On Writing More Frequently

Well, hmmn... I rarely post here. Nothing special about that. Most blogs are rarely updated, or fall by the wayside with the frequency that makes me look like a daily virtuoso. Life happens, and I've been busy.

I started a new bout of employment in my chosen field after a long stint of unemployment for school and then working a retail job I loathed (and I have no qualms about saying that Burlington Coat Factory is almost as bad as Wal Mart for the way it treats its serfs), have put schooling on hold (it got me the current career path, so thankfully the time spent trying to decide if a transistor was an NPN or PNP didn't go to waste), and have been a combination of busy and stressed out that I really don't care to elaborate one. Suffice it to say that I wish I could share some of the runway sightings I have had, but that would end everything pretty quickly.

I'm now firmly ensconced in aviation work, and have an excellent set of coworkers and bosses. My home company even is progressive (or maybe just writing on the wall) minded enough to offer full benefits to workers in same-sex relationships, the pay is pretty good considering what I do on a daily basis, and the wife and I are eyeing some more changes to our lifestyle in the vein of hoping to improve our foreign language skills.

That's all well and good, and I'll be glad to be able to afford making a concerted effort at paying down debts and living like a human being instead of a cave dwelling servile, but it leaves me asking 'when will Roy get to write more frequently?'

The answer is a resounding "sometime soon." At work, we have a short pre-Christmas push to get ahead of our orders as far as possible. It's a normal thing, but it involves overtime on the week where Misses Skull One and I would be trying to clean house, package gifts, and make final arrangements - and overtime in my job is a harrowing, mind-numbing run of sixty hour weeks as a general minimum. Once that overtime is over, we're on the road to cross a large percentage of the continental U.S. to visit family and friends literally within 36 hours. That's going to lead to a week of driving, visiting, eating, and trying not to drink and smoke myself into oblivion. After that, it's back to work, and maybe if I feel like it I won't take a semester off from finishing an A.S. in what fast becomes a ridiculous degree plan with no real bearing on making sure big tubes of metal can be certified to fly based on whether or not I followed a set of rules.

Speaking of those rules, I may spend some time in some training; that will necessitate a schedule change to accommodate the trainer. A minor annoyance, which may or may not show up in poetry. I find myself drawn lately not to narratives, fiction, or essays, but poetry. I swear it's the weather and the strong pull of the Shinto shrine north of Seattle. Alcohol may help, though.

I really would like to get back to writing more often. I greatly enjoyed the longstanding fiction project that Misses Skull One and an old friend (who we will incidentally be visiting for the first time this Christmas) have allowed me to collaborate on. I managed to get a submission accepted for a charity book of flash fiction which benefits an elementary school on the first attempt to submit something for publication. That's gotta amount for something.

I keep imagining that someday, I'll be writing flight fiction or science fiction, of a kind like H.G. Wells. Did you know he wrote fiction about powered flight before it was a thing? I have since the eighth grade, thanks to a cheap book from Borders my father bought me as a birthday present filler. I never really appreciated that book until way later in life, but I'm grateful for it - I think it subconsciously formed some of my notions on what and how to write that all the other writing and reading I've done didn't.

I've droned on randomly long enough, so as a last random piece, I'll leave a transcription of a poem I wrote Gods know when, sometime in the last two years. It's a common theme in my longer poetry, something about aircraft and warfare. I keep imagining B-29s over the Pacific Ocean when I read it, since rediscovering it earlier today in a forgotten pile of papers.

[Untitled]

Clouds race by us
Engines hum in time
As guns roar ahead

Dots in the red sun
Cruising past smoke and fire
A maelstrom follows

Peals of laughter climb
As if sparrows fleeing hawks
The vulture laughs most

Webs of condensation
Cross between puffs of thunder
Shattered glass rains

Wind hides chirps
Buzzing drones flit above
Green turns to flowers

Adjustments

The past few weeks have been a mind-numbing, nerve wracking blur. I'm very busy with my studies in the Avionics department at TSTC - Waco. Prior to starting this course of study, I'd only dabbled in online classes since before I moved to Texas a few years ago. Probably the hardest part of it all has been keeping the various operating and maintenance frequencies and regulations straight between the installation class, systems class, and the electronics coursework.

Even though at the time I was very upset about not getting to transfer my job from down south (and thus becoming a member of the voluntarily unemployed), the fact that I've not been working has been a blessing in disguise. Yes, money has been tight the past month (and the only creatures who have been guaranteed a meal here are the cats). Yes, the wife now has a job, and is looking for better employment for herself that will use her skills. No, I'm not unhappy with things here, but I am consistently bothered by the fact that things in general could be better.

That has proven to be a source of internal strife. Social harmony is extremely important to me. I want things to go well and I want people to be happy, because that in turn makes me happy. The social cycle of passing on a courtesy done by someone else comes to mind; if someone does something nice for you (say, holding a door or excusing themselves if they need past you in an aisle), and you do something equally courteous when the situation arises, perhaps it will continue on.

I've felt like nothing but a resource whore the past two months. Even being polite to random strangers, helping people in need when it's within my means, keeping the food coming from the kitchen when the pantry gets low... somehow, it was failing to click. I felt awful, and was sure I was being awful.

Today is a day where I feel like I've accomplished a lot: I've made a huge pot of beef curry and a loaf of bread, I managed to send my wife to work with a packed lunch (though she had to heat it up herself before packing it in her thermal bento), and the laundry is halfway caught up. Between that and some time spent meditating, things are looking better. Hopefully after I finish my homework and do some studying tonight, I'll still feel this way about it!

Rebirth

For some time, I've been considering a revamp of my blog. Realizing that it had become a whiny cooking blog, I set about considering something better, something I could be more passionate about. What I came to was this.

From here on out, I'll be expounding on how I relate my practice of Shinto and some conservative thought processes to blending in as an everyday Texan. It may get boring, it may get exciting. Who knows?

As a start, I believe now is an excellent time for an update on my life. My wife and I are still happily married and living in central Texas. Having moved to a different town and disposed of some unwanted or unneeded posessions, we now reside in a well maintained post-WWII duplex on the grounds of what used to be an Air Force pilot training base. At the moment we are still unpacking, but things have gone well so far.

We have both made a commitment to change our employment venues and goals and have thus moved to a new location where we can pursue careers in aviation and related fields. Unfortunately for me, I've had to resign my position with a very good grocery chain which treated me well and was quite frankly the best place I've ever worked. For now, that means I'm on the prowl for a job in the greater Waco area, or at least until school starts.

Living in Waco is not too foreign a concept to me - thanks to the generosity of my mother-in-law back in 2008, my then fiancee and I were able to stay with her while we readied for the wife's going back to school. Since then, we've lived around Austin and the outlying towns of that area, but Waco isn't that much different from any mid-sized southern town. It's a bit more southern than I grew up with along the Ohio River, but it's not been hard to adjust to - after all, many of the people here still know the manners their mothers taught them.