Attention Starved (Or, How I Failed Driver's Ed)

Lighten up, Francis.

I’ve told this story a dozen times in my life and everyone reacts in the same way. “How the hell can you fail Driver’s Ed?” I wish it was a simple answer, and one that was much funnier than what I’m about to lay down. 

I took Driver’s Ed in tenth grade.  In a half-year class, we would split between ridiculously easy and redundant classwork and driving cars in a parking lot.  Passing the class meant you would receive your Florida driver license, and all you would need is to go to the DMV and have a crappy picture taken. Everyone did it, and I took the class assuming I would do the same.  I aced the classwork, but when it came to going out to make sudden stop maneuvers and parallel parking, I froze.  I sat and watched as everyone else took turns slowly learning how to drive in leased Oldsmobiles.

The teachers were coaches first and foremost, and when I just sat to the side when it was time for practice, they just ignored me. I refused to go and they allowed me to do so. Day after day. For weeks.  When the semester was over, they gave me the failing grade I deserved.

Why didn’t I drive?  I was petrified.  Why didn’t anyone offer to help?  I don’t know.  I was fifteen and scared of everything.  I wasn’t just afraid of cars, I was afraid of adults, other kids, school, the world…  But it didn’t matter.  I did the same thing in my Chemistry class.  I remember a hand-written progress report to this day.  After an “F” was circled for my grade, it read: “Reads novels in class.”  He was right.  I was in my Stephen King phase.  It, to be specific.

So, what did my parents say when they saw my grade?  Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.  They said nothing because they never saw my grades. They never saw them because they never asked for them. My brother and I grew up in an environment where we weren’t exactly the focus of the household goings-on.  Sometimes, I believe, we weren’t even an afterthought.

But this isn’t about bashing my parents. It’s about attention.  I needed it and I never got it.  We like to believe as adults that there is a way we can suck it up and just own the shortcomings of our upbringing.  There is a strength is realizing what you lacked and then moving on with your own life as you see fit.  I’m on board with that.  But, there are a few wrinkles to that process.  The primary one is that if your ability to own your problems in itself was affected by the events of your past.  It’s like conducting brain surgery on yourself. (No, it’s not…terrible simile.)

When I was thirteen, a few years before my ill-fated Driver’s Ed class, in the snowy confines of Upstate New York, I was sledding with my cousins.  My brother and I spent the afternoon riding on snowmobiles, dragging behind them and having a good time.  When we were about ready to pack it in, I remember sitting at the bottom of a small incline in my aunt and uncle’s back forty.  I was alone; everyone else was heading inside.  For some reason, I feigned an injury.  I think I may have rolled my ankle, but I wanted to pretend that it was more severe. I wanted to wait right there until someone noticed I was gone.  Eventually, my cousin came back and gave me a ride on the snowmobile.  I think of that moment all of the time.  I wanted so desperately for someone to miss me.

When you need attention and you don’t get it, it is like you are a non-person.  You think of yourself as invisible and not worthy of anyone’s time.  If you take up someone’s time, you constantly feel as if you are intruding.  You don’t belong there because you don’t belong anywhere.

 I failed Driver’s Ed because I was anxious, and I accepted that no one helping me through it was how things should be. I was used to being unnoticed.  I look back and I’m pissed at those asshole football coaches disguised as teachers, but I mostly have a melancholy feeling. I was sitting there, alone. So many hours wasted feeling like a pile of dog poop.  For no reason at all.

If you’ve met me, it doesn’t take long to figure out I’ve lived a long life of attention- grabbing.  I loved comedy and comedians, I like to perform, I like to be funny and tell stories and be open and silly.  That’s not the entirety of me, but it’s a sizable chunk. I also married someone who requires almost no attention, leaving me to own the room, in a sense.  I might not need the attention like I used to, but it is so ingrained in my personality that I don’t know how I would separate it from myself.  Sooner or later, I guess we do become our defense mechanisms.

