Today I reached a very important goal in my life: I ended my CBT sessions with my therapist. I didn't say "I don't feel like doing this anymore" and just quit. I didn't even bring the subject up. My therapist asked me if I felt that I was ok to start trying to make it in life without her help. She was encouraged by my recent successes, without much anxiety, in life, and job, and dating. And, as she had very good points, I took her up on her challenge.
This may seem like a bad idea to some of you, and I do have some reservations about being on my own again, but, to horribly massacre a metaphor, I have been riding the bike of life with the helping hand of therapy firmly on the handle of improvement while I traverse the rocky road of life, job, and dating. Over time the hand's grip on the handle has grown looser as I've gotten better, but eventually, as with every parent trying to give their children permanent road burn scars, the hand has to let go to let the bike so that he who rides the bike can move on and prove that he can ride without help or crash and burn and run screaming back to mom with blood dribbling out of his multiple wounds.
A perhaps less stupid way of putting it is: The next step in getting better is to do it alone. I'll still have my psychiatrist to help me, but he's more of a passive observer than a direct influence on my mental health. The drugs he gives me are what I need most now.
And, in case you were worried, there's no way in hell I'm going off the drugs. I ain't that much better. The drugs were necessary to get me to the point in life where I could actually get better. Now that I am improving, over time, perhaps I will begin to decrease the drugs, but for now, they keep me in a holding pattern of good health. With time, in theory, I will continue to get better, and will slowly lose the need for the drugs. I expect I'll always have trouble sleeping and will have occasional anxiety attacks, but it is my hope that I'll get to the point where the drugs will be there to help when I need them and I won't always need them. This may not be for years, but it's a goal.
And while I may be flying solo, I won't be alone because I know you'll always be there for me.
January 7, 2009
December 11, 2008
It's begun...
It's been a while. Years? Probably, but I've started outlining my fourth K book. After months of trying to figure out how to start and write this book, I've finally come up with an idea that works! I'm not sure how to end it, or even where to go past halfway through the book, but even getting that far is huge progress for me. Even though I love my writing blogs, getting back to my favorite characters in my favorite setting is going to be a joy for me. I have a story that I want to tell that I've finally been able to figure out how to map (via Google Maps no less) and ideas are flowing. Given my free time coming up, I can't wait to get started.
Back to it!
Back to it!
November 25, 2008
A new and irritating question
Getting published, like fo' reals, is riding high on my mind right now. I'm not entirely happy with being employed as I am, and though the money is good, I don't feel entirely satisfied with where my life is. I would like to be able to make my hobby, writing, if not my job, at least a profitable hobby. I've been writing for several years now. Though some of my writing is bad, I have mostly found my voice, and am getting pretty good at writing stuff that is potentially publishable. What's the problem?
I like my writing blogs. I like having the ability to have a thought, write it out, and publish it on the web immediately. I like my micro stories, since they're mostly too short to be considered for publishing. It's quick, it's easy, and it's fun. I like my assigned projects, I like the weird shit I come up with while bored in meetings, I like it all. So what's the problem?
As I get better at writing, I find my micros to be growing. Not just a little, but hugely. Now these little scenes in my head are, rather than simply being a scene, are becoming entire stories. Not all of them, obviously, but some are reaching lengths, and we're talking nine thousand (!!!) words here. That's actually an upper limit for some publishers of short stories. Suddenly I'm writing things that are possibly of publishing quality and are also large enough to consider submitting.
So the problem is, where do I draw my blog line? I don't think I'll ever stop trying to write micro stories, but if I'm writing possibly publishing worthy short stories here, what do I do? Not blog them? That would seem obvious, but one click publishing! That's a lot less red tape than the formal publishing route.
Mostly I think I'll keep blogging stories as I see fit, only keeping the occasional particularly good idea to myself for attempted publishing. Maybe the way it'll work is I'll submit the piece, and if it's rejected then post it. That sounds reasonable. One question I do wonder about is if things that have been published via blog are immediately disqualified for real publishing? Not sure about that. I'll have to ask my writing sources.
More on this later as I find answers to my questions.
I like my writing blogs. I like having the ability to have a thought, write it out, and publish it on the web immediately. I like my micro stories, since they're mostly too short to be considered for publishing. It's quick, it's easy, and it's fun. I like my assigned projects, I like the weird shit I come up with while bored in meetings, I like it all. So what's the problem?
As I get better at writing, I find my micros to be growing. Not just a little, but hugely. Now these little scenes in my head are, rather than simply being a scene, are becoming entire stories. Not all of them, obviously, but some are reaching lengths, and we're talking nine thousand (!!!) words here. That's actually an upper limit for some publishers of short stories. Suddenly I'm writing things that are possibly of publishing quality and are also large enough to consider submitting.
