I have just leveled up in computer knowledge.

Drawbacks include the fact that I wasted most of my night doing this, that the knowledge gained was largely unnecessary, and that my writing session may or may not be shot as a result.

But hey, knowledge.

It all started when I wanted to know the voting breakdowns of the AL Manager of the Year. In the old days, media outlets would provide the full voting summary of any given award in the same article where the award is announced. You know, with the number of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place votes and then the complete vote total at the end. But for some reason, at least in the last year or so, a lot of outlets stopped doing this. Especially Yahoo!, which for whatever reason (fantasy sports tradition, I guess) has become my personal favored provider of sports news.

So I went looking for the AL Manager of the Year voting. You see, I happen to think that Mike Scioscia was a pretty bad pick and I wanted to see who agreed with me. Not that Don Wakamatsu, rookie Mariner skipper, was a shoo-in or anything, but I actually think Ron Gardenhire deserved the award, with maybe Ron Washington and Wak duking it out for second. Since I agreed heartily with the AL Cy Young (even though my boy Felix Hernandez didn’t get the award) and NL Manager of the Year, I figured the voting on AL MOTY had to be closer to reflect my dissent.

One of the first sites I found, however, failed to tell me the full voting record. It turned out to be someone’s personal ballot, probably not even a baseball writer. And then my manual cookie-acceptance filters started going crazy and extra windows started popping open and I tried to shut down Firefox as fast as I could. Firefox closed and instead of shutting down my computer as fast as possible, I stupidly reopened the browser and started looking for those elusive vote totals.

I found them (Wak got 2 first-place votes! Gardenhire was second overall! Generally intelligent votes abounded, save for the inane voting for Joe Girardi), but also soon found that there was a weird-looking virus “detection” pop-up message on my screen too, letting me know that a program called “System Defender” had found all these viruses and wanted me to take action right away.

I’m not a fan of anti-virus software in general or even conceptually, since almost every anti-virus software program I’ve ever found either (A) charges money, (B) is actually a virus, or (C) both. Making differentiations between the programs seems almost impossible and their effectiveness is often dubious even at the highest level. Recently, though, I have had a good bit of success with the popular (and free) Malwarebytes Anti-Malware program which seems to be pretty well regarded and has yet to act like a virus itself.

Judiciously wary of the purported software, the name “System Defender”, and the Windows-look-alike shield that just says “I am phishily trying to trick you” all over it, I avoided clicking on anything in this program and furiously got my Anti-Malware running. It found several problematic files, then did its magic, and I figured I’d be all set.

It took about three full restart runs of this pattern (restart, swear at the fact that the System Defender dubiously reappeared upon restart, run Anti-Malware, restart, repeat) before I started looking for an end-run solution around this tried and true methodology. And then I had to go to intramural basketball (my triumphant return after a week of illness), so I just shut my computer down for a while to let it think about what it had done.

This post should just be about basketball and my love of the game and how good it felt to be healthy enough to play and still fell I was getting air to my lungs, how I need to start playing twice a week with or without IM’s, how my muscle memory has preserved my downtown 3-point shot but the streakiness of said shooting remains, how we lost by a point in a hard-fought struggle, and so on. But System Defender had other plans for my night.

I won’t regale you with every twist and turn in my battle with this nefarious software or my ultimate conquest. Some highlights of things that I learned or remembered along the way, though:

• Internet forums are generally helpful in aiding the deletion of known virus software, but they only go so far. Eventually, you will be on your own and have to outwit the beast.
• You will have to reveal hidden files, INCLUDING system files that Microsoft warns you against revealing as though it were the file that proves Microsoft is a monopoly.
• You should search by date and try to pinpoint files created within the first 2-3 minutes of infection. Narrowing file searches by date will allow you to find and delete most everything.
• Safe Mode is your friend. Restart in Safe Mode by pressing F8, then delete the files that won’t go down because the nefarious program is still running.

Even if this doesn’t help you, this list will be invaluable to me in the future, so chalk it up to notes on how to combat the dangers of the future.

Of course, once I’d finally deleted everything, had a successful restart without the bad program, danced around the room, and gotten over my euphoria, I realized that Task Manager was still down. It had gone down in the wake of System Defender’s original attack, never to return despite repeated pressing of control-alt-delete and right clicking of the taskbar and so on. Even with System Defender defeated, it had left this one vestige of its success.

To which the answer was, of course, System Restore. That only took 3 Internet forums and several bad pieces of harder advice to figure out. System Restore timestamps the Windows settings every 24 hours or so and saves them for a while in case you want to backtrack in time from a serious mistake. This alone would not have wiped out the virus, but it was enough to put a bow on the restoration effort once I’d taken out all the mysteriously buried files it had installed.

For those of you reading this narrative in terror for the status of my novel which has been written in its entirety on this computer, fear not. I’ve been backing it up almost constantly in several different locations, including my secret cache under the mountains of Utah (seriously). By far my larger concern was lost time in working on the novel if the problem persisted or if I would have to get a new computer or do some larger restart of the whole thing. Not that this program ever looked threatening enough to do such things – after all, I could still access all my files, just with an annoying series of occasional pop-ups in the background.

But System Defender may have won this night, if not the war. My beloved word counter in WordPress tells me that I’m closing in on 1200 words for this post, aggravating if only because that would be a half-decent night of writing, but instead I’ve been regaling the torments of my last few hours. Sigh. Maybe there’s something still left in the tank. Time to go find out.

Just a quick line so that you all know I’m still around… the lack of any updates has mostly been the result of an ambiguous sickness I’ve contracted recently that I have tentatively diagnosed as potential walking pneumonia. It may just be a weird cold, but I’ve never heard of a cold without nasal congestion where it all goes into the lungs directly instead.

