Stuck In a loop.

Greetings.

So November passed, I started Nanowrimo, made it 10 days and 10 thousand worlds before other things took my attention off the project. This project suffered from a lack of a plan, the story was borrowed from a short I never made an progress on.  The details needed to build it up to Nano's 50,000 words did not add much.   This however did get me thinking about the other novel I had been working on.  In there I added a few more words and realized why the project had been so hard to pick back up. 

I have gotten my self good and stuck. The core of the story is the failure of a deep space mission, inspired by both Scott's and Shackleton's expeditions to the south pole. Things going wrong and scraps being salvaged is par for the course.   As I circled what has been since the story's first version a pivotal moment I realized I was doing it again and again.  A similar scene had been played out several times during the various chapters that preceded what I was trying to write, it was tiring.  

Now being a disaster story, where most people will live, and living will  involve improvising some scenes of the mechanics of the universe and the ship are needed. There is value in knowing first what they had and how little of it they keep, but too much time has been spent on those mechanics. The interludes are too small, and fail to build the characters into people I either want saved, or will be missed if I kill them off.  It is a first draft of something far larger than I have ever worked on before so flaws are expected, massive flaws should be considered normal.  Some of the flaws are simple I started too close to the middle, I did not know who was who before I started throwing near death experiences at them.  I am unsure as to the view point, I have drifted in and out of the first person, and currently have only one character's view point.  There is a real reason why the interludes between disasters are lacking, they are the hard part. 

In writing about a stranded starship crew I am facing my experiences in the North.  Perhaps I have not spent mucht time there, the bulk of two and a half years, mostly in one space.  A world that was ripe with adventure when I first got there but became tiring toil quickly.  When I left the last time long after having lost the heart to work so far from home for so long I was angry and despondent.  It was a world I did not fit it, beautiful but I never made an inside of myself, I seldom do.   It was out there I nearly blew a gasket trying to change a tire on a pickup on the side of an ice road.  It was a different patch of ice that swallowed a company truck and took one of its passengers with it.  A man I had worked with loosely for a year and a half or so.  So I find myself taking on the easy parts, the stark white on white of the depths of winter, but avoiding the hard things. 

The old advice of write what you know has value.  I hated the advice when I was 21, in a way similar to how I still hate the advice of "It,s not what you know it.s who you know".  Now I have had time to live, even if I have not built a top notch network, and it has given me material to add to writing.  Unfortunately getting into those head spaces is the hard part.  Also, just keeping focused on a task can be frightfully hard, and it gets harder as my life stays empty of external pressures longer. 

So the novel got stuck somewhere between the beginner and the middle. I added a introduction and parts of opening chapters that will build the characters and world, but to really make it work I fear it needs a massive restructuring. That weight, knowing that even if I push forward to new parts much of what is behind me will have to change.   Now the truth is non of this is new, non of this should keep me from writing, ultimately I have also been lazy.  Both these things need remedied.

Part one the approximate now.

Greetings, and a warning this is going to be a rambling stream of conscience.
Logging on to Blogger I looked at the posts from the last few months. The titles and what I remember of the content based on those titles tells me most of my writing has been about looking back.  Perhaps a few flirted with a couple ideas on how to go forward but little thought has been put into that, and similarly little progress made.  The short answer is I don't know what to do next, the better answer is I have never been able to imagine what I wanted to do that is still true.

  When my work is heavily self directed and or the number of tasks is small a failure to commit to one early in the day compromises my effectiveness at both.  These days I will wake up and ask should I write today or apply for jobs.  The answer will be yes. Unfortunately I don't ask which task gets priority, once the indecision takes root ways are found to avoid doing either, and damn my laid back personality from not beating me up over those failings.

In applying to jobs I submit to postings that come within throwing distance of what I had done in my last post.  Now the thing with me and throwing is I am often off by 30 degrees in 5 different directions.  So the returns are low.  Here comes the part where I blame external forces.  In what approximates my profession, I exist in a small niche a user of an obscure software suit for a recession pron industry, a suit I like little in an industry I am indifferent to. When my search steps away from the industry I started out in the jobs become more interesting but less accessible.  Yet I apply, with varying amounts of care and attention bordering on The Onion's take on job applications. Online job applications are like a monkey flinging feces, without the passion, aim, satisfaction, or results, when a monkey does it a least something is covered in shit. I have had a few nibbles a couple real interviews and a few calls from recruiters who neither understood my work nor the industry I have worked in.

