And J saith unto the Lord, “Lord, but why?”

And the Lord said unto J, he said, “J, you know why.”

And J saith unto the Lord, “Lord, I know why, but can they handle it?”

And the Lord said unto J, he said, “J, you leave that up to me.”

A J saith unto the Lord, “Lord, thy will be done.”

And it was good and right and holy.

Is that a crazy thought?

I actually noticed it last year when reading an old journal. Since then, I’ve stumbled across three different instances in my life where July 16th has played significance in shaping who I am. I won’t mention these things publicly, but they all represent moments in my life when radical new ideas were introduced OR where I leave something behind and set a course that led me to radical new ideas.

I have to admit, I take a lot of stock in numbers and their significance in our lives. I watched the movie “The Number 23″ a great while ago and his obsession with the number 23 is similar to my obsession with numbers and their significance on my life. Oh, and an FYI, one of the three significant July 16ths was last year, subsequently is you add up the date: July 16, 2007 you can get the number 23. lol 7+1+6+2+0+0+7 = 23.

Stellar, eh?

I’m thinking about it today because my boss just walked in and we were talking about when we started working here and HIS start date was July 16th. Huh, I thought, that’s interesting as well. It doesn’t apply to me per se, but it did get me to thinking about it again.

I suppose my biggest wonder is now that I KNOW about this, will it affect any future instances of that particular date? Does my now SEEING a pattern (which I can discernably pinpoint 3 particular instances that had life-changing, idea changing affects on me–and probably more which I have no idea of how to verify or I was too young to know) in this date automatically void it of it’s significance until I forget about it again? I mean, I have to say, I am personally curious to see if anything significant will happen this year.

Then again, 1 of the 3 instances did not become signficant until I traced it back to that particular day. I mean, I knew the event that happened had an affect (and, honestly, it’s piddly, lame insignificant shit really) on me at the time, but it also drove me to other areas in which eventually blossomed out into bigger things–things which I found support for my divorce, friendships, new ideas, radical new beliefs, etc. It wasn’t so much an event, as it was a shift of focus for me on that particular year.

It makes me want to research my life a little more–go through old journals and see if there are any entries for that date (which is how I discovered this whole thing to begin with). I doubt I’ll be able to come up with anymore, but I am pretty sure there are more things that have happened on that day.

I find it all fascinating and interesting and very intriguing. I suppose that’s because I’ve been searching for a long time for any hints for a grand design, or some subtle plan that’s guiding my footsteps and nudging me along. You could call it a search for “God”, but perhaps not in the biblical sense of “God”. Perhaps fate would be a better word.

If anything interesting happens next Wednesday, I’ll let you all know. Don’t count on it, though, because I have done fucked the whole thing by discovering it.

How can a blog site entitled “Something Like Life” have a blog post titled the same thing and a blog itself containing said phrase? I am a magician, that’s how. I am about to whip up some weird voodoo shit. You think I am joking? I probably am.

I realized today that I had forgotten all about this blog. I haven’t made a post in a long time, and the reason is because I usually don’t gravitate to the blog unless there is something I need to get out of me. Right now, my focus has been on my writing and I have taken a sense of pride in believing that the words I write for money (or publication) are more important than the words I kick around on the intramahwebnet.

I have also been rather busy lately. Lots of little things going on. Been spending a great deal of time with the kids. Been focusing on my writing (I am almost halfway through my SECOND novel btw). Been trying to catch up on my reading. Been getting out of the house and enjoying the summer while it is here. Went on my first “first date” in 8 years….

*zzzzzzzzip!*

Yeah, I figured that you wanted to hear about that. Oh yeah, and to the people I tell that I always feel some innate need to explain that I don’t consider the short-lived internet fling I had last year as a “date”. That was more like an episode of The Twilight Zone that just so happened to end as some sort of trip. And then, when I do that, I also feel compelled to reach a little further back into my past and explain that I also don’t consider the 4 months of incessent phone calls from a drama queen that I worked with as “date” worthy either. I consider both to be crutches and a way of keeping some distance while I healed. To be fair, however, the internet fling literally changed my life and how I looked at life and in some ways was my most intense relationship to date. I just have a hard time calling it a “relationship” because most of it existed in cyberspace or cellular space and there was very little face time.

There is no other way around it, though. I can reason away those experiences last year as something less than a “date”, but I can’t reason this away. In a lot of ways, I am glad I can say that. It’s like the first step back into something normal, after about 18 months of struggling to recoup from a divorce.

