A struggle to finish

Its raining today. I am sitting in the library on campus looking out over the central quad as people hurry bu hunched against the light rain or under the kind of light and flimsy umbrellas that people form Los Angeles use, but would get destroyed in a serious storm. I have 10 minutes to eat my breakfast sandwich and drink my latte before I have to be in class.

The meeting with my business class group from went well and I am once again grateful for being put in the my first ever school group with no slackers or jerks. In some strange coincidence, 4 out of the five group members are fully employed, and the fifth is a mother of two getting ready to re-enter the workforce. We are all very focused on completion.

Working and going to school is a struggle. I work the swing shift and go to school in the late morning, so 3 days a week i am out of the house by 8:00 AM and not back until midnight. It is hard to be home for only 8 hours, of which at least 6 are spent sleeping. It is hard to keep going when i could just give up on school and get my time back. I have to keep my eye on the prize. I so regret not getting my bachelor's degree done the first time I went to college.

Is this what burnout feels like

It is 12:30 AM as I write this. I am trying to connect to the laptop that I hastily set out for the new person starting tomorrow. The new person who we got last minute notice for and for whom I rushed to find a computer. It takes an extra amount of time because the remote control software has the old name for her computer from the last person to use it, and the name on the computer itself, the name I changed today is misspelled. Some minutes of searching and renaming and rebooting later, that part is straightened out.
I am struggling to care.
I need to configure her browser settings and set up her email. I need to do this at midnight because I didn't have time to do it during the workday and couldn't stay late due to familial obligations. I am doing it at midnight because if the computer isn't ready before the user comes in, I am going to have to explain myself to HR. Nevermind that we don't have enough inventory to have these things set up in advance.
It was a long day and now it is turning to a long night because the password doesn't work. Several tries later and I'm in. I plug away and set check boxes and server names. I have done this so many times that I can practically do it in my sleep, I only care because I have been twice hassled by HR and various other departments for not having the computer ready. These delays have caused no actual delay in use of the computer, but the hiring manager gets pissy and then I have to spend an hour emailing back and forth about what went wrong.
I think this is what burnout feels like. I am working to keep from being hassled but not to do good work. I am getting tired of solving the same problems over and over again.
Maybe its just late and I need to go to bed.

Why I don't jump in

It seems that  I have been struggling with being an artist for most of my adult life. I have struggled with the definition, variously using the terms craftsman, artist, and maker. I have also always stood on the edge and never jumped in with both feet. I have often asked myself why I don't throw caution to the wind and try out the life of an artist. What would it take for me to take a year off and be an artist?
I never have because of two main factors. The first is my own unreliability. I can gain a proficiency in most things in short order. I inherited from my parents; an ability to soak up different techniques like a sponge (an ability that my mother only discovered in the last few years). I can sometimes pick up a new craft by picking up a book and reading about the process. This is how I learned meadmaking and bookbinding. The trouble is that I can never seem to stick to it. I find reasons to stop progressing in one domain and move on to another. It can be because the next step requires costly tools or materials or that I am fascinated by something else or it can be that the other projects or life goals get in the way and I give up.
The second deterrent factor is the examples I have from the two truest craftsmen that I have personally known. My father, who is cursed with the same wandering attention as I have, spent a number of years doing custom cabinetry. It was an unsustainable model based on a high level of skill with quality materials against the wearing down of the crafstman hour by hour. He eventually had to leave that line of work. The other example is of my high school ceramics teacher who kindled in me my love of pottery. He told me of his early days as a production potter where he would work constantly to produce salable pottery and then truck it around to galleries trying to get his work shown. He eventually moved to the world of teaching where he could have a more reasonable schedule.
I don't think that I can live either of these lives. I cannot throw away my steady reliable job to give this a shot.
Can I?

School Scheduling

This Quarter has been rough. I have class after work until late on Monday through Thursday. Today I got home at about 10:30 pm and had to take care if some chores. It is midnight now and I am finally calming down from my day. I am almost halfway through the quarter and I am kind of worried that I am going to have trouble keeping my grades up at this pace.

NaNoWriMo Again

It seems like last year’s National Novel Writing Month was not that long ago but it has been a year. Last year I couldn’t keep up the writing because of work and classes. This year threatens to be the same. In fact, in terms of hours, this year may be even worse. I have class after work Monday – Thursday. This leaves me with time to write on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday only. With a little math, that leaves me 14 days in November, and If I am going to make the 50,000 word goal, I will have to churn out 3571 words on each of those non-school days. A daunting task to say the least.

I am going to go for it.

There is no penalty for failure. If I come short of the goal, then I can just add those words to the pile and still call it progress. I am going to continue on the book I was writing last year, Cascade. It was inspired by my trip to Banff in Canada to visit my sister-in-law and some of my wife’s college friends. It is fiction but not science fiction or fantasy as are most of my ideas.

I have never been short on ideas. I keep my story ideas on a OneNote file and go over them from time to time. I have about 20 story seeds there right now. My problem is stamina. Sitting down to write with consistency on the same topic is my greatest weakness. As you can probably tell from the frequency at which I post on this blog, my writing time, never really consistent, has dwindled in the last few years. That is the true challenge of writing for me. I know that I have a novel in me but if I can ever dedicate myself to getting it out is yet to be seen.

Today I head to the local National Novel Writing Month kickoff to meet the other writers in my area and get my head in the game. I have also made plans to start writing on midnight, October 31^st / November 1^st with a friend. I will get out as much of this as I can. I also have to remember to keep writing outside of November. It will not do to only write one month a year; I have too many ideas. I need to make this part of my life, and if nothing else, I can write a blog post every now and again.

Wish me luck

A Novel

National Novel Writing Month is almost upon us again. I still want to write. I have a story that I call Cascade that has been in my head for over a year. I started writing it last year and got over 14,000 words down but that is far short of the project goal of 50,000 words in one month, I haven't done any more work on the story since then. I have allowed myself to be busy doing other things but I think it is time to get back to that story.
I am also on the brink of going back to school. Later this month I will be adding 4 days a week of after-work classes. I hope I am not setting myself up too much for failure.
It has been a nice fun Summer of lowered stress but now its time to get back to doing bigger things.

Work and School

It is incredibly frustrating to have to choose between continuing your education and working. I have run into a very real problem where none of the computer science classes that I need to take for my degree are offered outside of work hours. This is looking hopeless.