* mic drop *

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Greetings, Loyal Listeners.

By all accounts, January is a pretty depressing time of year. The last remnants of your vacation time have been frittered away. Everything is cold and dark and dead. Holiday bills come due with a vengeance. Theatrical movie releases suck even more bawlz than usual.

As such, January is probably not the best time for me to do my annual "year in review" blog entry. And it's certainly not the best time for me to ponder the last scheduled Emblogification Capture Device post ever.

A year and some change ago I started to look for a part-time job in order to avoid the inevitability of being dragged kicking and screaming away from my keyboard. In doing so I made the following three wishes to the Employment Genie:

1. It Had To Be Mobile In order to have a hope in hell of continuing my writing "career" I had to find something that kept me on my feet and as far away as possible from a computer monitor. Why? Because previous experience told me that slaving away at a sedentary, computer-centric call-center job all day long would annihilate any remaining desire I'd have to go home, sit down and irradiate my eyeballs even further in the cold regard of a blank Microsoft Word document.
2. It Had To Make Sense  In other words, I had to work at something that kept my conscience clear, something that I didn't have to fake aptitude or interest in. I didn't want to work for some greedy, monolithic, corporate giant again - especially one that seemed intent on wiping mom-and-pop competitors right off the planet with Borg-like precision and ruthlessness. I wanted to work for a small, independent, innovative business that was trying to do something different. I wanted to help this entrepreneurial David fend off all of the overbearing, hyper-competitive Goliaths out there. 
3. It Had To Be Populated With Cool People Not people who rejoice at the beginning of every new cycle of Big Brother. Not people who keep paying Adam Sandler to take vacations. Not people who have an allergic reaction to the word "socialism" or barely tolerate the existence of gay people or get irrationally pissed off whenever the word "religion" is brought up for public scrutiny. With so many people my age and older throwing themselves upon the oblivion grenade for their kids or just making a conscious decision to preserve their outlook on life in carbonite, I started to crave fresh blood like Nosferatu with a mid-life crisis. I wanted to be surrounded by young, smart, creative, willful, work-in-progress people who are still striving to get better.

And let me tell you folks, I hit the freakin' jackpot.

I started working at a place which fulfilled all of my wildest expectations in spades. Unfortunately I'd neglected to lobby the Job Fairy for one other very important criterion:

MONEY

You know...cash, simoleons, bread, funds, greenbacks - the precious pieces of polymer paper that help us poor, brainwashed, capitalists plebes distinguish between who's leading the pack in the rat-race. A.K.A. the root of all evil. A.K.A. the bane of my fucking existence.

No surprise, but most of my twenty-something co-workers are also living paycheck to paycheck. Even worse, many of them were still being fleeced by a greedy, opportunistic, for-profit education system that wants to see them buried in debt up to their sparkly eyeballs for the rest of their lives. If I had any say in the matter a college-level education would be free in this country and even the lowly fry-jockey would be able to earn a respectable living wage.

But since I'm probably not gonna be elected Emperor of North America any time soon kids in their twenties will continue to be poorer then church mice. Now, I'm not saying that we should just accept this as some sort of mandatory rite of passage, quite the opposite. What I am saying that it's more socially acceptable to be broke if you're just starting out in life. Christ knows that I was dirt poor at their age, but now my inability to be upwardly mobile along with the rest of my crusty-ass peers is starting to wear on me.

The sad fact is that we're all willful participants in a consumption-driven system that's designed to underscore how well you're doing versus someone else. Self-improvement, seeking knowledge and trying to make the world a better place through creative pursuits is pretty much irrelevant. In our society it's much more prestigious to be house-poor, lease a new car, breed like a rabbit or rent-to-own a shiny new sofa. That's the real barometer to gauge whether or not you're winning at life.

Well, I personally can't subscribe to this outlook. The perpetually-dangling carrot has never motivated me. Honestly, I don't want to live in a suburban cul-de-sac, crammed in between two other mouth breathers who are silently trying to goad me into some sort of perpetual lawn care competition. I don't want to bring kids into the world because the joint's a real dump right now. And I really don't miss buying future landfill just to feel a momentary rush of endorphins.

