What the heck happened to October?

I cruised into October with a spring in my step and hope in my heart.  Then, almost immediately. I stumbled back into bed with pain in my throat and an infection in my sinuses.  All of my intentions to write a blog post every day went right out the window.

I’m recovered from being sick, but now it’s Halloween.  The month disappeared.  In less than an hour, NaNoWriMo starts.

I don’t know if I’m going to succeed this time.  I’m not going into this with a lot of hope.  I haven’t done much writing the last few weeks.  I haven’t done my preparatory blog writing.  I barely have a story idea.

But I’m doing this!  Bryanna is with me again this year.  We’ve already made introductions at the Yolo Nano kickoff party.  We’ve gone through the ritual seeding of the Plot Box.  In just a little bit, at the stroke of midnight, we’ll tear into our stories, creating terrible, merciless first drafts.

Fifty thousand words.  Thirty days.  Let’s see how this goes.

The political landscape is a cratered wasteland, with trenches dug so deep that they come close to the Earth’s molten core.  People are polarized, drawn to their respective camps out of mutual hatred for the opposition’s candidate.  The stink of fear and hyperbole dominate the air, overwhelming the usual scent of pumpkin spice that is common this time of year.

I’m trying to avoid adding my own voice to the tumult.  I’ve already made a couple of politically themed posts.  They’re decent posts, but I don’t think they changed anyone’s mind.  Most of the people that read my blog posts already share my perspective.

I like to use this blog as a writing warm up.  It loosens up my mind and my fingers and gets the words flowing.  The problem is that I’ve been watching the election so closely that all that ever comes to mind are politically themed posts.  For example, I’m tempted to talk about the debate right now.  I also feel an urge to talk about the false equivalence that is applied to Hillary and Donald in regards to their honesty.  The temptation is strong, when what I really should be doing is focusing on writing fiction.  My writing career isn’t going to go anywhere if I remain fixated on politics.

For over a month, I’ve been avoiding this blog the same way that I’ve been avoiding Facebook.  I’m going to continue to remain vacant from social media the same way those that govern avoid war zones.  However, October is coming.  My hope and dream is to turn October into Blog-tober again, which leads into NaNoWriMo.  If I can write a blog post every day for 31 days, I can probably write 1,700 words every day in November.  And I’ve got a really great idea for a NaNoWriMo story this year.

So, I guess this is a warning?

I want to talk about guns again.  I’ve talked about them twice before.  The responses to those posts were mostly positive.  I feel a need to talk about them again.  It’s been several days since the shootings in Orlando, so you may be sick of this topic by now.  That’s okay.  I’m writing this for myself as much as I’m writing it for anyone else, to try and work through my emotions around this latest event.  If you want to skip this entry, I don’t blame you.

I don’t consider myself a Republican or a Democrat.  I lean more left than I did when I was younger.  My conservative friends and family probably see me as a liberal.  I’m certainly able to find lots of areas of agreement with my liberal friends.  But one area that I’ve always been more right leaning is guns.  I’ve always been uncomfortable with the idea of taking away American’s guns, or infringing on the Second Amendment.

It is important to me that we avoid emotional responses on this issue.  Knee-jerk reactions are not usually powered by intellect and sweet wisdom.  That’s the kind of reaction that led to us fighting in Iraq.  It’s the kind of reaction that led to the Patriot Act, and Guantanamo Bay.  Smart people can get caught up in that kind of reaction, and then regret it later.

We are reeling from the worst mass shooting in American history.  Okay, well, it’s not actually the worst in history.  But it’s the worst in recent memory.  It was perpetrated by a man that had previously been under Federal suspicion.  He used an AR-15, bought legally.  He claimed alignment with ISIS.

There is so much right there.  Terrorism.  Assault rifles.  The ability to purchase a gun, even when on a No Fly list.

After recovering from the initial shock, we were inundated with second guessing.  Liberals cried out about the guns.  Conservatives clutched to their guns, saying it’s all about terrorism.  Both sides started fighting and name calling, and no actual communication took place, because it’s all emotions, grandstanding, and fear.

