Post Dramatic Stress Syndrome

Day 4 of the Writing Marathon
Starting to tire today. I finding it once again to be true that when you employ more time (as in deep into the evening) on any given task, your motivation to do that exact same task the next day diminishes rapidly (a lesson for all you workaholics out there, who think your performance remains top notch after burning the midnight oil days in a row - it doesn't). So I escaped the house today, wearing baggy clothes and a 4 day beard (ouch... rough) and took a breather. This is what my day looked like:

• 6:00 Woke up, put Alex on schoolbus (well, not on the bus).
• 7:00 Crawled back into bed. Not exactly sure why, cuz I wasn't tired. Maybe cuz when I woke up it felt like I had just closed my eyes and was super awake. Have you ever had that? Strange. May have to lay off the sake I've been drinking lately.
• 10:30 Sat in my creaky chair (where is that WD-40?) and started on chapter 7. Oh right, now I remember why I finally started sleeping past midnight. I was still caught up examining my notes on the draft 3 plot I had printed out. OCD anyone? Granted though, the next few chapters need to be chopped up and sewn back together again as if it was Frankenstein's monster.
• 12:30 I'm going mad. I need a break. The bit that sent me over the edge was Zuul's first exposition. Zuul is the villain of the book and a multi-national CEO, who can only talk in business lingo. As if that wasn't hard enough, he is talking to someone I cannot reveal yet, about something I cannot be too specific about revealing emotions that have to be kept mysterious. Fudge on a stick! 
• 1:30 After lunch I decide my break is not long enough, so I decide to leave the house and go to nearby mega-mall Terminal 21. I walk around, air out my head, buy some bread and dark chocolate and enjoy a quick 30 minute back massage (for $10 !) before walking back home.
• 4:00 Crack knuckles. This sucker is going down! This is how my work space looks like (it's only slightly less complex than the material I'm trying to redraft):

So, there you have it.
If you zoom in enough you'll probably figure out a nugget or two of cool spoilers

but really... the way I'm redrafting now, don't bother;
chances are it might not end up in the final version. ^_^

• 5:45 Break for dinner. Tonight on the menu: old fashioned Dutch food. What is this you say? Ah, just boiled potatoes with gravy, chicken and brussel sprouts. Trust me, after 3 days of fried rice the kid was ready to eat something else. Besides, he gets chocolate pudding for desert.
• 7:30 Back again.
• 9:30 Wrapped up Chapter 7: Hideous Zuul and The Pumpkin Jail. So far so good. I managed to put in the right amount of 'mythology information' I wanted the reader to have, without overwhelming them or making it sound like a countdown of bullet points. This was Nancy's (my editor) main gripe. Simon, the lead character is shell shocked at this point, having been just introduced into his new magical world and also having blown up the entrance to the city by accident (you have to read it to believe it). So I hope many of the terms used are excused for the time being as Simon (and hopefully the reader) simply read past them in order to get to what comes next: the Trial of Simon.

I leave you with another few pieces of art:

What I picture my fairy tale city to look like.

Chicago as inspiration. Add the great Redwoods and voila.

Aufwiedersehen.

A Wild Start

The Wild Hunt is on. It's the start of a new year and with it comes a fresh mentality. The Wild Hunt refers to the mythological concept of magical huntsmen unleashing chaos while chasing some boon or another. To me it means a wild abandon of the conventional ways as 2011 will become the year in which I reinvent my ways. The portents are present. According to Chinese astrology this is the year of the Rabbit and by being a 'Metal Pig' myself I am destined for great things - if I work on making them happen - which I will.

While I hunt for a new purpose in the computer world (and no, nothing like Tron: Legacy might suggest) I will continue to put the emphasis on creativity. In my work this not just means finding freelance work to support me and my family financially. I will be reaching out to my local community via a pro bono 'free expert for a day' project in which I hope to garner some word-of-mouth advertising. I call this my 'i2u' initiative (look for it soon on www.marcelclaxton.com/i2u).

