Saviour

And a Fine Mahok To You, Hallowed Reader!

Before I start prattling on about the editing of my book, I wanted to discuss something that, technically, should have been covered in my previous entry about the challenges that writers face.  It's a biggie, so I thought it deserved it's own separate mention.  It's a big, hairy bugbear that stands directly in your path like a bully and pushes you down on your well-intentioned ass.

That challenge is TIME.

For most creative types who work a full time job, time is most assuredly not on your side.  There's the time you allocate getting ready for work, there the time you burn getting to work, there's the time you spend actually at work, and then there's the time you waste getting back home.  Add in various other errands, chores, and responsibilities and it's little wonder why aspiring writers don't just say f#@% it, fire up the ole' X-Box and then spaz out in a virtual world where they actually feel like they're accomplishing something.

And perish forbid if you've got kids to take care of.  Maybe one day when I'm independently wealthy as a self-employed writer I'll consider replication but until then I'm gonna avoid parenthood like the movie Zookeeper.   

I say that not to be miserable, but because it's the way it should be.  It's been my experience that people who hesitate to have kids (and actually ponder the ramifications of parenthood) are the one who actually  should be having kids.  As I've stated clearly right here, as far as I'm concerned, as soon as you start spurting out mini-me's you're livin' for someone else from there on in.  IMHO, your feeble, bulls#!^ self-concern should be as dead as acid wash jeans.

Now, mercifully, around the time I began the book in earnest I also became convinced that T.V. was a vast, time-sucking wasteland.  Like Steven King says, if you've got the time to watch crap like Sarah Palin's Alaska then you've got time to write. 

Indeed both of us are in complete agreement when he records in his memoir On Writing that in order to be a good scribe you have to do two things: read a lot and write a lot.

Although my idiot box was collecting a lot of dust at the time, I wasn't really reading as much as I should have. This is a character flaw in me that I struggle with to this day.  I either blow through a book in a few days (usually anything contemporary and written by Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk or Douglas Coupland) or it takes forever (witness my recent experience with Pillars of the Earth) or I just abandon the damned thing because I'm bored with it.

Okay, let's all swear this right now, Determined Readers: "I hereby do solemnly pledge that I shall emancipate myself from the Plasma/LCD teat and read at least four books a year.  We'll DYB, DYB, DYB, DYB and we'll DOB DOB, DOB.  Hey, nonny, nonny, etc, etc."

After all, according to Unca Steve: "A day without a book is like a day without sunshine", and let me tell ya, folks, us poor Vitamin-D/Spring-deprived slobs on the East Coast here really know what it's like to be livin' without sunshine lately.  I swear to God I'm developing Rickets.        

Although I was slack with the reading, I tried to write whenever I could.  Between calls at work.  When I was left alone at a coffee shop.  After being abandoned by my wife in a mall and turning up at the Lost n' Found looking dazed and frightened.  If I was left home alone for a time.  Any moment of peace I had I'd endeavor to compose a spot o' prose.

Trouble was, these moments were fleeting.  The opportunities weren't consistent enough and huge stretches of semi-abandonment threatened to occur.  As a result, the process began to drag.  Things got worse after the whole Sears debacle.  In September 2000 I started a new full-time job with a major American office supply vendor.  I don't want to give away their name but it rhymes with an ancient southern Italian city close to Mount Vesuvius.  Called Naples.

The fixed nature of the nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday, forty-three hour a week job dove-tailed very nicely with my wife's schedule, but now I didn't have any randomly scheduled middle-of-the-week days off when I could work on my book.  As my life became more regimented by this new job my opportunities to spend time at home working on the book began to fall by the wayside.  Despair and desperation began to set in and I secretly feared that it would never be finished.    

Before I started this new gig I spoke to people working there to see if they could give me the inside scoop on what managers were good to work for and which ones were Coo-Coo for Cocoa Puffs.  I'd used this same tactic in university to find out which Intro Philosophy profs would force you to mathematically chart arguments and which ones would play audio tapes of Monty Python skits.  

