SovereignConvict’s blog

Ambition. That's a funny word. Apparently, it comes from Latin and originally meant, "To walk around soliciting votes." http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ambition. Isn't that weird.

Anywho, so I've been talking about what I do. I think it's time I talk about what I want to do, to talk about the trajectory that I want to set my life on.

I need to help people. Like my first blog in this series said, "I need to cultivate an environment where I recycle all the benefits I've received in my life back to those who can best use them." As much as I try otherwise, I cannot be happy being a cultural digestive track.

Shitting out the benefits I've received from others ranks in just around what it feels like to have the "Denny's Effect." Not a pleasant feeling, I assure you.

Ambition is also NOT about resting on one's laurels. Two novels written before turning 20? Never having lied in a relationship? Tuning out the knee jerk reaction to be angry or depressed with an uncomfortable circumstance and substituting it with the proclivity to understand and appreciate the experience? Learning Japanese?

Who the fuck cares (there's no question mark at the end of this sentence on purpose). I'm glad I've done those things, but even casting them as an echo into the vastness of the Internet seems self-indulgent. It seems weak.

So, here's my plan:

1) Continue with the Gym – It's been working out great so far, and aside from even MORE lost sleep, I feel great for going.

2) Be Responsible for My Relationships – I have always indiscriminately cared for others. Unfortunately, this often lends towards creating the habit of falling into social situations that cost me more than they benefit me. I'm going to attempt to change that.

3) Write Daily – Recently, I have done a fair job of incorporating writing into my everyday life. Now, I just need to keep that up.

4) Assist Those that Will Benefit from the Assistance – I need to continue to invest my efforts into promoting those who's promise exceeds their circumstance.

5) School – I've got to continue with school in one fashion or another. The teaching credential is faster, so that's what I'll pursue first. After that, hopefully at least a Master's degree.

6) Work – I need a new fuckin' job. I can't die making as little as I do right now. Every day I will dedicate at least 30 minutes to finding a new job, either as a replacement job or as a second job.

7) Volunteer – I need to find something I can do, even if it's once every couple of months, where I'm dedicating some of my time to helping others. I would like to incorporate some of my social circle into this as well, but since we're all busy/lazy/douchebags, I don't see that one happening anytime soon.

8) Do One Different, Cool Thing at Least Once a Week – I've been doing a pretty good job of this since April when I emerged from my pseudo-hospital stay. I plan on keeping it up.

So, that's a short list of the things I want to work on.

If you're not growing, you're dying. The in-between is only in our imagination.

You'll also notice on this list that it has nothing to do with romantic relationships, which is good, because that comprises the subject of my next blog.

As far as ambition goes, I plan on pulling myself up. I've done it long enough to know it doesn't get easier, but I can only look at the alternative if I shield my eyes through the sunglasses of cowardice.

Sorry, I was distracted by something and that line snuck in. I think I'm going to leave it though…

Now, I just need to do my best to surround myself with people that will assist in this process. It's always easier to fly if everyone has wings.

I was 23 years old before I realized, really realized, that people spent their lives in an attempt to acquire money. 

Weird, huh? Not sure how I missed that one. I was aware, of course, that money existed and that there were some people that wanted to do nothing but covet it. I just didn't realize that everyone, and I mean, really, just about everyone, sells out not just to get money, but because our culture can't live without it. We don't even sell out for lots of money. We sell out for miserable sums of it.

Long before I was 23, probably around 14 sometime, I decided I wanted to be a writer. I had the concept that people had professions or jobs or whatever, and that a large amount of what we "thought" of a person was based on the career that they had.

Something about writing appealed to me. Ever since a young age, words were a mystical force.

I couldn't read until third grade. I remember one of the few teachers that I'd ever had that sucked, my second grade teacher, Mrs. Borda, wanted to retain me because I couldn't read. Luckily, my mom was convinced that my brain would catch up on its own at some point.

During that time, everyone else I knew could read. It was like there was some kind of sacred meaning, a meaning of great importance, that lay hidden amongst the strange jumble of figures on every page of every book I opened.

Then, during third grade, magically, my brain figured out how to read. No one really did anything different. No great teacher reached through the barricades of my mental dysfunction and inspired me. Nothing so great.

All of a sudden, the symbols carried meaning. They were no longer strange. They no longer, at best, barely formed a word. The connection between words appeared, and with it, my ability to connect to the material.

I found a copy of a children's version of Frankenstein in my third grade classroom. I read it and liked it. It had illustrations. I must have mentioned something to the teacher, because I recall her saying something to the effect of, "When you're older, you can read the real version."

I always hated being a kid. The second I knew there was a "real version," I found it and consumed it. I then started reading the "classics" that my parents had in this decrepit old red book collection. I think I read all of them.