While I hunt for an agent brave enough to tackle the next step in young adult fiction, I'll continue plotting book 2 of the Aelemental series. Ideas that don't fit within the series will find reality on my computer in the dark hours before hitting the sack. One of the ideas I have follows from that feeling everyone has when they wander through a bookstore and sees titles which boggle the rational mind (how is it possible THAT was published). We've all had that feeling, usually followed by a notion of 'Well, if they can write a book, then certainly I can.' So, that's exactly what the book will be about: an experiment to get a book about nothing and everything written in record time, published in even less time thereafter and on your e-reader before you know it. It's all doable in on the Internet nowadays.

I have several odd projects on the side, which I will indulge in (rebuilding a rickshaw from scratch, painting a series of paintings representing the Aelemental books, the Sesame Trail maps for young explorers, three different and distinct children's series involving alternate reality Earth settings), but they will have to wait until I get concrete results from Aelemental and IT work first. There is always room for dreams, but they need to be balanced with actual real life results. But the hunt is on...and all the muses are unleashed.

Happy New Year.

No Shortcuts, Only Extensions

This is a blog from last week, that I never got to finish, but I'd figured its still relevant and allows me to get on with writing today.

There are no shortcuts in life. Period. I cannot magically produce a good novel even if I employ every trick in the book. Just as much as one cannot achieve lasting happiness through other people, money, gluttony or abstinence or reading The Secret. And I cannot reach the river from soi 13 other than backtracking through dead-end streets until I gain access to another soi.

The longer I employ my skills in the area's of webdesign, DTP and creative design the more I find that I need to continuously hone my skills in order to keep up with the next technological advancement in these digital arts. Likewise I find that self-publishing my own creations (whether its work or my creative projects like 'The Tree of Life' and 'Sesame Trail' maps) is not just a matter of finding the magic contact within the publishing community (as we recently found out). Everything is work. Long hard dedicated work. Ten thousand hours of work a friend of mine said recently. Its not a bad thing, but there is a methodology to it. A way of maintaining checks and balances so one doesn't turn into a workaholic who neglects social, mental and physical health and mistakes quantity for quality. Finding the right focus is the real challenge, rather than throwing endless hours of dedication at any project.

I struggle with this continuously when I write as I see day after day slipping away while the chapters only gradually roll out. I have so many details packed into the story it resembles neurosurgery dissecting chapters and piecing them back together again in the hopes of getting a more streamlined story. The challenge is to accept fate (writing is time consuming) and absorb the initial 'Fight or Flee' impulse so I can move on. But every morning after my exercise and sending Alex off to school its a struggle to face the mountain of work before me, the ten months without paid work behind me and the uncertainty if what I'm doing is actually worth anything.

As I walked down soi 13 this morning I found that like many street explorations I could not go reach the other side of the road. Stuck between scholarly soi 15 and seedy soi 11, the street struggles with its identity. The result? Inhabitants at the end of the street have effectively blocked off through traffic to either streets and to the river walkway at the end. It's almost cultural protectionism that makes it impossible to enjoy the soi and they intend to keep it like that. I was followed by a housing complex guard who kept saying 'no, no, no' when I wanted to use the padlocked gate to exit the street onto soi 15. Another 'no, no' when I wanted to climb the glass-ridged wall to get to a parking lot that would ensure my escape.

Essentially he wanted me to walk back down the soi and find a legal (traffic-stuffed and sidewalk missing) branch that would lead me back to freedom. But I'm Dutch. Recalcitrant, rebellious. I refused to give in and instead slipped through a wall to an abandoned building site that kept the street from ending on the river, walked along shacks where a poor Thai family washing their baby was friendly enough to let me through their little door. Okay, so there was a shortcut. But it's not a shortcut available for everyone and I still had to work for it. Maybe it took a little courage, a little linguistic struggle, a few receptive smiles and a lot of determination.

So I see it with writing. The true work comes from research, learning and plain old improvisation that is often needed to create something new. Innovation is hard work. Quality over quantity. I hope to innovate the young adult reader market with a story that has never been told before. So many elements in the story are novel to the classic storytelling genre and for a first time writer like myself especially daunting. But its the excitement of exploration that makes it worthwhile. It's a great experiment and a lot of dedicated hours and if it even never gets published I will still have had a blast designing it. I just hope I get to share it with the world. It will take a lot of courage, smiling and determination, but I hope to convince the established order that there truly is a shortcut to success if they are willing to open one up.

