The Worlds of James Vesping

I am a failure. Yes, you read that right: I am admitting I am a failure.

Why do we fail? Sometimes, we just didn’t try hard enough. Maybe we didn’t have the experience necessary. Perhaps the conditions were just wrong. Whatever the cause, the end result is the same: failure. But we shouldn’t fear it; failure is common and it is necessary. To fail is to indicate that something wasn’t right — that, for reasons we don’t understand at the time, the conditions for success weren’t there. That isn’t a personal slight, that is simply life. Sometimes we can do everything right and still fail.

My mother once told me that she was the world’s greatest quitter. She rarely held a job for more than a few months before quitting, with the longest she ever held being after college for 3 years. She quit that one for much the same reasons I quit club fed: it drove her to absolute madness. For people like us, working with others is a difficult grind, especially in person. Something about us just makes others dislike us, for reasons unknown. Perhaps appearance; mannerisms; speech; or some other aspect of our character. Whatever the case, it makes jobs difficult. As a result, we quit a lot — and fail a lot.

For 5 years now, I’ve been writing novels. I started when I still worked at club fed, mostly as a mechanism to create that was easier to do than a lot of my other hobbies. It didn’t take a lot of preparation and I could go as slow or as fast as I wanted to. It was a way to make sense of the machinations within my mind, to make those nightmares I always had to be good for something. As things got worse with my job, the harder I wrote. As the rage built up, so did the words. After my grandfather’s death, my mother suggested I try writing full time; I didn’t think it was a good idea, until I had a vivid dream of suicide.

It’s a hell of a thing to die by suicide. In the United States, it’s the 10th leading cause of death. Many factors can drive it: loneliness, poor health, lack of opportunity, community — even jobs. Especially jobs. I can remember my suicide quite well: a stainless revolver, rotating around to my forehead, then the cylinder rotating and the shot going out. Everything goes blank and I felt the bullet trail through my skull. Then I woke up. I decided that it wasn’t worth dealing with the unending discrimination at club fed; it wasn’t worth dreading going to work every day, dealing with the endless stream of nonsense by lazy, fat, government bureaucrats who made sure everyone around them were as miserable as they were. I gave them one last chance: I still had a mediation scheduled with the director the next month, so I told myself that if he could at least not lie to me, then I’d stay.

The director lied to me. “I can’t do anything about them,” he told me, when I asked him about why my two bosses were allowed to discriminate my hearing. That isn’t true — it’s far from true. The proper words were: “I don’t want to do anything about them.” I handed in my resignation that afternoon, simply saying I had a better opportunity elsewhere. I lied, of course; there are no opportunities out there for people like me. There is only worse and slightly less worse.

I sometimes wonder if I actually am alive and that dream was reality. That I’m not really here, writing these words. That this is death and simply an extension of what things might’ve been like. Ever since my mother died, it’s felt as if things are steadily slipping out of my grasp and reality is slowly falling to pieces. Nothing makes sense — and how could it? How is it supposed to be anything but fragmented chaos? It only makes sense as words in a story.

As Terra completes another rotation around Sol for the third time since my mother’s death, I’m just as lost and confused as I ever was. I am a failure, yet I still write these words, hear these thoughts, and draw these breaths. It will never make any sense and perhaps it’s not supposed to. I continue marching down the path of failure, for no other path exists. I am failure, and failure is me.

As I write this, it is the last day of the year 2020. I’m not going to lie; it’s been a bad year for a lot of people. There’s been a worldwide economic downturn, a pandemic, and a huge shift in most everyone’s lives. It has been a huge and challenging time for the world and I’ve no doubt it will be no harder next year. But for us, time is finite. We are not given limitless amounts of it and you never know how much you really have, from start to end. Sometimes, it seems as if those who do not deserve it have an abundance of it, while those who clearly deserved more have it all cut short in tragic circumstances. It all seemingly mocks us, as if to hammer home the point that life isn’t fair and it never will be. Or is it?