Anyway, it’s been a good few days, illness aside. The Rutgers team broke (made the elimination rounds – it’s a good thing) for the first time in two years at American Pro-Ams last weekend, prompting perhaps more excitement from me than even the kids at the time. They dropped their quarterfinal, but by all accounts it was close. Our speeches in the round, which was about pregnancy quotas in a post-apocalyptic liberal democracy, were recorded and are being posted on YouTube.

I also played intramural basketball on Monday, having joined a Monday/Wednesday night league that fits pretty well with Tuesday/Thursday debate practice, giving me something to do out of the house most nights. Although playing as hard as I did on Monday without having played in a long time may have had something to do with breaking myself down enough for this illness. It’s not entirely clear.

In any case, everything’s more or less fine except that I’m exhausted and this is playing a little havoc with my ability to write anything interesting, so I’m having to take a longer break than is ideal when up against the December 15th deadline, now perilously close to just a month away. This last month is going to have to be a barn-burner, especially if this sickness lingers in any way.

Overall, though, things are good. Debate and writing and life are all going pretty darn well. If I can just take a full deep breath, I’ll be set.

October 2009 is one for the ages.

It wasn’t the spookiest October, though one could easily argue that the moment I resigned myself to death made this the literally scariest October on record. Certainly one hopes that this much abject fear is not revisited frequently. And the renewing inspiration of surviving what looks like a deadly threat is always worth experiencing… it had been since May 2005 that I’d had a near-death experience!

It wasn’t the most volatile October by any stretch. Most any prior month seemed stormier for one reason or another. Not that this was devoid of ups and downs. The obvious aforementioned down aside, Em struggled with a more difficult time in grad school than anticipated and I flitted between exhaustion, frustration, and excitement in wrestling with my book and getting some perspective on debate coaching.

What it might have been, almost certainly was, was the most productive October ever. And given that October tends to be high-energy and high-productivity for me, that is saying something. I have tended, the summer of Loosely Based aside, to write more in October and to feel more inspired during the month than any other time in the year, although March tends to be competitive. But this October, though there are about 38 hours remaining in the month (that I won’t be writing during), I have written 34,533 words of American Dream On, making it arguably the most prolific month of my life. That’s over 1,100 words every day, on average, counting several days of no writing. It’s also ~138 pages total, putting me on pace to write well over 1,500 pages a year at this pace. Not that I’m saying I can keep that up, but at the same time, it makes my 3 books/year aspiration look pretty manageable.

American Dream On now stands within 1,000 words of Loosely Based, meaning the next writing session will almost certainly make it the longest piece I’ve ever written. The target size is increasing a bit over time, standing now in the vicinity of 125,000 words as I try to tie everything together and leave myself enough time to explain things. It may run longer as I’m thinking I may need 65 chapters instead of 55, which may even put my December 15th deadline in some jeopardy, though this can be mitigated by stepping up my game. After all, I’ve hardly felt like I’m writing at a breakneck pace. This has actually felt pretty comfortable, pretty sustainable. I’ve likened it to cruise control. I think I could get closer to 50,000 words a month if I really pressured myself.

I know I’ve talked about all this a lot, that I’m probably becoming a rather dull stuck record on the numbers games, writing, and the issues entailed therein. But the discovery of this productivity, really unfolding and getting into high gear this month, is almost certainly the second most exciting discovery of my life (behind finding Emily). The idea that I could conceivably write six books in Princeton, creating a serious portfolio for myself after nearly three decades of struggling with endless ideas and only one manuscript, this makes my whole life seem worthwhile. Let alone if any of those six books catch on, securing some sort of life for myself in this state on a permanent basis.

I’m trying (and failing, evidently) not to get too far ahead of myself. One book at a time, one idea. This book, being in the works for eight years, is certainly going more quickly than something that I just came up with might. It may prove to not be very good when I get around to editing – I can already anticipate that it will require more revision than LB did. There’s a lot of slogging to come and I can’t imagine that I’ll really end up averaging 1,000 words a day over 365 days.

But it’s possible. And after going to sleep at night for the better part of three decades asking myself what I’ve accomplished, telling myself that I’m falling short of my potential, it’s a mighty fine change. I somehow think it would be hard to keep up that narrative for myself if I wrote 4-6 books by the time Em’s done with her program. So, yes, one book at a time. But I can start to see the light on the edge of my life and it feels like the culmination of most everything that’s ever mattered.

And I can’t wait to have people start reading.

UPenn this weekend – debate has given me the perfect break and pacing and interspersing my secluded life with real human contact and discussion, just as planned. Very excited about the teams that are going and the potential to do well. Every weekend, like every book or chapter, is a new opportunity to maximize potential, to start fresh. Every round one starts with the possibility of winning the tournament. It’s amazing how easily I’ve been able to manifest my own need for competition into the vicarious joys of coaching. Maybe not that amazing, if one thinks about how competitive coaches can be, but it’s a relief for me that I don’t feel a big void from not competing. And if I start to, there’s always APDA Cup.

If you need me, I’ll be in the rented 2010 red Corolla with a spoiler and a sunroof. I miss the Prius already.

I love how a bad day can be salvaged by a good session of writing.

I love how I can transform from feeling utterly unproductive, a blob waiting around for nightfall and wondering why I’m squandering my time, into the most productive joyous person graced with a ticket to hang out on Earth.

Most of my days aren’t bad now, most of them have been productive in their own right with shorter works or web projects or just taking care of the household chores. But when they are, what a nice surprise it is to be saved by the “work” of these days. How strange would it have been for any prior job to save me in this way? To keep me going when the chips were down in other parts of life, even if for only a day at a time?

This must be what it means when people say they love what they do.

