Happy Birthday Erin!!!

Today is Erin's birthday. I won't share her age, if she wants the world to know than she will share. However, this is the second birthday I've had the opportunity to share with her and it just keeps getting better and better.

Last year, I got her a series of (something like) eight gifts ranging from rings (placeholder engagement rings) to pajamas (with feet) to... well, a year has passed and I don't need to share everything. This year I got her a birthday card. Yup, you heard it correctly. A birthday card.

It was a nice card. I thought it matched her personality. She said it matched mine. I think Erin is off the mark; but then, what do I know?

Outside of that, she got her present from her padres yesterday and since I've already been out to the mailbox, has three additional cards waiting for her today.

I am totally happy that Erin was borned, is married to me, and gets to celebrate another birthday.

One more time:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIN

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

You know, sometimes you hope for the best in people and then realize that "the best" just isn't there. Yes, I am talking about what happened to Erin over the weekend.

Before I get into that, I have been fired before - as a result, I empathize with Erin; on the flipside, I have had to fire before and have tried to figure out what her ex-employers were thinking.

What is important is how someone picks themselves up and moves forward. My comments are observations based on (nearly) a year of watching Erin deal with her ex-employers. I have never had positive feelings toward these men and will offer personal observations and relay some examples of why I dislike what these men.

You see, I have had to sit at the sidelines for months watching as Erin dealt with the problems and issues of her employment.

The men she worked for drove her, nearly, insane with guilt and shame at what she was doing. They claimed that what she did for them would directly translate into future work and future goals, and as a result, often very late at night, she would sit in my arms and cry about what had happened over the day or preceding few days. She was told if she "failed" at this job she would fail in the future. Talk about manipulation.

Having worked in industry for a lot of years, I know that you succeed and fail all of the time. A person who claims to have an MBA should know that current literature actually talks about how people rebound after a failure and often succeeds as a result; and that many Fortune 500 companies actually look for people who failed in business, the "why" to the failure, and what was learned so that those mistakes are not made at their companies. This is an aspect of the MBA and you didn't get one in the last ten to fifteen years without this theory coming out in class.

The office she worked in had a very manic attitude. If her office (environment) were a person it would literally be manic-depressive - and I am not convinced that her employer(s) are not manic-depressive. Her bosses often wanted her to show emotions that, as someone from New England, and Erin just being Erin, were not available to be shared. Emotions are personal and to understand that, and to realize that people should be allowed to be themselves, her employers were asking for something they had no right to ask for.

I consider myself lucky to understand, in her stoic way, when she is happy and sad, excited or depressed. I get to see more of the emotions, but that has been a long time coming. When we were dating and even through large portions of our engagement, I had to guess a lot of times what kind of emotion she was going through. Unfortunately, I am pretty blank and stoic as well.

One of the reasons Erin was fired was because she was not 100% about the success of her employers company(ies). Yeah. 100%. What does that mean? Really?

In my mind, 100% is an impossible number for anyone. You cannot give 100% to anything. Not the church, not your family, not your job, and not school. Anyone who tries, or tries to convince people that it is possible is lying. You have to prioritize and I agreed wholeheartedly with Erin's priorities. Family, church, school, and work. And you know what, when she got done at school it was family, church, and work. In that order.

You cannot be a father and family man in one life, and a businessman in another life. It is not possible. You are both a father and family man and a businessman all at the same time. Conversely, you can not be a wife and mother and an employee at different times or simply because you wear different hats. You get to divide your 100% (not possible to have more) into the areas of your life, church, family, work; and to expect a different standard of buy-in from an employee is hypocritical.

I consider these men hypocrites.

As an employee Erin has a work ethic that really makes me want to work harder just being around her. She is given assignments and does everything she can to get those assignments accomplished - even when she doesn't believe in them. As a wife and homemaker (on top of being a student and an employee) she does everything she can to make sure the house is comfortable and the environment is one she would want to be in. These are proper divisions of loyalty and proper divisions of her 100%.

I remember the day (not so long ago) Erin came home after having to speak to her employers about her lack of presence at the office. At the beginning of Fall semester she sat down and spoke to them about her schedule and when she'd be in the office. Conveniently, this conversation was not remembered (repeatedly) throughout the semester and at the end of 2007 when they wanted to speak to her about a full-time position with the company.

In return, going to work for Erin has been a trial. The work environment was very corrosive and poisonous. Her employer(s) wanted her to be there and available all of the time. He wanted her to do what he wanted even when she wasn't on the clock or being paid by him. I got the impression that he wanted her to be so sold into this company and his vision of entrepreneurship that everything else should be set aside and she should dedicate her life to the altar of business.

That is not Erin.

What she was hired to do was to edit a book so that two men writing it would have a better chance of getting it published. What she was (initially) hired to do was work as an admin, and when these same men decided there was more work in the book and in the admin position than Erin could handle alone, they hired an office manager-slash-admin.

Erin's job was to focus on the book. And, because I watched her and was a part of her deciding what was best for her and her employers (e.g. what she could offer) that is what she fretted about during the week, that is what she wanted to see happen. Erin's priority was the success of the book. Even when I would listen to aspects of chapters or ideas that were being bandied about, the things that were bring written... and even though I have a tendency to read business books for the sheer enjoyment and pleasure of it, and even though I knew without having to be in the industry that what was being shared did not fly in the face of any of the literature that was out there, Erin stood up for her bosses and looked for ways to defend what was being written. She was dedicated to the success of what her job entailed: She was dedicated to the book.

What was frustrating to watch was the continual need to remind her bosses (as a student) that her first priority was school and her second was work. At the beginning of the semester this was a conversation - and her bosses kept agreeing that her priorities needed to be in graduating and then the job. They were willing to take from Erin what she could offer.

And yet, a week or two would pass and she would come home crying about her day because she was not offering enough. What she had to offer wasn't enough for these men.

The real frustration, that I continually had, with her job was not so much the frustration of two men who would agree (verbally) to things and then backtrack, but that they insisted that the weight of writing needed to be on Erin and not on them. Instead of being an edtor they wanted Erin to write the book for them. When chapters turned out well, Erin was praised for making their writing work for them; when chapters turned out poorly, Erin was berated for failing to do her job.

My problem is that an editor does not rewrite. An editor looks at the work being done and tells people what needs to happen to fix it and then waits for the people to fix it. Her employer(s) didn't want an editor. They wanted someone who would come in and do the job for them. They wanted someone who would take their idea and ghost-write a book that they could publish under their names.

An even bigger frustration, though, is the talk of voice. Voice, for those who don't know, and her ex-employers don't know this is the way in which an author tells a story that is distinct to that author. Both of her employers are going to have aspects of voice, and yet neither of them are very good at what they do. They constantly had mistakes, spelling mistakes, re-used words that made no sense, used way too many words to describe something, and then expected that, magically, the work would be sufficient to attract an editor.

Erin had to rewrite. When things worked, it was because she rewrote the hell out of her employers; when it didn't, it was because her employers insisted on making changes they didn't know the first thing about. Their success in interesting potential agents and publishers is not a result of their voice or ability to write, but because Erin was able to do a very difficult job and make two different people with two radically different writing styles sound like they had the same voice and were telling the same story.

The outcome to her losing her job is that anything these men do, from this point forward, will be sub-par and will not impress the people they have made relationships with. Eventually, her ex-employers will have to go back into the writing community and find someone to replace Erin... and since I am a member of that community, and they pay crap-wages, the outcome will be that no one will come on for any length of time and put up with the *shit* they dole out.

One of the things that caught me off guard was a verbal agreement (well, email agreement) I with her main boss to do some web writing. Instead of using me, he went out and found a cut-rate writer who was willing to do the job at next-to-no-money. The outcome was that this writer plagiarized his work, stole from websites, was caught in the act, and then (if her ex-employers are actually intelligent individuals) let go and sued. However, as I understand the writing community, finding someone with the talent and skill necessary to coherently write content for websites and customers, and who is willing to do it at a cut-rate is next to impossible, I doubt that they actually let this guy go, that they sued him for his work, or that they found another writer to come in and fix the problems that do exist with his writing (e.g. re-write the material and give it to their clients because of the plagiarism).

Instead, when their publisher comes back to them (after the book proposal) and says, "This writing isn't as good as the original manuscript," her ex-employer(s) will go out looking for someone that will take the same crap wages as Erin, the same crap wage they were willing to pay a contract writer, and try to get them to come in and deal with the drama that is put out everyday.

The process of writing, even for someone who has done it for the majority of their adult life, is one that is complicated and cannot be disseminated down to a simple set of equations or processes. Erin and I took a class from a man who thought that you could teach people how to write a novel by creating a Poetics of Novel Writing (Screenplay writing) and then teach people how to break that down so far and so much that anyone can write a book (based off of a screenplay, actually). The outcome was that most of the class didn't get the idea of what it meant to write and they failed at the assignment. One reason people fail at writing is because they think, without practice and without dedicating large portions of their life to the process, they can just sit down and write something.