Now I have tried to make this post about going forward, but right now I am thinking more about trying to get back to where I was, if not in job description but a steady job would be great.  So before I explore some other options or decide to delay them for another post I will address the next thing people tell you to do, network.  I hate that term, it always brings to mind people dressed better than me with confident smiles, I can not pull of a confident smile for a sustained period.   Now I understand that in order to connect the services I can offer with the needs they can fill connections have to be made but the way the process is sold makes me feel unclean.  It is at this point in the dialog someone will chime in with the patronizing advice of "It's not what you know, it's who you know".  That may be true, but I will hate you for saying it.  It has always had the effect of devaluing the knowledge I spent time and energy gaining.

It is so much easier to look back.  I know what I did, what parts were enjoyed what parts were endured, it is easy to imagine something the same but different. I have orbited the same but different since I started working.  It is the easy thing to do conceptually.  The work I did for two years at Independence was the dull end of an interesting field and leaving open the prospect that I could land better work employing similar tools must be considered.  It is only the start of my GIS profession and getting started is the hard part.  When the commodity prices were high and I was still taking Geology jobs, offers were more frequent, a healthy reminder that I have be employable in the past.

I have romanticized the notion of landing in a totally unexpected field or weird new job that fits me perfectly but honestly I have no idea how that could happen.  What value is it to most people that I can break open a rock efficiently, or that I can actually use my 30X handlens, and if you give me a few weeks and leave me alone I can cobble together a simple program.   If I squint just right I feel clever and can believe that I can be of good value to people.  Yet I see a job market full of short term contracts demanding specialized skills, and feel useless again.

Damn it I was trying to think ahead. Currently I have rambled on about the now.  The question of how to land an interesting job, possibly within GIS or the geosciences remains poorly considered. Mostly I have reminded myself that mostly I have learned what I don't want to do.  I am not done with this pondering. I will revisit the subject soon and perhaps move beyond complaining.

F this Shit.

As usual things do not work out as planned, if there was a plan.   My life is suffering from the Sunk Costs Fallacy. Time and energy were spent to reach a goal, only to find less there than I had hoped.  I have said that before, but I still cling to the notion that I should try to keep the value of that effort.  I question that logic more now.

In question what sunk costs are worth holding onto I often find myself trying to ponder what to instead.  The hope had always been that correctly applied down time would lead to an enlightenment, guiding me to what I want.  It turns out I suck at finding myself. Down time does not lead to finding a clear resolution. The question of what do I want to do when I grow up remains unanswered.  What I  have are qualifications for jobs in an industry that I am indifferent to and they fail to engage me.

Looking for work makes me bitter, I have done it too often and have fear I will have to do it again too many times.  This seaming low return on investment is discouraging.  So I delayed in all the ways I could.  Starting with 48,000 words of a first draft.  Because obsessing about the lives of explores hundreds of years into the future is infinitely more interesting than trying to write a cover letter again.  At least at the start of the period I was feeling overdue for some vacation and there was no real shame. Things went sideways after June.  So late spring and early summer saw me deep in a creative project. High summer eroded that spirit with heat and too many social engagements.

July was by all accounts a good month, many of the summer things were done and enjoyed.  Heat was deadly to my creative process, sprinting through May and June tired me, but the heat finished me off.  I describe high summer as oppressively sunny. Long hot days where I am expected to love the heat, I don't.  I can chill at the beach or in the shade but elsewhere the heat becomes something to be endured. This took a toll on my writing process.  A great deal of my thinking for the project happened in mind afternoon walks, a time of day made unavailable thanks to sun and heat.  It was not the only reason.  I did let the story line get tangled up, and found I was wanting to restructure it.

August was the cat's fault.  She ran away at 6am on July 30th. An SPCA volunteer would later extract her from the loading bay of a charity on the 5th of September. As a nearly crazy cat person this disappearance had a serious effect on every aspect of my life. Including working through most of the stages of grief.  I was a mess.  As I said she was found, not entirely in one piece but all the important bits were working.  Between her vanishing and return, along with minor complications that arose during that time my focus was on cat things.  Now mid way into October I am getting some focus which is leading me to being bitter.