For the past year and a half I have consistently said that I am not ready to date (even casually) and the reason was because I had not learned how to be happy on my own. Well, somewhere around March of this year, I finally learned how to be happy on my own. To be content with who I am. To finally love myself for who I am. It was a long, uphill battle but I got there.

Is it such a surprise that this would be the next logical step?

Doesn’t surprise me much. I had a lot of fun. It was good to be on a date with a girl again. It’s good to be happy again. I feel like I am in a very great place in my life and that I’ve come so far.

The date consisted of going roller skating (I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time, but hadn’t done it for YEARS lol), going out to eat, and then watching a movie at my place. The girl is fun and we both enjoyed ourselves. That’s pretty much all I’ll say.

The thing I wanted to touch on the most (and after a long period of nothing but negative blogs, it’s time I put up a positive blog), was that my life is finally picking up momentum and I am happy again. Happier than I’ve been in a long time.

Humpty Dumpty may have gotten most of the pieces glued back together.

I finished a book last year too, but it’s non-fiction and the more I looked at it, the more I realized it’s pretty terrible. I tried to write a self-help book last year and I keep looking at it in revisions and stuff and I shake my head at a lot of it. I’m almost at the point where I am just going to put it into adobe format and make it available to anybody who wants it for free. My little gift to those who need a little inspiration. I dunno. Maybe I’ll make something workable out of it someday. Or perhaps I can use some of the chapters as single submissions to magazines or something. I’m just not sure if it’s something that’s going to be worth the effort revising or not to try to submit, so I shelved it a while back.

But now I have a finished novel and I am pleased as a peach. I have yet to read it, though. I’m shelving it until June 1st so that I can come into it with a little fresher perspective before making revisions. Plus I have a whole mountain of books I want to read and taking a little break is giving me the opportunity to read some more. It’s hard as hell, though, for me not to read it. I want to see how it turned out and how well it works as a whole after writing it in parts without re-reading anything I wrote previously.

In other news, I have already begun work on a second novel. I’m about 3000 words into this one (about 16 pages) and I feel like this one is a little more real and going to be a lot more fun. My first novel was kind of geared towards a family audience and that was kind of hard for me to write without saying “fuck” once in a while at least. To make up for that, one of my characters in my new book’s favorite word is “fuck-face”. lol

Since my first one was pretty light-themed and more inspirational on a “Chicken Soup for the Soul” kind of level, I have decided that this one is going to go to the depths of my darker side. I’m going to touch on very mature themes and use coarse language and ideas throughout. I think I write better in darker themes anyway and I feel more like I am in my element with this one.

I assume the first one is just for practice. I’m not sure WHAT people are going to think of it. I think it seemed like a fairly originial idea, but whether or not I pulled it off is still unknown.

I’ll let you know what I think of my book in a few weeks.

~ Diane Dreher (from ‘The Tao of Inner Peace’) ~

I’m reading a fantastic book right now. This book is speaking to me in all kinds of intersting and new ways. The book is the one that the quote above is from.

Something I’m really starting to learn these days is how to shut off all the outside “voices” (i.e. radio, T.V., my imaginary friend “Caleb” <—ha ha!) and just listen to myself. I used to think meditation was a bunch of bunk. That to sit quietly and breath in all sorts of peaceful things and breath out all your frustrations and agressions was pure nonsense. Then…I tried it.

Some have said that prayer is a way for you to talk to God and that meditation is a way for you to listen. I’d say, if you are religious in any way, that that is a pretty fair assessment. Sometimes you need to talk to “God” (not necessarily the christian god, btw) and sometimes you need to sit your ass down and just listen.

Last night I came to a section of the book about nature (which I thought was going to bore me to tears), and it’s totally fascinating to me. I suppose it’s fairly common sense stuff and things that I already kind of knew, but I never really listened before. Has that ever happened to you? You can hear a quote a thousand times and never quite “get it” and then one day it just slams into your brain and makes all the sense in the world. That’s what reading this chapter did for me.

I find myself looking around more and more at the world around me. I haven’t turned into some sort of tree-hugging hippie or anything like that, but from my own personal experience I am slowly starting to recognize the design of things. The way of life and all it’s intricate details. I even have a new little friend that has come to visit me everyday at work–a little bird with an orange belly.

I first noticed the little fella when I was outside smoking. I was there, just minding my own business, when out of nowehere I catch this thing coming at me out of the corner of my eye. I, of course, being the nervous little ball of energy that I am, jumped about four feet in the air. Startled the heck out of me. When I calmed down, I looked over and she (or he) was maybe 10 feet away from me getting a worm out of the ground.