Writing doesn't work that way.

That is why actual acquisition of voice is essential to the writing process. That is why you have to struggle and write hundreds of thousands of words and fail repeatedly before you are going to have the voice necessary to actually write your book.

I have yet to read anything that either of the men she worked with that I, as a consumer, would be willing to purchase and want to read. They don't have the ability to sell me as a consumer, me as a reader, in their background or skills.

The thing that makes me the angriest in all of this is that they had to trump up reasons to fire Erin. One of the reasons that was used was her going home (to work) for an afternoon. The main employer sent his wife to talk to Erin. She, allegedly, spent an hour and a half waiting, canceled two appointments, and then called her husband to inform him of her experience. At no time was Erin informed that she had an appointment and, as a result, lost her job. This is not only dishonest on the part of her employer(s), but unethical to boot.

You see, I would come home at 11 o'clock at night and have Erin telling me that her boss insisted that she make an appointment to speak with him about his *damn* book. Only to have him cancel the appointment or answer the phone rather than speak to her; and then when Erin didn't take the entire time, get mad because Erin was wasting his time. This happened frequently. And then to have his wife, WHO IS NOT AN EMPLOYEE OF THE COMPANY, come to talk about the writing with Erin and not give her the courtesy of saying, "I am coming, so-and-so asked me to speak to you about the manuscript," is completely unprofessional, irresponsible, and unethical.

Moreover, the way Erin was treated has led me to believe that these men are not honest or ethical men. Sure, they know how to manipulate the law to side with them, they know that if they don't hire more than X employees certain laws don't apply to them; but at the same time, this does not a good employer or businessman or member of the LDS church make. Just because you know how to manipulate the law does not make you an honest person.

One of the largest frustrations over the past year that I've experienced is for these men to insist that Erin is better off owning her own home than to rent. And, in different economic circumstances I would agree with them. However, we are college students. We don't make a lot of money. And housing prices in Utah are insanely high. The cost of a house, if we were both employed and out of school, would still be too high (in Utah) for us to want to agree to enter the housing market. Moreover, and this was evident more than 18 months ago, the housing market is about to enter a very severe shift where house prices have to drop radically.

If Erin and I had the intent of staying in Utah beyond the undergrad (specifically my undergrad) than I could see the prospect of buying a house. Our landlord has told me that the best market for us, in the coming days, and I trust him on this, is houses that are about 2 years old in relatively new subdivisions. Granted, we are not in the market in Utah as we are both planning on moving elsewhere to live, graduate school, have a family, and etc., but to think that you buy and then rent as an option is not logical or viable.

I have watched friends and acquaintances fall into that pit and watch as they struggle to make sure that the rental is always okay, and that they actually have the money to do what they are trying to do. Owning, right now, is idiotic - for us.

And yet, her employer(s) also informed her that she should be a millionaire by the time she is 28 and if she is not she is a lazy individual.

I mean, what kind of people are we dealing with here? If Erin wanted to go and start a business I have no doubt that she couldn't accomplish that task, handily. And be successful. I am under no illusions about what my wife can and cannot do, and business is something she has a talent for, and something she has not desire to pursue. And you know what, I appreciate that as well.

Where Erin was hired, and employed, to edit a manuscript, she became a member of an office that was toxic and destructive to her self-esteem.

Where Erin could've had a great experience editing a manuscript, and by doing, determine whether or not it was something she actually wanted with her life, she was told (at one point) that if she failed these men, she would fail at publishing.

Where Erin could've gotten a good opinion of members of her own church who run businesses and are entrepreneurs, what she saw was the number one complaint of members of the LDS church dealing with other members of the LDS church. They are dishonest, deceitful, liars who are self-serving and will look out for themselves and step on the backs of those they can manipulate.

I wish Erin's experience with these men had been different. I wish that she would've had a good experience. I wish that when it was time for them to end their relationship with her they would've done so in a way that would've been beneficial to both parties. I wish that when they got to this point they would've been honest in their dealings.

However, I will never trust these men. I will never accept them as men of authority. I will never support them in their endeavors. And the best I can hope for, for them, is that they find whatever it is they think they are looking for; because, what they've shown this past weekend is that they a) don't know what they want; b) certainly don't know how to deal with people; and c) don't really know what they are trying to accomplish.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wonder, I guess, whether or not anonymity is a good thing. This past weekend, I think, Erin and I lost a little of our anonymity. Or, more specifically, we realize we may not have had a lot going for us in the realm of anonymity as someone has been lurking around the house for weeks, possibly months, and had to be run off.

As expected, when we started talking to people about it, the members of the community banded together and, many independent of each other, began sharing information about a man that grew up in the area, married a woman, settled down, and then divorced (leaving her in the house they’d lived in). He is, simply, not a good man. Not bad enough that he has spent any significant time in jail, but bad enough that he is familiar with the county jail, being booked, and trying to find loopholes around which he can try and hide within the law.

According to the people we live around, this man has been a perpetual peeping tom from the time he was little until now. He finds someone he can watch and then pushes all boundaries until he has broken through them. He demands things from people. He is the neighbor who everyone thinks is the one stealing from them when things begin to disappear. And, according to one of the people we spoke with, he believes that this man has been coming around, tripping circuits on lights, and stealing things he’s got around his acreage at night.

This is the kind of person who poaches and feels that he has a right to hunt where he wants, what he wants, when he wants and then not have to suffer any consequences for his actions.

This is the kind of person who believes that the world owes him something, even though he has used and taken and never given back. His family (his family, not brothers and sisters, parents, etc., his children and ex-wife) have been on welfare for years. They demand that people loan them cars, give them things and money, provide them with jobs, and take and take and take.

We were told that this man got so involved with a woman he was watching and stalking that he’d imagined himself her husband and then attacked her real husband for being with her.

He’s had restraining orders out against him by his wife and children.

What makes this very frustrating to me is that one side effect of all this is fear. Extreme, nearly uncontrollable, fear. I wish there were a way to remove the fear and anxiety about strangers in the neighborhood, people that everyone knows, from my wife, our neighbors upstairs, but, you know, its there. My being home doesn’t, necessarily, resolve things.

We did go to the police today and spoke to an officer about what our neighbors told us. We do have on record that it is this man. We did a Google search for the man and found arrest records (Utah County) going back years. And, as everyone (including the officer who immediately knew who the man was) has said, he looks very distinct. We’ve seen pictures. Neither of us care to actually ever meet the guy.

We were told to immediately call 9-1-1 and the officers on that shift would know if they get a call in the area they are looking for this man.

Erin has asked me to hang a new door complete with new lock on the top of our stairs. We are pricing a motion sensor light for the backyard. We blocked viewable access to our house by covering all of the windows.

You know, I wrote about anonymity online and I maintain that the stand I’ve taken, being visible, letting people know me online, is still the right course. Some people would have to go seriously out of their way to find me, the cost (in money) is most likely not worth it. However, when you move the idea of some pervert off of the internet where they can follow their depravities online and out of the view of the public and into the realm of someone in our yard, looking through our windows, listening to us, watching, then privacy and anonymity becomes even more important.

The thing that gets me, the thing that is true, is something Erin said the other night, if it weren’t for her, if it was just me, I wouldn’t have to worry about things like this and I wouldn’t think twice about it. My life, by the simple act of getting married, has changed drastically and now I wake up periodically at night wondering if I woke up because Erin made a noise, because I wake up often, or because I heard something somewhere and need to check it out, or if I just need to go to the bathroom.

I know that all of this will, eventually, pass by. That this man will move on when he can’t get whatever show he was trying to watch anymore, when we make it impossible to be anonymous in the yard, but until then… and until Erin starts to feel comfortable enough to walk alone outside at night, and probably beyond all of that, I get to worry about her, about freaks who don’t even live in our neighborhood anymore, and about a whole host of other things that need worrying about.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 7:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some years ago I was living in Dallas, TX. The reason I’d moved to Dallas was to live closer to my parents for a time. I was recruited and took a job in a call center for a large computer company that had their main support center around where I lived. I would spend about six months living in Dallas, TX.

During that time, I helped get the office I was working for recruit someone I thought of as a friend into our office. They moved him from Utah to Dallas, gave him a salary complete with benefits, and paid for a lot of things I never asked for, or would’ve thought about asking for. When I decided it was time to move, to me it didn’t matter how, I just knew that I needed to go. Nothing else mattered and having a job was what mattered to me. Everything else was icing on the cake.

Dallas meant a lot of things to me. I liked living there. It felt good. I was, virtually, on my own even though, in hindsight, I could see a lot of people who helped me out in ways that, at the time, I thought was all about me.

I rented an apartment, a studio, which was about the size of my front room now. The entire apartment was about the same size as the front room in the house Erin and I share now. The place was small but it was mine. I had my television, VCR, movies, books (not as many as I now possess, or even close) my computer, a bed, and my belongings. Most of my belongings ended up in the closet that was, in my memory, almost as large as my bedroom.