My future co-workers/moles put in a good word for me and said in no uncertain terms that the team I wanted to be on was Linda Shaughnessy's.  As soon as met her I instantly knew why.  Linda was possessed of a warm disposition, a creative soul and a genuine desire to keep her people as happy as possible in such a challenging environment.

As such, a year or so later when we were in the middle of my performance review we somehow got on the topic of art.  I may have mentioned my Dad's paintings at the time and I was impressed to learn that she also liked to paint.  Then, of course, came the inevitable question:

"So, do you have any artistic talent yourself?" she quizzed.

After I got over the initial shock of her not asking: 'So, what do you paint?' I spilled the beans about my book.  Right off the bat, Linda was inordinately sympathetic to my plight.  A few days later, after I brought my MONSTER IN A BOX in to show a few people, she took me into her office and told me:

'Look, if I get you some extra time every week, do you think you can finish it?' she asked.

'Yes!', I shouted, throwing her for a loop.  'You're darned tootin' I can!'

I could scarcely conceive that this gracious lady was going to bat for me over what a lesser manager would likely make fun of.  I was even more shell-shocked next week when she took me aside and said:

'Look, David, I managed to get your shift adjusted.  From here on in you'll only work Monday to Thursday.  You'll have Fridays off to work on your book.'

I was so happy I think I cartwheeled out of her office.  Knowing what she'd likely gone through to procure this privilege for me, I vowed then and there not to squander my rare opportunity.

That Friday I used my newly borrowed time to attack the nigh-dormant manuscript.  The consistent effort of that day and many that followed really helped the book's narrative flow take off.

I can say in all confidence that my book would never have been completed without this woman's charitable intervention and for that I will be eternally grateful.  Needless to say, when it came time to design the paperback's Dedication Page, I made sure Linda's name was included:

For Linda Shaughnessy for understanding the importance of creative needs over business needs.

EPIC  To get a jump on our minimum "Four Books A Year" pledge, here are four contemporary books that I positively flew through:



FAIL  What the eff is Rosario Awesome doing in this cinematic turd?!?

♫♪ "Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'..." ♪♫

Hello, Kind Reader.

A great man once said "Time is the fire in which we burn".  Well, actually it was Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Tolian Soran in Star Trek Generations, but, hey, why split hairs?  It's still a cool quote.

Well, it's been nearly five months since my voluntary departure from my last traditional paying gig and I can scarcely believe it.  Like with any new, exciting and terrifying venture, for the first few weeks after my liberation time crept by like a chameleon on downers.

But inexorably, it began to pick up steam again.  Despite my best efforts to the contrary, the summer is melting away like quicksilver through my fingers.  Whatupwitdat?

Do you remember how the days lasted forever when you were a kid?  Do you remember how time would drag by sometimes and you couldn't wait for a certain major event to roll around?  Do you remember checking days off an Advent Calendar waiting for Christmas like a crazed little Dwight Frye in Dracula? 

Cripes, it seemed like a month would have to transpire before you could earn the privilege of spinning that little dial, marking an "X" or doing a cardboard "B&E" to retrieve the chocolaty  treasure inside.   

Summer vacations were epic long before the word epic was overused.  Of course, "Back in My Day" (best read in your finest Grampa Simpson voice) we weren't over-saturated in entertainment value.  There was no internet, no home video and our game consoles all sucked considerable amounts of ass.  All we had were Star Wars action figures, G.I. Joe (the gigantism version that would be much more likely to nail Barbie versus that pastel-clad closet case Ken), crappy hand-held electronic baseball games, and drawing paper.  Mardi Friggin' Gras, huh? 

I've said this before but it bears repeating: the intervening years between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were the longest years of my life.  I look back on it now and consider those thirty-six months to be like the dream that Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard shared in Inception.  It was like a separate, insular other lifetime. 

So why is it that time seems to accelerate the older we get?  Frankly I gotta know because I'm looking at the calendar and feeling a bit whip-lashed here.

