Summer 2023 Reflections
On new jobs, student loans, what I've been enjoying, and of course writing.
Happy fall, everyone! The leaves are already changing, the chill is in the air at night, and my daily 10-mile bike ride is not reducing me to a puddle of sweat. So it's time to reflect on the season gone.
WHAT WORKED: From a family standpoint, the 7-year-old has transitioned to 1st grade, and the 4-year-old is no longer the youngest in her preschool class. A significant victory for all of us is my student loans being forgiven and leaving my "temp job" of the last six years for good for a new job that is an amalgamation of what I did in New York at PSC and better-organized but a similar working environment to my “temp job.” Also, getting paid a living wage is a significant victory too.
When I walked out of that temp job, it felt a lot like graduating high school because I knew I would never walk back into that building again.
WHAT HAS NOT WORKED: Honestly, I've been concerned since leaving my temp job about overextending myself, burning out again, and losing my new job. That's unrealistic, though. I’m a month in, and I do understand when that starts happening—usually around the holidays and the summer—I know how to ask for accommodations, which I’ve never done before. The present and accurate struggle is the transition home from work and changing contexts, which is the 'issue of working shifts that involve not getting home until after dinner, but around bedtime, or after my kids’ bedtime--and being an autistic dad. I get nasty and treat people poorly because I spend the last eight hours in a very close social atmosphere; I’m pretty tapped out from a social standpoint.
WHAT ADJUSTMENTS NEED TO BE MADE? Alternatively, that sociability has until the absolute crash after bedtime. This usually involves talking to myself all the way home on the bike. Is hilarious to me and keeps people away from me so I don't expel social energy on people I don’t have any stake in.
When I was in high school I would walk out of the school mumbling to myself, saying, who-knows-what, and my mom, who was picking me up, would say, "Who are you talking to? People will think you're weird talking to yourself."
And I would say, "Oh, I’m just saying dialogue out loud," or "Good. That way, they will leave me alone."
But seriously, riding the bike now is a great transition back home.
I wish I wasn't missing dinner and bedtime with my kids.
But here's what I know: this won't be forever. There will be a last time that I miss family dinner & bedtime, and I'm already planning to make this accurate.
WRITING LIFE
Over the last two months, I’ve started and stopped a couple of short stories and started the revision of a novella I wrote in 2019. Just for giggles, I’ve opted into doing two different drafts. The original draft was in the close third of a twelve-year-old on the eve of his birthday. The" B" Draft now comes entirely from the tween's first-person point-of-view.
This was spurred on by reading an essay by Peter Turchi on "Reading Like A Writer." and reading John Hughes's short story "The Tit Jar" that I thought I would play with my short story in this “B” way.
Then, the other day, while riding my bike home from work, I had the thought that I would completely ditch the idea of it as a prose story altogether and go for it as a screenplay because, thanks to the WGA--screenwriting is pretty much the only professional creative writing job that isn’t just gig work. It’s a middle-class full-time job. You can’t say that about novelists, journalists or comics writers. Comics is basically a stepping stone to screenwriting and most writers leave the business around 10 years. Unless you’re Brian K. Vaughan or Bendis. And Vaughan went on a multiyear hiatus where he did not publish anything. And 'before' 'this strike, it was a dead-end job.
In the end, I think it should just be a comic book.
FUEL
ONE--Kindle Scribe. For my 43rd birthday I used some birthday to get a writing tablet that converts my handwritten drafts into text, reducing my workflow by about 50 percent. This thing is pretty sweet. I wrote this letter by hand on it. I decided to go with the scribe, over the remarkable because I could mark up all my Kindle books with scribe's sticky note and give Kindle books marginalia. And I was used to the interface.
TWO--Comics. With my new job and student loans forgiven, I have monthly subscriptions to Marvel Unlimited & started with DC Universe Infinite because I have a lot of DC stuff to read. I've been really enjoying Mark Waid& Dan Mora's World's Finest and just finished reading Tom King and Bilquis Evely's Supergirl. Up next is King's Danger Street, or maybe Joshua Williamson's the Flash run, which I completely missed but need to catch up on-I heard good things.
THREE--Books. I finished Charles Soule's The Endless Vessel and have a ton of thoughts on it. I'm very obsessed with Peter Turchi's three book series on writing fiction. I started reading Dr. Devon Price's Unmasking Autism but dropped it after two chapters. He's very prescriptive and clinical, plus alot of the experiences he talks about in his book( his and others) are not at all mine or other people's I know who are neurodiverse. On the opposite hand, I'm enjoying Chloe Hayden's Different, Not Less. I think the reason I prefer Hayden is we have a very, very similar approach to neurodiversity in the sense that we are creative storytellers, and Price is not.
But yeah, book reflections will be happening over on my Instagram.
FOUR--INSTAGRAM. I love both Generic Art Dad and Old Time Hawkey. Both hit my aesthetic feel.
FIVE--Music. Here's my 2023 playlist. Probably my favorite album so far is Darlingside's Instrumentals, Vol. I.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Well, what is next is that I am basically rebooting this as not so many weekly posts from the pages of my journals but monthly fiction, but sometimes they will be nonfiction.
But I won’t be doing that until the New Year.
I still have to write a crop of stories that are in various forms right now, from handwritten, to fleeting to nearly done. So, likely, I will talk to you again sometime between the holidays.
I hope you are well.
Cheers,
Dave