In that moment I started to ask myself, “Why did this happen?” I got all excited because I’ve heard of things like this having “meaning” in the  universe and I asked someone about it and they turned it into an anti-smoking campaign. *sigh*

But the little fella never fails to visit me everyday. Not in the startling manner, but it never fails that I am out there and see him getting his daily worm. I kind of enjoy his presence, even if I haven’t figured out yet what the fuck a bird is supposed to symbolize.

The moral of this story is simple…love thyself. The common saying is “Know Thyself”, but I think that that is grossly incomplete. It’s only half the story. If I were writing it, I would say “Know thyself, Love thyself”. Accept yourself for who you are–flaws and all. Don’t be afraid to change and improve, but don’t stress about it. The biggest improvement we can make in our lives is to learn to be secure in who we are, know what we want, and then just simply…accept who we are.

I know that ever since I began to think more like this, that I have been a lot happier. It’s a truly freeing experience to just enjoy the now, whatever the situation is, and realize your balance with everything else. Whether you want to be or not, you are part of a big machine (a grander plan) and, while you can’t see the big picture, all the little things that happen to each of us fit into that machine. The way you deal with what you are alotted in life is of utmost important. Don’t be bitter because you are a good person that bad things keep happening to. Love yourself! Accept yourself! And be patient. These are the things that I am learning right now, and I feel at peace with myself for it.

Where I am finding myself right now is in a slight lull, where I am still adding a little bit to the novel I started last month, but not in nearly as frantic a pace as before. I’ve slowed down a bit to come up for air, but in the process I’ve managed to get a clear head about where I want to go from here–which is good.

I’ve set the new goal of finishing this current novel by May 15th, and, since I have a lot more story to tell than I originally thought, I’ve bumped the new word count goal up to 75K words. Right now I’ve managed to eek myself up to about 55K words. So, essentially, I have a week to write 20K words to finish this thing, which is pretty intense. Almost 3000 words per day from this point forward to meet that goal.

I don’t think it’s going to be as intense as I think. I don’t HAVE to reach 75K words to consider this novel complete. The 75K words is just a guide to get me a given word count goal to reach for. The main thing I am striving for right now is just finishing this thing. Get the story complete in it’s first draft. If it hit’s 75K words or more, fine, but the ultimate goal is to get this story finished so that I can move on to bigger and better things.

So that’s my first goal: Finished first draft by May 15th.

When I have a finished first draft, I am going to take a break from novel writing (even though the intensity of writing has really spawned like a billion new ideas that I keep feeling myself being tugged in all directions to start on but am forcing myself to put off for now until I can finish this). I intend to shelf this first draft for approximately a month. Then I will begin my first round of revisions (which is where the fun begins, eh? lol) on or after June 15th.

For two weeks, though, I intend to just relax from my writing a bit (which means I’ll probably blog more about something besides writing) and take it easy. I have 3 books I’m trying to read currently all at once and I’m going to take the time to finish all of them up and read the other couple of books I want to read but don’t have time for right now.

Then, on June 1st, after taking a couple of weeks off, I intend to fall back on my original idea of freelance writing. I want to start getting some shorter submissions out and see what kinds of things I can get into on a smaller scale than novel-writing. Maybe get myself into print somewhere and pick up a few extra bucks doing so.

The ultimate goal, then, will be to find the balance between writing and editting a novel and submitting smaller pieces to magazines, e-zines, etc. and not overworking myself in the process. Although, I really don’t feel like writing is “work”. I’m having a blast putting out these word count goals. I love every second of the writing process and I have truly found something that I really passionate about and makes me happy. Something that is all mine and mine alone, and that is truly exciting.

I’m also discovering that I don’t CARE really if my work never sees professional print (although the money would be nice and I’ve dreamt my whole life about writing a book and getting it published) so much as I care about the process…the journey. I feel like that’s a good place to be, because I realize that mass rejection is quickly approaching and facing that rejection and revision and criticism is going to be tough. But I’ve faced tougher things and came out a better person, so I hope this will be a similar experience.

All in all, I just wanted to make a post getting the ideas about where I want to go out in front of me so that I can read them. I’ve veered quite a bit from my original goals that I posted when I started this blog, but that’s a good thing. This thing seems like it’s taken on a life of its own lately and that’s truly an awesome feeling being a part of something like that.

In other news, I’m going back for another dose of the writer’s crit group tonight. I’ve gotten to read some of the stuff by another person in the group and it’s pretty good. I had a lot of fun reading it and making comments on it. I’ll be curious to see how things go tonight, because last week was pretty informal.

I’m having a blast doing what I’ve always wanted to do and just learning to love and accept myself and gain the confidence to believe that I can do this as a full time profession someday if I keep working at it. Time will tell.

