Though this is probably not breaking news to most of you at this point, I wanted to come here to mention that the girlfriend and I broke up this afternoon, after more than six years of being together.
Before all of you flip your collective lids, let me state that it wasn't a hate-filled, yelling-and-throwing-shit breakup, and that both of us are fine. It was a very quiet, civil discussion, where we decided that it would be better for us to go our separate ways rather than be (mostly) unhappy as a couple. Our relationship, as they say, had run its course. There's no ill will or animosity involved, and neither of us are devastated or crying our eyes out or anything like that. We'll still remain friends for the foreseeable future -- we're just no longer together.
This will probably come as a shock to a lot of you, but as a whole over the past year, both of us have been growing apart more and more, and we knew it was coming down the line eventually, even if neither of us wanted to vocalize that fact. Neither of us have been truly happy in the relationship for a while, and after a certain point a little voice starts asking you what are we doing here? what's the end result going to be? When one can no longer answer that question is when the leaves blow away, figuratively speaking, and decisions have to be made. Both of us had become increasingly unhappy with the situation in recent weeks and months -- not angry-unhappy (for the most part, anyway) but just dissatisfied more than anything else, her more so than me, and when that happens it's just time to let things go.
Truthfully, I have nothing but the highest respect for the girl; the six years we were together completely changed my life -- I moved from West Virginia to Missouri, and then to Kansas, because of her, and if it weren't for her I more than likely would not be in graduate school right now, bettering my life and continuing my education. She has made me, overall, a better human being. Despite any fights and grievances we had over the course of our relationship, she was a much better woman than I ever deserved to have (especially since most of those fights and grievances tended to be my fault anyhow) -- and, of course, I wish her nothing but the best out of life. None of you who know her should harbor any ill will towards her for our breakup.
With any breakup of a long-term relationship in which the couple has lived together, there will have to be some arrangements made, of course. She's moving to Wichita to be closer to the school, and I'll be staying here in Newton for the foreseeable future. She's leaving me most of the furniture -- which is exceedingly nice of her -- as she will have no use or space for it, and is looking at different apartments and complexes down in Wichita to find somewhere to live so that she can move out sooner rather than later, even though I told her she doesn't have to rush through things. I will be keeping at least two of the cats, Petey and Sadie, though she yet doesn't know if she's going to take Maggie (read: her cat) with her because she's not sure she wants to separate her from the other two. When September rolls around, I'll have to redo the lease here at my place to remove her from it, as well as redo the security deposit once she gets the original deposit back. More than likely I'll just have to write her a check for the amount of the security deposit, so that no money actually has to change hands with the landlord. I will also have to change the name on our cable account from her name to mine. We're waiting to do most of the clerical stuff, obviously, until we get paid and/or my student loan disburses, which should be in a few weeks, so that in the case that I have to completely renew the lease, it won't cripple my bank account.
So yeah, that's about it. There isn't much else to say, really. As I've said, don't worry about me, though your thoughts and concerns up to this point are and have been greatly appreciated. We had a good run, all things must come to an end, etc. Life goes on; I will still continue this blog (in its new format, now) as usual, my book will still be edited and published, and I'm confident that my now former girlfriend will continue to excel in her own life, as always. Things change; we all move on in life in our own ways. The two of us are just doing it now as single people.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
The Rough Plan
The weird thing about completely revamping my blog, archiving/deleting all of the old posts here and basically opening it to the public is that I feel the need to explain some things all over again, or add to things that I never went into much detail on before, due to the anonymous nature of my writing here. I've gained a lot of friends by writing in this blog, and many friends I had before I started it read it on a regular basis -- but there are a ton of friends and family who have never seen it, and had no clue it existed in its anonymous state for the past four years who are just now beginning to read it in its new, 2.0 incarnation. So, I suppose, you can see my dilemma of sorts in covering things that to the majority of my readers are already well-known. Please bear with me, then, if/when I start repeating myself about things I've already written here in recent months, and keep in mind that those posts no longer exist anymore.
The girlfriend, who has arguably always been this blog's biggest "fan" of sorts, told me her opinions this afternoon on the blog's new inception and focus, and summed it up thusly:
"Well, you've named yourself," she said. "Means you'll pop up on Google now. Seems kind of stupid to me, but oh well, whatever you want to do. It's your blog."
This blog has always been findable on Google, by the way; no matter what settings I changed to make it "unsearchable" or what-have-you, it would always pop up. It probably still does; I haven't checked. The good thing is that nobody's ever looked for me, and it's not like I made it easy to connect me to the blog back when I had all sorts of incriminating stuff on it (like, say, when I was working in the grocery store) anyway. Now that it's fully open and public about who I am and what I do, there's that level of accountability I have to consider when I write anything here. It's a responsibility, to be sure.