P.S You might have noticed that I extended the deadline from Oct 2010 to Jan 2011. What can I say? We need to be flexible in these days of visitations, priorities, browsing and procrastinations.

And The Legs Too!

New beginnings all round. It's been a while, but I've finally taken up exercising. Our elliptical broke down a couple of months ago and the store that sold us the exercise machine was located in CentralWorld (which as you may know was torched by protesters in the May riots in Bangkok). I had for some time wanting to explore my direct neighborhood in Bangkok, but never found the time/incentive to do so. Part of it was guilt, because I had no job and Nancy was on my case about it, part of it just simple timing. But now I thought, I could hit two birds with one stone (hitting being somewhat less extreme than killing). I could walk outside for half an hour to an hour, kickstarting my metabolism right after breakfast, while exploring soi's (Thai streets) parallel to ours. We live somewhat in the middle of the Sukhumvit area, so I decided to start exploring the streets from 23 down to 1 first and then from 39 upwards (the idea that I know 23-39 like the back of my hand).

So while Simon may be stuck in a fairy tale city, I felt no such restrictions. I pulled on my yellow sneakers and just started walking after swallowing the last of my Vegemite toast and green tea. Today I explored the University District. Soi 19 has a quaint Thai university with waterways, pagodas and parks. It was a little touch and go whether I'd find my way out of the campus again as Bangkok has the annoying trait that anyone can build anything on their property even if it means blocking through-traffic. So there are hundreds of streets that simply run into a dead end, making it impossible to go from A to B other than by a handful of routes. Double backing is typical if you don't plan your journey beforehand with a map. Even then the map said I could turn onto another street, while in reality I ran into a closed gate.

It was fun though, weaving around street stalls serving hot foods from the grill, swimming up against a tide of hundreds of uniformed students and passing innovatory named massage parlors like Peep Inn and VIP Teen Love (massages by the Thai iCarly?) Once I crossed the khlong (canal behind our house) and returned home I was properly creatively rejuvenated and ready to write some Simon. Getting out of the house does that. Experiencing life away from the digital reality is much more rewarding and get my Muses all riled up. And it makes sense. Where else can you find better descriptions for smells, sights, sounds and feelings than int he real world? And it makes no difference really that I'm in Bangkok writing about a boy in Germany who will travel to Latin America with fantastical friends fighting supernatural villains. All writing in my experience has autobiographical elements in it.

So today when I revise the passage of Simon, Alix, Maya, Karl and Sesame traipsing through the forest fairy tale city of FabelInsel, he might just have to wade through clouds of street cooking, tides of fairy tale creatures and places like 'The Three Pigs Construction Co.' and 'Sleeping Beauty Inn'. Waittaminute...I already did that :)

My Buddha Needs a Drink

It's been a rather tough week as far as tough weeks go in paradise-like Thailand. Not even so much with the usual suspects like weather, politics or traffic, although they do rear their wet, corrupt and congested heads every so often. No, I'm talking about our little household. Sometimes the mechanics of keeping a household spinning around chores, finances and social engagements seems like you're running a machine that is falling apart as soon as you turn its back on it. There's a saying 'when it rains, it pours', and well, let me tell you. When it rains here, it really really pours and then my Buddha needs a drink.

I've concentrated this whole week on work. It feels like a whole week and it's only Thursday, so that's saying a lot right there. And the fact that I don't even have work, maybe even more. But I tried looking for work in the most basic of ways. Too often I try to get whatever I am doing right by immediately fine-tuning details. This often causes me to lose my way and more than occasionally to lose my focus and drive and fail to produce results.My art teacher told me a long time ago in high school: 'Stop fidgeting with the details. Commit to bold strokes first and just make something. Anything.' But I never mastered that skill. Together with a steady portion of procrastination and sidetracking (thank you Internet) and a perfect storm of going nowhere occurs on a daily base.

So not much work got done this week. Instead I got sidetracked by running school errands for my son, feeding the Thai bureaucracy time and money with work permit requests for my wife and the standard set of chores - groceries, paying bills and birthday arrangements for Alex. And this is when I didn't get sucked in by Facebook and Huffington Post. I managed to post my resume online, but not much else than that. Normally I would sit down in front of our wooden Buddha statue, which we brought with us from Sri Lanka and meditate for twenty minutes. It's not much (in effort or results), but it's a start, right? Well, now I'm just so tired, I nod off and can't stay focussed, so I feel discouraged from the start. And he weeps for it.

