Another Monday - Waking Up at 5am

For the past few months, with very few exceptions, I have been waking up very early. I’m having trouble sleeping anyway and I’m trying to pin down why. I know I am under stress, but after 8 years in the ad business, I should hope that I am used to stress.

I feel very anxious. I am anxious to get things moving, to build my company, to get started on client work. To prove that this idea of mine will work. But I think that stress has been an important reason that it’s been so much easier for me to get up and get going each morning.

Anyone who is thinking they'd like to become a morning person should try just getting stressed out of their minds. It's like starting each day with a Red Bull, Jolt Cola, and 2-3 cups of coffee.

Excitement and Feedback

Saturday morning around 9:30, after I’d been up, exercised, had my own breakfast and made pancakes for our kids, my wife walked into the kitchen and I started telling her about a great message I got from a potential client on LinkedIn. I may have blurted. It was probably too much, too early for her. She looked at me over her plate of pancakes and said, “I haven’t seen you this excited about work stuff in years.”

I want to believe she was saying it with support and empathy, though I may have detected a note of bitterness in her still-groggy voice. I like being in a positive place. I choose to make the best of the circumstances I’m in. I refuse to let myself get bogged down by what isn’t going right, the things I wish were happening, the problems I can’t control, and the outcomes I really can’t affect.

But she’s right. I’m motivated by what I’m doing right now. It’s great to be able to say I’m building something for myself and doing work I believe in. That gets me excited.

Instant Message

Instant Message by Shawn P. Butler

---

In dark circles we danced,

Beating drum faces,

Drawing sonorous courage

Through malleus and incus,

Around campfires, circling,

Beating back fears and shadows

With the sound of our clapping

And primitive bellows.

We learned—shouting together,

Clapping hands on each other—

Though alone, we could feel

Not alone, when willing, together

To break silence with sound,

First with noises, then voices,

Then instruments and music,

To connect the disjointed

In a harmony of engagement.

Interactivity unrivaled by men.

Connectivity beyond the ages.

Each man in line for his turn

To turn and to taunt, to rant

And wave—the audience, prisoner

Before the stage.

The end of an age:

When you knew me and I knew you

By smell and touch, and other senses

Unnamable. That’s what it meant to connect—

A word so misused, it’s become senseless.

To connect, not just with words

But the human condition,

Was simpler before silicon, fiber,
and electromagnetic transmission.

The upright animal reached out and spoke

And shouted to be heard throughout its cave.

Now that shouting continues, not ending, but echoes

To reach cave after cave after cave.

That cavernous cave is the enemy, now.

No walls and no ceiling
Stop no echoes

And offer no protection.

At once every voice is heard everywhere

And at the same time, so in listening too much,

We are deaf all the same.

So we stare at each other, no more fires, no more dancing

And we are alone all together, yet still altogether alone.

Did the dark really die? Did the fire win the fight

To block out the lonely, the fear, and the night?

Did we replace one beating for another—

Trading drawn skins for plastic keys?

But we’re still drumming. Still making ourselves heard.

So communicating, but not listening,

No, not to hear but to feel

Like we are not alone

In the dark.

Generating Story Ideas

I am a long-time fan of Writing Excuses. In fact, that podcast deserves its own post, it's been that important to me.

To attempt a metaphor, it really has been the difference between running in an occasional 5k for fun or exercise versus being on the cross-country team with a coach making me do drills and train for better times at longer distances. That makes perfect sense to me, but it boils down to going from "wanting to be a writer" to actually getting the training and doing the hard work of learning how to write.

Starting in Season 10 of the now 8-year-old podcast (they're writers, not mathematicians), the 'casters begin running the show "like a master class in genre fiction," complete with homework assignments. I'm not one to pass up a free master class, especially if I can get it from writers that I admire and respect. So this is my effort at keeping up with the homework.

The homework assignment for Episode 1 and my completed answers are below. Feel free to steal these and become famous! I just ask that when you get published and make it big, you leave a comment below and tell me the name of your book so I can go buy it :)

Write down five different story ideas in 150 words or less. Generate these ideas from these five sources:

1. From an interview or conversation you’ve had
2. From research you’ve done (reading science news, military history, etc)
3. From observation (go for a walk!)
4. From a piece of media (watch a movie)
5. From a piece of music (with or without lyrics)

Generating Story Ideas:

1. Brandon Sanderson talks about how he worked one or two rather inconsequential jobs while he practiced his writing and wrote like a dozen novels. His story goes on to him becoming a published and very successful author who quit working to write full-time. I think there's a story about a person who takes the small-time job and does the writing, even getting his books published and making some money at it, but never gets to the level that he "quits the day job." Twenty years later, he's a multiple-time published author with many fans (maybe not millions) who is still writing, but now he's twenty years into a lackluster career. He interviews for a job and the hiring manager says, "Look, you're not the most qualified guy for the job, but I really can't pass up the opportunity to be working with the author of "Taste of Glass" (or whatever his big book is called)."