I spent the better part of a decade, let alone what kind of a use of time even more years at school were, spinning wheels at pseudo-productive pursuits while somehow claiming that this prevented me from doing what I really felt driven to do. Always apologizing to myself, others, the world at large, my earlier years, that I wasn’t able to be productive, wasn’t on the road I needed to travel.

How satisfying, then, that this is what’s going well in my life now. That this, my work, is the antidote to any troubles that arise.

I hope this doesn’t sound like bragging. I hope it sounds like inspiration. To you.

My head has hurt most of the day, I’ve been sore, and I’ve been trying to convince myself that the doctoral advice to rest was indeed on the mark. I’ve been reading and watching TV-on-Netflix and generally grumping about, worrying about the “soft batch” spots on my head and wondering how I managed to bruise it without actually hitting it against anything. It’s an external couple of bruises, not a concussion, and the idea that whiplash could bruise the outside of one’s head is just baffling to me.

Nevertheless, I know that getting back on the writing horse is just as important as getting on the driving horse as soon as I can. And last night I wrote, but I felt pretty bad about what I wrote. It was so choppy and challenging that at times I was wondering whether I had sustained more head trauma than I initially thought because it was clearly impacting my writing. I slogged through, but I still think that section is going to need some major reworking.

Tonight, thankfully, despite hours of wasted time and false starts, I finally got a really solid chunk done, pushing toward nine pages, all some of the smoothest and sharpest production of the whole novel so far. The work stands at over 82,000 words, closing in on Loosely Based for the longest thing I’ve ever written. I’m maintaining a pace to get the thing done early and at a clip around 1,000 words a day, every day since I started writing it again.

There was a pumpkin party in there too, thanks to a lot of help from our friends and the ability to reserve the community room at the Butler Apartments when the weather is inclement. Probably a story best told in pictures, which we don’t have that many of since we ran the camera batteries out taking snapshots of the accident. I am tempted to post some of those too, once I’ve put a little more time between myself and the incident (and I should probably get some kind of insurance sign-off that it’s okay). We had a great time at the party, but the timing has been a bit exhausting. Very stressful for Emily, who is up against midterms this week.

This is mostly just a little recap post, the chaff of another great writing session and further crystallization of my gratefulness, both for being alive and for being able to recover on the writing front while so much else still feels stalled out or downright lousy. As unfortunate as it would have been to die, it would have been perhaps worse to suffer severe brain damage. So I am thankful not only to be here, but to be able to continue doing what I feel I have long been called to do.

And now, for the moment, I am called to rest.

So, there’s this thing called Wordle that I just discovered on Facebook, which allows you to analyze any piece of writing or webpage for commonly occurring words. Then it spits out something like this:

Pretty neat stuff. My big complaint is that it doesn’t draw on the whole history of the blog, but only the very recent history, which is why this thing reads mostly like a schizophrenic recap of my last substantive post.

I am wholly torn between my temptation to plug in the entirety of American Dream On and the concern that it would somehow find a way to capture it or just fail to function under the weight of 76,000+ words.

Maybe trying Loosely Based would be a good compromise…

I woke up early today (really yesterday, but you know my schedule) because a friend of mine was coming over. Early these days is around ten or so in the morning.

My friend (Ariel) and I met up with Em for lunch, who had already completed a couple classes in the morning. We relived old times we never had at the Frist cafeteria, imaging the student center of Princeton to be the basement of Usdan. With the new student center, even the basement of Usdan isn’t the basement of Usdan anymore.

We then proceeded to the Chancellor Green Library, undoubtedly the coolest interior space on the Princeton campus we’ve yet found. Most people, upon seeing it, immediately dub it the “Harry Potter Room,” though that distinction arguably might be more apt for the Grad College cafeteria, which generally looks primed for an address by Dumbledore himself. In any event, Chancellor Green is an octagonal room with two floors topped by an ornately woodworked dome, adorned with stained glass and bookshelves galore on each level and each edge. Below are comfortable reading chairs and above study desks. The expectation is silence throughout, if not to read than merely to appreciate the hallowed halls surrounding.

I rejoined my Russian friends in Toltsoy’s world, lamenting how little I’ve been able to read amidst the writing lifestyle I’ve developed. Some have said that one should never be writing at a higher volume than one is reading, but I feel that writing takes its toll on the desire to read. Besides, most of my reading is usually done either during a commute or just before sleep. I have no commute and I’m going to sleep after writing sessions that leave me utterly drained as dawn is threatening to break. Yeah, not exactly conducive to reading.

So I appreciated the opportunity to bury myself in a book for the afternoon, spending hours with 75 pages of the world’s most reputedly epic tome. Having discussed my general progression of becoming a slower reader for much of high school and college with Ariel, I was grateful to have sped up enough in subsequent years that I could read at such a pace. There was a time that I was convinced I would someday have to take whole days to read just a single page at the rate I’d been going.

Then home, phone calls, dinner, a brief time with Em as she worried over the day to come and we finally caught up to the current episode of “The Office”, having traversed the show’s entire history with frightening alacrity via Netflix and Hulu. Not everything I’ve done out here in Jersey can be strictly described as productive.

And then writing, the whole of chapter 35, a chapter I’m profoundly fond of suddenly, unanticipated in its depth and implications, all the more satisfying for how much it surprised me. There are chapters I know are going to be powerful, momentous, vital. Some have already passed. This one I wasn’t expecting and I deeply appreciate the characters therein for revealing themselves to me in this way. Really.

And here I am, just this side of five in the morning, worn out and really content. Not content as a proxy for slowly settling into the sediment that one’s life has become, but content in its truest, highest form. Not happy or elated, for I lack the energy for either. Just satisfied, at peace with my place in the world. This life is everything I hoped it would be, for all its solitude and strange freedom. God help me find ways to never let go, now that I’m here.