I hate projecting my issues on the world, but I have to think there are millions of people who would be convinced to make better choices if they just have someone listening to them. It’s not a universal cure; but just imagine if more people felt noticed, appreciated, heard.  This, in particular, kills me when I think of it because it is so easy to fix.  It doesn’t need congressional approval or a budget.  It’s a people thing. It can be accomplished for free.  Reach out to those who have a hard time doing so.  Communicate.  Listen.  These are all basic actions that we could all benefit from.

The following summer, I took Driver’s Ed and got an A.  I believe the way I got through it the second time was to think to myself: Failing Driver’s Ed is stupid.  Let’s not do that again.

Hank's Guide to Coping with Time Travel

Cover art & design - Jo James

Hello there.

I’ve completed the first book I want to put out it the world, via the interwebs. If you are reading this, you’d like to know little bit more about the book and how I came to write the thing.

This is the synopsis I’m going with:

            Hank Lloyd is bored and rudderless, and he just got his ass kicked by his girlfriend’s ex. What to him was just a depressing night at the emergency room is actually considered a pivotal point in American history --- thirty years in the future. He is soon visited by three people who reshape his entire life in one night: a military strategist, a Ph.D., and an astrophysicist (who also happens to be the mother of time travel).  Soon he will learn that he is the central character in the possible overthrow of the government, and that time travel can be used to not only alter human events, but it’s an excellent way to reinvent yourself. 

            Plus, it’s funny.

            I’m not a big science fiction reader, but I am a big science fiction watcher.  I love the movies. The books I read are usually, well…unusual. This book, with those influences mixed into a fun gumbo, is more human and personal than spacey and epic and Asimovy. I have loved time travel for as long as I can remember. The very first story I ever wrote, when I was twelve or so, was about a time traveler.  I’ve chronicled the how’s and why’s of the genre for a few years, and I decided to put everything I love about it into the type of story I’d like to read. If you’re looking, you should be able to find nearly every trope explored somewhere.  If I’ve missed any, they will turn up in the sequel which will come out in the spring (-ish) of 2016.

            I wrote this story because it’s the type of thing that got me thinking about stories in the first place.  After the Hank story is done, I have different ideas in mind. Writing is sincerely one of the weirdest things you can do with your time.  Those of us who are hooked know how ludicrous it feels to smash keys with sore fingers after you’ve finished a full day of work doing the job that pays the bills. But you do it because something keeps sucking you back. Earlier this year, I gave in.  I put aside my other fun distractions to focus on more time alone in a room thinking about fake stuff.  I want to spend the rest of my days doing this, and I’m happy that this is the first step into the wilderness.

            It’s probably not smart to give spoilers away, but I can at least say that Hank’s Guide is a fun book. It’s meant to be a fast-paced read. (Unknown writers are better off keeping their stories to a limited word count.) I kept that in mind while I wrote this and made notes for a second book.  Dammit, I can do what I want!

            If you’re still reading this you either know me personally or you are very interested in reading the book. I appreciate both groups. (I’m new to the writer blurb thing. It’s surprisingly difficult to write about yourself and something you’ve made.)

            Enjoy it, share it, review it, pass it on.  

I Love Time Travel – Part 23 – Doctor Who – “Blink”

It’s known as one of the best, if not the best episodes of the new series of Doctor Who.  Hands down, it is my favorite episode.  I watched it again recently, while I was desperately looking for something to pass the time on Netflix. It was just as good as I thought it was the first time.  I’m hesitant to burn too many details, because it’s such a good one.  Needless to say, if you like any aspects of the time travel genre, this may be the best singular episodic TV story using time travel ever. No shit.

Television provided a few dabbles into time travel, but nothing earth-shattering. Lost played with it, and it worked when it was pulling at the heartstrings more than invoking true terror.  Quantum Leap was a show I never liked, but I guess they screwed around with it.  Star Trek played with it some…a few times.  I guess what I mean is, very few shows have the central conceit that realities can be affected by altering timelines.  Most shows use it as a gimmick, or as a way to move characters into new challenges.  Doctor Who is specifically about altering timelines.  He is the last word in conflict resolution, from the beginning to the end of eternity.

