhere, convinced I’d fall back on my feet. Today, I’m scared to death of making a move like that and finding myself unemployed, unable to find a job and then slowly becoming homeless and despondent. I’ve always managed to land on my feet in the past, but this last time was a lot more difficult than ever before, and I just don’t see myself desiring to go through that horror again. Yet, if I don’t find something, somewhere soon, I don’t think I’m going to be around much longer.