As bad as I felt last night at this time is as good as I feel tonight. What a difference, as they say, a day makes.

I have just rattled off over 3,000 words (~12 pages) tonight, in a remarkably fast and focused session that has yielded what I am convinced is some of the best work of the whole novel so far. This brings American Dream On over the 70,000 word threshold (71,408 words/~285 pages) with just under two months to go and helps offset the fact that there will be no writing tomorrow night. It’s kind of too bad, because I’m in one of those grooves where baseball players find the ball looks as big as a grapefruit. Suddenly, after a week of angst, the dam has burst and things are flowing once more. (Though it probably doesn’t hurt that I’m on to a different chapter entirely, one that did not carry with it some consternating problems from the get-go.)

And Vassar pulled back on their threat to only break to semis, once again going with quarters, joining the ranks of virtually all modern tournaments. And it looks like I will be participating in the APDA Cup, thus getting a chance to compete in rounds that are adjudicated and are not demo rounds for the first time since 2006. (Yeah, I guess I thanked the BU Finals panel for judging my “last round ever”. Oops. We all know I’d debate professionally for a lifetime if I could.) And while I knew that this time yesterday too, it seems a lot more exciting today for some reason. Probably because the whole world does. And I’m almost short of breath and insanely full of energy for quarter till five in the morning, when I should be lapsing and a little tired. And given that the alarm’s set for 9:00 tomorrow, the earliest I’ve been up in weeks, to get ready to go to Vassar, this is all looking a little problematic.

But I don’t care that much, mostly because I’m in the throes of a manic phase of the sine-curve lifestyle. And the mania may be seen as problematic for some people, but I don’t know who those people could be. Being on the upswing of a roller-coaster, sailing upward on a high-energy high-productivity euphoria, this is about as good as it gets in this lifetime. I mean, yeah, the super-contemplative revelations are perhaps a little better, but this is a darn fine second place. I feel like running out into the middle of the early morning rain, whooping with joy at the fact that I get to be alive to see this kind of mood. I wish everyone could be here to feel this. I feel I’ve known people who never get this excited their whole lives.

I don’t know how I’m possibly going to sleep. It may end up an all-nighter and I’ll crash hard after round three at the tournament. But I should try all the same. Try to walk away from the euphoria to get a little shut-eye that’ll ultimately serve me well tomorrow. In the meantime, I leave you with this:

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Chapter 32 may be long remembered as the one that got away. After four nights and just shy of 5,000 words, I think I can finally put it behind me (for now), but it’s taken its toll.

A lot of how I feel about all this is the fault of the ease with which I’ve been able to settle into the writing life again. I’ve been remarking to everyone how amazingly things have gone, how smooth its all felt, how quick the transition was from moving in to writing full-time. Everything’s been a piece of cake, so the slightest change in the wind looks like a big problem. And compared to serious writer’s block or something truly problematic, it’s not at all. It’s just a vaguely exasperating series of things to write.

It’s hard to discuss exactly what’s frustrating about this chapter without divulging far too much of a plot I’ve kept close to the vest for over half a decade. But a lot of it’s about pacing and timing and trying to cram a whole lot of events into a small space when I haven’t necessarily been on a pace to do so. To make it seem smooth and effortless and intended. To realize that one has written oneself into a bit of a corner and then figure out how to delicately extricate without rewriting half the book.

Ultimately, it’s good for me. Every word written makes you stronger, even if most of those words will probably be rewritten. The chapter felt less elegant, less muse-inspired, pretty much throughout. There were some good turns of phrase and some moments, sure, but it’s just not my best work. On a first draft, though, holding the whole piece to the standard of best work means blowing deadlines. And today is significant on that front: exactly 2 months to the day till the deadline. December 15th or bust, come what may.

The context for the whole chapter is probably a big part of it – it just hasn’t been the best week. Coaching hit some of the first snags, with a low-energy meeting punctuated on either end by low attendance and frayed nerves leading to rising tensions. It all came out okay (I think – we’ll see for sure at tomorrow’s meeting), but my hopes of a potential break this weekend were mitigated somewhat by the surprise announcement that this weekend’s tourney is breaking to semis, not quarters. I didn’t know any tournaments on APDA had broken to less than quarters in some time, so this was quite a shock and one I don’t relish discussing with the team tomorrow. Not that it precludes breaking; it just makes it twice as difficult.

And Em’s sick, given a cold in exchange for her (conventional, not swine) flu shot. Despite the protestations of the injectors, it’s pretty common knowledge that the flu shot gives people cold symptoms and these have hit Em particularly hard this go-round. I’ve been dancing on the edge of catching it from her, but hoping to escape healthy by the time we (the Rutgers team and I) head up to Vassar on Friday. The whole thing has brought our collective home morale down even further though, and it was already on the wane.

It’s just been one of those weeks, more headaches than necessary, writing like pulling teeth, anticipation of everything weighing me down a little. I need to get out and do more, but it’s getting colder and making retreat the more likely response. It’s weeks like this that I’m so grateful to not be working, since at least I can find solace in bulldozing the writing problems in front of me and working through things rather than the dissatisfaction of frustration reminding me how far I am from my life goals. And I’m not much closer, and feeling it, but at least I’m starting on the path. Which is good enough for now.

I just need to set some limits on how I distract myself, on how I keep my focus and stay sharp. Up till this week, it’s been easy, so it can be easy again. But the last couple days, nothing’s felt easy. It’s all been pulling teeth and the desire to pull hair. And now I’m repeating myself and probably frustrating you too.

Join the freaking club. Augh.