My biggest flaw, however, is designing a main character who is pretty much me incarnate. The details get slightly changed, but I keep discovering throughout ALL of my work that the characters and how they think, talk, and act are all just extensions of myself in some way. Some of these characters get a little bit more of “me” than others, but there is almost always something of myself in these characters.

Another small problem that I have is writing female characters. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to, studying, and thinking about women, but for some reason I cannot what I believe I understand about women and translate it to a believable female character. I noticed this about two chapters into a book I am reading from a fellow writer at a website I frequent. Her characters are so girly and the story itself is pure estrogen (lol). Then I look over my female characters and they really are just dickless men.

Why can’t I tap into more feminine characters? Hell, I’ve always surrounded myself with girls. I relate better to girls. Most of my friends  and the people I allow myself to get closest to are girls. You’d think I’d have more trouble writing a male character.

So, I’m going to try to use this when making a female character. I’m going to model a few female characters (in the future) after real women that I’ve known and talked to in my life. Perhaps this will help put the edge back into the femininity of the characters I try to present through my stories.

In other news, last months challenge has really opened pandora’s box of ideas. I have a million different stories that I want to tell (among about five other partially finished stories that I’ve already started through the years), but I keep pushing myself to finish the story I started last month. It’s driving me completely batty. I want to be done this story so bad, not because I’m getting tired of writing it, but because I want to explore other, new ideas that have been slamming me ever since I started my current one.

I realize that this is why I have never really finished anything (except an 80 page handwritten novel as a kid and a non-fiction, essay-style book last year) and so I am forcing myself to remain focused on what I started. This is the farthest I’ve ever taken a fiction novel. It’s the most of one book I’ve written EVER. Page count is up to 260 in Microsoft Word (with Courier New font) and it’s growing (slower this month than last) everyday.

On top of that, I have a few things to critique for my writer’s crit group and I have about 3 different books I am reading all at once right now. lol

If the reading and writing world were a giant pool, I’d be completely immersed and in over my head right now.

I’ve never been more happy.

We sat at a little round table in a coffee shop in town and ate cookies, talked and laughed about things that came over the radio, and wrote together. I was dreading the idea of joining a crit group because I was afraid of putting my work out to people who could look me in the eye and criticize my work, but I discovered that the experience was truly fantastic.

I found it really nice to be able to talk about writing (among other things) with 3-dimensional people for a change (instead of searching the internet high and low for fellow writers). Personally, I was surprised that there was even a writer’s group in my area at all. I suppose I had resigned myself to having to discuss writing on the internet, but now that I found this crit group I’m pleased as a peach.

There were five of us there. There two other guys and two girls and me. The one woman (a little older) was a hoot. I found myself laughing at the crazy stuff she said and she was just real fun to talk to. I also discovered that she actually lives about one block up the street from me (lol). Considering I had to drive a half an hour to the next town over to go to this thing, I thought that was pretty funny. I also discovered that the group itself was formed because they had all met on NaNoWriMo (the official one) about 2 years ago. I thought that was pretty interesting because I have just come off my own personal challenge and it’s kind of what drove me to look for Writer’s Crit groups.

The other funny thing I discovered is that I had a lot in common with these people. I had similar interests and tastes as they did. That’s funny because my interests really haven’t been the same as most people in my area. Most people in my area can’t get past talking about hunting and fishing all the time and stuff like that. Now, I love to hunt (read: love being in the woods) and I like to fish (although I haven’t done it for years), and I don’t even mind talking about it once in a while. But all the time? GAH!

But not once did hunting or fishing come up last night. lol It was nice to meet “different” people that come from the same area as me. They all had their own eccentricities (which was cool) and it was refreshing to know that there are other people in the area that not only love to write, but are not bent on talking about the same old shit all the time.

I also discovered that writing in a public place–in front of other writers–wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. We had a “write-in” last night, which was basically getting together and chatting about whatever and writing. I figured I would sit at my computer and look at it blankly, but I actually managed to write a little–which was good for me to take my “private” thing and make it more public and open.

All in all, it was a good experience and I plan on going back. We meet every Thursday night, so it’s a once a week thing–which is good. I loved meeting fellow writers and I have a pretty good feeling about this.

1. It has taught me that the story has a mind of it’s own and that an idea, no matter how simple, can expand and expand and expand until it bursts into a life of it’s own. I started this challenge with an idea that I thought to myself “how the hell am I going to get 50K words out of THAT?” Here I am at the end of the month, and I’m not even sure I am half finished. Throwing words to the page has really taught me a lesson in how important the story itself is.