I did some research on the interwebs and found a lot of theories.  Here are just a few:

(1) "We had more leisure time and less responsibilities as a child so when you add in deadlines, chores and tasks, the time flies by quicker." 

Frankly, I don't buy this one.  Class attendance and homework certainly ate up more lot time for me as a High Schooler than I have now.  So why are my weeks as an adult flying by quicker again even though I'm theoretically doing less now?

EEEEEENNNNTTTT!!!  "Ooooooo, sorry, good guess but I'm afraid that is incorrect!  Now would you like to try for the bonus round where the scores can really change?"

(2) "School as a kid is so boring that time drags by. Once you're out of school you can choose what you want to do and suddenly there's not enough time in the day to do everything you want."

Ummmm, okay.  So why do you perceive time spent at your current boring adult job (especially an entire work week) still melts away quicker then, say, when you were locked up in a classroom as a kid?  In the immortal works of Ricky Ricardo: "'Splain, Lucy, 'splain."   

Let's face it folks: Lucy never did.      

(3) "Because time spent as a child is a larger proportion of your life.  Three years between the ages of three and six is half of your existence. Two years between the ages of 47 and 50 is only about 4% of your life."


Ri-i-i-i-i-i-ght.  Even the original author thinks this is horseshit when he admits: "Well, it sounds good when you say it fast."  Frankly a year is a year is a year.  A kid has no perception that a year of his life represents a certain percentage of his time spent on earth.  Nuts to this one as well.


(4) "Your brain is similar to a camera shutter.  The higher the setting on the shutter speed, the slower objects appear to be moving when you see them on film.  As you age, your brain starts to slow down like the shutter on a camera.  If you take a video at a high frame rate of a fast-moving humming bird its wings will appear to freeze in flight. When you're a kid your senses are operating a lot quicker."  

?????????

Okay, all I gotta say here is: "Ground Control to Major Tom!  Ground Control to Major Tom!"  Who the f#@$ wrote this, Doug Henning?

Actually I'm being a bit facetious here.  Of everything I've read so far at least this is an interesting theory.  This guy also tries to tie it into your diminishing reaction time as an adult and why your reflexes are sharper as a kid.  Frankly I think that's more related to the physiological disconnect that characterizes advanced aging and is certainly too variable amongst individuals to be the rule of law.   

Besides as an adult I'm a helluva lot more likely to grab something tumbling out of the cupboards before it brains me versus when I was a kid.  I was a clumsy, gangly little shit.  

(5) "As a man in his Sixties I believe that it's an attempt for the brain to guard itself. The more recollections we store up the more challenging it is for our minds to catalog it all.  The less intensely we feel things, the less the minor aches and pains will bother us. The more health issues we experience ( hearing loss, fading eyesight, stiff joints, poor balance, lack of recall...etc ), the more we'll welcome death as an old friend."

Jesus, morbid much?   This might address perception a bit and it's an interesting take, but there's not a shred of evidence to back it up.  Okay, let's see...next wacko. 


(6) "It's a physical process. Dopamine levels alter the perception of time.  Experiments have shown that people with high dopamine production guessed much higher than those with average levels when asked to approximate how much time had passed. Subjects with low dopamine levels guessed considerably lower." 

Alright, now we're cooking with gas!  This is the most sensible thing I've read so far.  But having said that, there are still no clinical studies available that have looked at the passage of really large chunks of time like an entire year.  But it certainly speaks to the old adage: "time flies when your having fun."

But if it was purely based on dopamine, why does your perception of time start crawling again when we suddenly find ourselves in unusual or different circumstances?  Typically during times in which our our usual routines are shaken up?  

Why is time flying by quicker for me now  versus my first two months away from work?  I've been uniformly busy the whole time and I'm pretty sure my Dopamine level hasn't dropped off a cliff in the past eight weeks.  Nope, something still isn't right here...

So, ladies and gents, I present to you, the real answer IMHO presented verbatim as written by the original author:

"Most people fall into a daily routine where nothing unusual ever happens. Our culture develops systems for smoothing our deaths, financial hardship, births, and so on, so that no one ever need be overly concerned. 