As I’ve aged, I’ve less looked at life at being about whether or not it’s fair; it simply is. You have a life and a certain amount of time and it is up to you what to do with both. You may use then to accomplish nothing more than that which makes you happy; you may utilize them to reach for the stars and create grand works of humanity; or you may use them to simply sit back and rage about how the hand dealt was unfair, unjust, cruel, and so forth. Whether or not these are legitimate uses of either is not my job to decide. Nor is it for anyone else to judge. You, and you alone, determine whether or not life and time are well spent.

There are those that say a life not spent pursuing traditional paths are wasted, that getting a good job, a home, a marriage, and starting a family are the only way to live a meaningful life. There are those that say that the only life pursuing is doing that which makes you alone happy — that no one but you is important in the world. There are those that say unless you do everything in your power to serve humanity, you’re a waste of subhuman filth and how dare you think of only yourself. Don’t let popular sentiment determine the path you take. Everything should be done in moderation: consider others, but don’t neglect yourself; work, but don’t let it dominate your life; pursue your own happiness, but remember that of others as you do so. Walking that path is the difficult part and we all stray now and again. That’s part of being human — making mistakes.

Time, like life, is what you make of it. A year, like any other, can be good or bad. You can decide to take this time and call it the worst period ever, or you can simply take it for what it is: neither good nor bad, but merely time. And time, like our lives, eventually fades.

On October 4, 2010, I got up early for my first day working for the Department of the Army, part of the United States Department of Defense. I had made sure that everything was ready: my car insurance was up to date, drivers license checked out, nothing bad in the car, etc. as I didn’t want to be delayed at the gate. I had been on post a few days prior for a security background check, which I had my father take me on post for as he was a serving member of the Guard at the time. This time around, it would be all me.

My destination was the CPAC, Civilian Personnel Advisory Center — the place where all civilian employee affairs were handled. That morning, I had been scheduled for my swearing-in, whereupon I would swear allegiance to the United States Government as well as the duties of office. The CPAC was in temporary housing at the time due to flooding in their main office, so I stopped outside the post’s airfield and parked across from an old OH-58C helicopter, long since abandoned as a gate guard. I was apparently quite early and there was only one person in the office, but they were helpful and gave me the paperwork I needed to fill out. It was more of the same that I had filled out in the months prior; full name, social security, maiden names, what I had for breakfast, did I howl at the moon with a rubber chicken, and so on — the usual government paperwork in triplicate.

After the paperwork was filled out, filed, and forgotten, the final part was swearing in. What you’re supposed to do is face the flag, hold your right hand up, and repeat the words that the official says while standing next to you. At the time, I didn’t have a hearing aid in my left ear, so I was completely deaf out of that side, and my implant was still a processor from 2004 — not the latest and greatest tech. I asked the official if it was OK if I asked him to repeat the words if I didn’t hear them. He said that was fine, so we got started and I proudly repeated the words, stopping a couple times for repeats and clarifications, before it was finally complete. For the first time in my life, I actually felt a sense of pride: I was contributing toward my country, an ideal larger than myself. I was actually doing something good for the people, for the nation. My youthful idealism seems so quaint in hindsight, but that’s a topic for another time.

Once my swearing in was done, I was released for work, so I reported in at the building I was told I’d be at the week prior. I met a bunch of the people in the building, who were mostly network cable and phone installers, my boss, and my coworker. Pretty much all of them were — and are — excellent people and we got along great. My boss was the wild card, someone who you really weren’t sure why they were there. He wasn’t a bad person, but very much out of his element. Well-meaning, but inept. My coworker, on the other hand, had a lot of experience under his belt and his head in the game — a very customer oriented person. He was that way because he had hated how civilian employees had treated him when he was serving in the active army and refused to be that way himself. Into this came me: a deaf man in his 20s, on a student position, with a degree and a certification under his belt, with little real experience in the IT field. Lots of theories, short of practice. Yet I was pursuing more education than either my coworker or my boss had, on a student position that mandated I maintain half a course load — on my own time. It made for a very surreal start.