Although I don't want a new car I kinda need a new one because mine is over ten years old and both the engine and the airbag lights are on. I'm no mechanic but I'm pretty sure that's probably not a good thing. And although I don't want to live in the sort of cut-and-paste neighborhood where the Barenaked Ladies shot their "Call And Answer" video, I would like to stop throwing my money into the incinerator bin marked RENT. At this stage in the game I'd settle for a small lakeside cabin in the woods or a tiny bungalow on route to the beach. I'd also like to have a dog. Homeless people have dogs, why can't I?

Most of all I want to travel again. I haven't gone anywhere in the past two years and it's starting to get on my nerves. I'm this close to humoring the possibility of becoming a groundskeeper at some clothing-optional resort down south somewhere. I don't care; I'll provide my own towel, floppy hat and twenty-gallon drum of genital-friendly SPF 90 sunscreen.

Looking back over the entries here I've detected something that vaguely resembles a theme. If I'm working away at a job I like then I'm not going to get paid for it but if I'm toiling away in a mental and physical salt mine then I'm bound to make more bling than Croesus himself. Case and point: I'm currently working part-time and making less than half the money I was earning at my last "hit-the-feeder-bar-and-get-a-pellet" job. I'm not losing money but I'm also not making much in the way of headway either. 

Long before Frank Miller went nuts and turned into the sort of extreme fascist asshole that's parodied by connotation in his own books, he was a lean and hungry aspiring writer and artist. Determined to break into the comic book biz, he began stalking his favorite Batman artist Neal Adams. As Miller's ersatz mentor, Neal was pretty vicious in his appraisal of the young ingenue: 

“He told me that I was just no damn good, and I would never be any good,” Miller said recently. “But my problem is I got fired from every other job I ever had. So it was either comics or nothing.”

Even though I can't relate to Frank's more recent soundbites, this definitely resonates with me. I wish I could go back in time and convince twenty-year-old me to just suck it up, pay your dues and try to make a go of it. Now I find myself feeling old, tired, left behind and distinctly pathetic.

To make matters worse, whenever I look at all of these high-paying, so-called "adult" career jobs all I can think is "boring"..."boring"... "unqualified"..."boring"..."sedentary"..."I could totally do that but I don't have a piece of paper proving that I can do that"..."sedentary and boring"..."boring"... "suicide-inducing"..."hideously unqualified" ..."boring"... "boring".  To paraphrase Frank "every other job I've ever had either depressed me or made me sick so it's either writing or nothing."

But boo-fuckin'-hoo, amirite? A lot of people have the same "I'm better than this" *slash* "My destiny lies upon a higher path" delusions of grandeur. But then again, a lot of people don't. I remember asking one of my fellow managers at Sears what her dream job was and she actually replied: "Oh, I'd love to be a secretary at a nice office somewhere!" Honestly, I looked at her as if she'd just expressed a sincere desire to be the Lead Quality Control Taste Tester for the vomit, booger, rotten egg and earwax-flavored Bertie Botts Beans.

I'm not planning to post here again but, hey, crazier things have happened. I doubt that I'll be able to keep my big trap shut as we get closer to the next federal election. Or if more artists are killed for the mortal sin of parody. Or if ISIS gets close to establishing a caliphate. Or if American Sniper becomes the top grossing film of all time. Or if Kim Jong-Un is named the new head of the MPAA. In fact, I'd like nothing more then to explore every one of these topics right the falk now.

I'd like to think that I've written some pretty good stuff here. When I first started this blog almost five years ago (!) it was glaringly obvious that I couldn't write myself out of a paper bag but now I consider myself to be vaguely passable. And it's all thanks to the public forum that this blog has provided for me. 

I'll continue to maintain my entertainment and tabletop gaming blogs as best I can but I'm pretty much done with ye olde Emblogification Capture Device. Given a choice between posting a new entry here or finishing a chapter for my new book I'm gonna opt with the latter every time. At least I made a coupla bucks from my first book.

As I finish the final edit on this I can't help but anticipate the end of superfluous ol' January. The days are already getting longer and with that I feel inspired to end things on hopeful and positive note.

If a dude can make over four million dollars from a game about exploding kittens then surely there's still some room left out there for l'il ol' me.

EPIC SENTIMENT:

EPIC SENTIMENT II:

THE "MAMAS DON'T LET YER BABIES GROW UP TO BE WRITERS" FAIL:

Seriously, world...fuck you. 

A B.L.E.S.S.-ing For Humanity

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Wènhòu, Faithful Readers!

