Tuesday, January 18, 2005
A Day Off
I felt awful this morning so I phoned in sick. I barely heard Gail and Laura leaving and as I trudged to the phone in a dark and freezing house, my warm feet pressing hard on the cold wooden Ikea floors, I knew I was doing the right thing.
I went back to bed and slept till eleven, got up and immediately felt guilty. Not over having missed work, but for having missed a potential morning of writing. It is not laziness nor is it lack of responsibility. I have managed my holidays for the year such that I now have 3 weeks left to take in under 2 months, so I am due these days off.
But the reality is, I would much rather get up at 5am and work my arse off writing, than have to go into a place where my heart is not in it, where I am bored by the people around me (mostly) and where I get no reward from my work whatsoever. Actually, I'd rather write the 6pm to 6am shift but that ain't ever going to happen in the near future.
The challenge of working in I.T. is gone, though I am thankful for the time I have spent here and of the rungs on the ladder I have stepped up in a relatively short time span. I am thankful for this mind-numbing job also, in that it has helped me realise just where it is exactly I want to be in my life – writing. If it were possible, I would gladly take a pay cut to quit the day job and go write, sell my fiction and my articles and live a life that is right for me. If that included doing the home-care bit then fine, at least I'd be happy.
It used to be that money was my main driving force but not anymore. That has been replaced by the desire to be happy more then anything else. I want to die happy, whether I am published or not. The aim is not to be famous or rich beyond my wildest dreams; it is to be happy and writing about life and the things aruond me. Learning and growing, finding out new things about the world and the people in it. Anyone who says this is a load of rubbish and my head is in the clouds, only has their own heads ful of mince, because that is the kind of thining that didn't get the human race to where it is today.
I am not a single guy any more though, and until something big happens to either me or Gail, I will have to plug away slowly, paying the bills and living for the time I get in front of a sheet of paper. So long as that fire burns within me I will keep on striving.
So anyway, I got showered and dressed and started with my email – still nothing from any of the freelance jobs I have applied for.
I wrote to the end of my planned amount of issues for the month and have hit a point where I now need to decide the direction Jackie is to go in. It’s not a major move, but will determine how quickly he hits rock bottom before bounding back up again. I also spotted a minor mistake with the name of a hotel and location of a potential scene for Jackie, so I will have to correct that tomorrow after I talk to a couple of folk.
I also spotted one huge and potentially embarrassing flaw in the story. While writing down events and significant things that happened in Scotland and Edinburgh in 1995 (when Hunting Jack is set) I realised I should have checked a couple of things in Glasgow. My memory is pretty good for detail in that era and I was correct with all the places I chose for scenes – except one. The SECC Auditorium (aka. The Armadillo) features in my story, but was not built in Glasgow until 1997 – two years later.
This would only be picked up on by the most astute readers because the time frame will not become apparent until later in the story, therefore the location would be lost as it is not part of the integral plot. But it is still a blight, and one to change when it comes to revisions. I am more annoyed at my own lack of discipline in checking this out than anything else.
I spent some of the afternoon tidying the house for when Gail got back in from work. She phoned mid-afternoon and asked to pick up Laura and collect her new glasses from the optician. So off we went and Laura looks fab in her new pink-rimmed spectacles (the last ones got trampled on when she fell asleep watching the TV).
Back home it was a usual night. I made dinner, helped Laura with her homework and got the girls settled. Laura had a mini-project to do – find an interesting fact about waterfalls and we found some interesting stuff out through Google. Apparently Laura’s teacher told the class the Angel Falls – the tallest in the world – were so named because the water looks like angel wings as it falls. Not so – as we proved.
We discovered that the Angel Falls were so named after Jimmy Angel, a pilot who crashed his plane near the falls. They were discovered by someone else (a native of Venezuela) and it wasn’t until after the crash they were renamed to the Angel Falls.