The streak didn’t end tonight after all (as I just just alluded – in fact, I had one of my most productive writing sessions of the whole week. And the word count was higher than it would have been had I been watching the count the whole time in some silly tracker.

Moreover, I just noticed that the URL assigner is all messed up in this format, somehow skipping numbers. All my posts are numbered and there have been a couple discards, but generally the number of the URL of the post aligns with a straight count of the number of total posts I’ve written. But since I installed the beloved “upgrade”, posts 656 and now 659 have followed 653. I guess it counts by 3’s. Hooray.

You know what other number has 6’s and 3’s in it? 63,315. I like that number best of all. At least for tonight.

It’s October.

There’s a lot of sleight of hand involved in October, but perhaps its greatest achievement is bringing an end to baseball season without generally making me upset about said end. Granted that the excitement of playoff baseball and its association with October helps, but all too often October comes with no real hope for the Mariners and often no hope for any team I particularly care for. (Indeed, with the demise of the Twins tonight, I find myself rooting for, what, a Red Sox-Phillies World Series? Yawn.) Yet October is able to draw me away from baseball with smoke and mirrors and pumpkins. Mostly pumpkins.

Tonight (or rather, the last night of September), I had the distinct privilege of listening to the full game of perhaps the most satisfying Mariner win all season. I mean, strategically it was unsatisfying, given that the M’s were eliminated from contention over a week ago. But Brandon Morrow nearly threw a no-hitter, Griffey hit a three-run homer in the first inning, and the M’s clinched a winning record for the campaign, leaving themselves an outside shot of passing the Rangers for 2nd in the AL West. And Rick Rizzs almost predicted a homer (turned out to be a triple off the top of the wall) on a precise pitch and then nearly had a stroke calling the play he had nearly predicted. All the while, I was reminded of how much I love listening to baseball in particular, how the quiet nights in my room with a game remind me of so many quiet nights in my room with a game from younger years.

The nights have been quiet lately largely because of Em’s efforts to acclimate herself once more to a studying routine, while I try to write and (much harder) find the discipline to code changes for the Blue Pyramid. Tonight, for example, I was working on the tedious conversion of the Book Quiz pages to the new navigation-bar format. I’m also trying to get the jump on the long-awaited Book Quiz II, which I’m hoping to have out by the time American Dream On is ready. The former could not be much less of a priority, however, especially by comparison, though watching the BP’s sagging stats always gets me back on my horse for a while.

Like anything, these projects – even Em’s studying – are all about momentum. Getting in a groove and then finding things satisfying or rewarding enough about that groove that make it worthwhile to stay there. Or, more accurately, to return there time and again, to recreate that space. When the space is wide enough, this is easily done with writing. Pretty much everything one does (or at least I do – perhaps I shouldn’t attempt to speak objectively about what may ultimately be a very personal experience) relies on the renewal of the font of momentum, the benefits of being in the zone. This is perhaps why so many people give up so completely in their place of work and general approach to a day job: the feeling of obligation alone is insufficient to charge the batteries that generally get their best fuel from excitement or passion.

Of course, obligations provide a fear factor and disciplinary onus that those who haven’t completely checked out come to rely on to keep them going through a day job work week. So a big part of the game of these two years is about revving the engines without overt obligation (though self-imposed deadlines help) and pacing oneself with the constant celebrations of milestones in writing, in coding, even in playing basketball or walking the cat (long story, but she needs to eat grass for her digestion). Debate, unsurprisingly, is taking care of itself. If anything, I need to find ways to limit my attention on the debate coaching side so it doesn’t consume the time required for everything else.

Why? Because debate is exciting, innately sort of passionate. It creates its own rewards very quickly. The thrill of one round, the excitement of even one well-answered Point of Information, these things are enough to charge months’ worth of batteries. I have had so many dreams in the past seven years about being back in rounds and wanting to savor a last competitive semester or year. Despite my interest in both, I have had no such heartbreaking dreams about the summer of 2001 or a chance to code a quiz.

The challenge right now, the challenge of a life lived creatively and deliberately in a variety of pursuits, is the create the fire of a competitive event in everything I do. And starting in four days, I won’t have baseball to distract/inspire me.

It’s starting to get colder. Already we’re starting to debate when we’ll have to bite the bullet and actually turn on the heater.

September still has a week to go, but the stats are looking pretty good for work on American Dream On. While work on various other projects, including three short stories and a quiz, has slowed substantially, this has been the output 24 days into this first full month of work on the novel:

31,294 words (~125 pp) in 15 chapters

Suffice it to say that I’m pretty ecstatic about this. That’s just over 1300 words (~5+ pp) a day, every day, which includes several days that I’m not able to write, such as when I’m overnight at a debate tournament (second one coming up tomorrow). Now obviously the quality has yet to be evaluated fully (editing takes some time), but actually slogging out the execution is the real bulk of writing work, both in terms of time and energy.

As far as the experiment of working on this as a full-time schedule vs. trying to integrate it with a day job, it’s worth noting that I only wrote about 19,000 words (~76 pp) of the book from June 2002 through July 2009. So, uh, 76 pages in 85 months vs. 125 pages in 24 days. I think we can close the book on any experimental wonderings about what allows me to do my best work.

Not that this is a surprise, of course – this whole life is based on trying to take the summer of 2001 and apply it to a year-long or even multi-year scale. But I’m almost starting to wonder whether three books in a year is a – gulp – conservative estimate of what I can do when I get rolling. The major question on that front will revolve around how much down-time (if any) I need between books and on whether I can keep this roaring pace going for months on end. Certainly deadlines create incentives, though their value may be diminished when I’m on a pace to beat them by almost a month. We’ll see how well I’m still chugging along come Thanksgiving.