The reason “Blink” is so damn good is that it incorporates so many fun tropes into the story, and it works.  The main character is played by Carey Mulligan, who I am currently in love with, who also supports the bulk of the work in the episode.  That’s the thing.  I love the show, especially David Tennant’s Doctor, but he’s barely in this one!  The Doctor is second banana to Mulligan and the idea of time travel itself. It is also the first use of the coolest baddies the series has yet to come up with, the Weeping Angels.

If you aren’t aware, Doctor Who sometimes features alien beings who live in the abstract.  The angels have developed two noteworthy and crazy attributes. One, when they are seen, they are statues.  Actual statues. But when you take your eyes off of them, even during a blink, they can move at near-lightning speed.  It’s a sci-fi game of “red light, green light”. But what they do to you once they reach you is even better.  A touch from a Weeping Angel sends you back in time forever.  Maybe 100 years, maybe 50, who knows?  They do this to feast on your “potential energy”; the life you left behind.

Dude.

Not to mention, when they get frozen in mid-attack, they go from angels with hands covering their faces, to full-on demon head monster fangs.   But you can’t look away, or they’ll get you!  Such a great idea. 

Ah man, I want to write about the thing with the DVD’s!  The note on the wall…the doctor’s messages. Shit.  I shouldn’t have even broached this subject.  To explain it would kill chunks of the plot…damn it.  I’ll try.

Okay, so…Mulligan receives a message from the past.  Her friend…no, shit.  That blows it, too. Crap. I can’t really tell you anything.

Screw this.  You have to just see it.  If you’ve never watched the show before, this is as standalone as the episodes get.  All you need to know is that The Doctor travels through time in a big blue box with a companion, and, as described in this episode: “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause and effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it is more like a big ball of wibbily-wobbly timey-wimey...stuff.”

The Unsolved Mystery of the Sewing Box Poop

Not even sure if he could crack the case.

Life is full of unsolved mysteries.  I’m referring to those events in your life that are missing essential pieces of the story as it pertains to you.  Who egged my house that Halloween? What happened to that cool dude with the blonde hair who dropped out of school?  Why was my boss really fired? 

They can be benign and sweet, like the unknown person who recommended me for a job as a projectionist at the art-farty movie theater in Orlando.  I got a call one day, around 1992, and the manager said I was referred to him as a candidate.  I had a job already and declined, but I never knew who did me the solid.  Conversely, in 1987, we lived outside the district of my junior high school.  My brother and I had the option of going to school an hour before it started and getting picked up nearly three hours after it was over by my very tired mother, or going to the shittiest school in the district. We opted for the former. One day, some unknown student squealed on us. It caused an entire maelstrom of crap for my mother, who had to talk to the county and adjust custody with my dad, and I don’t know what.  We eventually got to stay in that same school, no thanks to some unknown middle school prick.  Thanks for that, by the way.

But nothing compares to the biggest mystery of my childhood.  My brother and I discussed this a couple years ago and we were a little fuzzy on the details, but to be honest, I trust my memory and my details.

Sometime in the year 1984, we lived in a rental house on Yates Street in Orlando.  My parents, my brother and I were out for a while, most likely at the beach, but it could have been something else.  That’s not important.  What is important is that we were out for an extended period of time and the house was locked. We came home, my dad opened the door, and we were immediately punched in the face by an intense smell.  It filled the entire house, which only had two bedrooms and stretched only a handful of square feet across.  Holding our noses, we spread out to find the source of the funk.

I did not find it.  My brother says he found it, but I remember it was my mother who received that privilege. On her sewing box, she discovered a turd.  A piece of doody. The box was located in my parents’ bedroom in the corner, on the floor.  It was the size of a shoebox and contained needles and thread and whatever other stuff my mother kept around to sew stuff. But that day, it was adorned with shit.