Okay, so imagine if the government started paying every adult in Canada a living wage of $2000.00 a month just so they could spend their lives doing what they wanted instead of slaving away at some job they don't care about in order to avoid freezing and / or starving to death? Well, that's exactly that the Swiss are thinking about doing right now.

Depending on where you are (both mentally and physically) this either sounds like emancipation from modern capitalist serfdom or the rankest form of SOCIALISM. Ewwwww.

If anything else, it illustrates the philosophical gulf between Europeans and North Americans. In Europe this proposal could be regarded as the next logical extension of the social safety net that's already set in place. In the United States just voicing this idea in a public forum would probably get you run out of town by a mob of yahoos armed with torches and pitchforks.

Now, I'm not sure what Americans think socialism is but many of them pronounce it with same sort of distaste a literate person would use if they were forced to say the word "coprophagia". Maybe they just assume that its evil because it ends with "-ism" like "fascism". Notwithstanding the the fact that capitalism also ends with the same three letters, I really want to ask these people what they think farming assistance, unemployment benefits,Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is. You like those programs, right?

"Wrong!" comes the obstinate reply.

Um, o-o-o-o-kay, why not?

"Givin' people a free lunch makes 'em weak, unmotivated an' dependent. And I don't wanna give a red cent to anybody who ain't gonna pull their own weight!"

Okay, but what if the shoe was on the other foot? What if the cracker factory you work at in Frog Balls Arkansas suddenly gets bought out by some wealthy conglomerate who then decide to move the whole operation lock, stock and barrel down to Bogata in order to wring a bit more profit out of it and give their shareholders a money-boner™? Suddenly the job you held down for the past eighty-four years is gone, you find yourself unceremoniously dumped out into a ruinous economy with barely any contemporary skills and you've gotta turn to Food Stamps to support your family.

Lemme give you another scenario: what if you're a single mom who works two jobs and can't afford health insurance and one day you get plowed down in the crosswalk of a four-way intersection because someone's idea of "multi-tasking" is texting, putting on makeup, eating a McGriddle and driving all at the same time? Well, if you have the misfortune of surviving, it's very likely that you'll be buried under an insurmountable crush of medical bills that you may never be able to extricate yourself from.

Since there's clearly a victim in both of these scenarios, wouldn't it make sense if society as whole chipped in a little bit to help mitigate this misfortune? And if you decided to accept this help would you see it as badly-needed assistance in a time of need or the start of your unending spiral towards becoming an entitlement junkie?

Or, to put it in the inexplicable words of actor / Republican / oblivious chowderhead Craig T. Nelson:

Wow, just...wow. Even Glenn Beck looks like he's thinking 'Oh, God, did he just say what I think he said? Who booked this (oxy)moron?'  

For a bunch of self-righteous blowhards who constantly rail against "takers" who exist only to score their next government handout, many star Republicans seem pretty durned quick to snatch up these benefits themselves when given half the chance. Take fiscally-conservative tub-thumper / unblinking Skeletor understudy Michelle Bachmann. Despite decrying Obama for foisting "socialism" on a weakened American populace like a drug pusher, her family farming operation leeched almost two hundred and fifty-two thousand dollars from American taxpayers between 1995 and 2006. And, trust me, she's not the only hypocrite.  

In fact, all Republicans and Conservatives want us drones to unquestioningly worship at the feet of whatever corporate golden calves that are kind enough to grant us a future. Well, if we're to believe that corporations are people now and we should look up to them, shouldn't they all be paragons of fiscal responsibility and independence? 

Nope. Wait, let me double ch...ah, nope.

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And that's why I think the Swiss are on to something.

"But Dave!" I miraculously hear some of you out there saying, "If you give people a free basic living allowance they'll never do anything productive. People are inherently lazy and, if given half a choice, they won't work a day in their lives!"

To which I reply:

1. You must be hanging around the wrong people! Everybody in my circle would go totally batshit nuts if they remained idle for too long, present company included. 
2. Eventually automation and technology will force this issue and there'll too many people and not enough crappy McJobs. 
3. Honestly, who cares if some people don't want to work? If humanity applied itself, only about five to ten percent of the world's population would need to work in order to keep this wacky globe a-spinnin'.

