The first week of the school year has come and gone, and so many things feel weird to me right now. It reminds me of a topic that came up in one of my favorite “Stuff You Should Know” podcast episodes: a thought experiment called quantum suicide. (I promise this isn’t going to be anywhere near as morbid as it sounds, and the explanation is a bit of a stretch, so bear with me for a paragraph or two.) One of the reasons I like that episode so much is because I’ve listened to it at least twenty times and still only understand about half of it, so each replay brings me a tiny bit closer to wrapping my head around the concept: Imagine a man sits in an empty room with a partially-loaded gun pointed at him. There’s a button in front of him he’s supposed to press, and when he does it will activate a machine that’s supposed to do some particle physics thing I won’t even try to explain since I’m sure I’d fail at it spectacularly. When the button is pressed, the trigger is pulled. According to this experiment, the gun would never go off regardless of how many times the button was pressed and the trigger was pulled, because each time the trigger is pulled the man is performing an action that splits the universe into parallel realities, and the version of the man in the other universe is the one who gets shot and dies. The idea here is that each time one of us makes a decision, a separate reality breaks off to follow the path of the choice we didn’t make. Following that “logic,” there isn’t just one universe but rather an infinite number of alternate universes that have come into existence following every decision ever made.
And in these early days of the school year I’ve felt like I woke up living in one of the alternative realities created by someone’s decision-making. Sure, every new year brings changes and discoveries with it, but right now this one feels a little top-heavy. I wake up about the same time and I go to work at the same school, but I spend my day in a different classroom. I’m teaching the same grade, but with a grade level team of entirely new people. I’m working with the same curriculum, but it’s been revised over the summer so I have to figure out exactly how what I’ve been doing for the past several years is new. I’ve been using the same schedule for two or three years, but now it’s shuffled to something completely different. I’m working as a part of the same staff (more or less) but there are a few new key players in my radius while some key players I had come to rely on seeing aren’t a part of my daily life anymore. I share my section of the hallway with people who in past years I could go for weeks without seeing for more than a few minutes at a time, and now I see them more often than anyone else.
Since I’m someone who is dependent on a certain amount of routine to feel completely at ease, all of this different takes a little getting used to. And don’t get me wrong -- I’m not saying there's some wholesale downgrade to my year because of these changes. Granted, some are harder to adjust to than others. But at the same time a lot of what's new about the year holds promise for exciting things to come. So my year is starting off with me walking around through this somewhat entertaining mixture of discombobulation and optimism. Which is really the case every year, to some degree. But for me, it's just more noticeable this time around.
It all makes me wonder a little about how the year is starting off for the version of me that wound up in the other reality....
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Eight Down
My Momentum Project goal from August, as stated a month ago: Get myself mentally ready for the school year. Granted, it’s the type of goal that’s hard to prove if it’s been reached or not, so you’ll have to trust me that it has. I’m not saying it was easy getting there. A big part of it was getting out of town for while. I was counting on this year’s trip to the Seattle area to be a big head cleanse, and it certainly got that done. It was a beautiful feeling to step off the airplane and walk through the concourse knowing there wasn’t a single thing that I absolutely had to do for several days. In retrospect, the only downside about the trip was I should have planned to stay longer than I did. (Melissa and Lynn, you were right. Next time.)
Here at home I finished off my writing for the summer, more or less... being back at school with new curriculum revisions being rolled out, I’ve heard the phrase “living document” used more than once. There is no truer example of what that is than an unpublished manuscript. Even though I’ve printed multiple copies and have shared several electronic versions since “finishing” the story, I’ve already made some minor changes as a result of proofreading. I’m sure that will continue to be the case right up until the possible day lightning strikes and my currently imaginary publisher sends the first edition to print. It helps having a piece of work that has held up well with all the revisiting it takes to thoroughly proofread it. And with the query letter almost ready to send out just as the school year begins, I’ll have that whole “job and career” thing to keep me distracted from wondering why it’s taking the agents I’ve submitting to so long to reply.
But like I said, I’m back to school now, and so much about my oncoming school year is going to be different than the last one. Since I’m someone very comfortable with routine, this much change wasn’t an easy adjustment. But once I found my way back into school life, I quickly switched over from “I’m just so overwhelmed by all of this I don’t know how I can look forward to the year” to instead thinking, “Oh, that’s right -- I AM unstoppable.” Which will last until about halfway through the third day of school, and then I’ll be back to running to stand still for the next ten months.