Or so it would seem. It's actually the rain that has been steadily falling in massive thunderstorms since June and flooding the top floor hallway in which our Buddha statue rests. Thai's like giving their deities drinks, flowers and food in ways of offerings. We're pragmatists: we just wait until it's finished raining. It's almost poetic how my lack in mindfulness and meditation coincides with the Buddha making his own presence aware, sitting in a puddle of water each morning after a cloud-bursting rainfall. My Buddha needs acknowledgment, an offering, a drink. And I need one too.

City of Work

Just came back from Singapore from a weekend with Nancy and Alex. We visited an old Irish friend of ours who lives there, but is heading back for her home country in September. We made the most of our time and got to see a little of Singapore as well. One of the things our friend said was that Singapore is very much a worker's city. Everyone is mindset on making a career and spending all there time working and making money. Being Irish I could see how it was hard for her to socialize in such a material society.

It must have rubbed off on me because even though we had a lot of fun, I find myself concentrating on finding work this week. So little to no writing, but a firm concentration on updating my IT skills, my website and scourging through tons of consultant opportunities on the Net. If you know of any vacancy in the webdesign biz drop me a line. In the meantime the Muses get to rejuvenate in my mental spa and we'll see how far I get next week.

To Multi Task or Not To Multi Task

That is the question.

Actually there is no question... and no this is not some Zen saying. I just have to do it. I have been struggling these last few weeks with redrafting and I kept on getting frustrated not knowing where the problem lies. I just seemed to be making no progress combined with the fact that I really wasn't enjoying writing anymore. At first I thought it was because I was going at it too methodical: trying to divide my day into looking for webdesign work and writing, so I started dividing my week into 'looking for work'-days and 'writing'-days. When that didn't provide me with the necessary inspiration and page count I started looking for alternative venues: writing somewhere else, writing something else, reviving my daily blog and sometimes just not trying to fight it and giving up on it. Especially this last resort (giving up) seemed to work in the past: if you have the choice, do whatever you feel the strongest pull towards, whether its writing, painting, reading, yoga, meditation, work, chores etc..

But eventually I got mad at myself. What if this inspiration simply doesn't turn up in time? Sure I can invest time in plotting out Book 2 or even non-series related stories, but I have deadlines to meet. My time of luxury is running out. I will have to work a normal IT job soon again and if Nancy doesn't have a manuscript to edit when my timetable fills up, I might run the risk of having to shelf the project for another year or two. No way that was going to happen. I got so mad I forced myself to write. Not always a good idea, but not a bad one either as I got to understand what it exactly is that I don't like about redrafting. It's hard work. Whereas writing fresh is a process of letting your imagination go off in all directions with wild abandon - in essence playing - redrafting is disciplinary and focussed - aka work.

It boils down to this: of the original 30 chapters, the first ten are a mess. Written over 2 years ago, they have little 'flow' and are a stuttering mess of story elements trying to get somewhere, further impaired by a poor beginning writing style, cardboard characters and mixed with Nancy's writing style. She did after all put her hand to writing the first 1/3rd of the book before we decided I should write it in full first. So there are 3-4 versions of each chapter that need to be meshed together and re-sampled until they are consistent with the style I got used to later. Furthermore there is material to be added, cut and separated, because we also decided having one  character viewpoint instead of jumping between several ones doesn't make for exciting reading. And at 600+ pages my intent to cut overshadows the intent to add. Also this means I can't just read and edit, I now have to read, splice, cut and edit AND add whole new writing to the mix. Bottom line: I have to multi task - and in my opinion very few men excel at it. I dislike it by definition.