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So, what if we could set up a system that both generous humanitarians and selfish assholes could both get behind? Welp, here's what I'd institute if I was ever voted Emperor of the Planet:

1. "People need food, water, shelter and access to basic healthcare in order to live. Okay, with that truism established, I'm just gonna give every legal adult $2000.00 a month just fer bein' you! I call it the B.L.E.S.S. or the Basic Living Expense Survival Supplement. Now, don't spend it all in once place; I'll be back in about a month or so to check up on ya!"
2. "Hey, how're you doin'? Man, I can't believe that it's already been four weeks since I gave you your first B.L.E.S.S. so I just wanted to pop by and see what you've been up to! What's that you say? You've been doing nothing? Just sittin' there watching one Vanderpump Rules marathon after another, huh? Well, um, okay, but if you really want the full experience of watching a snooty British entrepreneur berate her pretty-but-dumb-as-a-bag-of-hammers waitstaff on a high def T.V. then you might wanna go out and get a job. But, hey, whatevs."
3. *knock, knock* Yo, Jessie I'm here to...OH MY GOD!!! What the hell did you do?!? Okay, okay, lemme get this straight...you took all of the money I wanted you to spend on bread, milk and pizza and blew it on meth?!? Okay...no...no, relax, dude, chill out...stop crying...no, we're not gonna throw you in jail. And no, we're not going to cut off, alright? Clearly you've got a problem so we're just run  you through the same drug treatment program that Portugal's been using to good effect. Even if it takes more then a month, don't worry dude: we've got an endless supply of opportunities to get your head screwed on straight! Eventually I know you'll come around...
4. Good day, random flaky artsy person! I just wanted to see what you've been doing with your B.L.E.S.S. money and all of that free time! Well, well, looky that...I see that you've painted a picture / written a story / made a movie and / or composed and then learned how to perform an original dubstep song on the theremin! Well, here's this month's B.L.E.S.S. and, remember: if you manage to make some cheddar from your creation, it's all pure profit! That's right, you can cash that royalty check knowing that it's not just gonna get swallowed up by the inexorable rent monster! 
5. So, you say you want to live in something larger then your basic domicile? You want clothes with some stupid brand name printed on it? Enough kids to start up your own basketball team? A fancy new motorcar? A timeshare in Lisbon? Do you have an irrational desire to habitually dine at an expensive restaurant named SUR? Well, then you better keep your job at the cracker factory, pal! Now, don't worry, if you decide to keep working I'm not gonna claw back your B.L.E.S.S.! To the contrary, all of the money you bank from work will be pure, unadulterated profit my covetous friend!
6. Wow, hey, check you out! Through your hard work, discipline, initiative and perseverance you've become an entrepreneur / brain doctor / atom-smasher / star of a series of oddly profitable direct-to-pay-cable-giant-shark-based-monster-movies! Oh, but what's that you say: you don't want to share your tax dollars with "deadbeats" who don't work as "hard" as you do? Hmmmm, well, I can see by our records that that this stance of yours certainly hasn't precluded you from cashing those B.L.E.S.S. checks every month. Remember how that money paid your power bill while you were putting together your business plan? Do you recall how many text books it paid for? What gave you the chance to really drill down on that Sharkaconda vs. Gorillarantula script instead of bussing tables at Spagos? And, yes, I'm referring to the Spago in Windsor Ontario, by the way.  
7. As long as you keep living fairly frugally then you won't have to pay a lot of taxes. But if you start buying yachts, Ferraris, forty-thousand dollar bottles of wine or island in the Cyclades like a dee-bag, then yer gonna get dinged for some mondo sales tax.

***

So, is my system perfect? Hardly. Switzerland might be able to pull this off but that's just because of their shady-but-undeniably-strong international banking economy. Oh, and they also have a population of only about eight million people, who are already predisposed to the notion that social programs can actually improve the quality of life instead of signalling inevitable imprisonment on a work collective.

Even though it would be a lot harder to institute a paradigm shift in North America and you'd get a lot of push back from hordes of uninformed morons who erroneously equate socialism with communism, I still dream that one day we'll all come to our collective senses and actually try something new.

'Cuz, let's face it folks, the system that we're using right now is just plain broken.

EPIC DOC   You think that I'm a dreamer? Check out futurist / social engineer Jacques Fresco's proposals for The Venus Project. Pity that there's no chance in hell that the whole of humanity will ever rally behind this great idea because reasons.

EPIC INTERVIEW Our very own George Stroumboulopoulos gets some great observations out of comedian and political satirist Bill Maher. Pay particular attention to what he says at the six minute mark and beyond.  