Anyway, over the course of the past 48 hours or so, I've been trying to come up with a rough plan of what's going to happen, or what needs to be done, over the course of the next two-and-a-half weeks before we return to Wichita on a daily basis for the fall semester of classes. Yes, it really is that close. Our first day of classes for the fall semester is Monday, August 22 -- which means that our "orientation" will take place on either Thursday the 18th or Friday the 19th. As far as I know, it's not been scheduled yet -- or, if it has, we haven't been told about it as students and GTAs.
Orientation consists of a day where all of us go into campus, basically, and introduce ourselves to the new class for the fall. They do it every year; if you were reading at this time last year, though, you may remember that for all of us students in the new class last fall, we did it for a full week. There's a lot of lectures and meetings the new recruits have to endure, as well as paperwork and office assignments. From what I've heard, there's a class of ten this year, only three of which are fellow poets like myself -- and all three of those poets are guys. I'm not sure what the rest of the new class will be studying, though. Usually the fiction program is more selective than the poetry program, and last year -- in my class -- we had a healthy crop of MA students as well.
Anyway, back to the point. We (meaning all of us who are current students, including the girlfriend and myself) will have to go in there for the last orientation day, introduce ourselves, make witty banter, etc. Hopefully, however, at that point all of the "orientation" activities will be a formality, as I will have taken care of most of my business in the days prior.
The girlfriend needs to go back down to the lake house for a few days at some point soon to do some work on it; she was originally planning to do that sometime shortly after the first of the month, but I'm not sure when she's actually going to do it. When she does that, most of the time she's gone will be spent getting my school-related affairs in order. I need to go back to campus at least once or twice before the orientation week starts, taking a lot of my belongings (as well as new office decorations) back there to get the place set up. I also need to take in all of my new textbooks and novels for my classes this semester, which will be a nice little undertaking on its own since there are about thirty of them. I'm lucky I have a large bookshelf on the wall above and behind my desk.
So, here's the plan: during the first or second week of August, more than likely while the girlfriend is gone, I'll take my stuff to campus, set it up, etc. I'll also see if I can figure out when/where I'll be teaching, draft out a schedule of my daily tasks and activities for any given week, and print/post my office hours outside my door.
As an aside, this semester I am supposed to be teaching an undergraduate level scientific/engineering writing class, though it has not yet been added to the schedule in any form, not even for registration purposes. I don't even know the class or course number for it, but I do know it's not listed yet in the course catalog -- or, if it is, I can't find it listed under the English Department. As far as I know, I'm still supposed to be teaching it, but I could end up teaching anything, really. There are many classes that have not been added to the system yet. We usually find out our teaching schedules in the last few days leading up to the semester (read: orientation week). The girlfriend already knows, tentatively speaking of course, that she'll be teaching on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule, at 8 and 9:30AM -- which is what she wanted -- but, as always, anything can change. Nothing's finalized until we get the sheet of paper that tells us where, what, and when we're teaching.
Anyway, the main reason I'm trying to get as much as I can taken care of while I can is because I've never taught that science/engineering writing class before. I don't know what it entails, what books are used for it, or the kinds of assignments I'll have to give out. I need to get as much information on it as I can as early as possible so that I can make a course syllabus and plot a figurative plan of attack when it comes to teaching it. Only one other instructor in the department has taught it before, so it's going to be interesting to see what it's like.
As some of you know, I was originally planning to train for this class and help structure a new syllabus for it with the director of the writing program this summer, but there was no funding for said training and I was unable to do so -- so, again, I need to prepare as much as I can for teaching this course as early as I can. Still, it'll be no different than when I first became a GTA at this time last fall -- all of us were thrust into teaching positions and told to follow the basic plans of an example syllabus we were given, and we all turned out just fine. It's exciting, actually. I consider it a challenge, and I thrive when it comes to academic challenges.
The trip down to Wichita and back will also serve as the first truly functional, high-speed (70+mph) road test for my Monte Carlo on the interstate. As most (if not all) of you know by this point, I purchased a 1996 Monte Carlo Z34 for $500 this summer -- the $500 being the remainder of my tax refund money. It has its minor problems, both cosmetic and mechanical, such as off-track windows and misfiring engine cylinders, but it runs and drives quite well. I have not, however, taken it to Wichita and back yet, which for us is a round trip of about 50 miles or so, give or take, almost all interstate driving. I love the car; I even named it the Decepticon, because of this:
Yeah, I put that decal logo on the hood myself. In case you haven't noticed, I'm a huge nerd. Join the club -- we have jackets. It has a matching red logo on the back glass as well, and also sports a Galactic Empire insignia on the other side.