Because I felt like I was grown up, I also had a phone line installed complete with DSL. While I was in Dallas I purchased a cell phone so I could talk to people and because I traveled between Dallas and Temple somewhat frequently on the weekends… and because I thought it was cool.

After I had this friend move down, he called me to tell me he was on his way from Utah. I gave him my numbers and told him he should call if there were problems. One of the things I did, at the time, was encourage him to not dally in his coming and to make sure he gave himself plenty of time to get to Dallas. Company policy was that a person who did not show up on their first day of work did not have a job. My fear was that if he left too late, he would not get to Dallas in time and would drive all that way for no reason.

As I am remembering the events, he was supposed to have left on a Thursday and arrive a day or so later. He didn’t leave. Nor did he leave Friday or Saturday, both days he was supposed to have left to move his life to a new city. By Sunday morning I was uncertain he was actually heading in my direction and concerned that I had engineered him being hired for no reason. In short, I was pretty convinced he was making me look bad.

However, sometime on that Sunday he left Utah and started driving toward Dallas.

While he was driving I did my own thing. I got up, went to church, spent time doing whatever it was I found interesting and worthwhile (at the time) and then coming home and making myself something to eat – something, I am certain, that might’ve consisted of large amounts of wheat-gluten. This was before I discovered my problems.

I was twenty-five at the time. Think about that for a moment. Eight, going on nine, years has passed since I found myself in a situation where, probably for the first time, I felt like I was an adult and able to handle things on my own. This was before I’d gone through layoffs, before I’d started writing technical manuals, before I realized that writing might, someday, be a viable option.

Needless to say, a lot has changed in eight or nine years.

However, sometime on that Sunday this individual calls me from somewhere in the Texas panhandle and tells me that his car has broken down. I don’t know how much I believed him, though I told Erin the other night that I probably didn’t as he’d just purchased a relatively, if not new, Saturn. Regardless, he claimed his car was broken down and because I knew he either had to get to town or was without a job, I agreed to drive to where he was, make sure his car was okay (I have a tendency to carry tools in the back of most cars – must be a family trait). I knew that, so long as he didn’t blow up his engine, I was going to be able to assist him in getting to Dallas.

I spent the night driving up and down the state highway for 100 miles in each direction, stopping at every exit, pulling in to every gas station, convenience store, shopping center, motel, everywhere. I had an idea of what his car looked like and, for hours that night I couldn’t find him anywhere. Eventually, I called his phone, turned around, and drove back to Dallas. As I got into the Fort Worth area, it was late enough in the morning that I called my manager, informed her of the situation, and then went home and slept off the night of no sleep.

Eventually, this guy calls me up to find out where my apartment was and how to get there, to tell me he’d stopped by the office and spoken to the people there and they were “cool” with him starting a day late, and to spin yet another yarn about how he’d broken down.

According to him, his car broke down, he pulled over and called me, then he started to wait. The next thing he knew, he was being woken up by a police officer who insisted he go to a motel and sleep. The next morning, first thing, he got his car, miraculously, fixed and he drove the rest of the way into Dallas.

I am sure that just about all of this, except sleeping in a motel, was a complete lie; however, I will never have a way of confirming or refuting his story.

He showed up at my house. I let him in. Then I went back to bed.

This guy was supposed to stay with me only as long as it took him to find an apartment. He is the kind of person who liked living with people, I am the kind where, if you’re not married to me, or my situation isn’t dire, I would prefer to live completely alone. I didn’t share rooms B.E. Yet, there I was, being Mr. Altruistic, sharing a small studio apartment with a dude I wasn’t even sure I liked.

The outcome was that I started going and socializing to church singles activities. I went anyway, but it was more out of a personal sense of responsibility than because I wanted to be there. One outcome from this was that he drove to a dance one night, noticed that I was attracted to a girl, and then threatened to leave me at the church if I didn’t ask her out. I asked her out – not because of his threat, but because I did find her attractive and needed a reason to ask her out.

We, me and the girl, would start to date after that. Pretty quickly, she looked at me and said, “I think you are going to hurt me,” and then continued to date me. This was the first girl I would kiss; and I would not date again, after her, for another three almost four years. Yes, I went on dates, but there was no one else I wanted to associate with. No, it was not a matter of my “getting over” her, but the extension of my own personality and loaner nature.

I just didn’t date. During that time, writing became more important.

And yet, for a few months, I found myself, whenever I had time, spending it with her. In another mode, I might even reflect on some of what we did. I won’t. Not here, not now.

Pretty quickly, the guy living with me had to go away for a wedding of someone he didn’t know. He’d arranged for that, somehow, when they’d hired him. Where I was an amazing tech, they thought, in hiring this guy, that they were getting another me. Yes, that sounds conceited, but I know what was happening at the time and why they took him on.

He left and, in leaving, left his car with the girl (at this point) I was dating so she could practice driving a stick shift. A week later he comes back and takes possession of his car.

Time passes and I introduce this guy to some friends who all talk about moving into an apartment together. And yet, as the days, weeks, and what felt like an eternity passed, nothing ever seemed to come of the experience. And he kept trying to convince me to change my lease so that I moved into a two bedroom apartment and we could live together.

The entire time he worked with me for this company, he would recite a mantra, “They are going to fire me. They are going to fire me,” and every day I would assure him that he needed to give the job, the company, and himself some time. And yet, at least once a day he would start into his mantra until it was almost painful to listen to.

Then one night the relationship kind of changed. Instead of being an interlocutor in my apartment, he started suffering from migraine headaches. This had been something he’d been going through in Utah, or claiming to, and I figured it was his way of dealing with something he didn’t want to be a part of. At different times, these headaches would get in the way of work. He missed a lot. Didn’t call in. Had me tell the office what was going on. And finally, he had me take him to an emergency room because they were too painful and too much for him to handle.

I sat in an emergency room all night long for him. Eventually, the doctor came out, spoke to me, and told me he was fine and that they were prescribing a very light pain killer figuring that the placebo effect would probably do more than real medication. It seemed to work, he missed more time on the job, and I had to make excuses because he was living with me, he was working with me, and I had put myself out there to get him this job.

Anyway, time passes, more crap is fed to me, I am told he is moving out, at one point I was told he was signing a lease on an apartment, and I think it was at this point that he started to loose control and things went downhill.

Which leads to the next to last time I saw the guy…

I woke up one morning as I had a later shift at work than he did. I believe, at this time, I was intentionally working 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. He was gone. I got up, showered, dressed, and drove over to work. When I parked my car and walked to the front door, his car pulled up blocking my path. He said, “My mom has been stung by a bee. She is dying. I am going to drive to Florida. Will you go up and tell them I have to go home for a couple of weeks?”

I was done making excuses, I was done with this guy, I said, “No. I won’t. If you want to go home like that, you have to walk up there and take care of it yourself.” I then walked around his car and went to work.

He parked, came upstairs, and spoke to the manager who was covering for our manager, who, incidentally, was not there. The manager told him to do whatever he needed to do and then came and spoke to me. He asked, “What do you think we should do?”

I asked him to give me about fifteen minutes, during this time I tracked down his parents phone number and made a call where I spoke to his mother who was not dying as a result of a bee sting. I then spoke to the manager, told him what I had learned, and he asked, “What do you think we should do?”

I said, “Fire him.”

He was summarily fired.

I then asked to leave work for a few minutes where I went home, had the locks changed, moved all of his belongings out of my apartment, and then left a note (I waited around as long as I thought I could spare for him to come home to speak to him face-to-face) telling him that if he planned to move back to Dallas he needed to put his things in a storage unit, I, however, was not willing to store his crap for him. I told him that anything I found left I would walk to the dumpster and throw away.

During this time, he’d used my phone to call a girl he’d met online. He owed me several hundred dollars. I mentioned this in the note and then went back to work. When I got home late that night, most of his things were gone, I walked the rest to the dumpster, and then opened the door. Of the four hundred dollars he owed me, I got fifty with a promise that he would send me the rest. I never saw another dime of that money.

Some years passed and I was given a job working for Novell. Pretty quickly, I discovered this guy also worked for the same division in this company. He would hang out in my office, sometimes, and, still, never get past feeling like he was always going to be fired even though he’d learned enough to get a job where he was installing and maintaining Linux machines for this department. Eventually, and for the second time in five months, I would be laid off again, so was he. I guess he moved with his wife (he’d gotten married between Dallas and Novell) back to Florida.

I learned, some days ago, after having a conversation with someone I’d not seen in about nine or ten years, and who was a mutual acquaintance of this guy, and after I’d shared my dislike for him, I was told he died.