If there’s a message that’s more widely applicable from all this, it’s probably a familiar one: you have no idea what you might be capable of without the bonds of a daily obligation to school or work.

I just hope the book’s good. I’m certainly enjoying writing it, but the proof will be in everyone else’s opinion. Of course, no previews are available since I very much try to avoid others’ opinions impacting the actual process as I’m working on the piece. But at this rate, Christmas might be coming early for those of you intrigued.

When I lived in Oregon and wasn’t attending sixth grade, somewhere between my acting life and my speech and debate life, I opened a play directed by a friend of my parents with a recitation of “Sea-Fever” by John Masefield.

The poem is brief (briefer than I remember), but conveys powerful imagery of the pull of the ocean and its eternal hold on those who sail upon it. I was adorned in a cap not unlike what I’d worn as Oliver Twist (but newer and nicer) and some sort of scarf that the director had determined sufficiently aquatic. Despite these elements of costuming and the placement of a stage beneath my feet, I think this may have been the birth of my understanding of the power of spoken words. Not the magic of theater, in full regalia, which I’d long known and loved, but the actual power and presence of mere strings of syntax, dramatically spoken.

Of course, there was my third grade talent show rendition of the Gettysburg Address, which I remembered made a couple teachers cry. But I’d been disappointed with my performance there, forgetting some words and feeling immense pressure. I had not felt the command over that performance that I did in the practiced rhythms of Masefield’s cadence.

It is somehow fitting to remember that preface on a night back from introducing members of the Rutgers class of 2013 to the basic tenets of parliamentary debate. Just as every word written makes for better writing next time, so every word spoken has led me to this point in my life. And perhaps I can forgive myself for sacrificing tonight’s writing efforts (unless I can start after completing this post) to the twin duties of education and navigation.

This last is the true inspiration for tonight’s title, for a navigation bar has been introduced to The Blue Pyramid for the first time ever. Over the course of the next few weeks, the navigation system will filter out through the rest of the website. The focal points of this bar also come with an acknowledgment that several projects have been archived, most permanently lost at sea.

I would like to say that this move will usher in a new era of updated content at the site, with quizzes and new projects abounding as long planned. I have learned enough over my millions of spoken words, of course, to know that such promises are of no worth. Either I shall make good, which will speak for itself, or I shan’t, which will undermine the promises’ purpose.

So I present what is done and will call it a night. Perhaps to write briefly before sailing for sunrise.

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
and quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Today (defined loosely as from noon yesterday till right now), I:

• Took delivery on a flat-screen television, which will hopefully never have network or cable TV thereon.
• Spoke to my parents on the phone.
• Listened to Barack Obama’s speech and…
• …Decided that I am against the current incarnation of “healthcare reform”.  (More on this later!)
• Spoke to Em’s mom in person.
• Welcomed Pandora back into our home.
• Ate a bunch of fried food.
• Had a soda for the first time in weeks.
• Wrote Chapter 21 of American Dream On, weighing in around that magic 2,000 words.
• Played “Hero” by Regina Spektor on repeat for some time.

The only difference between these days and the old days is that these days matter. I am writing and that changes everything. My whole outlook on life can be determined through the filter of how much control I have over what I do on a given day and how much of that links to what I feel I was put here to do.

Daily fulfillment is not about the space in between, the margins, even most of the time spent. It’s about intentionality, living deliberately, and whether what is done is part of what should be done. Not on the path there, or some esoteric larger vision of being there, but actually a PART of what is intended overall.

This makes all the difference. And I am grateful, eternally grateful, for every day on this side of things.

Last night, I threw in the towel early after about 1,200 words. Not a bad output – way better than zero – and I even felt pretty good about them. I was actually reading my early chronicles of writing Loosely Based yesterday to contextualize my current pace and it looks like I’m on a blistering tear by comparison.

Anyway, I threw in the towel because I had a migraine that I’d been denying most of the night to try to get to a place where I could write something. It wasn’t completely debilitating yet, though it was on its way there, and this is actually a good opportunity for writing. Having lived with migraines for a decade and a half, I have learned a great deal about them, including the fact that they actually represent a state of heightened awareness and sensitivity. Ultimately, this heightened state becomes completely non-functional, as all light, sound, and stimulus of any kind create overwhelming pain. But the moderate parts of the upswing represent a blood-surge to the brain that creates intense focus and ability.

Don’t get me wrong – I would never intentionally induce this state, because the downside of being knocked out for 8-12 hours (or way more in the bad cases) far outweighs the brief preliminary increased consciousness. But if it’s already underway, there’s no harm in taking advantage of it in that very small window. Unfortunately, the tipping point comes very quickly where the pain of trying to maintain interaction with the world outweighs the benefits of that interaction being of higher quality.

So I turned in early, around 4:00, after eking out four pages and change. And I realized that, migrainous, I was going to have to sleep more than the six-hour standard that I’ve been on the last ten days. (My ideal sleep cycle is four hours, but I think I may have gotten too old for this to be feasible on a constant basis.) And that, my friends, would mean dreams.

They were disjointed and unmemorable at first, as they often are when I’ve prevented myself from dreaming for an extended period. Then they started to coalesce into my standard night fare. In the first of memory, I was grinding my teeth into a pulp (sadly all too realistic, Em reports), to the point where I could feel into my mouth and pull out little chunks of tooth and some accompanying powder. The visceral reality of that dream was absurdly compelling, especially since it was set in my actual location, on the bed in Tiny House.