There is a silver lining to this dark cloud of redrafting. Discipline, focus and multitasking are hard, but it will get easier. The 2nd 10 chapters thankfully already have included the concept of switching viewpoints between chapters to enhance tension and they incidentally also contain the largest chunk of story I'm about to omit. It shouldn't be too hard to cut unnecessary scenery without sacrificing essential character building. Also I won't have to add much, further simplifying the 'write for yourself' (=drafting)/'write for the reader' (=redrafting) contrast. The 3rd 10 chapters finally benefit from much more experience in writing, familiarity with the characters (so their actions and dialog are more consistent) and a 'race to the finish' story wise (which doesn't need too much editing). So it will get easier over time, but first those darn first 10 chapters - oh, I mean 20 new ones (my estimate giving me a total of 71 smaller chapters this time around for the whole book as opposed to the big clunky 30 of the first draft).

Hijacked by Life and Death

Has it really been 9 days since my last post? I guess so. Where once I wouldn't be caught skipping on a day of blogging, infatuated as I was by the premise of 'Julie & Julia' now I find myself once again resorting to a more practical solution of blogging when I can. Life and Death had a hand in taking over my time this week.

First on a tragic note: a good friend of ours, a young mother of two who has been battling cancer for some time now, got really bad news that there might not be much time left. She was also leaving Bangkok so there is a good chance we might not see her again. This played very heavy on all of our minds and so we all grouped together to offer moral support and at the same time spend some quality time with her. To make matters worse her husband very likely failed to deal with the reality at hand and had found refuge with another woman, something that she had already known for some time. It was very strange to realize that our friend, even though confronted with the worst possible scenario still decided to forgive him and asked everyone to not confront her husband for the sake of her children. I have seriously not met a more noble and forgiving person. Emotions ran high this weekend and with the amount of people flying in to visit her and with preparing for her trip back home, while still making hospital visits, I simply decided to take away from sitting behind my computer and connect on a more personal level with others.

When my own mother passed away a couple of years ago, due to a wasted body that simply couldn't keep up with the after effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, she left me with a few wise lessons. Never the one to preach, she rather taught by example. She made me realize that life does go on and we can only find happiness by accepting the reality as it revolves around us. A down to earth Dutch mentality was something my mother always exhibited when it came down to emotional matters. We connect with them, but never lose ourselves in them, waiting patiently for the emotion to run its course , after which we pick ourselves up and move on. So with that in mind I find myself once again staring at my old dusty resume and freelance website, which I have to freshen up in order to find a job. I haven't let go of my idea to reinvent myself professionally, nor of Simon & Sally, but I realize that everything has its place and if the time isn't right, the universe and all the forces within will let me know when it is.

My unfortunate friend as well as my mother were both very driven women. I admire their drive and ambition, mainly because I have always struggled with it myself (hence the pride in this one big thing - Simon & Sally - that I am set to follow through to the end). However I realize that too much drive and too much ambition is also not good. Whether its a burnout, physically or mentally, or worse, I believe our bodies are simply not equipped to deal with such pressure. Regretfully our society is ill equipped to balance leisure with work, rest with activity and peace with busyness. The sheer Western doctrine towards work and achievement is one that thankfully takes a step back in a society like Thailand. Creativity, smooth and easy interactions and a gentle disposition reign supreme here - even if underneath there is a disconnect with their Buddhist mindfulness and compassion. So I am motivated more to listen to my own rhythm, which in turn tries to be in tune with what feels right at the moment in the universe.

This means Simon & Sally will be redrafted when it feels right and the Muses sing loudly enough again. This means I will find work when the time is right and all signs point towards it being beneficial. This means all is well in the world if I take time to meditate and rest, besides honing my IT skills, reading up on writing tips and spending time with Nancy and Alex. This means living and discovering Life is in balance with accepting the reality of Death. And not just literal Death. I also meant the Death of old ways and habits, the influence of an outside world gone mad with bottom line profits and the pressures it brings. The Death of creativity by hands of ambition and ego. We all get hijacked by matters of Life and Death. The trick I found is to accept what we cannot change, change what we can and find the wisdom to distinguish between the two. Therein lies, if not happiness itself, a moment of peace....and perhaps a blog post.

Soft Work. Period.