"People's lives are planned by the State from the moment they're born to the moment they die so as to cause minimal fuss and disruption. The way the human brain (and other brains in general) work(s) is extraneous data is discarded to ensure that critical data is always able to get through. 

"A frog's brain is so simple that it edits out anything which doesn't move erratically; large erratic objects are predators to be avoided and small erratic objects are prey to be eaten. Snakes are efficient predators of frogs because their smooth, sinuous movement makes them literally invisible to frogs. Human brains, while more complex, work much the same way. As time passes, the uninteresting daily routine gets edited out of your experience. 


"Sadly, for most people, this means they blink at age 9 and suddenly they're 65, on their death beds.

"The best way to avoid having time whiz past at breakneck speed, rushing you to your death, is to make sure you never fall into routine. Take up new skills constantly. Challenge yourself always, and take on slightly more than you can handle. Throw yourself into crisis willingly, and tantalize yourself by the occasional brush with lethal danger. 

"I'm 39 years old, never had a wife, no kids, no car, no career, no insurance, and my income hasn't exceeded $10k per year in a decade. I'm an anarchist activist, a street organizer, I've done time in jail, and fighting with riot cops is a pleasant and relaxing hobby. When at last I go to my final rest -- with any luck, still wearing my combat boots -- I'll have sucked every drop of experience from my life and be well ready to throw the husk away."

So there it is.  Now I'm not saying that the previous theories don't hold any water at all.  They all contribute to our experience as time's plaything.  But I think this one really hits the nail on the head.

I'm also not suggesting we all go out like "anarchy boy here and throw Molotov cocktails, burn cop cars and spend time on a chain gang but for the love of Katy Perry, if you feel time is making you her coat rack then just twist the wheel hard to port and veer out of that rut!  

Turn off the crappy reality television!  Liberate yourself from that time-sucking MMORPG!  Stop virtual farming and plant a real friggin' garden!  Look for a new job!  Sign up for a course!  Go out and see a good movie!  Take a walk without a destination!  Read a book at a coffee shop!  Embark on a trip!  Go camping!  Volunteer!  Er, write a blog!

You'll be surprised how much time slows down again when you give your eyes and ears something new and exciting to chew on.

Yes, I still lose track of time occasionally but at least now I've got something to show for it!  Before all I could do was say that I pressed some buttons, habitually pestered people over the phone and then picked up a paycheck.

I hated knowing that every day of my work week was a pre-destined exercise in futility.  Just like clockwork, every morning I would get up, boil some tea, make toast, check my links, get cleaned up, get dressed, go to work, slave away pointlessly for two hours, go buy a coffee on my fifteen minute break, blabber endlessly for another two hours, drive somewhere for lunch for thirty minutes, rock back and forth in despair, come back and hit the feeder bar for another four and a half hours before stumbling bleary-eyed out of my corporate prison.

And my reward for enduring this at the end of the day?  Running errands, making dinner, paying bills, cleaning up, self-medicating myself with a movie or a video game for an hour or so, only to pass and do it all over again the next day.

I did this continuously for ten years with one interchangeable day blending into the other. Little wonder our brains merge all of these identical "experiences" into one big amorphous blob of  mush!  It's a horrible, limbo-like existence designed merely to prop up the status quo. 

After subsisting on this unchanging pattern of chronological gruel  for so long I've vowed never to let myself be imprisoned in my own life ever again.

   

At least now I can point to some things and say, "Well, that's what I did with my time!"   Of course some people may respond: "Really?  Jeez, that's pretty sad" but I bet it's more than they can claim.
 

Don't be kindling for time's fire, people.  Burn the bitch right back... 

EPIC: "Magic is illusion and illusion is magic, except on Wednesdays..."



100% bonus in the EPIC department:  "GET IN DA CHOPPAH!!!"



If this was a link it would be CAPTAIN EPICPANTS:  The best song I know on the subject.


FAIL: More half-baked answers to the time quandary right here.
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/34217