The first week was strange. I couldn’t use a computer, as you needed the Common Access Card to get online, plus an account on Army Online. Getting that took a couple days, then even more time to get an account at Army Online — because my father was a service member, my account’s approval was somehow tied to him, and I had to get the authority to verify it transferred to my coworker so I could finally use a computer. That took two days and lots of frustrated calls before it finally got sorted out. I did so much “training” — holy cow, did I do “training.” Sexual harassment training, computer usage training, IT policy training, management training… All of which was thoroughly useless and only used as a “check the block” sort of deal. Little did I know that I had 6 years of that to look forward to.

By the end of that first week, I thought I was finally on the road to doing something real and tangible with myself. I wasn’t going to be the useless deaf guy, leeching away from the country; I was actually going to contribute. I was going to help the United States Army, and by extension, the people of America. My idealism knew no bounds — I might not have been wearing a uniform, but I was helping all the same. Finally, like my father, my sister, and my grandfathers before me, I was serving the country with honor and distinction. That idealism, so long part of my core values, was finally in a place where it was not only appreciated and understood, but also embraced by others. Or so I had thought.

Predators come in many forms. Sometimes it is very obvious, like a lion, a tiger, a bear, or a spider. Other times, it is more insidious and subtle, harder to detect. I had unwittingly walked into the trap of the latter the moment I had sworn in. You see, for many people, the idea of serving in the government isn’t service to a grander ideal — it’s all about them and what they can get out of it. These people look at those with ideals and manipulate them for their own ends. I was young and impressionable, full of idealism, and ripe for the harvest. Cracks started to form, small at first, then growing larger as time went on. It is only in hindsight that I look back at myself and find anger within for not having seen it sooner.

The first exposure was seemingly innocent at first: I had worked there for almost a month, getting good results and doing good work, settling in and becoming comfortable. My coworker saw this and felt it was wrong that I was in a mere student position when I should’ve instead been a full time employee. There was a full position open in our section, one that paid far more than I was making, as well as no student requirements. He brought me aside and taught me how to fill out the application to ensure that I would be on the “list.” As with much in personnel resources in the modern age, what determines your ability to get into a job is not your skills or experience, but how well you can game the system. In this case, fooling the automated routine. Essentially, it’s about padding your resume as much as possible, using key terms from the job description to make the computer mark your application as “high potential.” You look at the job listing and copy entire parts of it, filtering it down to keywords, and putting them all on your 10 page long resume — which, by the way, contains as much ancillary information as possible. Doing this, I was able to make the first list, but not the second — as everyone does the same thing, you’re up against the people best capable of spewing nonsense, not the most skilled person for a job.

That first application turned into nothing and we were eventually stuck with one of the worst employees ever hired on to the section, all because the system is not composed of idealists, but predators. You see, when your system encourages dishonesty in place of honesty, lies in place of truth, and shadow in place of light, you will find that the very people you get in such a system are not those with integrity, but those with no morals and ideals beyond themselves. In the end, you are left with nothing but evil — a simple, petty evil, but evil nonetheless. At the time, I simply ascribed it to my own lack of experience; my coworker was far more irritated, saying that it didn’t have to work that way. I now know he was right, but that’s beside the point.

Ten years later, what should’ve been something to look back on with fondness, has turned into something that fills me with shame. Shame that I was part of a system that so willingly embraced evil. I curse myself for my own stupidity, my narrowness of vision, my own blinding idealism. And yet, despite all that, the system charges on. The system charges on because those within it feel powerless to change it. And more still within it will fight any change to it — even if it costs them their lives. A behemoth that serves itself, exactly as those predators intended for it to become.

Welcome to Club Fed.

Once again, time has crept up on me and rather than get regular updates out, I’ve blown off 6 months worth! Then again, it’s been a pretty hairy 6 months.

As pretty much everybody knows, COVID-19 has spread worldwide and left a ton of chaos in its wake. I had some plans set up for this year (menial job hunting, home maintenance, junk cleaning, etc.) that got pushed by the wayside due to how things turned out. In particular, job hunting has been very difficult due to everyone’s insistence on using phones for interviews, which makes it almost impossible for me to get my foot in the door. This is compounded by the general state of the economy, which doesn’t leave much room. In light of all this, I tried to focus on writing and drawing, and hopefully before long I’ll have another novel published. Small victories!