Anyway, no, despite having the car registered and insured for a full month, I've not yet taken it on the highway. Part of that's because I rarely go to Wichita unless we're visiting our friends, and the girlfriend has already told me she refuses to be seen in a car with a huge Decepticon logo on the hood, so we've always taken her car into town for that sort of stuff. Part of it is also that it's been really, really fucking hot here in Kansas for the past sixty days or so, and there's no reason to tax the old car in the heat when it already has a few minor issues.
Plus, as I mentioned here before a few weeks ago, it gets 18 miles per gallon. On a good day.
I hope the car stays reliable; I can't afford to make any of the needed repairs, upkeep, or maintenance on it until well after we get our first paychecks of the semester, and even then I'll need to shop around somewhat. Depending on how our teaching schedules mesh, it's likely that there will be days where I need to go in when the girlfriend doesn't, and vice-versa, let alone different times we're in our respective classes, so I'll probably be driving it back and forth a lot.
I already know my schedule of actual classes, of course. I've known it since April or so, when all of us registered for fall. I have two classes on Wednesday, one of them 1:30-4 and the other from 7:05-9:45, and one on Thursday night at 7:05-945. I can't yet set my office hours, however, until I know when I'll be teaching. The girlfriend's with me in the Wednesday night class, at least -- it's our poetry workshop.
The next few days should be buzzing with activity -- I'll be working on more of the edits for the book to get it as finished as possible, as well as paying the last bill that came in today (the water bill) and doing some grocery shopping so that we have food in the house. I need to make a shopping list for that, actually, and include coffee on it. I'm running out of the proverbial life's blood, and we can't have that.
The girlfriend, who has arguably always been this blog's biggest "fan" of sorts, told me her opinions this afternoon on the blog's new inception and focus, and summed it up thusly:
"Well, you've named yourself," she said. "Means you'll pop up on Google now. Seems kind of stupid to me, but oh well, whatever you want to do. It's your blog."
This blog has always been findable on Google, by the way; no matter what settings I changed to make it "unsearchable" or what-have-you, it would always pop up. It probably still does; I haven't checked. The good thing is that nobody's ever looked for me, and it's not like I made it easy to connect me to the blog back when I had all sorts of incriminating stuff on it (like, say, when I was working in the grocery store) anyway. Now that it's fully open and public about who I am and what I do, there's that level of accountability I have to consider when I write anything here. It's a responsibility, to be sure.
Anyway, over the course of the past 48 hours or so, I've been trying to come up with a rough plan of what's going to happen, or what needs to be done, over the course of the next two-and-a-half weeks before we return to Wichita on a daily basis for the fall semester of classes. Yes, it really is that close. Our first day of classes for the fall semester is Monday, August 22 -- which means that our "orientation" will take place on either Thursday the 18th or Friday the 19th. As far as I know, it's not been scheduled yet -- or, if it has, we haven't been told about it as students and GTAs.
Orientation consists of a day where all of us go into campus, basically, and introduce ourselves to the new class for the fall. They do it every year; if you were reading at this time last year, though, you may remember that for all of us students in the new class last fall, we did it for a full week. There's a lot of lectures and meetings the new recruits have to endure, as well as paperwork and office assignments. From what I've heard, there's a class of ten this year, only three of which are fellow poets like myself -- and all three of those poets are guys. I'm not sure what the rest of the new class will be studying, though. Usually the fiction program is more selective than the poetry program, and last year -- in my class -- we had a healthy crop of MA students as well.
Anyway, back to the point. We (meaning all of us who are current students, including the girlfriend and myself) will have to go in there for the last orientation day, introduce ourselves, make witty banter, etc. Hopefully, however, at that point all of the "orientation" activities will be a formality, as I will have taken care of most of my business in the days prior.
The girlfriend needs to go back down to the lake house for a few days at some point soon to do some work on it; she was originally planning to do that sometime shortly after the first of the month, but I'm not sure when she's actually going to do it. When she does that, most of the time she's gone will be spent getting my school-related affairs in order. I need to go back to campus at least once or twice before the orientation week starts, taking a lot of my belongings (as well as new office decorations) back there to get the place set up. I also need to take in all of my new textbooks and novels for my classes this semester, which will be a nice little undertaking on its own since there are about thirty of them. I'm lucky I have a large bookshelf on the wall above and behind my desk.
