A Whole New World

One of the countdowns I was dreading would have been the seven month run up to my pending retirement, scheduled for either June 4th or July 1st, whichever was most expedient. I had already started the countdown. With the anticipation starting to slowly build, I began dreading the time when it would be so close, that it would become a dripping water torture.

Unlike some "career" people, Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality for instance, I was not the job." Long ago, I had programmatically made my job so efficient that I would tell people that it was very much like firemen down at the firehouse. We waited for fires so that we could rush to put them out. The rest of the time we were just perfecting our art, polishing the equipment and inspecting it to make sure it was in prime, working order for when it was needed.

An odd thing happened during my countdown. My company moved my department's functions to the mother ship in Minnesota. No more fires to put out in Hoboken. Instead of a seven-month countdown, it became a 7-day countdown. Suddenly, the future started last Monday.

Since my last day on the job was a Monday, and that was last week, today was the first Monday that I would have that feeling of nowhere to go and nothing pending to do.

And it felt great. Time to take an assessment of where I came from to this point and where I want to go. Really, a whole new world of possibilities.

Gentleman, start your engine.

Back in the Saddle Again

 The feeling of a giant stone lifted off my back washed over me after I uploaded the last of 3.7 GB of files to the printer. The Hockey book was sent into cyberspace. It felt good immediately but after a good night's sleep, the feeling became wonderful. I think when you are in the middle of an intense project, one that goes on seemingly without end, you have no idea what it does to you. 

You forget any other longer-term projects. The order of importance of those "off stage" to do items fades and jumbles. Things you thought important to do next, switch places with "I'd-like-to-do-that items." And if you need real proof that your brain works on problem-solving off stage in your subconscious, I had one of those moments of clarity. A long-time problem of how to draw up a schedule using a program, a task that was daunting because of how irregular a calendar is, suddenly popped into my brain. And, very typically, it came to me while I was in the shower. Don't most of your great Ralph Kramden ideas happen there? Mine do.

That was also a signal to my brain of how much open space there is in my cranium now that the nonfiction writing gremlins had departed. That was a scary thought. Because of the immediate head-clearing catharsis of finish, my subconscious was now wide-open. I shutter to think how much it must have been working overtime .

Today, I did something I haven't done in a long time. I sat down at the piano. Recently, I did entertain thoughts that when I retire next June, I would take the piano back up in earnest. 

Stepping Out of the Shadows

Tonight, I was running my routine 5K around the lakes I live on in the mountains of northwestern New Jersey. I carry my cell because it has an excellent stopwatch app. My older brother called to tell me he was contacted by a person that played on our ice hockey team in Reading in 1964. That meant I hadn't communicated with this person in 56 years. Facebook has a way of reuniting people as well as dividing them with thoughtless and vicious posts.

  Facebook was taking too much of my writing time. My brother told me this person was setting up a private Facebook page to reunite the skaters and hockey players who were involved in the McKellen's Ice Rink in the early 1960s.

  Reluctantly I went back on Facebook to contact this person and, while there took a casual stroll through the nonsense. I see just how much time Facebook can control―if you let it. I also realized how much time I had saved not being very active the past two years.  Even this blog has suffered because of the massive writing project I took on.

  Now I am happy to say, the writing of that 636 page nonfiction is done. All the files went to the printer and right now I am awaiting the printed, final version. I am also holding my breath that there is not some massive and embarrassing mistake. Thankfully, my younger brother read and reread the book so the chances have been minimized. He was meticulous and relentless. If he saw something , he spoke up, which is exactly what you want in a reader.

I've been in publishing since 1974 and putting the tools I've acquired along the way is very rewarding and creative.

  The book is at the printer and I expect it will ship by the end of ext week at the latest. It will be in time to go under the Christmas tree.

The people who will help market and sell it are holding off the roll out until after this ships to the hockey community. Yes, the virus affected yet one more thing. But that's okay, because the book is finally done and it is just a matter of time until it is in everyone's hands.

  But meanwhile, I have just restarted my other writing projects and I am amazed at the fresh perspectives I am experiencing on my China rock and roll novel. China is even more relevant now than when I started my novel. My other project involves my high school experiences working on the Apollo Program. And now Space is back in the news. I am sure that I will soon become a "writing Gumby" all over again. 

  There are so many things that completing this book has opened up for me. I will enjoy reconnecting to my skating past and hope others will enjoy my memories, which I will share. At least this long stroll through the tunnel is nearly over. There are times when you need to step out of the shadows. 

  And this is one of them.

Busy Guy Seeing the Tunnel Light

With all the new forms of social media and ways to get notice of your writing out in cyberworld, there are not enough hours in the day. I am also still in the workforce, credited with 35 hours a week, considered full-time employment. Writing was a sidelight. But being just 15 months from full retirement in my "day job," I  am nearing the point where I can devote my energies towards full-time writing.

Since my last post, I have been working on a 102,000 word manuscript, a novel about rock and roll in China, a 604-page nonfiction about ice hockey, and in the process, trying to keep up 4 websites, several gmail accounts, and I let this blog lapse.

The blog, besides being a forum to market my stuff, is a writing outlet I immensely enjoyed (I'm allowed to use one quantifying adjective here). The problem was I created such deadlines for the other two writing projects that I abandoned all other care and maintenance of my enterprises to finishing those projects. Only now that I see the end in sight for the one, can the domino effect help me with the others.

First the nonfiction is finished within 60 days. Then the efforts made to revamp the China book and put that in motion, and then I go back and patch up my blogs and websites. 

I do understand as a writer you need deadlines. Otherwise nothing progresses. Once the silver stake has been hammered into the nonfiction, my day-to-day life will return, then my writing life will return.