REALITY FAIL  Fox News continues to be the "news" equivalent of that drunk racist uncle of yours who's always ranting and raving about the "moocher class" at family dinners. Seriously, if you hitch your wagon to these idiots then you deserve to work sixty hours a week at two jobs in perpetuity and have the same quality of life as a medieval serf.  

REALITY FAIL: PART DEUX  "Have you seen some of the movies I've done? Did you think I wanted to do all of those movies? I'm gonna be honest, sometimes you have to go to work...and then get paid an exorbitant amount of money to run around and play pretend."

 

Cold Turkey

 
Greetings, Persistent Perusers.

During my forty...um...three years I've never come remotely close to tobacco, alcohol or drug-related dependency. Hell, I've barely even touched the stuff. All told, I think I can safely declare that I don't have an addictive personality.   

Yet now I find myself in the throes of a compulsion that may be just as ruinous. It's hobbled my finances, distracted me from potentially lucrative opportunities and even impacted my health. What is this dire pursuit, you may ask? In one incongruous word it's:

WRITING

Now, I know you're thinking: "C'mon, Dave, dramatic much?" But I'll prove it to you. Just listen for a second...

 

January gives me a chance to look back and see what I managed to accomplish during the previous year. For example, back at the end of 2011, this was my admittedly-"impossible" Things To Do list for 2012:

1. Try voice acting work.
2. Make more board game videos.
3. Attempt to find some sort of film crew gig.
4. Make my first book available to Kobo readers.
5. Keep promoting my first book.
6. Start working in earnest on my second book.
7. Produce four blog entries (!) and six reviews (!!!) per month.
8. Sell some of my crap.
9. Travel.
10. Find a practical job that will somehow jibe with this irrational creative workload whilst not driving me insane in the process.

As sad as this underachieving checklist might be, the most depressing part about it is the ending:

"Even if I manage to check off a few of these, I'll be happy.   In my current situation, 2012 is virtually rife with limitless, unpredictable and downright giddy possibilities." 

Wow. You poor, deluded, naive bastard.

I say all of this because my single-minded obsession with número siete on this list caused everything else to fall by the wayside. In fact, instead of diversifying my efforts, I started up a third blog and then proceeded to write like a possessed maniac throughout the entire year. In fact, I only managed to accomplish seven through ten on this list.

Now granted, some of these goals were either goofy and/or pie-eyed anyway so a part of me is relieved that I didn't waste a lot of time on them. For example, with the rise of iPads and other tablets, I'm glad I spared myself the pain and misery of wrestling with super-frustrating formatting issues just to appease a couple of Kobo users. 

And even though I really enjoyed the time I've spent on movie sets (documented here, here, here and here for what it's worth), I no longer have a burning desire to be a mobile light stand or a human-shaped prop in the background. And although I had a lot of fun emoting in my one and only "acting" gig, I just don't posses the level of self-awareness (nor the wardrobe, apparently) to become a career actor. Or whatever passes for "career actor here in the impoverished Maritimes.

No, the two things I really regret not doing over the past two years is making more of my own short films and writing the sequel to my first book. My very first board game video was so wildly successful (over twenty-one thousand view as of this writing, holla!) that I really should have followed up on it immediately. Also when I think about how many chapters of a new book I could have written instead of blog posts, my mind reels. And, believe it or not, I still think I've got something to offer as a voice-actor.

Anyway, a year goes by and my next "things to do list" sounds a helluva lot more sober. Self-disappointment must have been getting me down, since I reduced my goals from ten the previous year to only two:

• Break my ruinous addiction to writing
• Stop my savings from swirling down the commode

See!? Even back then I was referring to writing as a "ruinous addiction"! Clearly feeling defeated, I bashed out the following weary resignation:

"It kills me to say this, but I'm either going to have to quit these blog posts cold turkey or, at the very least, scale back my usage."
 
Well, I'll have your know that I did scale back that year. I just couldn't bring myself to quit. When you're a closet extrovert who's desperately seeking creative validation, you begin to live for that steady stream of visitor hits, the rush of positive comments and the optimistic delusion that the right person will come along, read what you've written and magically offer you a paying job for something that you're clearly passionate about. Is there any wonder why the alluring l'il devil mounted on my shoulder kept reeling me in whenever he leaned into my ear and whispered: "C'mon, man, just one more post! You know you wanna!"

Sorry, but compared to chipping away at the third chapter of a full-length novel that may or may not ever see the light of day, the instant gratification offered up by a blog entry is just waaaaaay too tempting.    