So, here's the plan: during the first or second week of August, more than likely while the girlfriend is gone, I'll take my stuff to campus, set it up, etc. I'll also see if I can figure out when/where I'll be teaching, draft out a schedule of my daily tasks and activities for any given week, and print/post my office hours outside my door.
As an aside, this semester I am supposed to be teaching an undergraduate level scientific/engineering writing class, though it has not yet been added to the schedule in any form, not even for registration purposes. I don't even know the class or course number for it, but I do know it's not listed yet in the course catalog -- or, if it is, I can't find it listed under the English Department. As far as I know, I'm still supposed to be teaching it, but I could end up teaching anything, really. There are many classes that have not been added to the system yet. We usually find out our teaching schedules in the last few days leading up to the semester (read: orientation week). The girlfriend already knows, tentatively speaking of course, that she'll be teaching on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule, at 8 and 9:30AM -- which is what she wanted -- but, as always, anything can change. Nothing's finalized until we get the sheet of paper that tells us where, what, and when we're teaching.
Anyway, the main reason I'm trying to get as much as I can taken care of while I can is because I've never taught that science/engineering writing class before. I don't know what it entails, what books are used for it, or the kinds of assignments I'll have to give out. I need to get as much information on it as I can as early as possible so that I can make a course syllabus and plot a figurative plan of attack when it comes to teaching it. Only one other instructor in the department has taught it before, so it's going to be interesting to see what it's like.
As some of you know, I was originally planning to train for this class and help structure a new syllabus for it with the director of the writing program this summer, but there was no funding for said training and I was unable to do so -- so, again, I need to prepare as much as I can for teaching this course as early as I can. Still, it'll be no different than when I first became a GTA at this time last fall -- all of us were thrust into teaching positions and told to follow the basic plans of an example syllabus we were given, and we all turned out just fine. It's exciting, actually. I consider it a challenge, and I thrive when it comes to academic challenges.
The trip down to Wichita and back will also serve as the first truly functional, high-speed (70+mph) road test for my Monte Carlo on the interstate. As most (if not all) of you know by this point, I purchased a 1996 Monte Carlo Z34 for $500 this summer -- the $500 being the remainder of my tax refund money. It has its minor problems, both cosmetic and mechanical, such as off-track windows and misfiring engine cylinders, but it runs and drives quite well. I have not, however, taken it to Wichita and back yet, which for us is a round trip of about 50 miles or so, give or take, almost all interstate driving. I love the car; I even named it the Decepticon, because of this:
Yeah, I put that decal logo on the hood myself. In case you haven't noticed, I'm a huge nerd. Join the club -- we have jackets. It has a matching red logo on the back glass as well, and also sports a Galactic Empire insignia on the other side.
Anyway, no, despite having the car registered and insured for a full month, I've not yet taken it on the highway. Part of that's because I rarely go to Wichita unless we're visiting our friends, and the girlfriend has already told me she refuses to be seen in a car with a huge Decepticon logo on the hood, so we've always taken her car into town for that sort of stuff. Part of it is also that it's been really, really fucking hot here in Kansas for the past sixty days or so, and there's no reason to tax the old car in the heat when it already has a few minor issues.
Plus, as I mentioned here before a few weeks ago, it gets 18 miles per gallon. On a good day.
I hope the car stays reliable; I can't afford to make any of the needed repairs, upkeep, or maintenance on it until well after we get our first paychecks of the semester, and even then I'll need to shop around somewhat. Depending on how our teaching schedules mesh, it's likely that there will be days where I need to go in when the girlfriend doesn't, and vice-versa, let alone different times we're in our respective classes, so I'll probably be driving it back and forth a lot.
I already know my schedule of actual classes, of course. I've known it since April or so, when all of us registered for fall. I have two classes on Wednesday, one of them 1:30-4 and the other from 7:05-9:45, and one on Thursday night at 7:05-945. I can't yet set my office hours, however, until I know when I'll be teaching. The girlfriend's with me in the Wednesday night class, at least -- it's our poetry workshop.
The next few days should be buzzing with activity -- I'll be working on more of the edits for the book to get it as finished as possible, as well as paying the last bill that came in today (the water bill) and doing some grocery shopping so that we have food in the house. I need to make a shopping list for that, actually, and include coffee on it. I'm running out of the proverbial life's blood, and we can't have that.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
The Art of the Hungry Writer
Most of you know me, have read this blog for years on end, or both. Either way, you know I'm a writer and have chosen that as a career for better or worse at this point. Most of you also know (probably due to my aforementioned choice of career) that I am not a wealthy man, I don't come from a wealthy background, and the same goes for my girlfriend. Both of us come from blue and/or white-collar families, but neither of us or our families have been "well off."