The follow-up was a more traditional, artificially located dream, in which I had been sent into a movie theater as some sort of harbinger of doom. My goal was equal parts to warn a specific person that something troubling was coming to the theater and to create a general aura of discomfort that aware people would be able to pick up on and join the target and I on the way out the door. Those that made it out the door before I did were safe as a rising tide of panic started sweeping in. Just before I left, the shooting began. I was then instructed to push the double-doors behind me shut and hold them there no matter what. Without considering the consequences in detail (I was mostly focused on how infeasible this seemed for one of my strength), I followed the orders. I felt a surge of almost supernatural power through my arms as I was somehow able to resist the stampeding mob shoving the doors in the other direction, while hearing the two machine gunners make their way through the crowd with a sickening series of automatic bullets and the accompanying anguish of their targets. I was torn between my incredible guilt at what I was aiding, the sweet surprise of my strength, and the fear of realizing that if I let go of the doors, I might well get shot myself. Eventually, it was over and I was able to let go after two minutes of silence. No one in the theater was still alive. I met up with a suspicious-looking counterpart who was apparently the operative holding the other exit shut – the one through which the gunmen had initially entered. We briefly discussed the horrible compromise we’d just had to make to save our own lives before I woke up.

I was going to end the post there, dramatically demonstrating why I aim for less sleep and why I see dreams as such a potent enemy of my own peaceful state of mind. But I have just recalled a third dream, I think just before the tooth dream, that might as well accompany this narrative. Funny how intensely recalling dreams prompts the further recessed recall of others.

My group of male high-school friends and I were all hanging out at what was some sort of college or graduate school, mostly in the cafeteria, but occasionally in the dorms, which resembled hotel lodging more than student housing. Fish hadn’t processed his paperwork properly and was thus deemed unwelcome on the campus, though we hadn’t been caught yet. The dream was basically an extended chase scene where we kept trying to get away from these two slick-looking undercover cops who were going to root Fish out and probably punish all of us as well. Throughout the dream, Fish was the only one of our crew who seemed unperturbed by the situation, while Jake and Gris and I struggled in frustration with how serious our circumstances were and how hard it was to get Fish to recognize this. For some reason, I kept being the one to have cryptic conversations with the cops, as though they suspected I was shielding Fish but didn’t quite have enough evidence yet, so they couldn’t just take me down. The climax took place on a used car lot, somehow the last place I expected them to find us, and they told me the jig was up right before I saw Jake tear out of there with a stolen used car, Fish in tow. I gazed down the highway, wondering if they would make it.

I’m aiming for a return to six hours tonight.

I remember this feeling – the elation of finishing much more of the book than you were planning on even working on at the outset of the night, especially given how late you were hanging out with other people, eating into your writing time. (In this case, the Rutgers debate team I’m coaching, in that case Schneider & Kunkel). The pure exhilaration of watching it get faintly lighter outside and knowing how productive you’ve been while all the rest of your part of the world slept. How everyone is still asleep and you just want to stay up one more hour, fuzzy-tired but eminently satisfied with being in the right place doing the right thing with your time on Earth. Tired, satisfied, and… hungry.

And before, during those blessed days in the summer of 2001, I would get in the Kia and drive down to the Frontier. I would have a breakfast burrito and fries and the world would take on this radiant hue that matched the pinky-purple-orange outside and I would polish off spicy bites with the anticipation of sleep that can only be joyful (for me) knowing exactly how hard and sound you’ll sleep and how happy you’ll be to awaken in the face of the prior night’s accomplishments.

Box of Cheez-Its, loaf of country potato, you are not the Frontier. I know I’m trying hard to eat at home these days, but mornings like this call for an exception. Although I still don’t think driving to Albuquerque is the answer.

These bread products will have to do for this morning. Good night, world. Can’t wait to see you again.

This blog may be in danger of becoming a writing blog. I think I’m okay with that, since writing is what I’ve been wanting to do since I was about eight years old, but you should probably be forewarned.

I remember when we were talking about living together a long time ago (it never happened, though we are in much closer proximity for the time being), my friend Ariel said she had cooked up images of having friends over and sneaking around by candelight, shushing them and pointing upstairs to the literary nook. “Shh… he’s writing,” she imagined herself saying.

Sadly, this is probably more akin to what it’s like to live with me while I have a migraine than while I’m writing. Such romantic notions are (and were) fun, but the reality is much more like what happened with Emily and I today. She called on her way home from her evening Economics class while I was in the midst of a 7:00-9:30 burst of inspiration on a short story, the third I’ve done at least some work on in a week. I picked up the phone in case she needed a ride for some reason in the dark, but was cranky and annoyed when I realized she was just doing a routine check about something. Nearly derailed, I hung up as fast as possible and tried to recapture the magic.

It took a little bit, but I was back in the groove shortly. Then she came home after a long day at school, wanting to converse. But I could have none of it. We had an awkward interlude where I told her that I was really sorry, but I just couldn’t be interrupted while in the throes of inspiration. She thought I was talking about the phone call. I observed that too, but gently noted I was talking about now.

If you’re wondering what Emily was doing that was so unreasonable, the answer is absolutely nothing. The problem is that writing is a fickle beast, especially in this fragile first week of full-time focus. There may be people out there who are writing for eight to ten hours a day, but most of them are actually thinking about writing for that long (or longer). And this work and time is important, and should be scheduled and dedicated, but it’s not the same as being in the crosshairs of the muses, churning out words like the language will go extinct in 30 minutes and you have one last thing to say before they pack it in.

That time is precious, and it’s when most of what people think of as writing gets done. And if you disturb that time, you might as well punt a full day’s worth of work. Because, honestly, you’re spending the whole day trying to get yourself into just that state.

I think this is why so many writers use routines, and why so many of those routines involve alcohol. Artificial substances are so often used as an inducement or a proxy for a specific state of being. And routine, ritual, rote behavior can sometimes train us into the same stupor.