Regardless, I now find myself in the same position again, looking back at the prior year and trying to see 2014 in a positive light. Even though my monthly balance sheet still keeps going in the wrong direction, at least my savings have stopped hemorrhaging. I really don't want to hit rock bottom. As such, I gotta start making some really tough decisions. I need some help.

To follow through on this goofy addiction analogy, I seriously considered going cold turkey at first. But then I found out that the odds of this working were actually pretty slim. In fact, according to one source, only "three to six cold turkey quitters out of every one-hundred will succeed during any given quit attempt. This makes cold turkey the least effective of all treatments."  Hmmmmm, not very promising.

Honestly, my vow to quit writing cold turkey is nothing but an unrealistic, overly-optimistic New Years resolution. Taking a break from breathing would be an easier for me. Just last week I tried to go as long as I could without writing something. Within a few short days I started to feel anxious, surly, unfulfilled and vaguely depressed. I felt like I was wasting my time. I even took my unconscious frustrations out on a poor, innocent sandwich press.

So, with the cold turkey approach out of the running, I had to find a more realistic strategy. Taking another hackneyed page from the simile book, I'm going to try a Gradual Reduction combined with a little dash of N.R.T., I.E. Notary Replacement Therapy. As such, here are my goals for the coming year:

1. Keep this blog alive even if it means committing to a single new post a month and more if the  spirit really moves me.
2. Reduce my reviews to a minimum of two per month instead of striving for one a week. If I need to do more then that I'll use "Pro" and "Con" bullet points if I have to.
3. Maintain my board gaming blog at its current pace since it's clearly the most popular of the three.
4. Finalize at least one chapter a month for my new book. 
5. Start making those damned board game videos. Monthy, by rights.
6. Put more focus on writing projects that may actually yield a bit of money one day down the road. The iPad ap I've been dabbling with now gets top priority!
7. Keep looking for ways to snare the almighty dollar while keeping my mind and soul intact. At least cobble together enough scratch in order to travel someplace this year. Travel is the only luxury I really can't do without. 

Slowly but surely I'm coming to realization that writing has to be one of the worst pursuits to burden yourself with. In this age of fleeting attention spans, visual artists, pod-casters, musicians and film-makers have a huge advantage over writers, because the things they create can be experienced and enjoyed passively. Writers, on the other hand, need to engage people in the active endeavor of reading, which oftentimes ain't easy.

Even I'm guilty of literary sloth from time to time. Occasionally I'll click on a superficially-intriguing link, quickly appraise the resulting wall of text that's been magically conjured in front of me, dive in and then start to think 'Ugh, this is waaaaay too much effort. I wonder if there are any new talk show clips with Bill Burr on YouTube that I haven't seen yet?'

In spite of this, I'm glad that I gave myself so much time and opportunity to practice and hone this wonderful craft. When I first started, I really wasn't a writer. I was just some dude who could kinda string a sentence together and occasionally come up with something vaguely funny, witty and/or crude. At least I can do a reasonable impersonation of a writer now. And as such, I'm really looking forward to turning my attention to producing a vastly superior second novel.

Wish me luck, Gentle Readers, as I try to stay on the straight-and-narrow path and not backslide into temptation. If you could just feel the same gloriously-wonderful sensation of creative endorphins happily frolicking around in my head as I'm about to finish up this sad, navel-gazing exercise in self-therapy, you'd know why I'm so strung out on the written word.      

I appreciate your continued support just not, y'know, too much support. Whatever you do, don't be an enabler. If I get too much encouragement then, who knows, I might fall off the wagon and go on some crazed, five-post-a-week binge like back in the good old days.

*sigh*

EPIC POEMS   The photo that appears at the top of this post comes from this site, which features some heartfelt poems produced by real people in the throes of real addiction. Pretty harrowing stuff.

EPIC SHMALTZ:   Corn-ball but true...

EPIC SENTIMENT  Yeak, I know, I know...another Patton Oswalt clip. But, hey, the dude keeps encapsulating my exact thoughts on the overwhelming drive to practice your true calling, regardless of how financially daunting that can be. Just listen to what he says here at the 30 second mark:

FAILED ANALOGY   'Don't bury your lead...don't bury your lead...don't bury your lead...'

The White Flag

A assure you, that is John Cleese in this blurry-ass photo.