Like everyone else I hate looking for work, I also feel I am worse than average at it. Gods know I was scrambling for scraps while university classmates had multiple offers on the table.  The hope was that things would get easier.  Hope is a fucking lie.  While I can still pretend that I have hope, here are some of the things I would like out of a job; Neither all drudge work or overwhelming responsibility within an organization large enough to have  different roles I could advance or transfer to.  That is fantacy.

Adding to frustrations, so many jobs are contract positions, temporary in nature.  Especially it seems with the jobs that I am on paper qualified for. Through the power of limited foresight I have created an condition where I am not very happy doing the work I am trained for, seldom likely to land a stable position.  This leaves me doubting too much.  On bad days, and this post was only written in bad days, I doubt my own judgement enough to not want to conceive of a new plan for fear of ending up even less happy.

I am increasingly wondering how much I want to remain in Vancouver.  Perhaps all I want is an apartment with less street noise and a bigger kitchen.  Or do I want the slower quality of life that a lesser city can offer.  Damned if I know.

The Lady Found

So as of 3pm, September 5 The Lady Baroness von Softpaws of Gallifrey is found.
She is not yet home.  She was found near Quest food exchange, several blocks north of Hastings.  This was far outside the area I had searched. Kitties Hiding spot.

A staffer at from the SPCA found her in a corner of Quest's loading bay, crawled over filth and dirt to get to her.  The Lady's condition is not great.  Most of her tail was lost, according to the rescuer likely an encounter with a racoon, the remainder will have to be amputated, it is necrotic.  Her hip at first inspection is dislocated possibly broken, at time of consultation the X-rays had not  been taken and a final assessment could not be made.  Of the three outcomes for her hip, two are likely to result in the same operation.

It turns out a difficulty with cat hip dislocations is soft tissue and other material getting into the socket, making a persistent relocation difficult and unreliable. The simple option appears to be remove the ball part of the ball and socket joint, cats are light enough and have the muscles to function well like that.  It is suspected that the hip was injured either from squeezing past the bug mesh, or a possible collision with a car.

I did see her, she was doped up on pain meds, I don't think she recognized me, her pupils were so wide I doubt she was seeing anything.  They had her on an IV drip because of dehydration.  But it was her, without a doubt my Lady.

Several things will happen, One, I have put a down payment on the operation, she will be cared for at the SPCA animal hospital, if nothing else I want her to avoid moving and keep her with people she knows.  Poppy, as she was known was well loved by the Shelter care takers and she may yet remember them.  This operation will cost several moneys, and might cost slightly more if it takes longer.

The other thing that will happen is The Kitten Katana will have to return to her other home.  As much as I want her about I can not introduce a cat in recovery to a healthy cat.  In a couple weeks or a month I will consider bringing Katana back into the house, she still needs a calmer home than what can be provided.  But the first thing is to get the Lady back and as healthy as can be.

Failure of imagination.

Greetings

I started to clean the bathroom, it was not particularly dirty nor entirely spotless.  This is a form of academic procrastination, doing something that you normally put off because the thing you should be doing is worse, kitchens get clean when papers need written.  Now that the bright days of summer are over, and the trip to Nakusp is a week in the past, it is time for me to get serious about hunting for work.  Admittedly I would have liked to write more of the book, but more on that later. 

It is likely that I have harped on this problem before, but, it remains as true now as it did 4, 6, or even 10 years ago.  I don't know what a job that can keep me engaged without burning out looks like.  Test have shown that my overall well being declines quickly if the job and or the conditions it is done in are crap.

However, I have narrowed things down some more.  Of the things I have done, the limited customization and app development appealed to me far more than tinkering at making maps.  The thought process and logic keeps me engaged.  It is most like writing, requiring imagination and reason, and therefore the thing that will keep me happy, if not a little obsessed.

This post started bitchy, I then left the house, had coffee, thought about past projects and remembered the handful of things I liked buried in the mess of things that tired me out.  It's the tougher sell but it is the better play. As said, this type of work is the smallest part of what I have done.  