Which brings us to September’s goal: Stay on top of life. Having the summer off makes it easy to let priorities exist on a sliding scale. I’ll admit it -- during the summer, I can feel like I’ve had a day full of accomplishment if all I do is run the dishwasher and get the mail. The transition between summer break and the school year can be tricky, and sometimes things fall through the cracks. When all the normal daily stuff like cleaning and shopping and reading and bill paying and working out and getting the furnace checked and submitting agent queries and keeping up with TV and laundry and getting oil changes and etc. times ten has the epic chaos of the school year piled on top of it, life can get kind of nutty. This is probably why I tend to nap so much between 5:00 PM and 10:00 PM on September weeknights. But this year? No procrastinating. I’m going to try staying on top of it all, taking it as it comes, preventing the to do list from growing into a horror movie, and above all eliminating as much unnecessary stress from my life as humanly possible. As soon as I’m done writing this, I’m syncing my phone and reinstalling an app I haven’t used in some time: EPIC WIN. It’s both a to-do checklist and a role-playing game that will reward me for doing the stuff I’m supposed to do anyway. Since that philosophy has become a big part of my classroom management, I figure it’s worth a shot at turning that back on my own self and seeing how effective it is.
Thirty days from now, I’ll let you know how it worked. Until then, cross your fingers for me.
Here at home I finished off my writing for the summer, more or less... being back at school with new curriculum revisions being rolled out, I’ve heard the phrase “living document” used more than once. There is no truer example of what that is than an unpublished manuscript. Even though I’ve printed multiple copies and have shared several electronic versions since “finishing” the story, I’ve already made some minor changes as a result of proofreading. I’m sure that will continue to be the case right up until the possible day lightning strikes and my currently imaginary publisher sends the first edition to print. It helps having a piece of work that has held up well with all the revisiting it takes to thoroughly proofread it. And with the query letter almost ready to send out just as the school year begins, I’ll have that whole “job and career” thing to keep me distracted from wondering why it’s taking the agents I’ve submitting to so long to reply.
But like I said, I’m back to school now, and so much about my oncoming school year is going to be different than the last one. Since I’m someone very comfortable with routine, this much change wasn’t an easy adjustment. But once I found my way back into school life, I quickly switched over from “I’m just so overwhelmed by all of this I don’t know how I can look forward to the year” to instead thinking, “Oh, that’s right -- I AM unstoppable.” Which will last until about halfway through the third day of school, and then I’ll be back to running to stand still for the next ten months.
Which brings us to September’s goal: Stay on top of life. Having the summer off makes it easy to let priorities exist on a sliding scale. I’ll admit it -- during the summer, I can feel like I’ve had a day full of accomplishment if all I do is run the dishwasher and get the mail. The transition between summer break and the school year can be tricky, and sometimes things fall through the cracks. When all the normal daily stuff like cleaning and shopping and reading and bill paying and working out and getting the furnace checked and submitting agent queries and keeping up with TV and laundry and getting oil changes and etc. times ten has the epic chaos of the school year piled on top of it, life can get kind of nutty. This is probably why I tend to nap so much between 5:00 PM and 10:00 PM on September weeknights. But this year? No procrastinating. I’m going to try staying on top of it all, taking it as it comes, preventing the to do list from growing into a horror movie, and above all eliminating as much unnecessary stress from my life as humanly possible. As soon as I’m done writing this, I’m syncing my phone and reinstalling an app I haven’t used in some time: EPIC WIN. It’s both a to-do checklist and a role-playing game that will reward me for doing the stuff I’m supposed to do anyway. Since that philosophy has become a big part of my classroom management, I figure it’s worth a shot at turning that back on my own self and seeing how effective it is.
Thirty days from now, I’ll let you know how it worked. Until then, cross your fingers for me.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Infinity
I finished revising the manuscript for Following Infinity today.
I really wish I could convey what a huge thing this is for me. Unfortunately I only know of maybe three other people who have gone through the experience of having an idea, working tirelessly to turn it into a book-length story, having it read and appreciated, deconstructing the whole thing in an effort to improve it, starting over from the beginning and finally winding up with another version that is astonishingly better than what it was before. Reaching that landmark moment brings on an all too rare combination of pride and humility and inner peace.
I expect most people would see writing a book as something so ridiculously insurmountable that it's barely worth considering. For the most part I'd agree. It is impossibly hard work. There are a lot of early mornings and late nights, and there is very little, if any, "free time." Life becomes isolation and sacrifice. The world around you has to compete for attention and importance with the world constantly growing and evolving in your mind. The characters you struggle to create become interchangeable with the people in your life. You have conversations and arguments with yourself, and abuse your own fragile self-esteem when that one perfect word you need escapes you. From my perspective, the only real reason anyone would ever subject themselves to the physical, mental, and emotional challenges of writing a book is because you can't NOT do it. The story digs into you so deeply that you're compelled to tell it, and telling it exactly the way it needs to be told is the only way you'll ever find release. I know it's hard to explain that to other people if they see writing as just a unique or interesting hobby, but it really does become that defining.
