Hard work is for the weak willed….
Originally published at shanefitzsimmons.com. You can comment here or there.
Second day back at work and I’m already getting in trouble. The reason isn’t important, it doesn’t sound like serious trouble, just a boss kind of on my nuts about a project. I finished the project a few minutes ago so it’s likely over at this point, nothing to worry about. Regardless, it’s a strange feeling to not like your job, not really care about it, and not really do much to achieve at it, but once you get in trouble or find that you might be at the risk of losing your only source of income how hard you wind up working to meet goals and please your boss and that sort of shit.
Makes me feel like kind of a hypocrite. It also makes me want to figure out a way to get out of here and work for myself. Of course, who doesn’t? And more people in America work in offices these days than anywhere else. Or at least that’s the way it seems in Research Triangle Park.
In other news, after only one and a half days at the gym, I’m already back down to 202 pounds, which tells me that my body is ready to lose weight. Sounds good to me. I haven’t eaten anything yet today, and I think I’m gonna push to not eat anything until lunch, and then have a fairly healthy dinner later tonight.
A semi-official acquaintance of mine (I use that particular description because, by his own admission, we’ve really only hung out twice) named Andrew inquired on my livejournal yesterday with something of a proposition about collaborating on a writing project. It’s actually a really friendly gesture and collaboration is something I’ve thought about quite a bit in the past. Despite this though, for now at least, I’m going to have to pass. There’s a few reasons for this, and all of them have to do with where I am in my writing currently, so it’s nothing against Andrew personally.
Firstly, I’ve been on again off again writing projects for years, and I’ve been seriously working on this specific project since last August or October or something with very little results in terms of writing output (I’ve done a lot of very useful and necessary research, but it matters little unless I actually write the damn book). In fact, I haven’t actually finished a novel since high school, at which point in time I actually wrote two and a half books in a year, and then rewrote the first book something like seventeen times before finally dropping the project. I don’t mind dropping the project, it was a Star Trek novel and my interest in Star Trek at this point is basically nonexistent, and I’ve basically resolved to work only on projects I actually have completely created myself. But anyway, the point is, since I dropped that Star Trek project back around college 2002, I’ve started work on over a dozen other projects, taking two extremely seriously and still not getting very far with either of them in terms of writing output.
So in that respect, I think that collaborating with another person would not only be bad for me, but I think it would have the potential to be really bad for the other person as well. I seem to have a horrible case of ADD when it comes to projects, and the last thing I’d want to do is start something with another person only to lose interest or suddenly develop even more interest in something else, but for whatever reason wind up just losing my drive to work on this project and have it just die, or have the other person just be left with the reigns. It’s pretty shitty that I recognize the potential for that happening and can’t simply resolve to not let it happen, but I gotta face up to the fact that there’s real potential for that outcome.
The second reason, or really, reason one-point-five is that if I’m going to get myself out of this rut, or if I’m going to kick my ADD in the ass and pull my shit together, then I really need to do it by myself. Call it a lame sense of honor, call it stubbornness, call it pride or ego or an unwillingness to let other people help; call it whatever you want. I am what I am, but I really just need to know that if I do wind up finishing a serious, long-term, difficult project I’m slitting my wrists and pouring my own blood into, that I’m doing it on my own, without a crutch to get me there. It’s not that I’d never accept help in anything, but I think that, at least with the first serious-as-testicular-cancer project I finish, it needs to be on my own.
The third reason is that the novel I’m working on is one that is actually, wake-up-thinking-about-it, constantly-on-the-mind, everywhere-I-look-is-a-new-idea, boner-inducing concept that I’m just too selfish of a bastard to share with anyone else, and I’m worried that if I put it on hold while I work on a side project I’d wind up losing motivation for it. The goal is to finish this book by the end of 2008, and have it ready to send to publishers and agents by the start of 2009. I think that, especially at this point in my life, procrastination is really just going to hold me back from ever accomplishing anything I want to do in my life, and I really don’t want to be 35 and still writing but not have anything professionally published.
The final, and probably most important reason, is that I really get the feeling that I’m very much like a pressure cooker when it comes to writing. The more I talk about an idea, the less I really feel the need to actually write the damned thing. I think that the less I talk about my ideas, the more internal pressure I have inside of me to really just write it all out, and do the best job I can the first time, rather than telling the same joke in a thousand reiterations, and just not really have the same flare for it in the end that I started out with. I think that, for me, that’s really going to be the key to getting this book finished. And until I do get it finished, I think that collaboration on any level, or even just talking about the book beyond small, “this is the basis of the story” sort of stuff is really just going to hurt me more than be helpful. That doesn’t mean I’ll never talk about my novel, or never want to work with someone else on a project, but until I get this book finished I just don’t think taking on extra loads is going to help my situation out much.
That said, now that I know you’re interested on working on something together, I’ll definitely keep it in mind once I do finish the book, and if you want to throw anything you’ve written my way for critique or just an opinion on whether or not I liked it, I’d be more than happy to help out.
There was gonna be more to this entry than what I’ve written, but I think I’ve written enough for one entry so far and it’s time for lunch, so I guess I’ll post more later.