2. I read an article about trans-human evolution--fascinating stuff postulating that man, as we now are, is not the culmination of the evolutionary ladder. Which would make sense if the supposed primordial ooze's ultimate destination was a Grey-like being with vast intellect and minuscule muscularity. But what if mankind was never God's intended apex species? Like the dinosaurs who "ruled the earth" while unevolved man was swinging in the trees, what if man is just the sitting ruler of a planet destined for something that is still on its evolutionary path?

3. It's not new, but I'm often fascinated with the idea that some of the little houses, shacks, cottages I see might just be the clever camouflage of a much larger, obviously clandestine, structure buried beneath the ground. With a network of surface structures serviced by long, rapidly moving, omni-directional elevators. Controlled by a rival government faction.

4. I watch no TV and few movies, but I read Scalzi's "Old Man's War" and, recognizing the heavy borrowing from Starship Troopers, imagined a new rewriting of the now-tropey "see the universe, blow it up" storyline. Facing the cliche overpopulation of Earth, now the recruits travel to the far reaches to colonize populate-able planets via a Star Gate/Teraport that is, surprise, actually a virtual matter translator. The humans are being decoded into virtual humans in a Matrix-style computer-simulation of the universe where they are led to "think" they are fighting aliens, but in truth, are merely experiencing a matter-compression process designed to free up space on the organism-sustaining hard drive that is planet earth.

5. A song I like right now but do not understand at all is About a Girl by The Academy Is... 

One song about a girlCan't breathe when I'm around herI wait here every dayIn case she'll scratch the surfaceShe'll never notice 

I'm not in loveThis is not my heartI'm not gonna waste these wordsAbout a girl

I have to assume that these lyrics refer to the singer's predicament of finding a beautiful girl trapped beneath the surface of the pond behind his house and are an effort to explain his dilemma of not being able to hold his breath for more than about 31 seconds, not to mention his inability to speak under water, wasting his breath trying to garble unintelligibly to the pond nymph in his backyard.

Oh, I just watched the music video here and realize that I was way off. Couldn't have been more wrong. I really though I had this one.

Now What Should I Be Doing?

I am in a weird place. For so long I have always had this one huge, indomitable project pressing on my shoulders and nagging my subconscious. Well, this weekend, Saturday morning to be precise, at about 4 AM, I decided that I had finished my novel. I closed my laptop and went to bed. I slept really well.

A few hours later, I got up and made breakfast. My poor wife is sick, so she did not play into these scenes. I fed and entertained our children. I took them to the park, and then to McDonald's. We had a nice enjoyable day. That afternoon, back at home, I was sitting with my wife. I was holding her hand. She looked miserable. I said, "I don't know if this means a whole lot to you, but I have to tell you... I finished my novel."

She may have nodded. She may have just been sleepy. She said, "That's great." Then she asked if I could take care of dinner. I totally get where she's coming from. I finished writing. That's great. Now what?

Time to unleash it on the world, right? Well, at least a few innocent, unsuspecting friends. I made a short list of the people that I know who I would trust with something like this. People that I'd shared my secret with, some of them only very recently. And I emailed them the Word doc and asked if they would read it.

It feels so odd to be done and now, just to be in the waiting phase. In fact, it was so weird, that I stayed up all night on Sunday and made mountains of edits! Then, I emailed out the new revised version to my involuntary beta readers on Monday morning. Now I'm just in the waiting phase... so how come I keep re-reading parts of my manuscript?

Self-diagnosing Insomnia

I never get enough sleep. I was falling asleep at 9-ish when we put the kids to bed, then I laid down for the night by 10:30 (my target bedtime) and lay awake-ish until after midnight. My mind was replaying the day: thinking about my Sunday School lesson, which I was able to recall in surprising detail, thinking about what I’d said to people at my uncle’s announcement of his pancreatic cancer, thinking about how I would market Leadgenix, thinking about how Dr. Everett would present his findings on the decline of the Maya. It was a jumble of vivid, important-feeling thoughts going through my head.

My wife was fast asleep not 3 feet away. I wondered if her being there was keeping me up--like the light coming in around the blinds that I know is there even with my eyes closed. Out of respect for her blissful dreaming, I felt her presence weighing on me, pushing against me, driving me to curl up at the very edge of the mattress, the furthest point on the bed from her. It was after midnight when I finally got up, went downstairs, got a drink of water, and spent the rest of the night struggling for sleep in the guest room. 

It was a poor night’s sleep, I know that. And I was awake again around 5:30 and walked back up to my bed. She asked if I’d been up all night when I came in and I answered that I’d slept downstairs. I felt guilt in my voice as I added, “I just sleep better down there,” as though I had been up to something. I really don’t understand why I can’t get a good night’s sleep. I have this general sense of anxiety, especially on Sunday nights, that makes me think it might be work-related. But I don’t really have that stressful of a job. I’m not sure why I lie awake at night…

Heroic Stereotypes

Just watched a TEDx by Colin Stokes where he explains that Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz wins the fight with evil by being nice to everyone and being a leader (incidentally, of a team of men). Dorothy was not the hero of the story because she was the best at fighting or using a special power or type of magic. 