So my biggest writing goal of the summer is done... sort of. There will be more proofreading for the typos I'm sure I missed. There has to be a query letter and two or three different versions of a synopsis to write before I send it to the publishing universe, and if lightning ever strikes and an agent and/or editor decides they want to work with it, everything will go back to the drawing board. This business and management end of writing is much more of a chore for me, but I'm now able to approach it knowing I have a work to present that I believe in. In fact, I'll go as far to say this revised version of Following Infinity is by far the best thing I've ever written.
And as promised in earlier posts, here comes the recruiting pitch. If you've found your way here to the Summer Vacation blog and have ever read one of my self-indulgent writer posts, or if you know me from the real world and we've ever had conversations writing, perhaps you'd like to read this. Because reading "Summer Vacation?" Not the same thing. If you've read any of the glorified first drafts I've accumulated from Nanowrimo... eh, maybe a little closer. If you've read Lake Emily or the previous version of Infinity, you've got some idea. But if not: Well, after all the writing talk going on here, aren't you a LITTLE curious?
If you are, please let me know. As a policy I try very hard not to ask individuals to read my writing because that introduces a dynamic of obligation that too often becomes awkward. But please understand, just because I'm not standing in front of you with a printed manuscript and a big needy smile on my face that doesn't mean I don't want you to read it. I'm very much hoping you'll be interested. And then I'm hoping you'll love it so much you'll tell me all about it and share it with your friends and tell any 9-14 year-old kids you know that, oh, they HAVE to read it because it's just that good -- that age group is the target audience, after all. I'll have printed copies ready to circulate very soon, and I can always send out electronic copies as pdf files to anyone who'd prefer to read it on their tablets or monitors.
So there's my pitch. Thanks to anyone who does ask to read it. It means a lot to me. And regardless of what happens with the manuscript from here -- it still feels pretty amazing to know I finally reached the peak.
I really wish I could convey what a huge thing this is for me. Unfortunately I only know of maybe three other people who have gone through the experience of having an idea, working tirelessly to turn it into a book-length story, having it read and appreciated, deconstructing the whole thing in an effort to improve it, starting over from the beginning and finally winding up with another version that is astonishingly better than what it was before. Reaching that landmark moment brings on an all too rare combination of pride and humility and inner peace.
I expect most people would see writing a book as something so ridiculously insurmountable that it's barely worth considering. For the most part I'd agree. It is impossibly hard work. There are a lot of early mornings and late nights, and there is very little, if any, "free time." Life becomes isolation and sacrifice. The world around you has to compete for attention and importance with the world constantly growing and evolving in your mind. The characters you struggle to create become interchangeable with the people in your life. You have conversations and arguments with yourself, and abuse your own fragile self-esteem when that one perfect word you need escapes you. From my perspective, the only real reason anyone would ever subject themselves to the physical, mental, and emotional challenges of writing a book is because you can't NOT do it. The story digs into you so deeply that you're compelled to tell it, and telling it exactly the way it needs to be told is the only way you'll ever find release. I know it's hard to explain that to other people if they see writing as just a unique or interesting hobby, but it really does become that defining.
So my biggest writing goal of the summer is done... sort of. There will be more proofreading for the typos I'm sure I missed. There has to be a query letter and two or three different versions of a synopsis to write before I send it to the publishing universe, and if lightning ever strikes and an agent and/or editor decides they want to work with it, everything will go back to the drawing board. This business and management end of writing is much more of a chore for me, but I'm now able to approach it knowing I have a work to present that I believe in. In fact, I'll go as far to say this revised version of Following Infinity is by far the best thing I've ever written.
And as promised in earlier posts, here comes the recruiting pitch. If you've found your way here to the Summer Vacation blog and have ever read one of my self-indulgent writer posts, or if you know me from the real world and we've ever had conversations writing, perhaps you'd like to read this. Because reading "Summer Vacation?" Not the same thing. If you've read any of the glorified first drafts I've accumulated from Nanowrimo... eh, maybe a little closer. If you've read Lake Emily or the previous version of Infinity, you've got some idea. But if not: Well, after all the writing talk going on here, aren't you a LITTLE curious?
If you are, please let me know. As a policy I try very hard not to ask individuals to read my writing because that introduces a dynamic of obligation that too often becomes awkward. But please understand, just because I'm not standing in front of you with a printed manuscript and a big needy smile on my face that doesn't mean I don't want you to read it. I'm very much hoping you'll be interested. And then I'm hoping you'll love it so much you'll tell me all about it and share it with your friends and tell any 9-14 year-old kids you know that, oh, they HAVE to read it because it's just that good -- that age group is the target audience, after all. I'll have printed copies ready to circulate very soon, and I can always send out electronic copies as pdf files to anyone who'd prefer to read it on their tablets or monitors.
So there's my pitch. Thanks to anyone who does ask to read it. It means a lot to me. And regardless of what happens with the manuscript from here -- it still feels pretty amazing to know I finally reached the peak.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)