Limbo…
A place where every procrastinator, myself included, spends most of their time. A philosophical question… is to not try, failing? A hockey player once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” He is right, statistically, but he also had a gift which got him into an arena where he could take as many shots as he wanted. If writing was like a sports team, I’d have quit my day job years ago and started practicing to get paid where I could take all the shots I wanted. Sadly, this is not the case… so I work, to pay the bills. By the end of the work day, I am tired to the point of ADD and cannot focus. I hear that coffee stuff does wonders… too bad I hate the taste. So here I sit… writing a blog… in Limbo.
Lust…
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Isn’t that true? Whether it’s a job or a story idea… there’s always something us silly humans are lusting after. More money? I want it. More free time? Sign me up. Story about a boy magician or a story about fighting for the iron throne? I wish I’d written that. Despite my best efforts, I always see some shinier idea and leap upon it… leaving my old idea sad, alone and unfinished. If I could somehow tie all my incomplete stories together, I’d have one badass series of books. Sadly, the moment that I came up with a better idea, I’d be off lusting after that one too… damn sexy ideas. I blame the characters.
Gluttony…
Do I overindulge into my worldly pleasures? Perhaps… I only have a hundred games or so and a hundred books… or more. I do not eat to health, but instead to convenience. I do not drink, unless we count drinking in the stories of other creative types who have made it. As for those, I am drowning in them. I have more books than I have free time. I have more games than I have books. I am a glutton for a good story and even more so for great media in general. They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem… right?
Greed…
As I sit among all my things, I realise that I probably relate closer to Smaug than anything else. I am rational for the most part. Until I want something. Then I can ignore prices and my own common sense. For instance, my obsession with collector’s edition books has managed to get to the point where my bookshelf is starting to bow. They are all books that I wish to read, but never make time for. Do I buy more? Of course. Who doesn’t? Does that make me greedy? Yes, yes it does.
Anger…
No one is more frustrated with me, than me. My girlfriend is probably a close second, and my coworkers a close third. Work is fulfilling. Numbers do not lie and when you are doing well, you see it reflected in the numbers. That is why I like work so much. My brain releases endorphins when I succeed. I succeed at work, through others. That is why I love it. I can pump them up, get them excited, start them on the task and leave… only to come back and follow up. Easy right? Now to accomplish anything in my personal life, it is not so easy. I am angry that I have lost the focus and the capacity to accomplish outside of the work setting. I am angry that I get distracted easily. I am angry that I seemingly have tons of time for a bunch of things I have no actual interest in, and no time for the things I want to accomplish. I’m just an angry guy apparently.
Heresy…
For this particular circle of awesomeness, I am a heretic on multiple levels I suppose. I believe the future of movies lies in video games. *GASP* Although I have also lived the majority of my life believing in no God, and also with the belief that if we are indeed creatures of a God’s creating he will be happy with how I have lived my life and the lessons I have learned and will hopefully learn before I die. Let us take a look at the commandments.
- You shall have no other gods before Me. (What about no God at all?)
- You shall not make idols. (George R.R. Martin is my hero.)
- You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain. (Didn’t anyone work retail back in those days?)
- Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. (Which one is that? My day off?)
- Honor your father and your mother. (I have cursed them and loved them dearly throughout my entire life. I still hate it when Mom is right.)
- You shall not murder. (That’s easy, unless he means anything. In which case… I’m sorry, but spiders are terrifying.)
- You shall not commit adultery. (What constitutes adultery anyway? I mean, if a man can take many wives… where is the line?)
- You shall not steal. (I was young! I did it to be popular! I learned!)
- You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (Who hasn’t lied to get out of something?)
- You shall not covet. (See Lust above. Whoops.)
So there you have it… I’ve broken most of those outdated commandments and people consider me to be a nice guy. I’m sure my version of God will be impressed I’m not a lunatic… sadly if it is the biblical version, well… I’ll fit into any of the nine circles of hell. Party on the lake of fire. Whoo.
Violence…
I’m not a violent person… unless I get frustrated with a video game or get backed into a corner. I’ve been in a few fights over my years, but hey, we’re all fighting for something, right?
Fraud…
I talk of being a writer, when really I’m not. I’m a manager first and a writer… umm… roughly twelfth. It is nice to be something that you’re not occasionally, like when I am a writer first and foremost. In a sense, we may all be frauds until we truly discover who we actually want to be. I can fit into virtually any group, but that doesn’t mean that is who I am.
Treachery…
Betrayal of trust. So many people believe that I have lied about completing a book because it is still in the editing phase. *Shrug* Well it is. But when I was young, I betrayed the trust of many people; Friends, family and strangers. Lies became a basis of what I did to get out of things and eventually it took getting out of that crowd and a fight to realise what was happening. Although anyone can be deceptive if they put their mind to it. After all, I am in customer service… deception sometimes keeps both the customer happy and the business’s image untarnished while everything gets sorted out.
So… as you see above, if I were in the Divine Comedy… I would fit comfortably in most circles of Hell. As it stands for now, they are the nine circles of my own personal torment, but I’ll get there someday. After reading some tips and hints from one of my favourite authors, George R. R. Martin, I think it is about time to start giving my writing back some priority. Ironically, I am still awaiting my copy of the Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classics Edition of The Divine Comedy. Curse you back orders, curse you!
One final note too, that made me quite the “happy chappy” was this quote from Mr. Martin himself: “I’ve always said there are – to oversimplify it – two kinds of writers. There are architects and gardeners. The architects do blueprints before they drive the first nail, they design the entire house, where the pipes are running, and how many rooms there are going to be, how high the roof will be. But the gardeners just dig a hole and plant the seed and see what comes up. I think all writers are partly architects and partly gardeners, but they tend to one side or another, and I am definitely more of a gardener. In my Hollywood years when everything does work on outlines, I had to put on my architect’s clothes and pretend to be an architect. But my natural inclinations, the way I work, is to give my characters the head and to follow them.” That is how I wrote my story to completion was to have a few plot points to hit, and let the characters do the walking. I’m also starting to believe the game idea I had where six characters all affect the same world should be more like how I write. It’s been right there all along!