She and I both attended undergrad via the way of scholarships and/or other financial assistance, and can only afford the costs of graduate school by receiving a tuition waiver and stipend by being GTAs. As we do not attend a high-end graduate school, our teaching stipends are a lot lower than what one might expect, and are very hard to "live on" alone, even with two of us in the household -- and to be able to have accessible money in the case of an emergency (such as the girlfriend's car breaking down and needing costly repairs, or the death of a family member in one of our home states that would require immediate travel), she and I have both taken student loans from time to time. I took substantially more of them than she did once I started graduate school, as most of the time I cover the bills and home expenses like food and gas for the cars.
It was, and still is, a necessity for me to do so, sadly. Both of our cars are 1996 models, and do/will require upkeep and preventative maintenance whenever possible to keep them running, and there are a lot of hidden costs to attending graduate school, not to mention unexpected cost-of-living expenses. Books for a semester's worth of classes can easily set one back $200-400 (even if one purchases used copies from places like the school bookstore or Amazon), and student fees are around $400 as well. Neither of those are covered under our GTA tuition waivers or our stipends. When the costs of going out to eat or drink with friends as well as the occasional clothes shopping are added in there as well, there's no room for anything else -- and I found by calculating my budget that we simply weren't going to be able to live paycheck-to-paycheck anymore as we had in the past, because there simply wasn't enough money to get us by. When I left the grocery store I was working in, I was making more than twice the salary I get now as a GTA. The store, however, doesn't offer a degree. Even last year when I worked for the local newspaper as a reporter, layout designer, and webmaster, I still made more money doing that than I now make as a GTA, and I only worked at the paper 20-25 hours a week in-office. It wasn't much more overall, but still.
As a writer, the book I've now finished and have been editing has a lot riding on it. Self-publishing now isn't what it was ten -- or even five -- years ago. Authors can make a lot of money doing it with little to no overhead costs if the situation and climate for said book is right. When said publishing is entirely digital, as is the case with Amazon, there are no overhead costs to speak of, and Amazon keeps about the same percentage of each sale of your book as iTunes would keep were you to sell an album through them, roughly. What I have is currently a 487-page manuscript that I am trying to edit down to about 350-400 pages. I'm making cuts for redundancy, adding footnotes to better explain situations, and adding/removing sentences (or pages/chapters, in some cases) here and there. I'm trying to make the best possible book I can make in order for those people who'd be interested to get the most bang-for-the-buck out of their $9.99 (or whatever price it actually ends up being). Lower prices generally mean more sales; take a look at Walmart's stock figures if you don't believe me.
There's a lot riding on the book because its release can go in several different directions -- it can either take off and do consistently good sales, it can do good sales for a month or two before dropping back off into obscurity, or it can go completely unnoticed to the eBook-buying public. Why is this important in the long run? Because when I started serious work on the book in earnest earlier this summer, it wasn't just to tell my story -- those of you who have read this blog for four years already know my story -- but it was to make enough sales off of it to be able to pay back my student loans without issue.
As I've said, I'm entering my second year of graduate school in the fall. Entering. I have two years left of schooling before I receive my MFA, and unless I get into a good PhD program after that, I will immediately have to begin paying back those student loans (I'm guessing around Christmas 2013). By finishing and releasing the book now, I've got two years of e-Sales to work with, and in that time I hope to be noticed by a publisher who would like to make a large-scale print run of the book, meaning I would be able to secure a literary agent as well as have at least one actual book on my list of publications when applying to PhD programs. All of this, obviously, requires a lot of luck, and I'm taking a big gamble on whether it will actually work. As they say, though, fortune favors the bold. I'll never know what I'm actually capable of unless I try to do it and hope for the best. Right now, judging on how much work I have left to do on it, I'm shooting for a release date on Amazon for around August 15 or so.
I must also extend my thanks to all of you who have left me kind messages and/or tweets of encouragement over the past 24 hours, especially those of you who are new to this blog. It's all much appreciated.
She and I both attended undergrad via the way of scholarships and/or other financial assistance, and can only afford the costs of graduate school by receiving a tuition waiver and stipend by being GTAs. As we do not attend a high-end graduate school, our teaching stipends are a lot lower than what one might expect, and are very hard to "live on" alone, even with two of us in the household -- and to be able to have accessible money in the case of an emergency (such as the girlfriend's car breaking down and needing costly repairs, or the death of a family member in one of our home states that would require immediate travel), she and I have both taken student loans from time to time. I took substantially more of them than she did once I started graduate school, as most of the time I cover the bills and home expenses like food and gas for the cars.