Into the night and I wrote more Hunting Jack – mostly editing and going over some missing details and facts. Gail’s back is giving her real gip so she went to bed early leaving me to write this Blog and watch a sneaky episode of The Soprano’s.
Salute!
I went back to bed and slept till eleven, got up and immediately felt guilty. Not over having missed work, but for having missed a potential morning of writing. It is not laziness nor is it lack of responsibility. I have managed my holidays for the year such that I now have 3 weeks left to take in under 2 months, so I am due these days off.
But the reality is, I would much rather get up at 5am and work my arse off writing, than have to go into a place where my heart is not in it, where I am bored by the people around me (mostly) and where I get no reward from my work whatsoever. Actually, I'd rather write the 6pm to 6am shift but that ain't ever going to happen in the near future.
The challenge of working in I.T. is gone, though I am thankful for the time I have spent here and of the rungs on the ladder I have stepped up in a relatively short time span. I am thankful for this mind-numbing job also, in that it has helped me realise just where it is exactly I want to be in my life – writing. If it were possible, I would gladly take a pay cut to quit the day job and go write, sell my fiction and my articles and live a life that is right for me. If that included doing the home-care bit then fine, at least I'd be happy.
It used to be that money was my main driving force but not anymore. That has been replaced by the desire to be happy more then anything else. I want to die happy, whether I am published or not. The aim is not to be famous or rich beyond my wildest dreams; it is to be happy and writing about life and the things aruond me. Learning and growing, finding out new things about the world and the people in it. Anyone who says this is a load of rubbish and my head is in the clouds, only has their own heads ful of mince, because that is the kind of thining that didn't get the human race to where it is today.
I am not a single guy any more though, and until something big happens to either me or Gail, I will have to plug away slowly, paying the bills and living for the time I get in front of a sheet of paper. So long as that fire burns within me I will keep on striving.
So anyway, I got showered and dressed and started with my email – still nothing from any of the freelance jobs I have applied for.
I wrote to the end of my planned amount of issues for the month and have hit a point where I now need to decide the direction Jackie is to go in. It’s not a major move, but will determine how quickly he hits rock bottom before bounding back up again. I also spotted a minor mistake with the name of a hotel and location of a potential scene for Jackie, so I will have to correct that tomorrow after I talk to a couple of folk.
I also spotted one huge and potentially embarrassing flaw in the story. While writing down events and significant things that happened in Scotland and Edinburgh in 1995 (when Hunting Jack is set) I realised I should have checked a couple of things in Glasgow. My memory is pretty good for detail in that era and I was correct with all the places I chose for scenes – except one. The SECC Auditorium (aka. The Armadillo) features in my story, but was not built in Glasgow until 1997 – two years later.
This would only be picked up on by the most astute readers because the time frame will not become apparent until later in the story, therefore the location would be lost as it is not part of the integral plot. But it is still a blight, and one to change when it comes to revisions. I am more annoyed at my own lack of discipline in checking this out than anything else.
I spent some of the afternoon tidying the house for when Gail got back in from work. She phoned mid-afternoon and asked to pick up Laura and collect her new glasses from the optician. So off we went and Laura looks fab in her new pink-rimmed spectacles (the last ones got trampled on when she fell asleep watching the TV).
Back home it was a usual night. I made dinner, helped Laura with her homework and got the girls settled. Laura had a mini-project to do – find an interesting fact about waterfalls and we found some interesting stuff out through Google. Apparently Laura’s teacher told the class the Angel Falls – the tallest in the world – were so named because the water looks like angel wings as it falls. Not so – as we proved.
We discovered that the Angel Falls were so named after Jimmy Angel, a pilot who crashed his plane near the falls. They were discovered by someone else (a native of Venezuela) and it wasn’t until after the crash they were renamed to the Angel Falls.
Into the night and I wrote more Hunting Jack – mostly editing and going over some missing details and facts. Gail’s back is giving her real gip so she went to bed early leaving me to write this Blog and watch a sneaky episode of The Soprano’s.
Salute!
Colin 10:02 pm