The troubles with the Lady.

Greetings

I count 13 days.

You are too cute, come home

Two weeks ago Tuesday, my cat, The Lady Baroness von Softpaws of Gallifrey went for a wonder.  The nights had been too warm, and I knew I would not function properly in the morning if I could not cool my bedroom.  So I opened the window some more than usual.  More than a cat's head wide.  I had shored up the bug screen hoping it would resist her probing.  I underestimated her, which turns out the be the theme of this post. 

So at just after 6am on July 30th I heard a thump and a mildly startled cat.  I went back to sleep the event did not register.  An hour or 45 minutes later I got up.  It was apparent that the screen had been pushed aside.  A gap large enough for a semi-liquid cat to squeeze through was present.  A few paw sized dents were later found in the dry soil of the planter box below the window.  Because of how the screen was forced open, she did not have a direct way back in, it was easy for her to fall out but hard for her to climb back in. 

So I was devastated.  Or I would be once I concluded she was not hiding in the house somewhere.  Over the course of the following ten days I passed through the majority of the stages of grief, only some of which I recognized as I was in them.  Frustratingly I was regularly woken by my duvet, which I had kept folded double over my feet to keep them warm.  The weight of the heavy silk bedding passed for a cat in half a sleep state.  

My fur baby running off is depressing in its own right , but her time was awful.  She popped out for a stroll in the middle of a depressingly hot and sunny spell of weather.  Most people praise the long spells of sunny weather, brought to us by a too warm arctic ocean, I find time exhausting.  The bright sun hurts my eyes, I overheat if I am not on the shady side of the street walking in an old man's shuffle.  So the timing was bad.  On the second day of her absence I had early heat stroke symptoms from walking around at midday.  

I took the advice of the internet, friends, pet shops, and others to try to get her found.  Posters have been put out, facebook spammed, Craigslist listed, dog walkers accosted, and more.  At first I was shy about looking for her, I was ashamed of having lost her, felt I was a bad person for it.  Now after a couple weeks of looking, a few false reports and walking through more back alleys than I care to I can conclude, if she is in the mood to hide she will stay hidden.  As the human I have done my part to try to bring her home. 

Ai can has home!

Looking back I feel I should  not have been ashamed for creating the conditions for her escape but for confining her.  Not too much is known about the cat I adopted.  She had the name Poppy, not right at all, she was dropped off at the 100 Mile house Spca, originally from Horsefly, with kittens and was barely a year old at the time.  I knew from living with her that she is clever, playful, shy, cuddly, and wants to hunt.  Slowly she got used to my home, and with that discovered the windowsill in the bedroom, with its built in observation deck.  As spring rolled around and birds came out she spent hours at the patio doors watching and chattering, often standing up and pawing at the glass.

April came to a close and I got myself a layoff.  The surplus time let me use the balcony and with that I started letting the Lady have supervised outside time.  As a cautious beast she stayed close at first, standing guard on the concrete post at the corners, eating the oat grass I planted for her.  Slowly she wandered onto the yard in front.  

The Lady Baroness
von Softpaws of Gallifrey,
Defender of the Realm. 

Ultimately she graduated to breaking and entering, or at least entering. She has had a long interest in Pixie, the dog next door. They would watch each other through my bedroom window.  A drama lost to me because my draps always closed.  And so on more than one occasion I had seen her hop the railing to unit next door.  She got schooled when the dog chased her out.  All in all she was becoming increasingly adventurous.  My response, was to cut her outside time and hope that she got used to being an inside cat.   Her discontent sighs from on top of the dresser should have told me this was not working. 

Too much of the sad face

Seriously I did not listen.  In the mornings in the days preceding her wander she would be as likely to direct me to the patio door as to the food bowl.  Her mornings and evenings were spent aggressively pawing at the patio door.  In the evenings when I needed the air she would regularly climb the bug screen looking for a weakness.  All in all I have a cat that has a sense of adventure.  With all of this in mind, or rather as this came to mind it became clear that I could not blame myself.  Though I still want to apologies to the SPCA for losing their cat.  After I had only had her a year and a few days at that point.