Another anniversary is creeping up on me, this time the start date of working for Club Fed. I’ll make a separate post on that date and detail a bit more about how that whole ordeal worked out. I’ll only say that the past decade has certainly gone through many twists and turns that I never would’ve predicted back then — or cared to.

As I am writing this on the last 30 minutes of this month (my time), I’ll end it here and promise to come back later.

Two years ago, it was Sunday. As per the usual Sunday tradition, I had been helping my mother clean out her rabbit cages; it was a task I had helped her with since I had left my job at the Department of Defense. In the winter prior, she had gone through some elective surgery which turned into a big mess, and I had taken care of her rabbits for about a full month. My sister had only just come back a week prior, having been deployed for the duration of 2017. So many events in that short period of time feel like a blur, all spun together in such a way that sometimes I’m not sure they were real. I don’t remember the work that day being particularly hard, easier than it usually was now that I think about it. Much like it was today, it was a pleasant day, relatively warm for March. We knew it wasn’t going to last, so we made the best of it.

After we had completed our cleaning routine, we had gone inside for a cup of coffee and my mother wanted to work on some art concepts as potential covers for The Fifth Letter. I spent some time refining a few of my own concepts, then had to leave to take care of a few things of my own. I told my mother I would see her later; she said the same.

Those were the last words between my mother and I.

That evening, the last message my mother ever sent to me was the latest work she had been doing, to get my input on it. An hour later, she was gone. I can remember the time between, having a sudden feeling of imbalance and temporarily being unable to stand up straight; I figured I was simply too tired or something, and my usual inner ear balance difficulties were cropping up. I sometimes wonder if it was just a shock wave rumbling through my world, letting me know that everything was going to change.

As a child, one adjusts to the idea that they will eventually have to bury their parents. It’s a fact of life that I saw my mother go through and know that soon, my father will go through as well. But one doesn’t anticipate sudden loss in this day and age; one doesn’t expire from an unknown affliction so quickly, with no idea it was there. But it happens and we deceive ourselves into thinking it won’t. That only happens to others and it won’t happen to us. That it is a numbers game we will all beat.

On March 25, 2018, my mother died at her desk. A problem with her heart, they said. It was sudden and quick, yet despite everything that’s happened since, I always ask myself what would’ve happened had I stayed? What if I’d put off my usual chores and stuck around a bit longer? Worked on my artwork a bit longer there? Written something? Done anything except leave her alone? Would things have been different? I don’t know; I don’t have the power to speculate. Things might’ve just continued as they did.

In the time since, I’ve been listless and aimless; stagnant and alone. I wasn’t sure if it was worth continuing to be an author, even an unsuccessful one. In this day and age, how does one make it in such an industry that is highly dependent on one’s social skills? I had made the jump because my mother had told me so as long as I wrote, it didn’t matter; she would handle all the social aspects of it. Then, as now, I was a very pessimistic individual, not prone to believing I could hack it in such a competitive industry. I often ask myself if she had just suggested I pursue it to keep me from being driven to madness by the United States Government.

As time goes on, I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort. I’m not sure if it’s worth trying to keep going, screaming into a faceless void at the edge of an abyss. I’m not sure if I’m no longer beholden to my mother’s promise, that as long as she was alive I couldn’t kill myself. I’m not sure if all those dreams of suicide during my last year working for the Department of Defense were a vision of the future or just subconscious nonsense. I keep going, in what feels a vain endeavor, towards a future I don’t know if I can be a part of. Or, more succinctly, if I want to be a part of it. I don’t know if tonight, I’ll put a bullet in my head and leave this forsaken place, continuing my journey to elsewhere, where hopefully I’m not rejected as this world has rejected me. But I also don’t know if there’s any place out there where I’ll be accepted; it often feels that there’s no place for me to go, in this world or beyond. The one thing I can be certain of is no one will miss me, which is good because I’d hate for what few friends and family I have left to cry over old bones.