Soft Work. That's the conclusion so far that I've come up with this week. I did not write on Simon & Sally. Not a single word. Instead I tried to find work, or rather the concept of work and how I see myself in it. It started, as you know from my previous blog entry, with me refusing to give in to the rules of society concerning work. I do not want to be enslaved by the labor-money mechanism as I have for the previous 15 years. I don't believe in its (im)moral underpinnings and many others agree that its time has now past. They should give way to a more enlightened way of skillful work. I read (and suggest reading) the following:

• ChangeThis:  A site of friendly manifesto's set to made you think about the status quo of the world today. As they say: 'We are against demagoguery, dishonesty, shortsightedness, superstition, fundamentalism, unequal rights and violent argument. We are optimists and we believe that an informed, motivated electorate is likely to do the right thing, given the facts and given a chance.'
• Seth Godin: An intelligent author and 'social analyst' (as I'd like to think of him), who has some fresh views on marketing, change and work.
• Gaping Void: a site by Hugh McCleod, an artist who is 'interested in how art affects what some people call “The Real World”- the work place, the world of work, the world of business.'

There are more people out there who think along the connecting lines of creativity, work, society and change, and the best way to find them is surf along the links above - it's how I did it. You will be surprised what interesting ideas these men and women have. 

Anyway, the reason I bring this up, is because these sites have stoked ideas in me that were always burning on a low fire, never fully realized in their potential to change the direction I need for my life. Until now. Simon & Sally, I realize is a symptom of a larger problem I need to address. I can no longer with good conscious be satisfied with a job that conforms to any particular one industry (IT, writing, art, fill in the blanks). I can't do contracts anymore. Or hour counting. Or weighing pay versus effort. It doesn't even matter that I am no longer in a 9-to-5 job, but have chosen the road of consultancy or freelancing. I need more authenticity. I need happiness in what I do.

These are the new 'rules' by which I want to play (yes play, not work) in this social reality:

1. I want to express my creativity. First and foremost, because my Muses demand it, but also because I feel creativity is in every one of us and without it we are merely cogs in a machine waiting to be replaced by an actual machine, which is faster and cheaper (and better looking) anyway. Luckily our society has like never before since the Industrial Revolution been ready to embrace creativity. It has to. There is no more way for it to survive without it.
2. I want to collaborate instead of becoming institutionalized. I have already done so to limited extent by becoming a freelancer, but the threat is continuously there to once again become a cog in a company machine by offering up all my freedoms in a desperate attempt to get a project. I need to be strong in my convictions and say 'NO', when I want to. Clay Shirky, a technology guru with a striking resemblance to Tom Hanks (I bet he's sick of hearing that) propagates that this is where we are right now anyway, or at least heading to: a collaborative effort of information and skill sets rather than a rigid exclusive set of institutions. Go ahead and look him up on TED.com.
3. I want to find the balance between effortless effort and free discipline. Now, these two concepts sound very paradoxical and therein actually lies the challenge for me. Effortless effort relates to employing an activity that comes natural and allows me to create/change in order to benefit others around me. When this effort becomes 'work' in the least motivated manner, too much stress and strain occurs for me to actually enjoy it. But when it's in line with what I want and enjoy it becomes effortless. On the other hand I realize I need to sometimes push myself to adopt new skills, methods and routines in order to get where I want to go. Who doesn't right? This is discipline. We all need to put in the work to reap the benefits. I would however like to be free of outside pressure in deciding how to do this and over what time period. If I can strike the right balance between what I do now (effort) and how to proceed to future effort (discipline). I am there.

Above is what I call Soft Work. Hard work after all has the negative associations of workaholism and resistance, both of which are massively counterproductive, not to mention deeply unpleasant for everyone involved. According to Hugh McLeod to further your dreams you should never give up your day job, but I disagree. I think this is just another excuse to give in to your fears and remain a cog. You can't have both your dreams and your safety net. In today's changing social working environment ideas that jump out are the ones that succeed. It's no longer a matter of luck, it's the norm now. No mediocre person or idea is going to attract business. If I can create an amalgam of what I enjoy and what will constitute my 'job' I can live my dream and earn from it. All I need is to be creative to find the right formula.

