Ostensibly it's about trying to make the conscious decision to steer your life in a better direction. Overweight? Let's lose it! Unlucky in love? Time to find that "one true love!" That bucket list burning a hole in your brain because you were too lazy to write it down? Time to write it down! (Maybe you can work on the actual crossing off of an item or two next year...let's be realistic in our goals, after all...)
Having a son makes me reflect once in awhile on life circumstances. It doesn't hurt that the job change...and such a drastic change, having moved to New York City while my family is still back in Pennsylvania, with my wife in the same industry that I left...gives a radically new perspective as well.
Age has given me more mistakes to reflect on; for example, I see the times I martyred myself in the workplace thinking this was a way to "get ahead," to gain respect for my dedication to the job. Extra hours expecting nothing in return. Either I was doing it wrong or that's not how the world worked because the employer didn't give a damn when I left. In fact it's my understanding they replaced me with someone less experienced at the same approximate pay.
I've started thinking in terms of legacy. That's the type of morbid thinking that enters your head when you go back to an empty apartment at night after an hour on the subway; I wonder, if something happened to me, who would know?
After having left my previous employer with barely any recognition of "sorry to see you go," I wondered what I would leave behind. When a cog breaks it gets replaced. You don't know anything about the replaced cog. It was unimportant. It doesn't leave a mark. Unless it really exploded off the axle and scratched the shit out of the surrounding area, so the next repair guy is like, "What the hell scratched the shit out of this?" But really, who questions that? Unless the scratches look like Jesus or the Virgin Mary or some neat writing that summons demons or something. But that's off topic.
I also think of my parents; I don't know what they were like when they were kids or teenagers. And much of the stuff that might be interesting to the later generations doesn't seem so interesting at the time, so your memory shuffles it into the mental trash bin. I'm still not sure their favorite toys weren't made of sticks tied together with rags or some other Little House on the Prairie idea of what passed for fun back then.
Today we have more tools than ever to indulge in our narcissism. Cameras in everyone's pockets. Entertainment available at a few clicks. Outrage delivered by Twitter. Everything in our lives, for better or worse, documented by not just our government but by ourselves.
But what does this say about us? Are we nothing more than our FaceBook farts (usually shared meme images and rants about political figures, little more than the impulse to shout ME TOO to our circle of social media friends?)
To that end I want to be more creative, or at least try making something that lasts longer than I will in the world.
I've tried doing a few things so far. This blog, for instance. Very few people ever read it. My wife rarely sees me in real life as we're apart for work, but I don't think she ever reads my musings online. And my view stats demonstrates that most of what I say isn't of importance to others. But recognition isn't why I'm doing this.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get paid to write brain droppings. Realistically that isn't going to happen. What this does do, though, is highlight some of my thinking process and act as a snapshot of things I find important enough to comment on over time; my son, should he grow up wondering something about his father, can go back through these writings and see some of what his father thought and enjoyed (and what ticked him off.) It's not complete, but it's something. It's definitely more than my parents left for me to read. My little guy will have something to look back on. It doesn't hurt that this is a convenient place to leave notes to myself either.
I wrote a novel; the manuscript never generated enough interest for an agent to pick it up, but I still managed to finish a novel-length manuscript. It's been a little time...I'd have to look up how long it's been. The important thing for me is that I wrote it and the manuscript is on my computer. It actually exists. And maybe someday I'll be motivated again to try querying more agents.
I have managed to keep my self-imposed schedule creating my podcast, Geeking After Dark. It's nothing fancy; there's no varied feedback so I can't really use it as a reference for what to tune or try to improve. But I still kept up with it. Each week, one episode recorded, lightly edited and uploaded. There have been times when I ask myself if I want to continue working on it because it does seem like a lot of work for so little payoff and there have been a couple of times when I want to quit. Then I go ahead and do it again anyway.
If you're keeping count, the creativity bin has a podcast, a blog, and a manuscript.
I did have progress in creating a utility using the Go language; I scrapped it when there was a push to move to another platform altogether in the company, then that push was scrapped and I never picked it back up. The reception to the utility was lukewarm and I decided that if I was going to write something again it would have to be useful to mostly me and it had to be something that I wasn't hoping would have some kind of encouragement from others to buoy my enthusiasm to completion.
I feel like this isn't enough, though. I'm not leaving enough of a footprint to say that I was here. So this would be as good a time as any to consider options. Some things that have been on my mind...
- Write another novel. I am not a writer...oh lordy I'd love to make an income writing novels. Realistically it's not an option. But it is a possibility. People love possibilities. At a minimum I can write the story to see if I can flesh out what is bouncing in my head.
- Write another application. There's a couple things I could work on. Programming is weird...I keep shying away, feeling utterly stupid and overwhelmed at mediocre work. Then I keep going back to it, wondering if some simple task is something I can tackle. Sometimes I think the biggest challenge is the fear of simply failing, so not doing it is the best way to avoid yet another failure. Oddly enough this is also the biggest obstacle to writing a novel manuscript.
- Work on YouTube videos. I have a channel, as everyone with a Google account does by default. My channel has languished, but I am always watching videos from Ryan Connolly (Film Riot) (if you haven't seen some of his work, you really should check them out...) and wishing I could do more to learn about film editing and compositing. I don't have great equipment, but maybe I could do something fun.
Those are the big ideas I've been toying with. I think I'm going to ponder a bit more this week and come up with a "plan" of what I want to pursue, if anything, in earnest this coming year. Then I'll hopefully get through the year and promptly forget what I wanted to do. Who knows? Maybe I'll end up writing a variation of this blog post in another year...
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