It’s been two years. Wherever you are, mother: I miss you.

I had intended to make this post back on February 11, but other things got in my way and I pushed it aside. Between working on my latest novel (easy) and updating my resume (hard), I haven’t given much consideration to maintaining at least a monthly post here. So, let’s get that out of the way and take the time for a little discussion about deafness.

My story of deafness doesn’t begin with me; it begins with my grandfather. As a young boy, he began to exhibit hearing problems, and his Jehovah’s Witness father would often berate him, shouting at him to “clean the wax out of your ears, boy!” By the time he was in his teens, the hearing loss in his right ear was profound, but in 1930s rural America, there wasn’t much in the way of screening or help for him. He was drafted (for which his father disowned him) into the second world war, where his hearing loss was missed by the entrance examinations. He had told me his hearing in his left ear was good enough that he managed to stumble through the hearing test — not that they looked hard to begin with at that time. It wasn’t until he got sick in Japan that they found out about his deafness, at which point they discharged him from the army. As he got older, his hearing steadily got worse, but even in his 30s he was still able to listen to and understand the radio.

My hearing loss, by contrast, was very aggressive: by the time I was a few years old, I had profound hearing loss, with the prospect of being completely deaf by my teens. Before I hit puberty, I went through a series of treatments intended to arrest the speed of my hearing loss, which was of marginal success. My parents had tried to get me to accede to a cochlear implant in those days, but I steadfastly refused — I was terrified of surgery. Finally, at the age of 17, I finally gave in: I couldn’t communicate with anyone due to my deafness and those around me refused to learn sign language or use notes. I went under the knife and had a $30,000 procedure to install a $90,000 device that would be a “miracle.” It wasn’t.

Understanding cochlear implants takes a bit of nuance; there’s benefits, but with those come many detriments. In my case, those were made clear almost immediately after initial activation: you don’t get sound through the implant, you get clicks and buzzes. Nothing makes any sense and the first time is a huge letdown — I almost immediately regretted the procedure. But once you get one, there’s no going back; the surgery damages your auditory nerve, so you’ll never be able to use your natural hearing ever again. It took about 3 months after my surgery to actually “hear” things with it, and about 6 months before use became natural. It was about that time that I suffered the next setback: I became dehydrated and due to complications from surgery, suffered a blow out of my right vestibule system. What is that, you might ask? Good question!

We have what’s called a vestibule system in both ears; it’s an interesting little gizmo that regulates our sense of balance without needing visual cues, in addition to other functions. The particular mechanic that is used for balance is a bridge between the middle ear and inner ear and I suffered damage to this part. As a result, for a full week, I couldn’t move properly without getting sick and disoriented. After I had recovered, I found I had lost all sense of balance in my right ear; I could no longer close my eyes and maintain balance without starting to get dizzy. Like most people, I rely on the right side of my body for most day to day functions, which includes my sense of balance. It took some time to start to adjust to my left ear’s senses to retain my stability, but even today I rely upon my vision to remain stable.

After that first year, things got better and I became acclimatized to the implant, to the point where I couldn’t imagine life without it. I got my hearing back, so to speak, so life would logically follow with it — right? No. Wrong. There is no substitute for natural hearing — not yet. A cochlear implant gains back a lot of that missing sense, but it doesn’t give it all back. I still have difficulty understanding many people, and while their voices might come in clearly, the sounds do not always make sense. Sometimes it takes many repetitions before the words finally click and it all comes together. For sure, it’s better than it was, but it’s not a magic wand that suddenly fixes everything. This was especially true for the system quality throughout the early 2000s; the processors of the time, while more refined than they had been in the past, were still lacking significant capabilities. Using a phone or remote voice communications of any form were still an exercise in frustration, especially if the phone wasn’t a traditional handset type (for which most of the accessories were built for).