For me, routine is a part of it. I somehow seem to perform exceedingly well on a dawnish to noonish sleep schedule (which I’ve already discussed to excess), with around ten or midnight till dawn being the primary time set aside for the really intense writing work. I have always done my best work in the wee hours, being able to raise my mind the loudest when the surroundings are at their most still.

But the routine only gets me so far. A lot of it is just intensity, meditation, focused thought trained on the particular subject or problem at hand. Or flitting between several. Or just deeply taking in whatever the universe seems to be throwing down.

It is painfully unscientific, unscrupulous, and mercurial. Writer’s block is just what it’s called when the usual combination of meditation, routine, and mumbo-jumbo doesn’t somehow flip over into magic after a little more than the typical requisite time. It’s not that one can’t come up with words to put on a page, staring at a blank screen. It’s that the words are empty husks, severed from the life-giving inspiration that can only come when the mind of the writer is aflame and haunted, slaving away for a mysterious master who strikes at random but offers such sweet rewards.

Much has been said by so many writers about the process’ solitude, its pain, its pyrrhic feel. I say nonsense. Writing is just being the only thing it can be, which is this weird daily fight to create the platform for hours of mystic captivation. But every time that captivation descends, locking in place, it’s like rain coming to flood a drought-stricken land. Nothing has ever been so perfect, so blessed, so wonderful. And it’s all one can do to drink, absorb, wallow in the water before the clouds are spent and it’s time once more to trudge through the desert with a divining rod.

I love it. I love every minute. The coaxing of the next big thing, the slow exhilarating tumble of realizing that inspiration has struck, the torrid tempest of typing, the perfect conclusive feel when one knows the last sentence just finished has completed this segment of the festivities. Even if I didn’t like the results of writing, I would probably try to run through exercises like this just to feel this progression.

It makes me a pain in the behind to deal with. It makes me a logistical nightmare. It makes me even more sine-curvy in my emotional perspectives than normal. Yes, really.

But at eight pages (2,000 words) a day average, a week in, with four projects going (three short stories and, of course, American Dream On, the novel), I wouldn’t change a thing. I really didn’t think I’d get here this quickly, but, God, I never want to leave.

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In a programming note, while I finished one story already, it still has some editing to be done before it is ready to send out to those of you out there who have so generously volunteered to be readers. Given the state of things right now, I’m actually thinking I might send out a small suite of three stories at once as the first dispatch, if only because they are all so different and thus demonstrate the range of what I’m working on. The first one is such a departure from my normal fare that I fear it might be somewhat off-putting, or at least distracting, if sent first and by itself.

I don’t want to start setting story deadlines for myself, so I can’t be more clear. But hopefully “Name Game”, “Life is Good”, and (gulp) “The Greatest Story Never Told” will be ready for other eyes sometime this month. American Dream On is the priority, though, so no promises.

Yesterday, I completed* the first short story that I’ve written in years – possibly more than five years. Entitled Name Game, it still needs some editing before too many other people read it (hence the asterisk), but I think it has a good deal of potential. More importantly, it took me just two writing sessions over two days to write the whole thing, which weighs in around 7,000 words. If I can write 3,500 words a day, I’m going to be in good shape.

Granted, I’m here in this situation now to write books, not really short stories. Though I have been newly inspired to write some stories, they aren’t exactly intended to be my focus. So this success offers a bit of a dilemma – how much do I divert my efforts if the stories keep coming? On the one hand, stories have a lower threshold for publication and indeed may almost be a prerequisite for getting a larger work printed by a significant press. On the other hand, my success in writing books is going to depend on setting a deadline and making it stick. And if my daily 3,500 words are being diverted from longer works to shorter works, it’s going to be hard to keep to the deadline.

All of this is coming at the same time as I contemplate a major overhaul of the Blue Pyramid, both the front page and subsequent pages. I’ve decided, for example, that it’s time for me to have a navigation bar. The BP is suffering its biggest drought of traffic since the quizzes came out, which is hardly surprising in the face of how much I’ve neglected it. And I don’t want this to distract me from any sort of writing, though one can’t be writing 24/7. And I can’t help but think that a traffic revival could only help the general momentum of all my projects – getting my name out there and having something serious and creative to refer people to when they’re asking who the heck I am anyway.

Regardless, I was contemplating all this and wondering what to do about having a possible writing section of the BP linked on the nav bar when I remembered that I once assembled my so-called collected works before. And I was shocked to rediscover that I wrote no fewer than 51 short stories in a 3-year period from September 2003 through August 2006. Fifty-one! Now that’s productivity.

Granted, of course, few were of really sustainable value (other than the process and its incredibly helpful practice in improving my writing – hard to imagine being able to write Loosely Based without that kind of narrative experience behind me) and many of them were outright absurd. Although, it does make me wonder how many plots are retrievable – rarely were the ideas the dealbreaker in the stories so much as the execution. But still, 51 stories while going to school and living a full teenage life. That was some dedication. I really used to be so much cooler than I am now.

So I’m newly inspired as I stare down my tentative deadline of December 15th for American Dream On and contemplate a full slate of stories to compete with its completion. Surely I should be able to outpace my fourteen-year-old self in volume of output. Surely, like anything, enough work input will lead to worthy output.

And speaking of output, if you’re interested in being on the list of potential readers for either stories or the novel when they’re ready, let me know. I sort of threw Loosely Based at most of my close friends at the time it was done, with mixed results. Some of the recipients still haven’t read it. I’d prefer to take a much more measured, opt-in approach to the next stage of my writing life. A few folks have already volunteered through Facebook, which is great. My only request would be that you are completely honest in your readings and that you look on the work as an attempt at art, not an opportunity to try to analyze me or find yourself in my writing. You won’t be there. And I don’t need cheerleading – I need earnest, critical feedback.

Standing in the shadow of my youth, here I go.