Greetings, Fellow Capitulators!

Back on the 16'th of this month I had the unique pleasure of seeing comedy legend John Cleese give a two hour presentation about his career. Interestingly enough, one of the most enduring themes of the show was the importance of luck.

According to John it was sheer kismet that his first stage show with the Cambridge Circus was elevated from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to London's West End and then went on to tour extensively in New Zealand and on Broadway. It was pure good fortune when David Frost took John under his wing as a writer for The Frost Report where he met future collaborators Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Micheal Palin. And it was a masterstroke of fortuitous happenstance when Thames Television offered these four, enterprising young lads a blank check to produce a new show that would eventually be known as Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Although I suspect that John is short-changing his prodigious talent somewhat, I also believe that, no matter how good you are or how hard you work, sometimes you need someone with power and influence to recognize what you've got, validate your worth and give you a shot.

***        

Way back in April of 2010 I quit a lucrative-yet-thoroughly-despicable job and started writing this here blog. When I began, I had several lofty goals in mind. At first, all I wanted to do was vent about my miserable working career thus far. I also wanted to sharpen my writing skills, show that I could maintain a self-imposed deadline and avoid accusations of goldbricking. I didn't know what "goldbricking" was, I just knew that I didn't want to be found guilty of it.
 

But more then anything else, I really hoped that the blog would showcase my ability to string a sentence together. In turn I thought, rather naively, that someone in a position of influence might take notice of my previously-mentioned aptitude for sentence-stringablilty and offer me some sort of paying gig. Clearly this Pretty Woman-style scenario was the product of a fevered brain warped by watching one too many formulaic rom-coms.

Clearly, this delusion is entirely my own problem. Well, maybe writer J.F. Lawton deserves some of the blame, but mainly the onus is on this cowpoke right here.         

Alas this tacked-on, eleventh-hour, test-screened, feel-good, slap-happy ending didn't materialize for me. Sure, I made some cheddar from my book, a few shekels from the odd writing and editing gig, and a coupla bucks from the occasional background acting job but hardly enough money to be described as "sustainable". As a result, by savings account has taken more abuse then Bill O'Reilly's studio crew.     

As such, I've got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that I've been forced to seek out non-editing / non-writing jobs that pay me actual real money. The good news is that I've found something in an area of interest that just might dovetail with writing on the side. Details not to follow, BTW, so you can exercise yer nosy proclivities some place else. 

So what does this mean for the three blogs? Well, the most consistently popular in terms of overall traffic, the board game blog, will get top priority. The days of detailed session reports are officially over and game play recaps will likely be limited to a few paragraphs with more of an emphasis placed on information and reviews. Basically, quantity over quality will become the order of the day.

I've managed to maintain a fairly regular posting schedule for my entertainment-related blog thanks to a stockpile of older, pre-written reviews which I've been dusting off and posting. Also helping to keep me productive is a self-imposed restriction that I can't watch a new movie until I review the last one I watched. Needless to say, this is pretty masochistic for someone who could routinely spazz out on three or four movies in one sitting. All new reviews will be capsule-style without a great deal of synopsis or analysis, I.E. more like this and less like this.    

Which leaves me with the sounding board you're inexplicably wasting time on right now. Regular Readers have probably already noticed that my entries lately have dwindled down from once a week to twice a month and that trend is likely to continue. This gives me a raging sad-on since this blog is by far the one I enjoy writing the most. It's free-form, creatively unrestrained and the one which feels the least like work. 

Here's the bottom line: if time retrains dictate that I can either write a chapter for my new novel or espouse some crackpot theory about Syria, gun violence or the ravages of unchecked mailbox rust, I'll probably go with the former. In fact, it's distinctly possible that I'll never write anything for free public consumption ever again.
     

And so it ends. Schadenfreuders, start your engines! 

Now, just because I've temporarily thrown in the towel it doesn't mean that my dreams have been permanently interred. At least I hope not! I still believe that my Richard Gere is out there somewhere and one day he'll notice me, foist me up and validate my real purpose for being here on this earth.

I just hope it happens before they put me in the earth.

EPIC SKIT Some inspired proto-Python lunacy on At Last The 1948 Show with John and his hilarious contemporaries Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman.

REALITY FAIL  Sorry, but I just can't understand this world we live in. If velcro-head here can make $40,000 a night as a DJ, why the f#@k can't I make a living as a writer?  

