The Line

Over the weekend I attended a Halloween party. It was fairly enjoyable, even if some of us left early because things were getting out of hand. On the way home, I stopped and checked my schedule at work. Instead of the usual scheduled hours after my name, there was a swiftly-drawn line.

My initial reaction was confusion. What did this line mean? Was there a conflict? Would I resume work the next week? Eventually, I realized what should have been obvious: I was fired.

Or at least I had a hunch that I was. It was not until I called the hotel the next morning that I knew for sure. I tried calling my manager directly, but there was no answer. I tried calling the hotel’s number, but the call would not connect (I think they may have blocked my number). Eventually, I got through by using my home phone instead.

They fired me without even letting me know.

The actual reason for my termination is convoluted, but the basics are that I was doing things the way I had been taught under previous management. This was producing errors, apparently. No one told me that I was doing anything wrong. No one told me the new way of doing things. This happened twice and caused the management and owner a lot of problems. But they never told me I was doing it wrong.

A Sorry Excuse for an Entry

Ah! In such a good place for creative musings (The coffee shop I like)!

So here they are.

Or not.

I have been greatly neglecting this blog, and like a baby, it will wither and die of exposure if I do not act swiftly.

So yeah.

What’s up with you guys? Anything interesting?

I want to see Cloud Atlas, but since the town I am near sucks, I will have to travel forty minutes to do so.

I am sure more interesting things would come to mind if I only tried a little, but there is an assignment I really should get to.

[/worstblogpostever]

A Confession of Optimism

I am very thankful to my parents for the way that they raised my sister and me. There has always been a strong sense of neutrality. Not in the sense of never backing any side of an argument, but in the sense of being impartial and evaluating the situation before forming an opinion about something. It has led to complicated, if interesting, scenarios when friends and I have fought—I do my best to avoid taking a stance against the person mad at me. This just seems to frustrate the other party and makes me sound smarmy as I describe it now, but I believe it is the right thing to do if you can appropriately distance your emotions in order to make a rational decision.

Because of this, there is a sort of centrist streak running through my family. Religiously speaking, I was taught to revere the Dalai Lama as much as the Pope and to shun fundamentalism. Politics were also subject to this; my parents never shared with us who they voted for. They will discuss who they plan on voting for now that both my sister and I are of age, but they showed no desire to imprint their political beliefs on us the way so many people seem to do. (We were indoctrinated, but with views that are more flexible, in my opinion.) Whenever I can glean something about their beliefs, it reinforces the idea of choosing sides based on their merits instead of voting straight ticket; my father is a registered Democrat, but Reagan was his favorite president.

But there is more to this post than bragging about Mom and Dad. The centrism is alive and well whenever we talk about the upcoming election. My whole family, it seems, has adopted the strategy of voting for neither Obama nor Romney, citing problems with both. As with the previous election, I agree with them that there are problems with both (though I think neither would run the country into the ground, Bush-style). But every time my sister extols the merits of the Green Party, there is a part of me that shrinks as I remember my true feelings.

I like Obama.

There. I wrote it.

I have yet to admit this to my family, for fear of deviating from the consensus they have come to. Even with an intentionally-open belief system, there is a set of norms to which one must adhere.

I certainly have my issues with the President. The bill he signed “with reservations” bugs me, for example. But when I learned a friend was involved with the Obama campaign, I actually had a slight desire to do something myself.

I missed my chance during the “hopey changey” era. I lost my absentee ballot, so I did not vote. But even then, despite professing that both Obama and McCain were worthy contenders, I clandestinely harbored Obama sympathies.

I know that supporting a candidate in an election is not something to be ashamed of, but still I worry. I have found myself increasingly to be a liberal democrat over the years, and I just do not want to be one of those people that are part of the partisan train wreck that is most of our politics. And yet I drift to the left (or maybe I have always been there—I am a bit of a Socialist at heart).

I know who I am voting for this November. I just hope it is for the right reasons.

If he's good enough for her, he's good enough for me.

On Discovery Writing

I suck at it.

Discovery writing, for those that do not know, is writing without an outline or guide. You may have a vague idea of where your story will go, but you are coming up with the actual plot points and character arcs while you are writing.

My “bad” story has been an exercise in this. I do not have a particular direction in mind for it to go. This is a problem for me. When I hit a block, it seems that much worse since I do not have a later scene that I can jump to.

Should have used an outline.

I am embarrassed to say that I have made barely any progress in that story. I am still under 9,000 words. I keep running into the problem that I have no plans for what happens to the main character next. I end up following him around his life as he does things like going to work. It’s some boring shit. In the right hands it could be used to make a point, but in my case it was because I had nothing else for him to do.

There is one positive thing I can take out of this ongoing endeavor; I have learned that I prefer outlining. There is always an element of discovery writing present when writing anything, but I do not think I can sustain it on its own for a whole book and produce something readable. I need some sort of lattice work to write things of significant length.

For completion’s sake, I am interested in continuing to write this story. I might try sketching out a few broad points, though.

The End of an Era

Tonight I had an issue while checking out a guest. I went to call my boss to remedy the situation, but was sent to voicemail. She then informed me via text that she has resigned.

I am disheartened, to say the least. My boss was one of the best things about working at the hotel. She is possibly the most positive person I have ever known, and always has such genuine enthusiasm for things.

She will be missed. I can only hope that work will continue to be a rewarding environment. If things go downhill, though, I guess I will be stuck in the same boat as everyone else.