So the problem is, where do I draw my blog line? I don't think I'll ever stop trying to write micro stories, but if I'm writing possibly publishing worthy short stories here, what do I do? Not blog them? That would seem obvious, but one click publishing! That's a lot less red tape than the formal publishing route.
Mostly I think I'll keep blogging stories as I see fit, only keeping the occasional particularly good idea to myself for attempted publishing. Maybe the way it'll work is I'll submit the piece, and if it's rejected then post it. That sounds reasonable. One question I do wonder about is if things that have been published via blog are immediately disqualified for real publishing? Not sure about that. I'll have to ask my writing sources.
More on this later as I find answers to my questions.
November 20, 2008
November 5, 2008
A special word
To all you racist fucks out there; to all you people who referred to Obama as "Hussein"; to those who pointed out his heritage as if it were a bad thing; to all you people who said, "I ain't voting for that n***er."; to all you people who called him a Muslim; to all of you who referred to him as an "A-rab"; to all of you who brayed the words "coward", "appeaser", or worse; to all of you who said, "A black man cannot lead this Christian nation."; to all of you who secretly hoped that he would be assassinated before his election bid could be taken seriously, and those of you who still hope for that to happen... I have five words for you.
President Elect Barack Hussein Obama.
P.S. Suck it bitches.
President Elect Barack Hussein Obama.
P.S. Suck it bitches.
October 23, 2008
It lives! Mostly.
Recently, I had a case of misfortune when my Xbox 360 began to slowly die. Had I seen the signs, and spoken to the correct people, I could have headed that bullshit off at the pass and moved on with my life. Unfortunately, I didn't know the signs were a portent for worse things to come, so I continued to play the thing expecting that, you know, it would work. Silly me.
The first sign came in the intensely difficult, but very fun Ninja Gaiden 2. There was a point in a level that I just couldn't get past. I gave up on it and moved on with my life. The next sign came while playing Airstrikes 2: Hooray for Airstrikes (actually Mercenaries 2) when the game wouldn't load a saved game unless it was connected to Xbox Live, and even then the load times were unbearable. Eventually I borrowed Force Unleashed and found the load times to be painfully slow. Last, while downloading songs for Rock Band 2 the downloads were so slow I thought I might die before the bloody songs got here, but I blamed that on Comcast.
Then came the final straw, I booted the machine and, other than the splash screen at the beginning, nothing would load. No game, none of the ones I mentioned above, would load. I poked and prodded as best I could, eventually removing the hard drive to determine what the error was. As soon as I detached the oddly quiet hard drive, every game booted incredibly quickly before bitching about needing a place to save data. Put hard drive back on? No worky.
Thus I emailed Xbox Support and told them my hard drive was busted. The guy who emailed me insisted I try some steps, but, lo and behold, I did have the internet and had already done every single step already, reiterating that my hard drive was no longer in the land of the living. The email dude told me to call Xbox Support. I called, got a monumentally unhelpful shrew of a woman who repeatedly implied that I was an idiot, but eventually, after I told her my hard drive was the trouble, she told me I'd need to send my Xbox to Microsoft for repair. Just not on this call because their system was down.
I called back the next day, repeated my problems again, explained how my hard drive was broken, and I was assured that it could be fix. I put in a repair order, got all that nonsense taken care of, and, even though I would be without my Xbox for possibly a month, I was happy knowing that my hardrive would be brought back from the dead.
I got the email from Xbox telling me about how to pack up and send my box back to them and as I was preparing I noticed a little detail: "Detach your hard drive for you cannot send it in." What?
Shortly there after I was on the phone with Xbox Support AGAIN, this time just short of yelling at people, trying to find out wtf was going on. This latest support person told me, of course I couldn't send in my hard drive. Xbox only repairs the Xbox itself, not the attachments of any kind. I asked him why someone before him had told me that this was possible, and he told me I was lying because, obviously, anybody who serviced me before would have told me I had to replace my hard drive for Xbox doesn't repair them. Without telling him to go fuck himself, I asked if buying a new hard drive would allow me to keep all of my data, and he told me yes, all my downloaded accomplishments, gamer tag, and saved data would be restored when I got the new hard drive. Then he put me on hold to talk to someone to get my repair order canceled, and something like an hour later I gave up, hung up, and went off to do other things.
And, no, it's still not over. I called back AGAIN. I talked to another idiot long enough to be put on hold so I could talk to a supervisor. This was the first competent human being I spoke to. Repair order? Canceled after verifying my information. Help me recover my gamertag? Sure, just a second. Then the bitch hung up on me. Motherfuckers.
And I STILL didn't have my gamertag recovered. Rather than talk to a human I tried talking to the Xbox phone bot and he was a useless piece of shit. Eventually, out of sheer desperation, I tried using an email address on my gamertag that made sense only in a twisted sort of way and, hooray, it worked! I actually got my gamer tag back. It took a long time, but after that I was confident that my shit was restored.
