The job I left almost a year ago is no longer there.  After putting in my notice to be finished mid March, and them squeezing another two weeks out of me, I predicted they’d be [...]]]> “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”
― Albert Einstein

The job I left almost a year ago is no longer there.  After putting in my notice to be finished mid March, and them squeezing another two weeks out of me, I predicted they’d be under in a year.  Turns out I was a few weeks off.  They went bankrupt last week.

I could not bear it any more because of the corruption, the gross mismanagement, the long hours, the low pay, and the lack of respect.   I haven’t written about it because of several reasons, but now those reasons have evaporated and I feel free to talk about it. And I want to; I just don’t know what to say.

The online articles are making this out to be a case of the economy doing another family business in.  It wasn’t. There were some good people in upper and middle management — but far too few. The COO, in particular, is a man that I would recommend to anyone in a heartbeat.  But in the year I was there, I uncovered so many shady, dishonest, or incompetent business practices that I knew it was only a matter of time. They would either tell me I didn’t understand the whole picture, put me on another project, or clean things up enough so I would shut up, time and again. It was like cockroaches scurrying when someone turns on the lights.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of people ended up in jail shortly. Rumor has it the CEO is in rehab right now, so he can’t attend the bankruptcy hearings.  Poor baby.

Right now I am watching as those who lost their jobs Friday are recruited and picking their lives back up, for the most part. Friends are getting sweet gigs as other local and national companies absorb the vacuum left.  What bothers me is those people who were on the lowest rungs of the Adams ladder. There were truck drivers, who busted hump and worked lots of overtime hours, who found out at 5 o’clock Friday that the week overdue paycheck plus the paycheck for this week was never coming. They were trying to figure out how to get gas money to get home.

Many people have made snarks about “if a company doesn’t make payroll, it’s time to walk”. I get that. It’s part of the reason I left. There were two instances in the year I was there where payroll was screwed up, and I knew a company who bounced hundreds of payroll checks was in serious trouble. But when you are in a job where getting a lunch break, or even a pee break, is sometimes a Herculean effort, and you are working 60 hours a week, where are you going to fit in a job interview? I’m grateful and lucky in that I had a home life that allowed me to just leave. It made me reevaluate my life, and now I’m freelance writing. We’ve been fairly broke a lot of the time, but I didn’t compromise and it turns out I was right.

However, that means that I’m not being snatched up in the recruitment efforts, and to be honest, part of me is so envious when I hear my friends getting offers for twice the salaries they commanded at Adams.  I remind myself that home is where I want to be, but man if money doesn’t seem tempting right now. I could do with a year making 6 figures and being free of student loans and other debt, maybe having a down payment on a house or, I don’t know, decent health insurance for more than just the kids.

I really have no pat conclusion to all of this, no ending note.  Watching this in the news and talking to my friends just dredges up so many memories and questions and pain. I hope the right people end up holding the short end of the stick. I worry that isn’t what is going to happen.

The Inklings group has been wonderful!  We read Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, then John Griffin’s Darkness.  Both of them were interesting reads and gave us a [...]]]> I want to blog. I really do.  I put it off til my other stuff is done, and it never happens.  Life is busy right now.

The Inklings group has been wonderful!  We read Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, then John Griffin’s Darkness.  Both of them were interesting reads and gave us a lot to talk and think about. Plus the excuse to get together with cool people who love to read is always fun. I would like to write up reviews soon, but I clearly can’t promise anything.  The next book is A Game of Thrones.

Freelancing is going well, but I need to get a bit less volume and more quality jobs.  I’m working on that in a number of ways.  We’ve officially launched Vulcan Wordsmiths as a company.  It’s got its own Facebook page, twitter account, and everything.  I’m really swamped with work right now, and developing my own company has taken a back seat to working on some other people’s. Right now I’m at a loss as to when I’m going to fit in fixing that, but I’ll make it happen.

I got a standing desk. I started CrossFit. I may have a stress fracture in my foot. I find out tonight. I have a feeling there’s some sort of relationship between all of that. That would make another fun blog post.

I’m probably going to homeschool the children next year.

We’re still looking for some cheap farmland in the country.  Know any leads?

We’ve got a new roommate moving in this weekend.

The Renaissance Festival in Atlanta, Georgia is this weekend.

All of these things I want to write about, and more.  Somewhere I’ve got to  make more time for my own writing, and myself in general! I’m getting a bit burnt out.

As far as the book itself?  Well,  there’s not much to [...]]]> We met Friday and had a good time!  There was a good mix of introverts and extraverts, a lot of common ground, some good munchies, and fast friendships.  I felt very quiet, which is funny since I was the common link with everyone there.

As far as the book itself?  Well,  there’s not much to report, since I got the deepest into the book and only barely passed halfway. Apparently Foucault’s Pendulum was a bit ambitious for the first month. I accept that. Even I only got halfway through, and I was the person who picked the book!  I still plan to finish it. It’s hilarious, and it challenges me. I’ve learned a lot reading it. I’m thrilled! Other people were thrilled just to take it back to the library, though. I feel bad that I picked a book that so many didn’t like, but on the other hand, we’re just breaking into reading for the year, and it was a dense book. There’s no way one book would thrill everyone, even To Kill a Mockingbird.  Not everyone knows the fondness and exasperation that the Templars can inspire the way a history major does, anyway.