Still in third grade, I read "A Tale of Two Cities." By sixth grade I was reading "War and Peace." Apparently, I no longer had a comprehension issue.

Years later, like I said, around 14 maybe, it occurred to me that writing could be something that I could do as a profession.

Like so many males before and since, the first time I conceived of writing a book, it was influenced heavily by other genre fiction that I had been able to access, comprehend, identify with, and enjoy.

I didn't finish that book.

The second book I started writing was a sci-fi book, like the first, only this one was an original concept.

I didn't finish that one either.

The third book I tried to write, though, I finished. In a paperback, it would have been about 600 pages. I was proud. Now, looking back on it, I was amazed at how limited I was. Even the concept, the scope of it, often makes me feel ashamed. Yeah, fucking shame.

A couple of years later, I decided to write a second novel (fourth attempt). I finished that one, too. It was almost a freakin' thousand pages. What the fuck did I spend my life doing? I could have been getting laid! I was like… 17 to 18 by this point.

Come to think of it… fuck writing! Jesus, I could be getting laid RIGHT NOW.

Seriously though, for some reason, everything about writing appeals to me. Through my love for writing, I branched out. I studied the art of storytelling, poetry, mythology, religion. Then I moved into non-fiction. Psychology, biology, gender studies, history. Somewhere along the way, I discovered the word, "communication."

Everything that humans seem to do involves communication. Communicating with themselves, with the world we don't understand, with others. Hell, I have a friend who routinely speaks to her cat about their living arrangement.

It's not just about what you want to communicate, though. It's also about "how" you want to communicate it. Herein lies much of the writer's struggle.

It isn't enough to create a compelling plot point or a series of interesting events. If a character is boring no one is going to care. If the words used to transmit the events and the characters are poorly chosen, then the lens of the camera will pollute the photograph. The art lies in the nuances.

That's why there's so much "genre" fiction.

Any truly great story doesn't need a genre. Space Hamlet. Battlestar 1453. Doesn't matter what it is, if the story is good, it communicates anywhere, to anyone.

Shakespeare is performed all over the planet in many different languages. Usually in English though.

Anyway, sorry to digress. All of this comes back to writing. Few things nowadays can be done independently or quasi-independently. There are millions of actors and filmmakers, but few ever get anywhere because you need at least… like a humpteenmillon people to want you to do a project and to assist on it.

Art, like painting, mixed media, etc. That scene is like Junior High if the school sold drugs.

Music. Um… have you SEEN the types of people that try to be musicians? If so, and you didn't respond with an, "Ugh!" to the visual you got, then have you ever LISTENED to the types of things most of them say? "I'm going for something really raw. Raw like sex if a chick's thighs were beef jerky milky. Ugh!" Yeah, seriously. By the way, no offense Daniel. There's always an exception to the rule.

Writing remains one of the few things that can emerge as a complete work from a single person. Writing is therapeutic. Writing makes me realize things about myself I had never seen before. Writing helps us keep track of dates, memories, how many times we've had sex, how good the sex was, and old friends long since gone even after our minds have lost the ability to reconstruct these things on its own.

Also, writing is usually lonely. It's introspective.

It changes what creates it through the act of its creation.

It isn't easy. There are debates between the meaning of a line in a song and making it rhyme. Which is more important? How do I make that work?

I'm angry. I'm sad. I'm busy. I'm tired. I'm frustrated. There's too much of me in this. I can't find myself anywhere in this. This is too honest, too personal. This isn't personal enough.

In many ways, writing is making unrequited love. The feeling is awkward. You never get any feedback that you think is true. You pour everything in your heart out. You reveal every shameful secret that freezes you with the thought of it. You hurt. You cry. You hate everything. You trace words on the page with the tips of your finger as your mind connects the indent of the pen marks with the memory of your feeling when you set it down.

You breath in every time there's a pause.

You throw yourself at it. You alter your life around it. You fixate and then wonder if you're obsessing. You walk away from it when you think you're crowding it. During the day, you hold onto any good lines you think up or hear in the anticipation of sharing them with it. You try to connect with it, like trying to make genitals kiss with slippery fingers.

Too much? Anyway, you get my point.

You do all the loving, and in the end, writing, nor any art, can give love back. It is a mirror of the soul, offering only that which we already had. Writing never adds substance, it only reveals it.

Think of the most awkward and frustrating situation with anyone you've ever had. That's an artist's relationship with their art. It's the same with writing. Writing's only difference is that there usually isn't anyone else there to help you out.

Writing is the masochist's art. But, when you feel like you've written something right, you feel like you've written something perfect.

Or so I dream it to be. I'm still waiting to write something right.

Free time. I like that the word we use for independence is one synonymous with "cheap," and possibly even "worthless."