Still, it was good enough for college, and so I spent two years obtaining an associate’s degree with the implant. It was difficult, but I managed to stumble through it. College, however, was easy compared to finding a job: the economic downturn ruined just about everyone’s prospects in those days, to say nothing of a fresh graduate with a disability. If you want to get employers to instantly throw your resume into the trash, simply mention any form of disability and wave your employment prospects bye-bye. Even getting a simple job like pushing a broom can be an incredible challenge, though it was easier back then since you had more of a chance to get someone face-to-face. Today, it’s much harder: most employers rely on an automated system with automated voice systems to filter candidates, to say nothing of applicant tracking systems. Don’t have the right keywords on your resume, even though you might be perfectly qualified? Into the trash you go! Further, even if you do get through, they often wish to conduct informal interviews over a phone, which can be a challenge. If you ask for face-to-face, they might have an issue with that; if you do it over the phone, it’s often very easy to become error-prone, with many misunderstandings. In either case, it becomes very difficult to make it clear that deafness won’t be an impact on the job. It rarely is, unless someone wants to make an issue of it — sadly, many do.

My first job was working at a help desk, which wasn’t too bad, but my coworkers had issues with how I conducted business. Because I had difficulty using the phone, I would often take an issue and go directly to the person’s computer; my coworkers believed this was inefficient. They tried to force me to use the phone, which just didn’t work out. I eventually had too many issues with the personalities involved and so left after 2 months. It was a terrible job. I spent the next two years doing freelance work remotely, primarily website work of varying disciples, but this was a transitioning age: the field was becoming very competitive and the swarm of worldwide workers made it difficult to make a living. That came to a head when my internal implant failed, 6 years after installation.

It was an incredibly disheartening time when my implant failed; I had no health insurance, no steady employment, and without the implant, I was back to square one. As a trained IT technician with little real experience under my belt, in a downturn economy, how was I supposed to find work in my field where I wouldn’t be thrown out due to my disability? In an extremely fortunate twist, I had found out that my internal device had been subject to a recall upon failure, and the corporation that built it would handle all associated expenses with replacement. I would be OK — assuming I could find regular employment. But the story of my government employment is for another time.

In the end, it has now been more than 10 years since my last implant was replaced, which also makes it out of warranty. If this one should fail, for any reason, I will lose my hearing once again. And unless I can come up with $150,000, I will not get it back.

I write this because I see far too many people that believe a cochlear implant can fix deafness; I’m here to say that it doesn’t. It helps, yes, but there are many, many, many strings attached to it. So the next time you see a “wondrous,” “magical,” or “miraculous” video of “child’s first implant turned on,” know this: that child doesn’t “hear” anything but clicks and buzzes. It makes no sense to them and won’t for a few months. And for as long as they live, they will be a slave to that little machine embedded in their skull, drilled through and connected to their ear. And it won’t change anyone’s perception of them or their deafness.

On January 20, 2017, I resigned from my job working for the United States Department of Defense. I had worked there for just over 6 years, having started at the end of September, 2010. It was the second real job I’d ever held in my life, the first time I truly started earning a living rather than scraping by. It was far from the best job ever, but the people I was around made it worth it — for that first year, at least. Things slowly got worse as the years passed by, leaving me to deal with more and more bureaucratic types as time went on. This came to a head when my new supervisor told me that I needed to “learn to hear better.” After that, it was purely downhill for my last 6 months, going between the equal opportunity office (completely useless), my upper management (completely useless), my union (completely useless; see a trend here?), my higher headquarters (useless), and even my government representatives (thoroughly, completely useless). I’d had enough and by the time they finally scheduled a mediation between me and my director, I was ready to quit. I’d told myself that if the director could at least be honest with me, I would stay. He couldn’t do that. So, that very day, I tendered my resignation. I would not be part of an organization that embraces evil.