That caused me to pause for a moment and wonder whether or not I cared that this guy died. I decided to follow-up on what caused his death. I was told he suffered from migraines, which I knew, and that he’d been given a lethal combination of medication for the migraine headaches. I started thinking about this, and realized that this guy was the kind of person who would see two or three different doctors for the same problem, go to the emergency room, and get prescriptions from all of them for the same problem. And yet, he died of a lethal combination of drugs in his system. I was there to watch him go to different doctors and not tell one that he was taking medicines from another.

My outcome was that I don’t care whether or not he is dead. I do feel bad for his widow and their children. She woke up to find him dead after he’d taken the drugs. That is sad. I’ve met the woman, I can feel for her; however, I find it difficult to build even sympathy for the individual that passed on. This reaction makes me wonder about myself, a bit, and what kind of a person I am. I’ve watched people die, I’ve been to enough funerals to know that some people are just old and are ready to pass on, while others were taken before their time; I know that some people literally kill themselves with drugs looking for attention, and then, eventually, when they no longer need that kind of attention, are now physically injured because of the drugs that they have to continue taking them.

I find a situation like this to be hard and deplorable; but I also find my lack of emotion, realizing that I have a lack of emotion, a little disturbing. Should I care whether someone like this lives or dies?

I don’t think anyone else should die unnecessarily. My faith tells me that some people die early because they need to die early. It also tells me that some people die needlessly because they make choices in their lives.

How am I supposed to feel?

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 6:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Erin and I have been married for two months, today. Yay. Erin writes a bit about it on her site.

Being married has been interesting. In the two months I've had a professor suggest, somewhat strongly, that my personality would be perfect toward writing an essay on sharing a bed. Not sex. Sharing a bed. Literally. I've slept alone pretty much all of my life. At 30-something I am sharing a bed for the first time. I am sharing a bed that I've slept in alone (size-wise) for most of my adult life. This leads to some interesting changes. I won't write about them now. I am not even certain I will explore the topic.

However, in the intervening days I've discovered a new joy in sharing a bed with my sweetheart, my darling, and my love.

Happy two months Erin.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OKay, so, yesterday morning I got up to go to work feeling pretty good, which was nice as I've felt pretty crappy for several days. Anyway, showered, shaved, and dressed and then grabbed my backpack off of the floor and threw it over my shoulder. Instead of going over my shoulder, though, it slipped backward and fell to the floor. Because I have some pretty quick reflexes (not something I admit to very often, for some reason) I reached out to grab it. Instead of getting my hand around one of the straps, the top loop wrapped around the tip of the pinky finger on my right hand. I felt the weight of the backpack with a load of something like two books, one of which is a sketch pad, and a pair of headphones, and felt my finger bend the wrong way. However, when I looked at it I thought, "Oh, that hurts," and then tested to see if my finger moved properly. Since it did I shrugged it off and proceeded go to work.

Then the problems began. I have been queasy for several days and, at really odd intervals, I would have to stop everything I was doing and just let my stomach settle. The only time this happens, with me, is when I've done a very good job at injuring myself... the last time was when I slammed my chin into a rock while hiking in The White Mountains in New Hampshire. I was with a friend, Nick, and I almost lost everything I'd ever eaten in my life, or felt like it. I am sure, in the process, I got a concussion but refused to stop for something like that when I could keep myself awake and walk it off.

Since I'd felt like I was sick, still, and hadn't gotten better, which is how I felt after I woke up, I thought, "Man, I'm still sick," and went to the married apartment to crash. I slept off and on for most of the day, in part because the couple living in the main floor of the house were moving out so the owners son and his future wife could move in this month, and they were making a lot of noise. When Erin got home, I decided to try and nap some more, noting that, at that point, I was losing some dexterity in my finger but it wasn't really swollen. As I slept, though, I kept waking up to protect my hand/finger. Along with the noise and the sudden and very severe bouts of nausea, I got up to discover that the movement in that finger was now next to nil and the swelling had almost doubled the size of my finger. Erin said, "It looks like a fat man's finger."

When I realized that the discomfort and turgid nature of the finger stopped me from sleeping and, well, working on my computer (right now I am finding it difficult to write), and because I knew that fingers don't just hurt, nausea (especially with me) isn't like that, and the discomfort/pain was pretty bad that it was time to go to the emergency room. Erin drove me. We got there and was checked out, had the finger x-rayed, and then got to listen to a lot of people claim entitlements that made me very grateful I had something to take my mind off of what we were doing.

We were there for several hours. When we finally saw a doctor (Erin making fun of me the entire time -- see her blog for more details) he showed us the x-rays and pointed out where I'd broken the bone from multiple angles. He prescribed a splint (and because I can feel the cobwebs leaving which means the medicine is leaving) and Loritab (sp) and then sent us on our way.

Sleeping, last night, was pretty hellacious. In short, I didn't really and first thing this morning I filled that prescription.

Anyway, Erin decided we needed to have a couple of pictures, after the fact, so:

and:

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Denny Crane | Bond. James Bond

Posted by smokingpen at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I spent most of my formative years in Texas. Temple, Texas to be specific. My memories, as a child, really seem to begin and end there, though I distinctly remember both Virginia and California and aspects of school and home and church and life in both of those places. However, the memories I go back to over and over and over again live in Texas.

That is shared because there are a few events in my life that really stand out. They are not like Kennedy dying or Pearl Harbor or September 11th, though I did discover that 9/11 is something I am still dealing with. However, I don’t feel anything for Pearl Harbor and current theories suggest that J.F.K. probably would’ve been impeached had he lived and I think, “Wow, we deify a president and yet, he was not the best man in the world.”

And yet, American changing and world changing events aren’t what I am thinking about. Rather, I was living in Texas when the FBI and ATF and a dozen other government agencies surrounded the Branch Davidian compound. Some time later, I was watching north from a small bar and grill outside of town where my friends and I were eating lunch and saw the plumes of smoke rising. I was that close to the action. Every night I worried that my dad was going to be sent to the compound and that things would heat up and that people would die. People did die, but… well… not my dad (he was never sent to the compound).

I was living in Texas when the Luby’s massacre took place. I remember watching the news and seeing that a man had driven his car through the front window, got out, and started shooting people. At the time, in Texas, this was an example of the need for citizens to carry weapons.

Before I was even born the University of Texas at Austin had the record for largest mass killing at a university because of student who went to the top of the clock tower and started sniping classmates below. He was eventually shot and killed.

In 1999 the Columbine massacre took place. My parents, at that time, had either started the move to Cortez, CO. That one hit home because, at the same time, the press was debating on the cause of so many mass murders and the reason why the two boys at Columbine shot up the place, killed classmates, and then killed themselves. It was a difficult thing to watch because, as things progress, it’s a hard thing to deal with.

One of the things that go through my mind during a disaster, like this, is, “Do I know anyone who was there?” I am pretty confident I don’t know anyone at Virginia Tech. Looking at the list, I can see no names that would be familiar or places I would know anyone from. It doesn’t change the feelings of loss at this senseless attack.

So, last night, Erin and I were watching TV. At one point the news came on. With the news came images and video from the shooter. I could feel bad about the events that took place; I can even handle the constant discussion of what was happening; but at that moment, at that moment I got mad.

Because I spend a bit of time on the internet specifically surfing a variety of blogs, most of which are related to writing in some form or another, I got to read about people who have a level of connection to what happened yesterday. Granted, these are not people I know personally, but to think that some pretty famous authors were related to people who died; to think that the press decided (yesterday) to spend more time on the kid who did the killing rather than the ramifications of the victims, the dead, the families, I was upset.

Consider The Trolley Square massacre here a couple of months ago. I don’t care, one whit, about the kid who walked into Trolley Square and started firing his shotgun at people. I do care that he was shot and killed. I am happy that he is no longer alive and that the families and community doesn’t have to suffer through a trial and his mother and family telling the world he is not a bad boy. I don’t care what led to his shooting at those people. What I cared to know was that (a) I didn’t know anyone and (b) the shooter was dead. That’s it.

And yet, to think that the guy, earlier this week had bothered to spend time creating a video and expressing his hatred for the rich and more capable than him, who had taken his hatred to an extreme, this was sick. It makes the press sick. It makes me sick that we live in a time when we spend more time on the person who did the killings and the committed suicide than on the victims. I don’t want to know that the guy had a manifesto. I don’t want to be shown the images of the kid again and again. I don’t want to know that his mother and father thought he was a nice, good boy.

With that said, there are aspects to the story, and the kid, that I do care about. One is that he had a history of stalking. There is no real connection between his rampage and where he was born, but its nice to know that he and his family moved to the United States. Another is that he had a history of hatred toward those that he presumed were better than himself. We know that these things can lead to someone going over the edge.

I am truly saddened by what took place. My heart goes out to the families of the victims. I feel bad for the losses.

Posted by smokingpen at 6:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote The Lady of Shalott. The reason this might be of any interest is that the poem plays an important role in the book (and play) Anne of Green Gables. Last semester, in this semi-euphoric high, I tried out for and got a part in a Mask Club production of Anne of Green Gables and ended up playing the part of Matthew Cuthbert. Matthew is an old man who wants to adopt Anne. Marilla is his sister. They end up adopting Anne.