I lied earlier.  I said I did all the things I could do to bring her in.  I ignored one option that was put forward, a bloodhound service.  Somehow, I just could not make that happen.  Perhaps its the idea of chasing her down with dogs, but I think its something different.  I would not want to scare her that way but I also have accepted the fact that she has her own agenda.  

So I am far from happy that my kitty has gone for a walk, and I am not certain if she is all right.  There are coyotes in the area and plenty of other dangers, and she could have adopted another human.  If the Lady wanted to adopt a new human all she would need is a few seconds of eye contact.  I know you are your own cat person but I want you to come home so I can tickle your fluffyness.

Adding these photos makes my eyes water.

  

   

Momentum and ideas

Greetings.
This post is an arbitrary milestone. It is the 300th post since I got bored one winter in the Northwest Territory and decided I should tell people I am bored in the Northwest Territory.  I crossed a different milestone earlier today and had some difficulty getting there.

Todays arbitrary goal was hitting the Forty Thousand word mark in my Novel project.  In the fall of last year I rekindled the project and decided it would be a novella. At the time 40k felt right.  It helped that I had not visited the project in a long time, the world and people in it lacked development.  I was also working full time, a more modest goal fit my limited energy and creativity.

Flash forward to early May.  After a week of unemployment I restart the project, still intent on keeping the scale small. Yet I researched how big novels are, and also talked with my first reader.  This lead me to, two conclusions, 40k is a size that does not get published and though I had good ideas I failed at getting a friend to care about the characters in play.  By this time I had decided to make it a novel.  A sci fi adventure holding a mirror up to my time in the north, with science as correct as practical for the plot.

The novella could have been included all the major story arc elements that have always existed in this concept.  Lets not forget I have had this tale in my head for nearly 10 years. Yet had I committed to the small format I fear I would have ended up with writing that most closely resembled George Lucas's scripts for the Star Wars Prequels.  A series of checklists to make sure one thing happens after another so that the people all end up in the right places at the end.

It took at least 20,000 words for the characters to start taking on a life of their own.  In the setting of a starship the minor crew members were almost appliances.  Avatars of the ships systems with no substance to them.  A situation that has improved as their world changes around them.  Ultimately I will have to loop back to the beginning to correct that.

But I ramble.  Late May and June were months of explosive creativity.  I lived in that world, had a consistent climbing word count, maxing out at 1500 words a day for several days in a row.  1000 words is comfortable output now.  Yet early in July I started to flounder.  Socialization is a factor.  Summer is an active time for that.  Other factors played a role.

As much as I ranted against inspiration being needed for writing you still need some of it.  Perhaps it is not needed for ever writing session, but it is needed.  In a way the pump needs primed.  The body of ideas I burned through in May and June were the product of having been inspired in the past.  I reached the limit of the ideas forged at those times.

As that limit was approached my writing took on a holding pattern.  I wrote to stretch out the ideas I was still confident on and delayed advancing the story too much.  I chipped away at a few scenes, I scribbled on kid's doodle books from a dollar store to build the world, but wrote very little.

But sitting in the Prophouse cafe listening to a brass band I started to get shivers down my spine.  In a lot of ways this bout of inspiration was less about the what's happening to who, that hardly changes, though some new fine details emerged. What I started finding was the feelings I need to impart on both the characters and readers.

The need to build plausibility in to the people of my world, shapes the new scenes I need to write. There are rich emotions attached to my time in the north, I don't always want to visit them.  But for the poor souls in my world they must feel them so that you can too.  I must remember I love the north and hate the north.

The June sprint ended I was out of the old inspiration.  Yet the ideas tricked through my head.  I slowed but never fully stopped.  Somedays I itched to write, on too many days stuff happened that forced me to be aware of time, other people and the world. I still worked at building ideas.  It got much harder as the weather warmed up.  I spent a lot of time hashing out ideas as I walked.  As full summer hit us a mid afternoon stroll turned into a hellish ordeal rather than a pleasant diversion.

No one thing is responsible for a slump in creativity.  To the list I can add fear of finishing, as I worry if I will have a new idea after.  But ultimately I still choose to be creative. Creativity like my moods is weakly cyclical and low points are twin to high points.  So I will trudge along and embrace the memories of whiteness.

Thinking big thoughts.
Alexander van Houten