2. It has taught me that in order to acheive a goal, you have to break it down into smaller parts and keep on task as much as possible. Doing this challenge has shown me that my “writer’s block” is just a figment of my imagination most of the time and that if I just sit down and FORCE myself to start writing SOMETHING, the ideas and the words will eventually come. There were many times in the past month I sat in my chair and stared at the screen, dreading writing a particular scene because the ideas weren’t there. But something inside of me would say “just start typing, J” and I would do it. When I did it, the rough patches would melt away after a few minutes and the story would start to flow again. Sometimes I would have to type over a thousand words to get that flow, but it always came if I typed long enough. Yesterday was a very good example of such  a day.

3. It has taught me that the first draft of a story is not a first draft. It is a mere chunk of clay with which to use to shape a final manuscript. I gave credit to that idea from someone on another website, but I thought the analogy itself was very insightful.

4. It has taught me that finishing the story is of utmost importance and that editting is reserved for later drafts. I used to try and keep up with my editting as I typed, and as a result it would burn me out and I would never finish. I’ve learned thought this, however, that writing the story is where the sheer fun is and that EDITTING (which is coming soon to a theater near you, lol) is the part that really sucks. But for that there is EdNoWriMo, which I predict I will take on in June after I finish my story this month and let it cool for a couple of weeks.

5. It has taught me that if I truly believe I can reach a goal, I will find a way to reach it by doing what I can when I can. It has really reinforced the idea that getting anything accomplished involves doing it in small, insignificant chunks that, over time, really add up to a whole. It’s taught me the importance of writing 500 words in a day or 50 words in a day and how even those little chunks of writing will add up over time. This is also something that I can use in other areas of my life.

So, here I am, at the end of the month. The goal was to write 50K words in the month of April (30 days). Where did I land?

Final Word Count:  51,197 words

I surprised myself with this challenge and it was no easy feat. I especially surprised myself yesterday, when, upon waking up, I was at 43K words. I had 7000 words to write in 24 hours, and I had to work all day and had my kids all evening. But breaking it up in small chunks, not only did I reach my goal, I supassed it by over a thousand words.

I will definately take this challenge again. Perhaps I will do it again in November and take the REAL, official challenge.

The things that I take away from this, however, have changed the way I view writing forever.

A day at google brought me to a local writer’s crit group about a week ago. So, on a whim I decided to email the leader to find out more info about it. We’ve been emailing back and forth for the past week and there is a meeting on Thursday, of which I said I’d attend.

Great…a chance to meet some fellow writer’s over a good cup of a coffee. That doesn’t frighten me.

What DOES frighten me (beyond belief) is sharing my work with real, live people. You see, the beauty of the internet is that I can sit here and hound the hell out of my keyboard everyday for you fine folks knowing that you’ll never be able to look me in the eye and tell me that I suck hard. Rejection and criticism isn’t so bad when it’s a bunch of rag tag writer’s strewn together over the world wide web tossing words around on their computer screens.

In real life, however, with real flesh and blood people who can sit across from you and tell you that your work sucks (or is fantastic!), it’s  a little scary. I have no idea why I can handle criticism on the net like it’s nothing but the idea of real people from my own local area reading my work scares the bejesus out of me.

I mark it as a growing experience. A chance to branch out and make my work more “real”. So, I am forcing myself to do it, but I am doing so kicking and screaming.

Perhaps it’s because my writing has been my personal shrink for the past several years. Perhaps it’s because I have kept my craft to “private” forms. I realize that my family found my old blog and hence I’ve already had “real” people reading my work, but they never talked a whole lot about it other than to tell me that they thought I was good.

But the purpose of THIS group is “critique”, which means a focus on the NEGATIVE aspects of the pieces we write. So it’s going to be a bit different.

The meeting is going to be a “write in”, where we all get together and write together. That will be weird for me too because I am not used to writing with a group. As I’ve said, my writing has always been a “private” thing for me. The only “public” aspect about it has been the posts I’ve made on the net, but again, it’s to a bunch of people that I’ll likely never meet. And even of the one’s I HAVE met, or plan to meet, they aren’t local.

I don’t know if that makes a damn bit of sense or not, but let’s just say it’s a little scary to think about. I suppose it’s a necessary evil…a hurdle with which I need to cross at least once to get more comfortable with the idea of writing for a real live audience who can stare me in the eyes and let me know exactly what they think.

Not to devalue you, my precious, precious readers. But if you don’t get my point, I’m not sure I can explain it any other way.

Perhaps I need a good Paxil drip.