I agree with Stokes on this. Movies and pop fiction are often sending the wrong message: “Is a hero’s job to defeat the villain and collect his reward (that is usually a woman who has no friends and doesn’t talk)?”

That last bit in parentheses is a reference to the Bechdel Test that most movies fail.

Bechdel Test - 1. Are there 2 women with names and lines? 2. Do they talk to each

other? 3. About something other than a man.

Among Stokes' conclusions was this: “A real man is someone who trusts and respects women and stands up against a real bad guy (that wants to hurt women).” That is the kind of leadership people need to see. 

He also says this about Obi Wan: He knows more than anyone else and shares that knowledge.

Stokes assigns some of the problems he identifies to Joseph Campbell and “The Mono-myth” - The Hero’s Journey from The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Stokes notes that the hero is typically white, male, straight, and able-bodied. The truth of his words is powerful. http://youtu.be/OyM-2_5cmkA

Loneliness and a Dream

I am sitting alone in the dark, as I often am. I have “work” to do that I’m not doing. I have put aside this bit of time so that I can finish my novel, but I am having trouble knowing where to work, what to add, how to really get it done. 

I wrote most of this about three years ago. I wrote some of this about 10 years ago! Holding a novel in one's head is surprisingly hard work. I feel too tired or scattered to unravel all of the pieces I’ve put down for three different books and which parts I’ve told or changed or plan on telling later. It’s a surprisingly intense mental effort. I don’t really know if I have a reason for why, but I just want this book to be great and to sell and to have someone tell me it was worth writing. It would mean a lot.

A Matter of Perspective

It's amazing how much difference a little bit of time makes. Here's a blog post I started writing two months ago: 

September 5th, 2013 - I have a secret. I am meant to write novels. I have been hiding my secret so that I could support my family. I actually don’t like the fact that I want to write. I don’t want to turn into a writer. I’ve met people who say they’re writing a novel and they make me sad. I’m in a form of denial, not realizing that I am holding onto the same sad dream.

For so long, I have had the voice in my head that told me I would write. Whenever I heard about a new successful author, or read a new book, or discussed books being made into movies, I heard that voice: “I could do this.” “This isn’t that great.” or “This guy is getting paid for this?”

I have so much self-doubt. I wonder why I’m doing this. I wonder why I think that I could do this. I have failed at things before. Why wouldn’t I fail at this, too?

My definition of success has to keep changing. It was about money. Then it was about fame or prestige. Then it became a matter of escape or freedom. Now it is a matter of survival. I can’t face 35 more years of trying to hold a job working at some company for some sort of boss for a paycheck and PTO.

Right now, I am living the story I will tell. And if it’s sad and tragic, that’s only because it’s such a good story.

Church is the Drill

What if the Church is like a language primer, giving you exercises and programs that exist to teach you the structure, the sound, or the feeling of living a life centered on Christ, just as you would be given phrases to repeat and worksheets to write out until you get the feeling of the structure, sound, and feeling of a new language? Then, the goal of the church is not to make people who have their Duty to God awards (or Personal Progress medallions), but to create people who understand how to serve God and what it feels like to give to our fellow man.

About getting a PhD, I once thought, focusing on getting the degree and finishing grad school is like taking pride in shopping for a really great drill. I want to do my homework, I want the drill to be the right drill for the job, I need to know what it was designed to do and how to use it, but I went out to purchase that drill so that I could build with it. The shed in my yard, the new shelves in the garage, and the numerous tasks around the house that needed the tool are the reason that I bought the drill. Buying the drill was not an end in itself, but a specific tool to help me achieve the real end. In marketing, we say that when a man buys a drill, he's actually buying the holes it makes-- this is the distinction between the benefit and the product.

Church is the drill. It is the PhD program. It is the training wheels for what we're trying to eventually do with our lives-- the real end to be achieved. For me, the real end is nothing less than to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. In ward conference, President Gordon said, "Our mission is to help God bring to pass his work and his glory. The gospel is to love and to serve."

That is lovely and simple, but it is still too vague. If I asked 100 people what it means to love and serve, I'd get 100 different answers. So that is why most everything else in the Church exists-- to help us correctly interpret and understand that most simple statement of the church. Christ gave his answer to the plotting question of a lawyer:

“Master, which is the great commandment in the law?“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.“This is the first and great commandment.“And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” Matthew 22:36–40

Love God and love our neighbor. It's that simple. And how do we love God?

“He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father” John 14:21

Keeping the commandments is loving God. Obedience to God is loving God. Loving our neighbor is loving God. The Church's goal becomes to show us how to love and show us how to serve.