Simon & Sally is a set of ideas about society, told through the eyes of teenagers, packaged in a heavy dose of mythology and fantasy. Those ideas I could easily examine within a collaborative conceptual work-related movement, which I could spearhead myself and then spread to others through a website. Not unlike PlentyofFish.com I could then connect and share this passion with others, all the while giving sponsorship to companies, who like to be associated with such a concept. The concept could be anything: Better Environment, Social Volunteering, Fighting Disease, Building Houses/Wells, etc. People love to do good and companies love to be perceived as such. This too is Soft Work: investing disciplined effort into a social cause wearing your heart on your working shirt sleeve. Why not? 

And if I actually do decide to move forward with Simon & Sally in it's purest literary form? Well, I might just e-publish it through one of the many online publishers. I mean: e-books are on the rise. Or otherwise maybe change the format and the game myself in which their adventures (and message) are offered to the world.

The Universe Strikes Back

I did it again. I had to let the universe know I was about to storm full-steam into the creative writing process. It punished me by pushing my nose fast and hard into the grindstone of reality. I had laid out the 5 books I wanted to 'power-read' my way through in order to get a few lessons in writing children's books and redrafting/fine tuning my skills and had started reading them. Then this morning, as I'm working my way through Stephen King's 'On Writing', I was reminded about my role in the family household and how I had not brought in my share of paychecks since November last year when my final IT project came to an halt. I got this from both my dad and my wife and believe me: they couldn't be more polarized in opinions about life, the universe and all in between.


So what does this mean to me, when people who normally wouldn't agree on anything both think I should be inserting myself once again into the rat race, fighting in this current economic climate to pinch out a living? Perhaps sacrificing the one opportunity I've had in years to be unabashedly creative and intensively motivated to share my story with the world? At first, because I love my wife beyond anything on Earth's green soil and the sky above, my first reaction was to drop everything literary and start scourging the Internet to release its every byte of freelance offerings for desperate IT experts and webdesigners. But after a good two hours of digital scrambling I ran out of steam and was not the least bit horrified I had found myself at sites offering 'work at home' filling in surveys and answering phones....and for a fee no less.

Is this what I want? A job for the sake of having a job? A paycheck, however thin, to prove I am a dignified working person? Contributing to funds that, let's face it, for the most part will be used for entertainment purposes to mentally check out from the very job I'm doing? This was wrong. And then I remembered a good friend in Holland had sent me a presentation from Seth Godin called 'Brainwashed - seven ways to reinvent yourself'. This simple manifesto sparked something within me. Read it yourself and see if you agree. It basically makes the case that we've all been programmed by education and upbringing to think that we need to follow the rules of society or die a social death. Aka: work how society wants you to work, for pay they determine or cower in ridicule for not doing so. The very realization of this entrapment however is also its promise of release.

Companies like Google and Apple, inventors of social dating and networking sites and in fact a great many of free-thinking self-made successful men and women in various industries have discovered something cool. Overcoming the primal fear of failure and learning from it when it occurs, they have discovered that if you stand convinced behind your unique idea, you are the one who sets the rules of the game. Seth calls this: Connect - Be generous - Make art - Acknowledge the lizard - Ship - Fail and Learn. Be bold and use the technologies of today to connect with ideas and resources around you. Give and share your idea freely and attract motivated like minded people to gain momentum. Make your art whatever it may be. Face up to the fear, but don't succumb to it. Present it boldly. Turn any failure into a learning lesson - in fact learn from all steps along the way. We all have something unique to offer and by employing positive methods of rethinking and retooling how we present ourselves to the world we might just find our path to happiness and success.

So what does that mean for me? First of all I have to stop thinking in traditional values and terms. I am not an IT guy who wants to write a children's book. I am wildly creative, smart enough to handle a wide set of tools to express this and in a position to fail and learn from it. As such I need not choose between writing a book and finding a web design project - why can I not do both? I can find what it is exactly that drives me to tell this story of Simon & Sally and make use of my expertise of over 15 years of IT skills to present it (and myself) to the world. This should even transcend methods that only cautiously approach (and mimick) such an reinvention like e-publishing the book while finding a web design gig for... hey, maybe an e-publishing site. No, I'm thinking larger. Bolder. Fresher!

I don't know yet where this train of thought might lead me, but one thing is for sure: I have discovered the mechanism of my personal reinvention and am feeling the shackles of conventions of yesterday's set of rules fall away. Now all I need to do is keep this train of thought going and use the energy to make it work.