The first theory was that this gift was from an animal.  We had no pets at the time, but maybe a neighborhood cat found its way in.  However, my father insisted this was not the work of an animal.  He presumed it was manmade. I never saw it myself.  The box was whisked away to an outside trash can.  Candles were lit and Lysol was sprayed.  But we never figured out who or what did it.

Who would do such a thing?  If we had enemies that severe, why would they break in and take a squat on my mother’s sewing box to show their disdain? Why not the living room or the kitchen?  Why not just break a window and steal stuff?

 Later in life I thought about my dad, and his affinity for Busch beer.  Or, perhaps one of his work friends pranked him. But not only would the alcohol required to shit on a sewing box have killed him, he would have had to commit the crime before we left. No dice.  And I think if a friend did that to him, my dad would have been probably been convicted of murder that day.

It wasn’t us, it wasn’t an animal, and we don’t know who it could have been. There are no new developments.  This remains a 31-year-old cold case.

There is no way to summarize or find meaning in this. It will forever boggle our minds and we will never know what exactly happened that day.  It is what it is.  And that day, it was a piece of poop on a sewing box.

Gross.

Self-Doubt is (Still) My Default Setting

Thumb is in California, camera is in Oregon.

Everyone fights with self-doubt. It’s natural, it’s human, it’s part of life. Unless you are a billionaire douchebag running for president, you have moments in your day where you just aren’t sure of yourself.  The common salve for this pain is to simply believe in yourself. To me, that’s like telling someone who is struggling with obesity: “Hey, don’t be fat.”

Self-doubt is nothing unique, but there is a subset of people, of which I am a member, where self-doubt is the underlying theme of one’s life.  Everything in our lives has doubt attached to it at its inception, and we have to fight to reverse it.   All. The. Damn. Time.

Daily, I have to remind myself of the things that aren’t broken in my life.  I have plenty, too.  Things are thankfully going well these days, and I’m appreciating this and aware of this. But these are actions I must take.  I don’t wake up feeling awesome.  I need something to kick in and tell me things are cool. My default setting is dark and gloomy and impending doom.  Hey man, today you have some work, you get to work on your book and this weekend that movie comes out that you want to see. I am reminded that things are going well, then I can feel happy for the rest of the day.  The next morning, it starts all over again.

When things aren’t going well, (in my pre-Zoloft days, was almost all the time in my head) self-doubt, and all the sludge that comes with it felt oh-so-normal.  Nothing was worth the effort because if I had anything to do with it, it was going to suck.  My writing was just journal entries; bitching and moaning. 

Everything changes when I understood the importance of decisions in your life.  Not choices; I’ve never liked that word, really.  I don’t care about the options out there.  The options are where all of life’s arguments begin.  What I mean is, the decisions you make to live your life the way that works for you.  You make those decisions and you deal with the sacrifices and consequences that come with them.

Self-doubt is nothing but “I’m not sure.” A decision can be interpreted as “I’m not sure either, but I’m doing it anyway.”

So, that’s all cool. 

However, just like an ex-smoker chews gum or eat Twizzlers to satisfy the oral fixation that still plagues them, there are plenty of behaviors us self-doubters don’t even realize we possess.  Even if we have a handle on the doubt, we have a lot of shitty habits that still get in the way.

I do not know how to promote myself.  I have a nearly finished, fun book that will be thrust out into the world in a month or two.  A confident person would already have a marketing strategy in place to promote and hopefully sell this book to as many readers as possible.  My brain won’t even let me think of that.  Honestly.  Every time I try to learn about that shit, I get distracted by Facebook, something on TV, a squirrel outside of my window. 

Self-doubt is saying: Who the hell are you?  Who would read your dumb shit?

I should be in a writer’s group.  It would be great to have a few outside opinions and I need an opportunity to meet people. I am not in one.  They exist; they’re all over the place around here. I can’t bring myself to join. It doesn’t matter that the room is full of people in the same boat as I am, thinking similar thoughts.