I spent the month or two I dealt with that play in a rather annoyed and depressed state. Matthew, in the play, is painfully shy. This is a key to the character; though, around Anne, he kind of comes out of that shell because she is such an outgoing, non-judgmental individual. Because I was dealing with this play six days a week, and because I was never really allowed to get out of character, I was always “on” when it came to Matthew. As a result, the shell I already seem to live in became thicker and harder to pull myself out of.

This, in part, led to my realizing that I might be good at acting; but, that I am not eager to get back into it. Part of the exploration of this was the audition for the next level of classes at BYU. I didn’t know about the auditions until a couple days in advance; I didn’t have time to prepare (and yes, it is very necessary to prepare); and when I got my reviews back, I was not disappointed that I didn’t get accepted.

At the same time, I was supposed to be in the second part of a philosophy class I was taking last semester. The problem, I kept becoming agitated as I dealt with the class and, at the last minute (like the day before the class) I dropped it and picked up a religion credit. This caused me to lose the frustration the class was causing; and, at the same time, I was somewhat taken aback after a rather candid conversation with one of the two professors teaching the class. My responsibilities would’ve been to write and to be a part of a production crew; and, chances are, I would’ve directed one of the movies being produced; but, at the same time, I discovered that I was on the path to getting married. Specifically, we’d moved from just talking about it to getting serious about really getting engaged and getting married.

The class no longer held a place and the final straw (camel’s back). The day after the class (and the day that the other professor started trying to contact me through Erin) I did get engaged; which, kind of, solidified my lack of time to spend on the screenplay or the class. The time commitment outside of class would’ve been in excess of nine hours a week; nine hours I don’t have (even though I probably do have it). This time was scheduled for Saturday’s. I catch up on rest and restore health on Saturdays and Erin wants some of my time (even though she works) that day as well.

Anyway, the aspect of The Lady of Shallot that plays into Anne of Green Gables is that “The Lady” ends up committing suicide and then being sent, floating, down a river. From what I was told, she was the actual wife to Sir Lancelot who, in a part of the poem, states that she is truly lovely. If you remember, Lancelot runs off with Guinevere, wife to King Arthur, who, because of the pride of his people (and himself), then chases down Lancelot and Guinevere and wages war, thereby destroying Camelot.

The destroyer of Camelot, a parable like the City of Enoch, is destroyed because of infidelity. Lancelot, about The Lady of Shalott is, “She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott.”

Because The Lady of Shalott is attractive, because, in death, she is attractive, God should let his grace fall upon her. Grace, in case you didn’t know, is the method whereby man is redeemed from sin and allowed to return to live with God. Grace comes through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, or The Messiah. Therefore, as a result of The Lady’s qualities she should be saved into heaven.

What we learn, today, is that The Lady actually never looked outside and spent her life only being able to see the world through the reflection of a mirror. She was a weaver creating images from what she saw; but was made to stare at a window and weave and never allowed to actually go outside. This is likened unto Plato’s Cave (and Fire) allegory where people in a cave are only able to determine what the world outside is like from the shadows cast (of them) on a wall from a fire.

Anyway, when confronted with the reality of the situation, The Lady commits suicide. She is dead. There is a curse and the curse results in her dying. Lancelot mourns her death and, apparently (I am really stretching here) he mourns so much that he and Guinevere run off together thereby destroying Camelot.

Granted, in the greater story Morgause is the true author of Camelot’s destruction. The destruction came about when Morgause cloaked herself in magic and then seduced Arthur having a child by him who, in turn, was elevated to the level of a knight in Camelot. Arthur tried to hide his infidelity; but, in the end, his infidelity (along with Guinevere’s and Lancelot’s) ultimately destroyed Camelot.

In Anne of Green Gables, Anne elevates The Lady of Shalott to a mournful, holy level. She wants to be The Lady. It’s romantic. And yet, in that romance, the inherent nature of the story is infidelity and destruction – even though it was written during a post-romantic period in literature where the hero should be good and holy. The outcome is that Anne, in recreating, almost kills herself.

There is no real reason for writing all of this. I think that the telling (of this entry) is somewhat allegorical. I believe that it speaks something to myself; but, honestly, I don’t know how to tell y’all what.

John Hattaway | Alicia Grey | Denny Crane | Bond. James Bond

Posted by smokingpen at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recall reading somewhere that the words, “The End,” when placed at the end of a movie denote that this is the end of this movie, but not the end of the story. How to ‘splain? Well, take the Star Wars travesty’s. Episodes IV, V, and VI complete a cycle. At the end of IV (commonly known to those who were around to see it originally as just Star Wars) you can place “The End” because the story continues in Episode V (commonly known as The Empire Strikes Back); and “The End” at the end of that Episode because the story completes (allegedly) in Episode VI (or, Return of the Jedi). You cannot, however, place “The End” at the end of Episode VI unless you plan to create more movies thereafter. The convention comes from the old serials days when the words were meant to inform the viewer that this portion of the story was over, please come again for the next installment.

Pretty neat, hunh?

Anyway, gotta say, “I’m in love,” and, “No!” it is not with myself (though there are arguments that can be posited for that as well). No, I am in love with Erin. Thought the world needed to hear that.

However, that ties in to this because, on occasion, she will make a statement, “The End,” and whatever we are conversing is done. We aren’t going to continue that conversation or line of thought at that moment. Papers receive the same treatment. It’s not rude, merely a statement that things have run their course for the moment and, in the future, at some point, maybe, we’ll pick them up again. The End. Seriously, a neat convention used to denote that the story or events aren’t over, merely this portion of them.

I was reading on Tim Pratt’s website a while back. Maybe a few weeks, last month (e.g. November, 2006) and his wife wrote, “The End,” at the end of one of his manuscripts that he’d finished a first draft run-through on and then printed out. The idea is that he is through with the hard part (maybe) and has rewriting, first readers, editing, and then shipping off to publisher (as he is writing on spec) to finish. “The End” in this case represents the end to one portion of a much greater story. It is applicable because, if you follow his website and updates, he is contracted to write multi-volumes in the series he’s working on. Granted, I am new to Tim Pratt’s writing and haven’t come across the short stories set in the world he’s writing in, but I like his style and what he brings to SciFi/Fantasy. I think he’s got something to say and “The End” merely implies that so does his wife (as first reader, editor, and supporter) as well as the publishing world in general.

“The End” does not denote an ending. Rather, it suggests to the reader that this is going to continue. It’s like carrying on a conversation with Erin. You can’t explore every idea you want to at one time. Start down a path and it has to end for a time because the mind (and possibly heart) needs time to catch up with the succession of thoughts and ideas that have been discussed. Asked: “How do you feel about…?” to me. I answered that it was a complicated matter and that I was not in a position to expand my thoughts without some preparation, time, and multiple sessions (face to face). That ended the dialogue. Unwritten, unspoken, “The End,” was a part of the conversation as my answer, at the time, was sufficient for whatever she was working through in her head. She expanded, back, a little, but “The End” came into play because neither (I’d surmise) was prepared to move forward.

Story is a notion of continuation. One example of this, I found it intentional, other’s think I was crazy, the author has said I am right, is Dune. The first book, Dune covers the initiation of a family on a world and the eventual acclimation of Paul Atreides, and his posterity, are destined to rule the universe. However, the first book, written about twenty years before the second or third, sets up a “The End” scenario where the story can continue. It probably does end that way, and the second and third installments are actually not so good, but need to be slogged through to get to where Frank Herbert actually starts writing well, again. The point, though, is that the author intended for a “The End” to the story only insofar as he was not done writing it. He died before he could finish his latest additions and it seems that one of his sons has taken up the mantle. I’ve not read any of the new novels. It would be like watching, and REALLY liking the prequel trilogy of Star Wars, unthinkable.

Anyway, “The End” isn’t an ending. It is merely a prelude to a continuation of what is already going on. George (Lucas) grew up watching serials. As a result of that he conceived of the Star Wars franchise, the Indiana Jones franchise, and helped produce the Back to the Future franchise. All movies that can (and in some cases do) end with “The End.” Wait until the next installment, you won’t be disappointed.

What all of this has to do with life, with me, is that I write. Some things are meant to be standalones. Others are literally, “The End,” waiting to happen. On a more personal note, conversations are often “The End”ed, sometimes without both parties realizing why or what is happening. This isn’t a bad thing. In writing you do it. Television does it (though they are not likely to use the words). It happens all the time. The End is a simple convention meant to add suspense, to announce that this part is over (of the conversation) and that you will have to wait for more. If you are savvy, waiting for more is a very good thing; if not, it can be frustrating.

As I said, I love Erin. People shouldn’t doubt that. When conversations end with “The End” it’s a promise to me that we will continue it later. As long as the promise is there we are doing well. If it ever disappears (and I guess it could regardless of where our relationship goes) then it is time to start worrying.