Course, I've never been much for being a consumer. I'm also poor, so to me, nothing gets much better than "Free."

With few periods of my life not withstanding, I've gone to Lestat's almost every single day for years now.

It's a small coffee shop when compared to most European ones I remember. It's a large coffee shop compared to most Starbucks chains. It's named after a character in an Anne Rice novel. It has red bricks on the outside and lots of nice modern technology on the inside, like wireless (and FREE, btw) internet access, moving poster screens in front of Lestat's West (the music venue next door), and ashtrays.

And seats that commonly break. The entire patio is strewn with these chairs.

Oh, but the patio is nice. It's more of a small courtyard now. It's almost reminiscent of New Orleans in its ambiance. It also does a mildly decent job of keeping away the bad weather; cold breezes, burning sunlight, Dragon Shirts, and all.

It's here, out back of a coffee shop, where my friends and I spend most of our free time. I usually order an Earl Grey tea, large, definitely caffeinated. Candis orders Pepsis. Daniel usually gets coffee. Matt doesn't have a usual, other than he usually makes something effing weird.

And I guess it's mainly Matt's realm, now that I think of it. I do spend a great deal of time there, but I had a relationship a few years back that took up a lot of my Lestat's time. Daniel works, has a band, had a relationship for a long while too, and generally keeps himself busy.

As for Candis, well, despite whatever anchor tethers a few moments out of her day there, she is always moving. Lestat's is her greenroom, where the actress appears only when not on camera in the real show.

These are the main people I spend my time with there.

If our little group was made into a television show, Matt would definitely be John Hughes' hero. Candis would be the character that the audience would always like to see, but would have little screen time because good writers are like life. You fuckers don't get what you want. Daniel would be the guy that keeps everything running. And I guess that would make me the dooder that shows up on the other side of the fence, comes down from the apartment above, or calls in to give the advice that anyone else may need at just the critical moment.

There are the others that are close to us there; Charlie the Asian filmmaker, Rochelle the ex that might just punch you in the face, Victor, who's quips probably do punch you in the face, Evan, Jen, Danica, etc.

Then, there are the other employees. Troy, Nick, Longworth, Goudy, and all the rest.

I'm pretty sure that we're either a bad "reimagining" of Gilligan's Island, or "Friends" if it had aired on a network where you could violently describe Alabama Hot Pockets and Meatcubes.

Not to mention nudity. Ah, nudity. Where o' where would the world be without Monopoly… er, I mean, nudity. Certainly the world would not be at Lestat's.

No, we are heathens of the worst sort. There are no curse words to us, because we have nothing to curse. All topics are equally open to debate, and will be debated, and even if we don't like you much, we will still tolerate you.

Some people come to be tolerated. Some of us, most of my friends and I included, I hope, come here because it's an easy, and cheap, place to invest our time.

And as much as I think we waste time there, I also think it's an investment.

Matt's starting to get into photography. Candis and I are beginning to write again. Daniel has always had something going on.

I have hope yet for the place.

Lestat's is also close to the Old Sod, a bar that has the right mix of atmosphere, chill, and places to smoke.

Lestat's is at once the place that we always talk about getting away from, and the place that pulls us all together. It is the destitute's Mecca.

Dreams of greater things often pull at us, but yet most of us stay single, or get involved in dead-end relationships. We use the place as an escape from our dead-end jobs. And unless you've never really thought about the word before, dead-end means that it winds down. It's entropic. It bleeds off a little bit of our life at a time until it ends in death.

Dreams on the other hand are the beginning of growth. The opposite of dead-ends. You have to be careful with dreams though, using them too much turns them from what they do best into being a narcotic.

I think many people use Lestat's as a way to share the dreams they have with others. Dreams breath through sharing. Every day the dull ache of another step towards the end seems more tolerable amidst the endless parade of distraction that this coffee shop proffers, and with such little cost to the pocket.

We sit there, all of us, each an author, an actor, a photographer, a musician. We keep the hard work of realizing any of these dreams at bay with the spectacle we set it in.

Recently though, we've been taking slow steps.

The purchase of a camera. A joint gig between bands. Writing through frustration.

There are four elements to realizing any dream. A start and a way, both of which I think I've got down now. Perseverance, which is always the difficult part. And luck, or the uncontrollable elements. Anyone can work on the first three, but if you want to rely on the fourth, then you don't understand what "uncontrollable elements" means.

But it's the third factor that we all have to work on. Perseverance. Making it happen every day.

I need to find the way to make completing what I want to work on actually happen. Despite frustrations, inconveniences, daily tasks, the allure of socializing.

Despite dropped change.

I've seen it happen. Now I just have to make it happen everyday until I've got another completed novel staring at me.