Self-doubt is saying: Everyone there is better than you.  They won’t respect you when they discover how bad you suck.

This is want I want to do with the rest of my life.  I have forsaken all the other interests and hobbies so I can improve as a writer.  I want to imagine myself as a published writer with a following.  I want to imagine myself doing this professionally, where all my work life is centered on creative ideas and figuring out stories and making them work.  My brain won’t let me think of that for more than two seconds.

Self-doubt, that unbridled asshole, is saying:  Success is for other people. It’s too late.  You’re kidding yourself.  You aren’t any good.

So what do you do?  Every morning, every single morning, you have to remind yourself of what’s good and what’s working in your life.  You can’t give self-doubt an inch of room.  This process is exhausting, but the alternative is…well, I don’t know what the alternative is anymore, so that’s a step in the right direction.

When Your Spouse Is A Friggin' Nerd

Guess which one's the nerd?

My wife gave me a wonderful gift a few weeks ago.  We were attempting to cool off near our window AC unit on a particularly annoying August summer day.  Neither one of us are summer people, and the will to go and do and be and live eludes us until mid-September or so.  She asked me: “What are your favorite TV characters of all time?”

For some people that would be an inane conversation starter, but for me, it is something that could keep me occupied for hours.  You, see, my wife is married to a nerd.  She, herself is not a nerd, nor is she nerdy.  But after a few decades of living with one, she understands the potential that having one around can present.

I don’t want to detail the aspects of a nerdy person, or the difference between a nerd or a geek, or the fact that just because you liked Iron Man doesn’t make you anything special or not special. To be completely factual, I’m only part-nerd.  There are many aspects of pure nerdliness that I lack, or have abandoned.  I know when to let stuff go.  I know how to pick my battles and avoid arguments over irrelevant horseshit. I know that this is a world only partially based in logic; that human emotions, relationships and traditions factor into everything.

My wife knows that I’m into stuff.  That is a universal nerd attribute.  We are passionate.  We have an emotional attachment to a wide array of stuff. She knows that tossing me a question about putting some arbitrary metrics to a list of my own opinion and design will begin a discussion. We’ll also find some fun in it.  It’s as if I am a dog and she bought a new chew toy.  I have to rip into it.  I can’t let it just sit there.  I need to round out my top ten, AND I have to help her round out hers. 

She boiled my nerdliness down to a few personality details.  I have a good memory.  I am full of references. And, I like the stuff nerds like.  I like fiction, I like sci-fi, time travel, superheroes, and I get all excited about all of that stuff. That’s about it.  There’s no math involved, there is no dressing up, there are no fictional languages spoken.  Pretty average nerd-cred.

For the spouse, I am the entertainment center.  It’s a deal we made a long time ago that seems to be panning out okay.  I try my best to get her hyped up for things, but it’s usually a losing battle. I can say for certain she was on board with the Lord of the Rings movies and all the Harry Potter stuff before me.  She was responsible for sending me down those rabbit holes.  She picks and chooses superhero stuff.  Yes to Avengers, no to Superman.  She does not give a damn about time travel, which was a tough pill to swallow.  But I keep trying, and I think that’s the whole point.

Unless you have another nerd in close proximity, you are left to your own creative devices to play with nerd stuff.  The internet is there, but it’s not the same.  Too many angry nerds out there who don’t know how to have fun.  So, when the Mrs. throws me something like rating my favorite TV characters you know damn sure I’m going to deliver.  And, I will be honest.  This occurred on a weekend.  If this had happened during the week, when I clearly had a bunch of work to get done, the list of TV characters would be first and foremost on my mind.  I remember my old drone jobs; frittering away in front of a computer.  When the opportunity came to make a list or solve a puzzle, all work stopped.

As it should, if you ask me.

So I am thankful to my wife for feeding this undying beast.  Good luck in your endeavors to satiate the nerd in your life.