It was, and still is, a necessity for me to do so, sadly. Both of our cars are 1996 models, and do/will require upkeep and preventative maintenance whenever possible to keep them running, and there are a lot of hidden costs to attending graduate school, not to mention unexpected cost-of-living expenses. Books for a semester's worth of classes can easily set one back $200-400 (even if one purchases used copies from places like the school bookstore or Amazon), and student fees are around $400 as well. Neither of those are covered under our GTA tuition waivers or our stipends. When the costs of going out to eat or drink with friends as well as the occasional clothes shopping are added in there as well, there's no room for anything else -- and I found by calculating my budget that we simply weren't going to be able to live paycheck-to-paycheck anymore as we had in the past, because there simply wasn't enough money to get us by. When I left the grocery store I was working in, I was making more than twice the salary I get now as a GTA. The store, however, doesn't offer a degree. Even last year when I worked for the local newspaper as a reporter, layout designer, and webmaster, I still made more money doing that than I now make as a GTA, and I only worked at the paper 20-25 hours a week in-office. It wasn't much more overall, but still.
As a writer, the book I've now finished and have been editing has a lot riding on it. Self-publishing now isn't what it was ten -- or even five -- years ago. Authors can make a lot of money doing it with little to no overhead costs if the situation and climate for said book is right. When said publishing is entirely digital, as is the case with Amazon, there are no overhead costs to speak of, and Amazon keeps about the same percentage of each sale of your book as iTunes would keep were you to sell an album through them, roughly. What I have is currently a 487-page manuscript that I am trying to edit down to about 350-400 pages. I'm making cuts for redundancy, adding footnotes to better explain situations, and adding/removing sentences (or pages/chapters, in some cases) here and there. I'm trying to make the best possible book I can make in order for those people who'd be interested to get the most bang-for-the-buck out of their $9.99 (or whatever price it actually ends up being). Lower prices generally mean more sales; take a look at Walmart's stock figures if you don't believe me.
There's a lot riding on the book because its release can go in several different directions -- it can either take off and do consistently good sales, it can do good sales for a month or two before dropping back off into obscurity, or it can go completely unnoticed to the eBook-buying public. Why is this important in the long run? Because when I started serious work on the book in earnest earlier this summer, it wasn't just to tell my story -- those of you who have read this blog for four years already know my story -- but it was to make enough sales off of it to be able to pay back my student loans without issue.
As I've said, I'm entering my second year of graduate school in the fall. Entering. I have two years left of schooling before I receive my MFA, and unless I get into a good PhD program after that, I will immediately have to begin paying back those student loans (I'm guessing around Christmas 2013). By finishing and releasing the book now, I've got two years of e-Sales to work with, and in that time I hope to be noticed by a publisher who would like to make a large-scale print run of the book, meaning I would be able to secure a literary agent as well as have at least one actual book on my list of publications when applying to PhD programs. All of this, obviously, requires a lot of luck, and I'm taking a big gamble on whether it will actually work. As they say, though, fortune favors the bold. I'll never know what I'm actually capable of unless I try to do it and hope for the best. Right now, judging on how much work I have left to do on it, I'm shooting for a release date on Amazon for around August 15 or so.
I must also extend my thanks to all of you who have left me kind messages and/or tweets of encouragement over the past 24 hours, especially those of you who are new to this blog. It's all much appreciated.
Friday, July 29, 2011
The New Face of Blogging Starts Here
Look around. Notice anything different?
Well, for one, this is the only post on this blog as of right now. All of the other posts I wrote over the course of the past four years have been archived by me and deleted cleanly from the Blogger servers. They no longer exist anywhere except for on my hard drive and in my head.