If someone had been armed in the club when the shooting began, would it have made a difference?  Conservatives say yes.  Liberals say no.

If he hadn’t been able to purchase the gun, the tragedy would have been avoided, right?  Maybe.  That seems to be the main argument for tighter gun restrictions.  But the Boston Marathon bombing didn’t involve a gun.  I don’t think Ted Kacynski used guns.  If Omar Mateen had been scoping out the club weeks before the attack, who’s to say that he wouldn’t have tried something that didn’t involve bullets?

My initial reaction, after the sadness for the loss of innocent lives, is to side with the conservatives.  But we’ve had so many mass shootings.  A call to make a change is not an emotional reaction.  It is the reasonable thing to do.

At the risk of upsetting the quasi-religious reverence given to the Second Amendment, let’s look at what it means to restrict guns in the US.  Already, you can’t just have any gun you want.  I’m not talking about nuclear missiles or weapons of mass destruction.  I’m talking about the kind of weapon you might think was used in Orlando.  To quote:

NFA weapons are weapons that are heavily restricted at a federal level by the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986. These include automatic firearms (such as machine guns), short-barreled shotguns, and short-barreled rifles. Some states and localities place additional restrictions on such weapons.

So, we know that there are already some restrictions on what constitutes a legal firearms.  That makes me think that the conversation about greater restrictions is going to go one of two ways.

• Tighter restrictions on the kinds of guns people can purchase legally
• Tighter restrictions on the kinds of people that can purchase guns

If we further restrict the types of guns people can own, we’re talking about eliminating semi-automatic weapons.  People could then legally own bolt action rifles and single-action revolvers, right?  Or will we go further?  It wouldn’t take much before it starts sounding a bit like what was done in Australia.  They broke out guns into several categories.  I think the AR-15 would be a Category D, which can only be owned by government officials.  Handguns are Category H, and in addition to having a justification for owning one (such as being a security guard), there’s a 6 month probationary period, as well as other restrictions.

I don’t think that’s going to go over very well in the red states.  It might be a hard pill to swallow in many of the blue ones, too.

Let’s shift back to restrictions on who can purchase a gun.  I don’t think anyone disagrees with the notion that suspected terrorists shouldn’t be able to buy guns.  But… how do we determine if someone is a suspected terrorist?  What criteria do we use?

We’re still struggling with racial biases and prejudices in our law enforcement and at different levels of our government.  One of our candidates for President speaks with alarming frequency in tones of racism.  How do we keep racism (and potentially fascism) from becoming a part of the process that determines if a person can own a gun or not?

Someone should ask Trump if an American citizen born and bred in the United States, that just happens to be a Muslim, should own a gun.  I wonder what his answer would be, and how he’d play it out against the backdrop of the Second Amendment.

This whole conversation about guns in the US is one of those issues that requires thought and care.  Unfortunately, it’s instead filled with name calling and rhetoric.

What do I think?  How would I change the system to make it better?

I’d start small.  I’d start with putting the restrictions on people, and I’d try to make the restrictions as reasonable as possible.  If you’re on a No Fly list, you can’t buy a gun.  Then I’d go a step further and make sure that there are provisions for getting off the No Fly list, so that innocent people finding themselves on such a list have a way of getting removed.

Maybe I’d also make the waiting period based on the results of the background check.  If you’ve been on a No Fly list, or you were recently the subject of a restraining order, or you had run into some other legal troubles, your waiting period is measured in months rather than days.  People can still get guns if they’re under some suspicion, but they can’t get them in a hurry and rush off to do mayhem.

I don’t think those are unreasonable changes.  It’s an incremental change that would have addressed the situation in Orlando.  Or at least, it would have meant that Omar Mateen would have had to use something other than a gun.

I think that’s the way that we’re going to make things better in the US.  It’s through incremental change, with conversation and compromise, rather than shouting and mule-headed grandstanding.

Let’s talk about how to write.