The fact that we met and didn’t procrastinate just because the book didn’t appeal to everyone makes me ecstatic. That means we’ll be laid back enough that we can enjoy ourselves with or without the book as focus. In fact, a few of us mentioned branching out into movies.

The Spousal Unit chooses the next book. He’s leaning towards something by Octavia Butler. I’ve got my fingers crossed!

However, even if it had sucked, I still came out [...]]]> I promised a blog post on NaNoWriMo ages ago. I’ve procrastinated enough.  On my wedding anniversary, I let the Spousal Unit read it. He said it was good, had a lot of potential, so I know it’s worth something in its own right.

However, even if it had sucked, I still came out ahead. Writing a novel was amazing.  I kicked and screamed and fought with the Spousal Unit and pitched fits and cried. I listened to blaring music for hours on end, couldn’t remember my own name at times, had no idea what I was doing, but still did it!

I had an awful go of it. My hard drive crashed and I was out of the game entirely for a full week. I had a lot of real other work that I was doing simultaneously, which made it stressful and not really doable during my work days. I had always complained that November was a stupid month for the project, but that turns out to be exactly wrong. It is an amazing month to do it. Instead of December, where you have a lot of off time devoted to family and friends and it’s just too busy to fit in everything you need, November you have this last two weeks of do-nothing at work where you can devote alot more brain power than usual to getting this done.

I learned so much. First of all, I learned that writing is not that daunting for me. I have the skillset.  I just had to write. I knew this, but I didn’t.  400 words?  Nothing. I can write 400 words a day for the rest of my life and it is no big thing.  The 1667 required for NaNoWriMo isn’t really that bad, either.  That’s four pages, maybe 6 if you have a lot of dialogue.  But zero pages a day is not getting me anywhere. No words, waiting til I have time or organization, is really worthless.

I’ve learned so much about writing this year, and not just from NaNoWriMo.  I’ve learned how much time I’ve spent worrying about failure that I never even started.  So many first chapters I’ve edited out of existence that I didn’t grasp the burning fire of creation because I was too busy second guessing and extinguishing it.  I’ve always wanted to be a writer who sat down and the words flowed out from my pen (or keyboard) like water. I wanted to be inspired. Turns out that really does happen, even if its not good to anyone but me. I just had to actually allow it to occur. I had to quit second guessing every sentence, rewriting and refining til there was nothing left. It was excruciating, giving up the ability to edit. But then it came, magically tumbling out of me, a story where I thought there was nothing.

That’s why, even though I don’t have time right now to organize my thoughts, or get it all straight, I needed to write this blog post. It was burning my mind, nagging me that I hadn’t written it yet. And it was never going to get written if I waited til the stars aligned perfectly.  I can go back and rewrite it later and refine and tell you more, but there is no substitute for doing. All the planning in the world is not going to get me a single inch closer if I’m too chicken to make mistakes.

I have not really started editing the novel. I have been writing more consistently, but mostly professionally. I now know I have what it takes to finish a story arc, to progress a plot through to its end, even if I have no idea what that endgame is. Next time it will be better, but there will be a next time.

Since starting [...]]]> Back in the good old days, you may remember, when I first bought this domain and blogged all the time, I was a member of a book club. I loved it so much, even when I hated the book we read. I loved to blog about what we were reading at the time.

Since starting to work from home, I have keenly been missing adult interaction. Specifically talking to people about things that matter, and while trolling the net for like minds is all well and good, I have plenty of friends who love good literature, and we’re always talking about how the other should read this book or how we need to get together to discuss another book. It just rarely happens, so I took it upon myself to try and recreate some of that this year.

I decided that instead of wishing someone would form the perfect book club — filled with diverse personalities like Chris, Jeff, Homebirth Honey, and Sarah, I would make it happen myself. Since I already know everyone involved, I am a lot less likely to chicken out, anyway. So I invited 9 people, and asked them to invite anyone they wanted to join. Everyone in the group is a reader, though some of us simply do not make the time to read that we should.

Our first book is Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco.  Some of you know I’ve been ghostwriting a book about conspiracy theories (just in time for 2012!) and I really like Umberto Eco.  I guess that is what appealed to me, since it’s on my mind, and I’m not about to waste anyone’s time on The Da Vinci Code.  Also, this book kept coming up on many of the “Best of” lists — Best SciFi novels, 100 Must Read novels, Best books of the 20th Century.  With such a large group, coming up with something that the majority of us has not read was a challenge.

The name of the group comes from the original Inklings of Oxford, a literary society which included both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.The original Inklings have inspired me throughout the years, both individually and as a group. Still, I don’t know half of those authors half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of them half as well as they deserve.  Or… something along those lines. Perhaps this can help to change that.

If you can’t tell, I’m very excited about this. If nothing else, I hope to have, at the very least, 12 blog post topics for 2012, one for each book we read.