For the nerds, here’s my final list. I stuck with TV dramas only. I kept it to one character per show, and in no particular order:

Frank Pembleton – Homicide: Life on the Street

Desmond Hume - Lost

Omar Little – The Wire

Josh Lyman – The West Wing

Jesse Pinkman – Breaking Bad

Raylan Givens - Justified

Alice Morgan – Luther

Malcolm Reynolds – Firefly

Helena – Orphan Black

Sherlock Holmes – Sherlock

405,000 Keystrokes Later...

The author. Slanty.

The first draft is done.  Okay, it’s technically Draft 2.5.  I think that might need explaining.  (It doesn’t, but I’m going to do it anyway.)

I wrote very fast back in June.  I hit the ground running with a rough plot outline complete with 3 X 5 cards.  It turns out I prefer writing all my notes in a document, but it was cool to have the cards at the beginning of all this.  When I hit the mid-point of the story, I realized how quickly I was moving things ahead, and that’s when I decided to slow down. 

I hate the summer.  I’ve never been a fan.  It’s well documented that I like the weather cool and comfy.  I started writing notes in April and May, and I wrote some backstory stuff just before I began the whole thing on May 27 or so. So that meant the bulk of my writing occurred in the hottest summer on record, in my non-air-conditioned room with a box fan set to HIGH three feet from my face.  I don’t know a lot about the life of a professional writer, but I assume one typically doesn’t have damp armpits after knocking out 2,000 words.

I felt better about the process, and I reached the end of the story in August.  However, I still had to rewrite the first half.  As I moved through the draft, I realized my attempt to slow the story down still wasn’t good enough, so I ended up rewriting entire scenes.  I also cleaned up the plot, made better connections, fiddled with the dialogue.

I finished all of that yesterday. And, the novel is still a little short.

Today begins the next phase.  If I was a more seasoned writer, I would have had the tempo down a lot earlier, and could have patiently written my story.  But this is only my fifth experience, and it’s been forever since my fourth.  Also, I had to contend with an undeniable fact. I AM THE WORST TYPIST IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. You should see the typos just in this blog entry before I went back and fixed them.  These things are usually between 600 and 1000 words.  My first draft is 72,000 words, and it still needs about 10,000 more. Imagine the amount of typos and screw-ups.

My writing time was 4:00. I posted a schedule at my desk and originally had slotted 6:00 to 8:00 for writing. I figured after dinner I have a little energy, so I’d start typing right after I finished.  The big flaw in that plan was my midday half-caf. I quit caffeine five years ago and have been drinking decaf coffee since then.  No problems.  But working and writing every day, trying to keep up with both, and knowing that you have to write EVERY day was tiring. I have to admit it. I’m 43, and Jim likes a little nap when he can get it. So, I decided to up my coffee intake a bit.  Four o’clock is when my measured dose of caffeine kicks in, so I wrote from then until I felt I should stop.  I aimed for 1,200 words a day, but it fluctuated between 700 and 2200. 

Again, why am I writing this?  I think I understand.  I love to document stuff.  I think I want to remember this process, so I won’t complain in a month or so when I bogged down with the next one.

On the topic of documentation, I also keep a writing journal.  I heard about it years ago, and I recommend it highly.  Even if your entry is just the word count for the day, you can track your progress and that can save your sanity when you hit a wall. 

After this pass, I give it to my wife to read.  Then, it has to “sit in a drawer” for a while.  You do this to give it a chance to breathe or something, and you have a chance to think about other things. The rule is six weeks, but I’m only going three or four.  Then, I see where the holes are and fill them.   In the meantime, I’m gonna read as much as I can and write a bunch of stupid horseshit for this blog you’re reading. (Or not reading. The fact that nobody reads this things does offer some creative freedom.  Why not go nuts?)

Once the story is polished (and titled, I’m still debating) it’s time to put it out there in the world. 

Then I start all over again, until my fingers fall off.

And, that’s how the tractor was made.