My writing has really improved over the last few years.  Part of this improvement comes from writing more.  Another part comes from putting my ego aside long enough to listen to meaningful critique.  One of the things I’ve learned from critique is that I fall into the passive voice when I’m not paying attention.  Many writers do this, and the passive voice is fine once in a while.  But like any seasoning, too much ruins the broth.

Adverbs are in the same boat.  Adverbs are not your friend, and should be used with care and intention.  If you’re not paying attention when you use an adverb, you run the risk of telling something that you should be showing.

Most adverbs end in “ly” like quickly, loudly, and simply.  When scanning your writing, you can let your eye land on the words ending with “ly” and then start your surgery.  Similarly, many passive voiced sentences involve the word “was.” So, while editing The Repossessed Ghost, I spent a great deal of time rewriting sentences that involved that word.

Here is an example of a passively voiced sentence that involves “was”:

Rewriting sentences was how I planned on elevating my prose.

If I come across that sentence while editing one of my stories, I’ll rewrite it to something more like:

I planned on elevating my prose by rewriting the weak sentences.

Look how much stronger that sentence is!  The emphasis shifted from “was” to “planned.” It is easier to read, the message is clearer, and I even had room to sneak in an extra adjective.

My first draft of The Repossessed Ghost dripped with weak, passively voiced sentences.  It isn’t that surprising.  The main influence that set the tone for my book is Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, and he falls into the passive voice all the time.

Of course, not every passive-voiced sentence involves the word “was.”  Look at the last sentence of the previous paragraph.  The first half is passive.  It should be “Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files influenced and set the tone for my book.”  It’s sneaky, because it doesn’t involve the word “was” and it is part of a longer sentence.

So, as hard as I worked on The Repossessed Ghost, I know that it still isn’t perfect.  It’s stronger than the previous draft, with a greater emphasis on strong verbs.  However, sneaky sentences slipped past me, and now wait like active land mines.

But, beyond my own book, I have developed a sensitivity to the word “was.” I’ve spent so much time watching for it that it stands out in other people’s work.  It stands out in the audio books I listen to.  Every instance of the word “was” makes me sit up, pay attention, and listen for passivity.

I’m trying to back that off.  It isn’t a terrible word.  It’s sorely needed in some sentences.  I know that some of the sentences I rewrote in my book were not made better by eliminating “was.”  As I’m going through the beginning again, polishing and adding greater strength to the verbs, I’m trying to leave some of the sentences alone.

So, in summary, spending energy seeking and destroying the word “was” can help you reduce passively voiced sentences in your work.  But spending too much energy on something like that can make you crazy, and still allow you to miss your ultimate goal of good prose and a solid story.

You know, I never know how to end posts like these.  So I’ll just say, “Happy Birthday, Melissa!  I love you, and I hope your day has been extra special!”

(Edited.  When writing a post on writing, it’s embarrassing to include so many sloppy mistakes.)

I go to 2 or 3 conventions each year, with one of them being WorldCon every year that I can afford it.  This year, Melissa and I chose to go to BayCon as one of the other conventions.  This was our first BayCon, and I went into it with some unrealistic expectations.

For starters, I thought it would be bigger.  I hadn’t heard anything about BayCon 2015, and I wasn’t aware of the three other cons going on at the same time.  I heard a rumor that there had been doubts about BayCon happening at all this year.  If I’d known all that from the beginning, it’s possible I would have given BayCon a pass.  Fortunately, I went, and I had a good time.

I did have my doubts at the beginning.  Melissa and I arrived a little bit early, and we hoped that would help get us through registration more quickly.  We’d preregistered, and I hoped it would be a straight forward affair.  Unfortunately, they had a rough start, with technical difficulties preventing them from getting registration going on time.

Melissa and I went up, badge-less, to attend the opening ceremonies.  There seemed to be some confusion about when the doors would open for that, so Melissa and I bailed on the opening ceremony.  We took a walk around the hotel and went to lunch instead.

Still badge-less, we went to our first panel.  It was Magic versus Religion.  It went in a direction I didn’t think was as interesting as it could have gone.  I took some notes.  Then, one of the panelists started talking about their own stories and their own characters, devolving far and away from the topic.  That went on for several minutes.  The moderator never reigned the individual in.  I looked at Melissa and saw that she was getting tired of the panelist’s droning too, so we quietly left.