Just so you all can hear me say it: THE END.

More later.

Posted by smokingpen at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I’ve decided I don’t like Christmas. Actually, pretty much anyone that knows me knows that. I’m a scrooge. Not really. People who really know me really know that I am probably the anti-scrooge; but for those who are passive followers/acquaintances, the outcome is that if you know me you know I don’t like Christmas and as a result I come across as a scrooge. So. Get over it.

However, there are a couple of things, with the holiday season, that I felt needed to, personally, be addressed. I have a couple of significant reasons for this. And yes, one of those is Erin. Yet, I just don’t like Christmas. Actually, the real feeling is I don’t like holiday’s in general; but that is a topic for another time (read here: NEVER) and as such will not be explored a great deal in this entry.

What I don’t like is the notion that holiday’s have become. Let’s take apart the word. Holiday literally means holy day. However, in the United States, today, and in the world, in general, the reference to holiday represents one of many things. It could be a civil or national day of remembrance. It could be a religious time of rememberance/celebration, it could simply mean a recognition of something important. Take Texas, as one example. A state holiday is Juneteenth, the day when the Emancipation Proclamation was read in the state of Texas. A quick Google search tells me two things, first, Juneteenth is June 19th (I was sitting here thinking 13th), and second, this is a nationally and internationally celebrated-slash-recognized holiday. Truth told, outside of Texas and those who have lived, been raised, born in, or are familiar with Texas, I have never heard of the holiday being recognized, let alone celebrated, anywhere else. You can learn more at this website if you are really curious. The holiday isn’t a holy day (though to some it may be). It is a day of remembrance, a day of celebration, but not a day of religious remembrance.

Thanksgiving is another example.

The Fourth of July.

New Years.

Halloween (though you don’t get time off for this one).

The list can go on, Martin Luther King day or Civil Rights day, President’s day and for some Election Tuesday are all days that hold some significance, whether we choose to recognize that significance or not; but they are not, traditionally, holidays.

If you are Jewish or, traditionally Catholic, there are as many holiday’s as there are days of the year. Every saint has a day. The Jewish people recognize a lot of things. And I guess, that is where we get back to Christmas. That’s a Catholic word. Christ and mas. The suffice –mas literally means a celebration of and then the word it postcedes. Meaning that Christmas is literally: A celebration of Christ. Yet, Christmas has become as ambiguous in celebration as almost any other holiday. It is no different, for me, than Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July or that one British holiday about Guy Fawkes – at least he is interesting in that he tried to blow up parliament and failed and is now canonized in the minds of the British people as a hero with admirable qualities. Someday, someone from England will have to explain that too me. Not today, tomorrow, this week, and if I am really blessed, not until after the end of 2006 and well into 2007.

You might begin to see my trepidation about holidays and their common celebration. Is Christmas about Christ? Or is Christmas a common celebration wherein people exchange gifts, buy trees (and kill them), and pretty much find an excuse not to work and put themselves far deeper in debt than they need to? Think further on this: X-mas, Happy Holidays, Yuletide (which seems to have a religious connection as well) and you might really begin to see that the secularization of the season isn’t about Christ, but about the relationship between retailer and consumer.

And yes, for those who are reading and wondering, “Is he trying to be antagonistic?” I am.

Hanukah, Kwanzaa, and other holidays literally exist, and are celebrated, during December not because they are significant or even important holiday’s, but rather as an answer (and in addition to) Christmas. Hanukah is a lesser Jewish holiday that would’ve disappeared from their social conscience had Christmas not existed. It is an excuse, adopted, to give presents and feel like the rest of the Christian world. This is not meant to incite and I am sure that there are people who celebrate Hanukah that truly felt he religious significance of the day, but the holiday and its celebration exists because of Christmas. I don’t have a problem with that, per say, I have a problem that we diminish the meaning of Christmas (celebration of Christ) by applying new (and different) meanings simply because tradition and social pressure dictate all of that to us.

Kwanzaa came into existence about 40 years ago and is the biggest joke on the planet. (As an aside, on that website, I discovered that Kwanzaa is exactly 40 years old. The number, I knew, was relatively correct, but had really been pulled out of my *bleep*. So, there ya go.) I can’t say anything positive about it even after reading about why it exists.

So, throw an Erin into my equation and then add a dash of something else (and, no, I don’t know what the something else is) and you get a much larger outcome. Specifically, I am now in the mode (at least this year) to want to appreciate this time of year, Christmas. I want to celebrate Christ; and yet, Christmas seems to pedantic to me that I am not sure I can cope with the traditions that are bespoken during the time of year. I’d be happy to forgo everything that is traditional and start over again; but that doesn’t work either. Get rid of the fat git in a red suit and exchange gifts for gifts sake and I am good. But, Santa Clause is so much a part of our culture that I don’t believe that is possible.

With all of that, my interest in the time of year has altered a bit. As a result of that I have decided that instead of Christmas I will be having a Celebration of Christ and, if you can get me to exchange greetings in the tone of the season, I will be wishing people, “Happy Celebration of Christ.” Yes, I am now running with the definition of Christmas. Yes, I believe this to be important. And yes, if you don’t want to be reminded about the reason for the season than I am probably not the person you want to have that discussion with.

Now, respect is something that has to come up, sooner or later. And with respect, I understand there are people who just traditionally celebrate without the need to delve into the reason. Great. Keep it that way. Just understand that in reverse I choose to focus on the reason and as such, Christmas (though a word in use) will no longer be my reason for the season.

Happy Celebration of Christ y’all.

p.s. It also allows me to not use the word “merry” during the season, as well; which is only a plus to me. In case people were wondering or had noticed that about me.

Posted by smokingpen at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, it’s been one week. I guess what gets me is that the idea of the fire and the reality of the fire are kind of separating themselves in my mind. A week ago the reality was all I could think about. The fact that it had happened was a bit overwhelming. Now, the idea that there was a fire is really what is important to me rather than the reality. Truth told, I was interested in finding a way to sell or get out of the “contract” on the place I was living in and now I am wondering where I will end up living when I find a place. There are a couple of possibilities, area-wise, but they depend on whether or not I go after an internship. I want one, I want a specific internship, and yet, I am still in limbo there.

In the past week all of my belongings have been moved to Jared’s house. I appreciate them being out of the burned out structure. It makes for an interesting personal situation as I know I have something, reference-wise, and yet, I am at a loss for where to find it or how quickly I can get my hands on it before I can start using it. Which, in turn, makes the whole homework and assignment thing a bit of a chore as I consider what I have, what I need to get my hands on, and how much time needs to be allotted to such tasks. So, in that sense, the whole fire thing has been somewhat perplexing.

I keep forgetting how much time is involved in a commute and what that does to my personal schedule. When I live five seconds from wherever I need to be, the commute isn’t really a factor and I can just do what I think needs to be done rather quickly. The idea of travel time is non-consequential. Now, I have to REALLY think about it before I start to commit myself to stuff.

Anyway, the landlord has already given me back my deposit. Electricity, for last month, was insane. Chances of my finding the roommates to get them to help pay that bill is next to nil. The house was condemned, which I think I shared – if not, sorry – and work to gut and rebuild starts tomorrow. Literally. Stated, everything should be out, if not, it won’t be available until after the rebuild. My stuff was out, but when I went by, Friday night, to gather stuff, they had stacks sitting near the front door. Hopefully, the roommate who still had things there got it all out yesterday or today.

The ward I am technically still a part of has been trying to help. Many friends and family have come out of the woodwork to make sure things are going okay for me. I appreciate all of this. It’s nice that, when in an emergency, you can rely upon people in your life. As stated, it could’ve been a lot worse, I am glad it was not and that, for the most part, I’ve not needed to ask for more help than has been accepted.

My next steps, for those who care, is to figure out what is next and then to find a place to live in accordance with what is next. It is to send the parentals off on an LDS Church mission for the next six months. And to do whatever needs to be done so that things progress as they are wont to.

Outside of that life is all about school and work and school and work. My boss doesn’t know this, yet, but I intend to stop working for him once the book project it done. I will admit that, that, like many other things, are decisions that are spurned by the realization of what the fire means to me. I am done, in some areas of my life, sitting on the fence and hedging my bets (can I mix those metaphors?) and making decisions for good or ill. At the same time, the one decision, work-wise, is influenced by something else that has happened to (and around) me with the whole job thing. So. Here I come.

There’s more, but I think this is enough for now.

One thought, though: After the fire one of the guys started making jokes about how 9/11 would no longer be the defining moment in our lives. He was having fun with the whole situation and deflecting the reality of what was happening. I totally understand that. However, as I’ve thought about it, this may become one of those defining moments for me. Granted, one of my friends wrote me an e-mail telling me I could rewrite if I’d lost and there is some truth to that; but the reality is that a lot of the writing, journals, would be lost and there would be no recovery. As a result, there is a personal need to put together a backup plan for my writing, digital and otherwise, as well as a protection plan for those things that can’t be backed up.