I suppose I should properly introduce myself, as many of you have been reading this blog since I started it, yet have never known exactly who I am. My real name is, and always has been, Brandon. I am 28 years old, and I live in Newton, Kansas (the geographical center of North America) with my girlfriend of over six years and our three cats Petey, Sadie, and Maggie. I am originally from Morgantown, West Virginia, a city and state that I am proud to say I am from despite the negative connotations thereof. I graduated from West Virginia University in 2005 with a Bachelor's degree in English and Creative Writing, what was considered at the time to be a "double-major" sort of degree. Since 2006, I have lived in various locations in both Missouri and Kansas, and moved out here to be with my girlfriend, who I met online in 2005. I am a graduate student studying towards an MFA in poetry, and I am a teaching assistant -- meaning, I teach two sections of English classes every semester, and I get paid a stipend for it and receive a tuition waiver. I'll enter my second year of graduate school in the fall, less than a month from now. I am on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
I originally started this blog in August 2007 -- almost four full years ago -- as a place where I could write about the surreal experiences I'd had while working as a cashier in a grocery store when I first moved out here. I worked as a cashier and night shift stocker in that store for two and a half years, during which I was able to chronicle many of the stressful and outrageously funny stories of working there, in this blog. The big reveal here is that the best of those stories have been compiled and edited down into a book, called The Cash Register Confessional: Sordid Stories of Working in a Low-end Grocery Store, which will be available for sale on Amazon in Kindle (and whatever other eBook formats they support) within a month or so, with a print version to eventually follow once I acquire a literary agent and a publisher. This is, for those of you who are not new to the blog, the "big secret writing project" I've been working on all summer, and why all of those stories/posts/everything else have now been deleted from this blog in order to reboot it. I am currently finishing the editing process of the book before I can "lock" the manuscript and put it on sale, though I need to find front-and-back "cover art" for the book first.
I have, of course, not revealed the name of the store I worked in (or its location) in the book for obvious reasons, nor have I revealed the true names of any of the store's employees both past and present. I would rather not be sued, and it's best that I keep everything within those stories as vague as possible to prevent that. I also wish no ill will on any of my former coworkers or bosses, or the store itself; I am friends with many of those people on Facebook, and keep in touch with some of them frequently, so it's inevitable that eventually one or more of them will eventually pick up a copy of the book and read it. That's part of why the compiling/writing/editing process has taken so long -- there are many factors to consider, and I'm not the kind of guy who wants to burn bridges. I just want to tell a story. The final version of the book will be between 350 and 400 pages, more than likely.
Until right now, when you read it above, I'd revealed the plans for the book and for this blog to about five people, tops. Not even my parents knew all the details, though I'm sure they could figure it out. My original plans were to completely delete this blog off the map after I used it for promotional purposes for the book, but decided I would rather revamp it and renew it. I didn't want to lose the Soakin' Up Paycheck name, nor did I really want to hide anything anymore. Because of that I relaunched this site as Soakin' Up Paycheck 2.0, as you can see, and as I am no longer anonymous, it's going to be more of a personal blog, not relating much to work or school if I can possibly avoid it. Obviously, I can't write anything here that would get me in trouble with friends, coworkers, or anyone at the university (which I will still call "Flat State University," so that I'm not necessarily easily connectible to the school), but after four years of secrecy and anonymity when I wrote here, things began to wear thin. Believe it or not, it's hard to come up with codenames for everyone and to remember to use them at all times, and it's not fun to wonder in the back of my mind what would happen if someone I knew found the blog and decided to use its contents against me. When you work in education, and when you're as paranoid and high-strung as I can be at times, that's particularly stressful. The entire time I was writing about my experiences at work or in school, I was constantly wondering how long it would be before someone found this blog and put two-and-two together to figure out it was me. When one is under the umbrella of anonymity, it's quite easy to get carried away and start venting about certain things or situations, and that's something I can no longer do when it comes to my writing here. In a way, it's rather freeing. Full accountability and responsibility go a long way when you're working on something you care about, and I've done more writing on this blog than I've ever done anywhere else over the course of the past four years -- and, keep in mind, I was a reporter for the local newspaper day in, day out for about a year.
Aside from the obvious font, color, and other aesthetic changes, I've also removed my sidebar for links (mainly because most of them were out of date and no longer functional) and my Twitter feed. If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm not hard to find. The FEEDJIT web tracker on the right side of the page will stay, just because I like it -- and it lets me know in a roundabout way who is visiting my blog and from where. That was much more important when I was writing anonymously than it is now -- if I saw a few hits on there from one of the towns/places I used to work, I could quickly shut this thing down and wipe it from the internet, so that there would be no proof of my snarky online stories. Now that I've deleted all of my old posts anyhow, it's just a neat little widget.
Anyway, this post marks a completely new direction for this blog -- my own little public internet haven. I couldn't be more excited about it, either.
Well, for one, this is the only post on this blog as of right now. All of the other posts I wrote over the course of the past four years have been archived by me and deleted cleanly from the Blogger servers. They no longer exist anywhere except for on my hard drive and in my head.