So, to wrap up another long blog, if you don't go to Lestat's, you should. Unless you're a fucking Dragon Shirt, then don't bother. I don't want to hear about you inventing anti-gravity in your mom's garage.

For the rest of you, I'm sure I'll see you there.

What do I do? Other than eat, shit, breath, and on a good occasion, fuck? Well, I guess my dendrites fire ammunition over synapses, my cells reproduce far more frequently than I ever will, and, when lucky, maybe I'll actually accomplish something with my life.

So, I was going to introduce a small little thread on my bloggy here to help keep me writing, and to provide me with a break form the other stuff that I'm writing at the moment. I'm going to try to cover the next few topics over the next week or so.

This first piece will cover my job.

Now, keep in mind, I'm not actually allowed to talk (or write or even blog) about my job, so I'll have to keep it somewhat ambiguous for which I apologize.

So, I'm a Senior Customer Service Training Specialist for a major MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) company. MMO for short.

I start work by driving 30 miles threw what we like to call "traffic." Now, I'm pretty sure that if God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with some kind of divine nuclear attack, then his weapon of choice against America's Finest City is traffic. Every day I feel like the opening scene in "Falling Down" as I work my way over three freeways and several surface streets to get here. If only I could find a philanthropic Nazi willing to give me a bazooka.

When I arrive, I log into my computers, check any stray emails (almost always meaningless to me and what I have to do), and then log into MySpace and keep it running on a hidden system tray so that if my boss comes in he won't find it and imagine that I do nothing but surf it.

Like the sad little main character that would star in the straight to DVD sequel to "Office Space," I make myself a little happier everyday by loading up some picture on MySpace of a friend, some artwork, or anything else that will bleed into my workday some of the life that I watch, rewind, and watch again in my mind while I'm supposed to be working.

I also drink really bad tea while at work. All the time. Everything else here isn't safe for human consumption, a category of edibles to which the tea only barely dodges the criteria necessary to make it an entry.

After the beginning, my work day greatly depends on if I have new hires to train or not. If I do, then I spend the first half of the day training. This can often be fun, but it greatly depends on your audience. No matter how well you perform, if your audience doesn't respond, then the payoff is minimal. Imagine for a moment that you're performing "Hamlet" in front of dead retarded mice. Not much call for an encore.

I do enjoy the training. By do, I of course mean "did," but if I admit that to myself, I'll have to find a different job even faster than before and I may very well have the dingy I'm gallantly sailing slip beneath the surface of the great ennui ocean I'm attempting to navigate. And we just can't have that. This is a "No Dingy Sinking" blog.

After two years though, I can no longer survive without at least pretending that I have some as-of-yet unfilled potential that "needs" to be realized. The day we see the glass all the way full, is the day we stop dreaming of a bigger glass.

Now, this I'll come back to when I've actually finished off the daily job description.

So, if I don't have training, or, if I get done with training when regularly scheduled to, I work on other things. Originally, when I started, this was dependant on creating documentation. I wrote manuals for work-related tools, how-to guides for GMs (Game Masters), and even for video games themselves.

I also took on special projects. I created an Excel program (that rox, btw), an RNT application how-to, and several other boring things that will make you want to stab your eyes out. That's only because you're probably not in the same industry I am, because if you were, I'm sure you'd marvel at how well most of what my team does is realized.

Now though, special projects have consumed my time. I began a how-to-program-for Wiki course, and it somehow evolved into something much more. Five programming languages learned, one PHP driven program created, and a lot of stress later, and where has it gotten me?

This is what I am equal to: I make as much money as your average waitress; I make $18,000 dollars less than the average first year graduate with my degree (it's been almost four years since I graduated, btw); I make $39,000 dollars less than the average person with my job title in San Diego. All incomes above are presented in yearly increments.

Well, money isn't everything.

"So what is?" I find myself asking. This gets back to the glass.

I need to cultivate an environment where I recycle all the benefits I've received in my life back to those who can best use them.

To finish off my day (and yet another too-long-blog), when I get off, I race threw traffic at 5 miles an hour to try to get to wherever the hell it is that I want to go.

And usually I go to a coffee shop. But it's not really a coffee shop. It is the place where everyone knows my name. It's the place where I swap all of the frustrations of the day, all the vacant adoration of my childhood, and all my lifelong moments of feminine-exempt attention in exchange for the company I get to keep. The warm smiles, the inside jokes, the "OhMyGod Glances," and most of all, the small audience of people that feel like we make a daily difference in each others' lives through nothing more expensive than conversation and a cup of good tea or a Pepsi.

This tea is actually good, too.

This coffee shop is also the next installment I'm going to post. And it isn't really the place, but it is where I meet up with the people that make me remember what really is everything.

No glass is better than the one that refills.