Evil comes in many forms. We tend to think of classical interpretations of evil: massacre, torture, rape, and so on. We ascribe it to demons and devils, placing it on a pedestal for supreme acts. The truth is that evil can be quite small as well, a tiny little thing that on the face of it may seem inconsequential. I always remember Grant Gilmore’s famous saying: “The better the society, the less law there will be. In Heaven, there will be no law, and the lion will lie down with the lamb… The worse the society, the more law there will be. In Hell, there is nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.” That’s the United States Government: process, process, process, with no deviations. Rules, rules, rules, and more rules. Only in specific, favored circumstances is this ever abandoned, and it is almost always done by those bent by their own egos. There is to be no questioning of these rules, procedures, or policies; no explanations why they exist; no exceptions granted, unless one is willing to apply an oral fixation upon the proper superior’s posterior. Or if one is somehow perceived as “better” to these superiors. Truth be told, I was never aware as to why I had to go through so many hardships to bring my serious discrimination issues up, while my coworkers were able to simply move away from problem areas on simple request. Apparently the same process was not allowed for me.

In the time since I left my employment from the United States Government, I’ve written four novels, five short stories, published the bulk of my novels, created several pieces of cover art, taken a road trip to Seattle, had a hernia repaired (that sucked), lost my mother, and gotten back into flight simulators where I’ve made a bunch of new friends. I often find myself angry when I look back at how I was treated, but then I have to remind myself that had I remained, I would have lost out on an entire year with my mother — time that I never would’ve got back. I probably wouldn’t have completed those novels or short stories, never completed those art projects, or met those people in flight sims. I would have been contributing to evil, no matter how small, instead of breaking out on my own path. From that day forward, no matter how hard it’s been, it has been my road, my path, my future alone. And that’s something a federal bureaucrat job with benefits and pension will never be able to provide. I’m not beholden to the thinking so prevalent among many government employees: “Just a few more years and I can collect that sweet pension!” True, I may have to work until the day I die, perhaps at menial, pointless jobs; but no matter how dull, no matter how dreary they become, I can sit back and say I at least followed my conscience, instead of remaining slaved to the petty, evil whims of a bloated, overpaid, under-worked bureaucracy. And that counts for something.

New year, new decade! The holidays are finally behind us and I’m getting settled into work again. Got the ball rolling on a third Mandate novel, which I’d been thinking about for some time. Hardly worth publishing, but I needed to focus on a story for myself again.

Here’s to hoping for a great new year and decade!

Yes, it’s true: I am not a morning person, but I drink a cup of joe between the hours of 1400 and 1600 (that’s 2-4PM for those not aware of 24 hour clocks). It is cheap instant coffee and masked with sugar and creamer, as my grandfather preferred it. I don’t bother with it in the morning as I rarely, if ever, want to get out of bed for anything. Nonetheless, I do make an effort to do so because I like to keep a schedule going with my exercise, which in this time of year means weights and treadmills. Not as entertaining as bicycles for me, but my lungs don’t hold up too well to the typical midwest winter temperatures. No, mornings are not for me, even when I got up at ~0500 (5AM) working for Club Fed. Nothing much happened before 0900 (9AM; do I have to keep doing this?) so even arriving at 0630 left me with a lot of downtime. Did I mention how much I hate getting up in the morning?

So, American Thanksgiving has come and went. I went to my sister’s for this event and figured it would probably be the usual (sit in a corner, play inside my head, nobody wants to try to communicate with the deaf guy, etc.) but one of my sister’s friends asked me about writing books. Sure, I write. I mean, I’m not exactly a best-selling author or a successful writer or even a good one, but I write. She’s got lots of good ideas and things she would like to write, but she asked if I would be willing to write it for her. Well, yeah, I could, but why can’t she? She doesn’t know how, she says. It’s easy; just start somewhere. A conversation. An event. A description. Anywhere. Anything. It isn’t that hard. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to start.

Don’t be afraid to write something. It doesn’t matter if it gets done in 5 days, 5 months, or 5 years; it doesn’t have to be a literary masterpiece; it doesn’t have to be something everyone enjoys; it doesn’t have to be a smash hit and commercial success. Just write and the rest will take care of itself. Imagine a conversation between two characters, describe a place in as many words as you can think of, think of how you could make a clockwork nuclear bomb work write out the actions it takes for a watch to change the second hand on the clock face. It doesn’t have to be perfect out of the gate and it may never become what you imagined it to be — but you’ll never know if you don’t try. Don’t worry about whether or not your voice will be heard, or even if it can be heard: all that matters is whether or not you spoke to begin with.