I suppose I should properly introduce myself, as many of you have been reading this blog since I started it, yet have never known exactly who I am. My real name is, and always has been, Brandon. I am 28 years old, and I live in Newton, Kansas (the geographical center of North America) with my girlfriend of over six years and our three cats Petey, Sadie, and Maggie. I am originally from Morgantown, West Virginia, a city and state that I am proud to say I am from despite the negative connotations thereof. I graduated from West Virginia University in 2005 with a Bachelor's degree in English and Creative Writing, what was considered at the time to be a "double-major" sort of degree. Since 2006, I have lived in various locations in both Missouri and Kansas, and moved out here to be with my girlfriend, who I met online in 2005. I am a graduate student studying towards an MFA in poetry, and I am a teaching assistant -- meaning, I teach two sections of English classes every semester, and I get paid a stipend for it and receive a tuition waiver. I'll enter my second year of graduate school in the fall, less than a month from now. I am on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
I originally started this blog in August 2007 -- almost four full years ago -- as a place where I could write about the surreal experiences I'd had while working as a cashier in a grocery store when I first moved out here. I worked as a cashier and night shift stocker in that store for two and a half years, during which I was able to chronicle many of the stressful and outrageously funny stories of working there, in this blog. The big reveal here is that the best of those stories have been compiled and edited down into a book, called The Cash Register Confessional: Sordid Stories of Working in a Low-end Grocery Store, which will be available for sale on Amazon in Kindle (and whatever other eBook formats they support) within a month or so, with a print version to eventually follow once I acquire a literary agent and a publisher. This is, for those of you who are not new to the blog, the "big secret writing project" I've been working on all summer, and why all of those stories/posts/everything else have now been deleted from this blog in order to reboot it. I am currently finishing the editing process of the book before I can "lock" the manuscript and put it on sale, though I need to find front-and-back "cover art" for the book first.
I have, of course, not revealed the name of the store I worked in (or its location) in the book for obvious reasons, nor have I revealed the true names of any of the store's employees both past and present. I would rather not be sued, and it's best that I keep everything within those stories as vague as possible to prevent that. I also wish no ill will on any of my former coworkers or bosses, or the store itself; I am friends with many of those people on Facebook, and keep in touch with some of them frequently, so it's inevitable that eventually one or more of them will eventually pick up a copy of the book and read it. That's part of why the compiling/writing/editing process has taken so long -- there are many factors to consider, and I'm not the kind of guy who wants to burn bridges. I just want to tell a story. The final version of the book will be between 350 and 400 pages, more than likely.
Until right now, when you read it above, I'd revealed the plans for the book and for this blog to about five people, tops. Not even my parents knew all the details, though I'm sure they could figure it out. My original plans were to completely delete this blog off the map after I used it for promotional purposes for the book, but decided I would rather revamp it and renew it. I didn't want to lose the Soakin' Up Paycheck name, nor did I really want to hide anything anymore. Because of that I relaunched this site as Soakin' Up Paycheck 2.0, as you can see, and as I am no longer anonymous, it's going to be more of a personal blog, not relating much to work or school if I can possibly avoid it. Obviously, I can't write anything here that would get me in trouble with friends, coworkers, or anyone at the university (which I will still call "Flat State University," so that I'm not necessarily easily connectible to the school), but after four years of secrecy and anonymity when I wrote here, things began to wear thin. Believe it or not, it's hard to come up with codenames for everyone and to remember to use them at all times, and it's not fun to wonder in the back of my mind what would happen if someone I knew found the blog and decided to use its contents against me. When you work in education, and when you're as paranoid and high-strung as I can be at times, that's particularly stressful. The entire time I was writing about my experiences at work or in school, I was constantly wondering how long it would be before someone found this blog and put two-and-two together to figure out it was me. When one is under the umbrella of anonymity, it's quite easy to get carried away and start venting about certain things or situations, and that's something I can no longer do when it comes to my writing here. In a way, it's rather freeing. Full accountability and responsibility go a long way when you're working on something you care about, and I've done more writing on this blog than I've ever done anywhere else over the course of the past four years -- and, keep in mind, I was a reporter for the local newspaper day in, day out for about a year.
Aside from the obvious font, color, and other aesthetic changes, I've also removed my sidebar for links (mainly because most of them were out of date and no longer functional) and my Twitter feed. If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm not hard to find. The FEEDJIT web tracker on the right side of the page will stay, just because I like it -- and it lets me know in a roundabout way who is visiting my blog and from where. That was much more important when I was writing anonymously than it is now -- if I saw a few hits on there from one of the towns/places I used to work, I could quickly shut this thing down and wipe it from the internet, so that there would be no proof of my snarky online stories. Now that I've deleted all of my old posts anyhow, it's just a neat little widget.
Anyway, this post marks a completely new direction for this blog -- my own little public internet haven. I couldn't be more excited about it, either.
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