I'm sure you've already guess that, yes, my shit was not restored. After a little research, I did find that I could "download again" all the things I spent money on. Hooray! And I did. One at a time. There's no "download again everything", so I had to go through every single download and tell it to download again. Also, only ten could be set to download again at one time, so it took a while. My save games? Gone. Can't be restored.
So let's recap. Can I send in my hard drive to be repaired? "Yes." Lie.
Can I get all my data recovered with ease? "Yes." Lie.
Can I restore all my data? "Yes." Lie.
Thankfully, minus saves and a lot of my patience, my Xbox lives again! I have a new hard drive, one that in theory will work better for a while, and I can play those games that I'm so looking forward to. At least the fucker plays. I should count my lucky stars.
The first sign came in the intensely difficult, but very fun Ninja Gaiden 2. There was a point in a level that I just couldn't get past. I gave up on it and moved on with my life. The next sign came while playing Airstrikes 2: Hooray for Airstrikes (actually Mercenaries 2) when the game wouldn't load a saved game unless it was connected to Xbox Live, and even then the load times were unbearable. Eventually I borrowed Force Unleashed and found the load times to be painfully slow. Last, while downloading songs for Rock Band 2 the downloads were so slow I thought I might die before the bloody songs got here, but I blamed that on Comcast.
Then came the final straw, I booted the machine and, other than the splash screen at the beginning, nothing would load. No game, none of the ones I mentioned above, would load. I poked and prodded as best I could, eventually removing the hard drive to determine what the error was. As soon as I detached the oddly quiet hard drive, every game booted incredibly quickly before bitching about needing a place to save data. Put hard drive back on? No worky.
Thus I emailed Xbox Support and told them my hard drive was busted. The guy who emailed me insisted I try some steps, but, lo and behold, I did have the internet and had already done every single step already, reiterating that my hard drive was no longer in the land of the living. The email dude told me to call Xbox Support. I called, got a monumentally unhelpful shrew of a woman who repeatedly implied that I was an idiot, but eventually, after I told her my hard drive was the trouble, she told me I'd need to send my Xbox to Microsoft for repair. Just not on this call because their system was down.
I called back the next day, repeated my problems again, explained how my hard drive was broken, and I was assured that it could be fix. I put in a repair order, got all that nonsense taken care of, and, even though I would be without my Xbox for possibly a month, I was happy knowing that my hardrive would be brought back from the dead.
I got the email from Xbox telling me about how to pack up and send my box back to them and as I was preparing I noticed a little detail: "Detach your hard drive for you cannot send it in." What?
Shortly there after I was on the phone with Xbox Support AGAIN, this time just short of yelling at people, trying to find out wtf was going on. This latest support person told me, of course I couldn't send in my hard drive. Xbox only repairs the Xbox itself, not the attachments of any kind. I asked him why someone before him had told me that this was possible, and he told me I was lying because, obviously, anybody who serviced me before would have told me I had to replace my hard drive for Xbox doesn't repair them. Without telling him to go fuck himself, I asked if buying a new hard drive would allow me to keep all of my data, and he told me yes, all my downloaded accomplishments, gamer tag, and saved data would be restored when I got the new hard drive. Then he put me on hold to talk to someone to get my repair order canceled, and something like an hour later I gave up, hung up, and went off to do other things.
And, no, it's still not over. I called back AGAIN. I talked to another idiot long enough to be put on hold so I could talk to a supervisor. This was the first competent human being I spoke to. Repair order? Canceled after verifying my information. Help me recover my gamertag? Sure, just a second. Then the bitch hung up on me. Motherfuckers.
And I STILL didn't have my gamertag recovered. Rather than talk to a human I tried talking to the Xbox phone bot and he was a useless piece of shit. Eventually, out of sheer desperation, I tried using an email address on my gamertag that made sense only in a twisted sort of way and, hooray, it worked! I actually got my gamer tag back. It took a long time, but after that I was confident that my shit was restored.
I'm sure you've already guess that, yes, my shit was not restored. After a little research, I did find that I could "download again" all the things I spent money on. Hooray! And I did. One at a time. There's no "download again everything", so I had to go through every single download and tell it to download again. Also, only ten could be set to download again at one time, so it took a while. My save games? Gone. Can't be restored.
So let's recap. Can I send in my hard drive to be repaired? "Yes." Lie.
Can I get all my data recovered with ease? "Yes." Lie.
Can I restore all my data? "Yes." Lie.
Thankfully, minus saves and a lot of my patience, my Xbox lives again! I have a new hard drive, one that in theory will work better for a while, and I can play those games that I'm so looking forward to. At least the fucker plays. I should count my lucky stars.
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