2013's (Hopefully) More Realistic 'Things To Do' List

This time last year I posted a pretty massive list of things that I wanted to achieve in 2012.  

This year I'm paring things down to two (hopefully simple) goals:

1. Break my ruinous addiction to writing.
2. Prevent my savings from bleeding out like Marcus Fenix during a full-scale Grub invasion.

I love my life right now.  I love getting up every day and nurturing instead of ignoring the creative thoughts germinating in my skull.  I love exploring these ideas through mad loose leaf scribbling over a cuppa joe.  I love the process that occurs when I trap these thoughts in electronic amber, refining them twice before releasing them to the world.  Above all, I love it when people read what I've written and give me feedback.

There's only critical thing missing from this seemingly perfect equation: I'm not making any money.  Y'know, money...scratch, shekels, dinero, cash, bread, currency, cheddar, dough, rupees, coin, capitol...friggin' greenbacks.  I.E. those numbers on a paycheck or scraps of colored paper that we receive in exchange for goods and/or services rendered?  I.E. that mass hallucination which arbitrarily assigns a relative value to everyone and every thing in our society.

Hmmmm, for some reason the NHL settlement just popped into my mind.  How odd. 

Anyhoo, this irrational compulsion to write has set me on an inexorable collision course with the iceberg of financial ruin.  In fact, because of my three-to-five-times-a-week-habit I didn't even attempt to do most of the things on last year's list.  

It kills me to say this, but I'm either going to have to quit these blog posts cold turkey or, at the very least, scale back my usage.  As I transition back into some nebulous, yet-to-be-determined "real" job, these posts will become less about composition and research and more like diary entries.  I just hope that I can find a paying gig that offers even a fraction of the bliss I feel whenever I'm writing something.

I honestly didn't expect to degenerate into a word-slave when I started exploring the blog culture over two years ago.  My first tentative posts were only designed to hone my skills as a writer and maintain a regular production schedule.  In doing so I was hoping, rather naively, that some hypothetical employer would notice that I could string a sentence together, work under self-imposed deadlines, and attract a healthy cadre of followers.  In my warped imagination I though that this might lead to some sort of regular paying gig.  Surprisingly, this hasn't materialized yet.

I also recognize that I should have paid my dues as a writer back when I was in my twenties, not now.  It's forgivable to be dirt poor in your twenties but it's considerably less romantic and indie when your forty.  In fact it's kind of, hmmmmm...what's the word I'm looking for...oh yes, pathetic.    
 
Now, I certainly don't regret using the last two years to practice my craft.  In fact, I think I've exhibited dramatic improvement as a writer, editor and all-around embloginator.  But as I've come to learn rather painfully: producing content is considerably easier then parleying it into a career.  Although I'm still holding out some hope for an It's a Wonderful Life-style resolution to my story, I now know that life isn't like the movies.  No-one's going to magically materialize out of the ether and grant me some semblance of a future.

In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, after Kirk has become disillusioned with the administrative assignment of Admiral, Spock tells him: "Commanding a starship is your first best destiny.  Anything else is a waste of material".

If the last two years have taught me anything, at least I can say with total confidence that my own "first best destiny" is to be a writer.    

Unfortunately if I keep blindly pursuing this destiny, I'm gonna end up wasted by the material.      



EPIC SUPPORT  I just want to say a hearty thanks to anyone who's ever contributed to my hit count either here or at my entertainment site or my gaming blog.  If you're a regular reader and you want to help, honestly the best thing you can do is pick up a copy of my book in paperback for $19.99 or the e-version for a paltry $4.99.  You can also throw a coupla bucks my way by using the Paypal link above.  Considering the state of my finances, these donations should technically be tax deductible.    

Honestly, I had no illusions about becoming J.K. Rowling-rich while persuing this racket but I'd love to  keep writing without loosing my shirt.  The funny thing is, if all four-hundred and twenty-three people who read last year's "Things To Do" post had donated a dime to the blog I'd actually be well on my way!

NOT GETTING PAID TO DO WHAT YOU LOVE?  YOU'RE FAILING AT LIFE!  Honestly, I understand the world less now at forty then I did when I was twenty.

FAILED PRIORITIES  If this douchebag can get paid over five million dollars a year to chase a friggin' black rubber disc around a rink (or not in the case of this disastrous season) then I don't think it's unreasonable for people in creative pursuits to earn enough money to pay for basic living expenses.