Yes, I can rewrite, but there are things, elements, that are not rewritable and never will be. A record of my life. Dad once said to me that it was a waste of my time to write if I never published. That the only way a writer would ever be remembered was to get things published. Otherwise, I am just some guy who likes to write a lot and has files and shelves of things he’s put to paper.

With all that said, this has spurred me on to get my act together. Get something done. Protect what I can in case the worst were to happen again. Get insurance for those things that I own that can be replaced. And backup what I can.

9/11 will still be one of those defining moments in my life. But on top of that, the fire becomes something that defines how I deal with the smaller aspects of what I am doing and helps to push me forward in the larger areas of what I want to be doing.

Done.

Posted by smokingpen at 4:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear all,

I apologize for sending a generic, bulk, e-mail out to everyone, but I feel that this is the most efficient way to share a piece of information with people that I think needs to be shared.

Sometime before 7 a.m. on the morning of Sunday October 29 (as I send this it is this morning) a fire started behind the wall of the duplex I was living in. I woke up for some reason and decided to check the house to see why I was awake and almost immediately noticed that the electrical outlet next to the fireplace had flames coming out of it. In short, I could tell that the inside of the wall was on fire and that everyone needed to get out of the house. I grabbed my phone, ran get my roommates out of my side of the duplex, and than, in my underwear and with bare feet, raced next door to get the guys living in the other side of the duplex out. I pushed the door open to see flames behind and around their fireplace which shared a wall with out fireplace.

Come to find, they’d had a fire and friends over the night before and, somehow, an ember or something got inside the wall and eventually started the entire inside of the wall on fire.

While emptying the house I called 9-1-1 and reported the incident and, before I was even off the phone, had a police officer making sure that people were out of the house and the street was cleared for the fire trucks that quickly followed. Within ten minutes there were three fire trucks, three ambulances, and a fourth fire department truck for special assignments. There were between 16 and 20 firemen entering both sides of the duplex and four police cars with police officers keeping traffic, pedestrians, and neighbors away from the house. By this time the chimney was completely engulfed in flames and smoke was clearly visible, rising from the house.

My priorities, in this situation, were to get all occupants of the house out, to get the fire department involved, to call the landlord, and finally to call my parents. With that done and nerves and emotions finally coming to a head, I was surrounded by neighbors who all started using the word, “shock.” I don’t know whether or not I was, or am still, in shock, but for a while I had someone near me at all times. With my initial priorities taken care of I was finally able to realize the full ramifications of what was happening. Potentially, I could loose everything.

My house was on fire, everything I owned, all of my journals, all of my writing, my computers and hard drives, everything was in the house. At the point that I realized this, my nerves frayed for a moment and it occurred to me that my life could quickly, and simply, go up in flames and I would have to start all over again. There would be no evidence of my professional work as a writer, all of my school work, course descriptions for classes taken, everything I’ve done over the years, the research I’ve done for various long-term writing projects, school projects, work projects, everything would be gone.

In short, the potential for total, personal, disaster was very great and all I could do was watch as men I didn’t know raced into and out of the house wearing respirators and heavy clothes, carrying axes and water hoses, and wait for the outcome to happen.

Two hours went by. In that time I learned that one of the guys next door had stayed until the fire department showed up spraying water from a garden hose onto the flames inside of the wall. In all that time I learned that a series of events had taken place and that initial guesses toward the damage were that the interconnecting pipes that made up the chimney had been flawed and, after 20 years, had finally allowed something through that caught the wall on fire. I learned that I was the only one who called the landlord to let him know his property could, potentially, be completely wiped out. And I realized that I was lucky, fortunate, blessed, to have woken up and, in turn, gotten everyone else out of bed and out of the house.

After three hours we were finally allowed close enough to the house, and then back in, to survey the damage. The fire department had pulled the electricity, the gas company shut off the natural gas, everything was off and as we walked in we discovered that we would only have limited access inside of the house because it had been condemned by the fire marshal, who spent a few hours between sides, and then left.

In the space of three hours I went from an apartment that I was semi-comfortable in to being homeless and in that time I spoke to my mother twice and had most of my local siblings call with Kimberly and Justin driving down from Layton to see if they could help; and Jared and Emily coming down, with Jared taking charge of my moving clothes and odds-n-ends out of the house and up to his house.

Everything smells like smoke.

It is important to note that I am all right. That the various roommates are fine. No one was injured. And that I have lost nothing (that I am immediately aware of) except the place I was living in. Jared and Emily are putting me up until I figure out where to move and through providence or whatever happened this morning, the damage to the house was minimized.

Sure, we can’t live in it anymore and everyone will be required to find a new place to stay, but the result is that things are being taken care of and that this is an opportunity to take stock, decide what needs to happen, and move forward.

I thought, felt, that it was important to update people on what happened to me this morning. It has been a long and emotional day. And more than anything else, I appreciate the support I’ve felt from neighbors, ward members, family, and friends.

As information changes I will try to keep my blog updated,

John

cc: www.sw-c.com

Posted by smokingpen at 9:51 PM | Permalink

I remember the day I decided that it was better to show no emotion than it was to show my emotions to the people around me. It was probably in 1986. Twenty years of conditioned responses to what people did around me. As I sit here writing this I remember the day, the place I was in, what I was looking at, and I have some memories of the surrounding events. I was twelve. It was in Temple, TX, I was sitting in a classroom at Bonham Middle School, and I was going through a rather emotional time. All children, at 12, go through rather emotional moments - but for whatever reason that is logical and makes sense to the mind of a twelve-year-old, I stopped caring that day, stopped emoting, and decided that my life was better served by not showing what I feel to the uninitiated than to go about showing others what was going on inside of me.

That is not to say that I don't feel. In truth, there is a wellspring of emotion that goes on beneath the surface. I would imagine that if people saw the exterior and then jumped beneath the surface to see what was really going on (a lot of the time) the dichotomy of emotion and lack of showing would become rather transparent. Know me long enough and you know when I am going through something; but the outcome is and may always be that I just don't show what I am feeling. I very much show what I am thinking, but thought and emotion are slightly different and, as stated, the outcome is that I don't show the emotion.

I don't know why this is suddenly so important. Some weeks ago the girls in the cast of Crimes of the Heart decided to tease me about not showing emotion. Oh, get me on-stage and I can show a pretty good range of happy, flustered, angry, upset, whatever, I know what the emotions are, I apparently know how to show them, but remove the stage and have normal, everyday human interactions and I don't show anything. Put me at a card table and deal the cards, papa's come to bluff. I'm probably not that good, but the truth of the matter is that I don't feel it necessary to show a lot of what is going on internally.

You probably need more.

Well, at twelve I'd somewhat recently discovered Star Trek. Yes, Star Trek. Not Star Wars (though I do recall seeing the first movie originally in the theater), Star Trek. Captain Kirk, Bones, Mr. Spock. Mr. Spock is a Vulcan. Vulcan's are a highly logical race of beings that inhabit the planet Vulcan. Mr. Spock was the juxtaposition to Captain Kirk. Kirk was emotion, Spock was logic. I don't think any iteration of Star Trek or any iteration of any science fiction television show or movie has ever put emotion and logic together like that. It was genius. Where Kirk could go off half-bent, Spock was there to ground him. Where Kirk would fall in love, Spock was there to remove the hormonal imbalance. As the series progressed through three season (and eight movies, or was it seven?) Spock got to show more emotion and Kirk got to show more restraint, but the origination of the two polar opposites with the conscience of Bones thrown in, the mediator of the two, absolutely genius.

I don't go out of my way to watch Star Trek anymore. If it's on and I have nothing better to do, sure. I'm willing. But the truth of the matter is that I don't have the need to watch that show. I grew out of a lot of science fiction. I grew out of identifying with a lot of the elements to science fiction that draw young men (and young women) to it. You stop identifying with Spock or Kirk and find other heroes in other places. My heroes are real, tangible, alive people who make mistakes. My heroes are special to me. Spock stopped being special round about the age of 15.

However, finding Star Trek and Spock was a defining moment in my life. It was probably one of the defining moments in my life. And there I was sitting in an English class, I'd probably just gotten in trouble at home, this was one of the first classes of the day, I was an awkward twelve year old, one of the other kids in the class may have said something to me about my hair, the glasses I wore back when, me being me, and the combination of bad grades (because I wasn't focused) and a bad home life, and a series of other events, to include being hyper-emotional as a twelve-year-old, came together and the outcome was seeing a picture of my hero, Spock, and deciding that if a Vulcan can lose all emotion and emotional ties, so can I.