A Welcoming

Last night at class, while speaking about my goal of writing the “bad” story, I mentioned this blog. I was urged to share the address. As such, there may now be one or two new readers poking around my archive.

If I am completely honest, it is embarrassing to have such an intersection of real life and online life. Which is weird, since most of my readers are people I already know in the flesh.

Speaking of embarrassing things, I was also asked to explain the premise of my novel-in-progress. Yikes. I was not ready for that one.

I am not sure if this bashfulness is present in all writers, or if I am especially prone to it.

The only lasting negative consequence of sharing the blog is this: now I cannot write about any of the people in class. Oops.

They are all really nice people, though, so there would not be much to write about. And yes, I would say that even if they were not privy to my postings.

Come to Philly for the Crack

I should be sleeping. I have to be awake for class tonight. But alas, I am out of melatonin. Since I am unable to sleep, I figure I can kill two birds with one stone by also being unable to write.

I have struggled to find something appropriate to blog about the past few days. It would make the most sense to talk about work, but it is my wish that this blog be something more than just a record of my spiraling occupational neurosis.

While at work, I did come across something that may be worth sharing anyway: I find Philadelphia accents indicate a constant orneriness. To me, it is as if the speaker is about to have an angry outburst at any moment.

There was a portly gentleman from Philadelphia in town for the university’s homecoming. While eating breakfast, he asked for me to change the channel on the breakfast area television to weather. Something about the way he said it made me feel like he was in a bad mood. I turned the channel from the usual (CNN’s Early Start) to The Weather Channel.

“No,” he continued, “I want to see the weather for here.”

His tone seemed to belie a certain impatience. I was flummoxed (it had been a long night for me). Eventually it was made clear that he wanted the local weather, but not before I felt like he was on the verge of getting mad.

Of course, he could have just been frustrated. One of several incidents that kept me busy that night was his toilet clogging. The plunger remained elusive, so the best I could do for him was to instruct him to use the public restroom. When you also consider how long it took me to realize that he wanted a local channel on, you have a recipe for an irritable guest. But to me, he seemed to be teetering on the edge of an unearned eruption.

After this, he asked to change the channel again. With my permission, he began tuning the TV to something else. He settled on a screening of Major League on HBO. The movie has some saucy elements, and HBO is the one channel we are never supposed to have on for precisely that reason. Yet, I did not say anything. I was afraid of upsetting the precarious balance of emotions within the man.

I know, I know, this makes me look bad. He had an excuse to be a little upset. Taking this into account, one might draw the conclusion that I simply do not like people from Philadelphia. This is not true. I love It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and my godfather is from the city of brotherly love.

Just like how I'm not racist because of my black friend.

I maintain that even taking into account the circumstances, there was a rising inflection in his voice. It practically sounded like he was looking for a reason to get into an argument. I do not know how else to describe the effect his accent had on me.

Looking back, I am probably overanalyzing everything about this frankly unremarkable situation. And it is kind of boring. But dammit, I got a blog post out of it.

Potpourri I

I decided to combine a few post ideas that were not long enough into a single post. Why? Because I steal from C/K. I even stole the idea to start a blog from him.

One of my duties as a hotel night auditor is to print out the receipts for Choice Privileges customers and slip them under their doors. Traversing from one room to the next, quietly slipping receipts under doors, I wondered if this was what it felt like to be the Tooth Fairy. In any case, it has similarly creepy connotations: I am slipping things under other things for you to find while you are asleep.

Last night I not only read text in my dream, I made a play on words! I think I was looking at someone’s online username and they were an Olympic swim fan, because the word displayed was “Lochtepus.”

I have never heard that one before (only “Lochtess Monster”), so I am taking this opportunity to praise my subconscious’s cleverness.

CNN keeps referring to tonight as “debate night in America.” Because of the phrasing, I now have “Tennis Night in America” stuck in my head.

To bring things full circle, Ryan Lochte will be appearing in the final(?) season of 30 Rock. If anyone can make his stilted, wooden personality entertaining, it’s them.

30 Rock Soundtrack:

Amazon

Google Play

iTunes

All Aboard!

The model railroading bug has bitten me again! This time it is more of a localized rash than a full-blown infection.

Something I do not often share with people is that I used to be an avid model railroader. Well, more of an armchair model railroader. I did more reading, planning, and collecting than building. As a result, there are a lot of unrealized projects. In our basement, we actually have a train table that my grandfather custom built to go around in a ring, but currently it is being used for storage. I never placed anything permanently on it.

This is probably somehow connected to my habit of not finishing things.

I made a little bit of progress a couple of years ago, and intended to document my meager attempts with a blog. I started work on what is known as a “pizza layout,” a small setup, often around the size of a pizza box. I think resuming this project is a good way to dip my toe back into the water before attempting the daunting (but exciting) task of creating a large layout.

As for the large layout, I have been rethinking my plans. A large part of it was going to be a small town, and I realized I could make it a miniature version of the town from my “bad” story. But as I was in class, I my mind began to wander. What about something more fantastical? Steampunk and dieselpunk seem perfectly suited for model railroading (steam and diesel being the two types of locomotives). I think this could end up as a pretty cool layout. I use the term cool relatively, of course.

All of this does beg the question, should I be devoting time and energy to side projects and hobbies? I not only have classes to keep up with, but my current story begs for attention. (I have accepted it will not be done in time for NaNoWriMo, but whatever, I can use that time to write draft two.) Plus, I should probably clean my room soon.

I do not see a problem with working on the pizza layout. And I think I can justify this as a creative release, so long as it does not keep me from doing other things. Writing, school, and work should take priority.