Twenty years later I would love to know how to reverse that. I would love to be able to go back to that younger me and put my arm around his shoulder, tell him that in twelve months my home life would change drastically, that things were going to get better, and that I didn't have to shield myself from the world by not feeling. But I can't. I can't go back to that young man and tell him anything. The joys and pains of being in the real world, in a real environment, with real people, and real science, where the laws of physics and time actually mean something, and where theory cannot be spun off into some weird tale of rebirth and renewal. I don't know that I would want to go back to that young man, it was, after all, Texas, but I do know that in a moment of despair and depression I made a choice that has followed me throughout my entire life.

I can look at you, I can feel something, and unless you are one of the anointed, you will probably never know the difference. I can count, still, on one hand the number of times I've cried since my mission. I can count between the two hands the number of times I've wanted to cry and couldn't. I know what it feels like to stand next to someone and to have them need me to emote and not being able to do it. I know what it does inside of me. I fear dying a little more inside every time someone needs that from me, or I need that from me, and not being able to deliver it.

There are justifications for the lack of emotion. I am supposed to be a leader of men. That's what I've been told throughout my life. I show that on occasion. In the lack of leadership I can step up and step forward. I've done it throughout my life. The religious leaders I see don't often show or express emotion. I've heard it said that the right emotion expressed at the wrong time can have a more devastating effect on the people receiving it than a wrong emotion expressed at the right time. You can forgive someone their faults so long as their faults don't offend you too wholly. You can forgive someone not showing you something, so long as you understand that the spirit, timing, the people dictate when and how an emotion is expressed. In an assembly of a lot of people it may be completely inappropriate. In an assembly of one or two or a few (less than a dozen) than the emotion can be very freeing and real and necessary.

I am in a pit of my own digging. I like a lot of the people I am around daily, weekly, nightly, and on the weekends. They joke around with me and I wish I could give more. But twenty years of conditioning is a long time and you don't change overnight. I didn't, at twelve, immediately stop emoting. It took a long time. It took years to get to the point where I wasn't going to show that weakness. And it is only through growing up and relating to people and becoming older and having to experience that onslaught of emotion that does become necessary (off-stage) at various times that I've come to realize that two decades and an emotional time ago, I made a very poor choice that affects familial relations, it affects friend relations, it affects passive relations, and it affects the way people interact with me even through school or work. I don't emote a lot. It's who I am. It is, unfortunately, who I am.

As a closing thought, various friends over the years have told me that I am one of the happiest people they know. This has come after being told by someone that I am always mad, angry, or upset. However, friends have seen beneath the surface. Granted, to know me means to know that I have key words and phrases that can speak volumes about my emotional state, but that is to know me and some friends have gotten to know me like that:

When I go home,
and go to bed,
and close my eyes,
and rest my head,
my eyes don't crinkle
and my mouth don't smile,
but there are thoughts,
that turn the trials
to sunshine and then fade away,
because though it don't show,
I smile all through the day.

I will admit that my friends and family, in this area, deserve much better at my hands.

Posted by smokingpen at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In high school I was one of a few members of the LDS church. My freshman year there was Jeremy, Greg, Tonya, Travis, Jared, Me, and a girl whose name, for a couple of days now, David, maybe one or two more. We all went to the same ward. We all knew the same people even though we also all really had our own social groups. By the time I was a senior the group consisted of Tonya, Jared, Travis, that girl whose name I can’t remember, me, Rebecca, Justin, Steven, Jaime, and a couple of others. We were a small group. Travis was the Golden Hubble. He and Jared were in the band. Rebecca, at that point, was a junior and as I recall had made it onto the JV Drill Team and was relatively active in theatre. Tonya was Varsity Drill team. I was on the newspaper, yearbook, news channel, I lettered in football, Academic Decathlon, and a half dozen other things, including band (I don’t play a band instrument and I’ve never played football) and orchestra. Most of the other members of the church had similar accomplishments.

We were an interesting group. But it wasn’t the group I hung out with on the weekends and did things with. From freshman year forward I hung out with Mike, Jason, and Mark and we occasionally added different people to our group. By senior year Jared was in the group. The others would add the various girl and we’d do things. I am, somewhat infrequently, reminded of some of the more illicit things we did during those years and before I spent two years serving a full-time LDS mission. I can honestly say that I don’t have many fond memories of high school.

It was an interesting timeframe in my life. I disliked high school I felt it a waste of my time. I didn’t, and don’t, have any close friends. And when people talk about leaving home and never being able to return, I believe them because I left home and while my parents were still living in Temple, TX the only reason I ever went back was to visit them. I tried, after my mission, after driving semis, to hook up with the people that I’d associated with in high school, but that seemed to be a waste of effort and a larger waste of time. I had grown beyond them, or in a different direction, and by placing religion in front of person I had effectively ostracized the people I’d thought were important to me in my high school developmental years. I have to admit that I find it interesting to hear from people who place a lot of stock and a lot of emotion in the lives of their high school friends. I don’t fit into that category.

You’d almost have to be me to really understand that I’ve moved on. High school is in the past and being forced to relive those memories isn’t always a positive experience. Being forced to relive the mission experiences isn’t always pleasant either. It’s not that either experience was devoid of positive and uplifting emotional elements, it was that the overall effect of that life on me has left a sour taste in my mouth. At the same time I believe, wholeheartedly, that all teenagers need to be in a public schooling environment; and I believe that all young men, and when appropriate young women, need to serve an honorable LDS mission. I just don’t like to talk about it.

That was one of the biggest fears of having this new roommate live with me. I don’t care that he is young. I care that he is young and will need someone to positively promote a mission. Granted, he is young enough, now, that I don’t think I need to worry about it, but at some point someone is going to need to sit down and talk to him about the benefits of serving a full-time LDS mission and that person will probably not be me.

And yet, I don’t want to be negative either. Negativity gets people nowhere.

Mom and Dad (and Jared and Emily) came to see the play on Saturday and then I went to church with the former on Sunday in James’ ward. I don’t know which one was worse, my ward with the children playing Frisbee with the tithing envelopes or James’ ward with the too-young men and women trying to give meaningful (?) talks on prayer. You wouldn’t have been able to hear in either situation, but at the same time the outcome might’ve been different.

After I got tired of church Mom took me home, since they drove, and we talked. She handed me my copy of 24 back and with it the Jack Weyland book, Alone Together. It is a book about a few young people in different parts of the United States who go to school alone and who find trials through not having any very close friends because they are LDS and because they don’t party and drink.

I’m not done with the book. However, I hit a part where one of the characters asks a question, rhetorically, about popularity and her standards. Paraphrasing, “Why can’t I go out and party. If I did I would be popular.” And yet, she lived the standards. At least, the first chapter, which is starting at the end… more or less… would imply that that is the case. Why can’t I forgo my standards in order to obtain popularity or something that I want almost as much, and possibly more than, life itself? Why?

Some years ago now I had to cross that same bridge but in a very different way. Instead of dealing with teenage parties and alcohol I had to deal with my spiritual self. I had to stand up and decide whether or not what I was waiting for was worth waiting for. I was 28 at the time. An old single man in traditional LDS custom. And yet, there I was, standing there, outside of a temple of God, asking myself a question that had never come up before. Why? Why am I torturing myself when all I have to do is give up and choose to live a different lifestyle? Why?

To my problems there was a very simple answer: Quit. Stop doing what I’d been taught and trained to do that I knew was right and start living an alternative (to my way of thinking) lifestyle. Stop believing that there is a purpose to life, to my life, and start living the way many of my family members choose to live their lives. Stop. Stop going to church. Stop reading scriptures. Stop praying. Stop being the person I’d been raised and trained to be and start being someone else. It’s possible. I knew in that moment when those questions and the options were being placed in front of me that it was as easy as saying, “Yes,” to change my life and my fortunes. I knew in that moment I would’ve found immediate successes that had, up until that time, been kept from me. I knew as well as I know the sun will rise tomorrow and that it shines today, that my life would’ve been completely and totally different and I would’ve found a lot of what I’d been looking for.

All I had to do was give up. Give up my standards. Give up my convictions. Give up my life and everything would’ve happened for me. And I knew, in that moment, that if I’d given up and done what I felt I should do at that moment that the one thing I really want out of my life would be gone forever. I would’ve found success and failed at the exact same time. The choice was easy and hard all at the same time because I stood there wanting my life to be easy and I chose to go over uncharted territory and past uncharted waters only to end up where I thought I’d started ten or so years ago.

I could’ve turned out like my friends in high school.

By the time we were seniors Jason and Mark had both found women who wanted to sleep with them. By the time we were seniors Jason had already gone through one AIDS test. By the time we were seniors they’d found ways of buying, or stealing, alcohol and on many weekends they would go out and get drunk. I was rarely, and then never, invited along on those weekends.

My life, even then, was different from theirs. I can name all of the girls I’d ever gone out with. It started, at 17, with Joanna. She was a member of the church. She lives in New York now with her husband. Then there was Kristen (I think) who was a Jehovah’s Witness. Well, her mother was. We went out a couple of times and then broke it off when I wouldn’t kiss her after a church dance. During those years the memory people kept of me, from the church, was my outgoing nature at youth