So far, I’ve described a pretty terrible convention.  Fortunately, that is (almost) the last bad thing I have to say about BayCon.

Registration finally opened, and we made it through without too much fuss.  After that, we went on to a panel about Space Operas, which proved to be much more interesting and better organized.

Let’s take a moment and talk about the hotel.  For the most part, I liked it.  The air conditioning was a bit inconsistent, with some rooms freezing us, and others testing the strength and tenacity of our deodorant.  There were plenty of seats, and most of the rooms were easy to find.  There was one room, however, which didn’t seem to fit in regular three dimensional space.  It was ostensibly on the third floor, but it also seemed to be on the same floor as most of the other rooms, which were one flight of stairs up from the ground.

Food options were limited.  If I’d been willing to drive for food, we probably could have gone to a number of places.  I didn’t want to do that, though, so the only place Melissa and I could eat was the hotel.  Like the air conditioning, the service was erratic.  The food was also a bit overpriced for what it was.

I sure seem to be whining a lot in this post!  But really, Melissa and I had a good time, and some of the panels were really spectacular.  The best panel we attended all weekend, and maybe even the best one I’ve ever attended, took place that first evening.  Called “Believable Spaces,” it had only one panelist: M. Todd Gallowglas.  Since I meet with Michael regularly, and since I have an ego roughly the size of a small moon, I told Melissa, “I’m probably not going to take a lot of notes.” Boy was I wrong.  Michael ran that panel like he was teaching a college level course on creative writing.  And it worked.  I have to say… I’m really proud of him.

There were other panels throughout the weekend.  We attended them.  Some I enjoyed more than others, but I didn’t walk out of any of them as I had that first one.  A couple were purely for fun, like the Delphic Oracle run by Todd McAffrey, or The Mystery Panel, which wound up featuring a bunch of writers at the convention writing flash fiction head-to-head.

Melissa and I attended the after parties.  We did our best, but I think we’re getting old.  We didn’t stay out very late, but we had fun while we were out.

The best part of these conventions for me is just meeting people.  I enjoyed talking with Jim Doty and Todd McAffrey and Mark Gelineau.  I got to visit with Jennifer Carson and Juliette Wade for a little bit.  At the Convolution party, I talked Jason Warlock’s ear off about Convolutions of the past, and what I look forward to in a convention.  I also really enjoyed getting to sit down to breakfast with Lawrence Schoen and Anastasia Hunter.  There were many fantastic people at the convention, and I enjoyed getting to connect with them.

Melissa and I weren’t able to stay for the entire convention.  I had a performance on Memorial Day at the VA Hospital, so Melissa and I left BayCon Sunday evening, right after a delightful panel on linguistics, with Juliette Wade and Lawrence Schoen as the panelists.  They’re both fiercely intelligent people, and it was both entertaining and educational to listen to them riff off each other about how language works.

There’s more I could talk about, from the Variety Show on Saturday night, to what it was like being a “Galactic Sponsor” of BayCon.  I think I’ve probably said enough, though.

There were flaws, but we had a good time, and that’s all that matters.  Will we go to BayCon 2017?  Maybe.  All I can say for sure is that Melissa and I are going to WorldCon this year.  Any other conventions this year or next year are not on the radar, yet.

I have two chapters left, and then the second draft is finished.  It has taken forever, but I feel like the story is much stronger for the work that I’ve put into it.  Before I get into it tonight, I want to talk a little bit about where I do my writing, and how it relates to advice that I want to take from Stephen King.

The book I’m reading/listening to these days is On Writing by Stephen King.  It is much more interesting than I expected.  Actually, I’m not sure what I expected.  I’m enjoying it, and I’m finding his advice reassuring.

One thing he talks about is the writing space.  He advises that you choose a place that has a door that you can close.  When you close the door, you not only shut the world out, but you shut yourself in so that you can focus on the world you’re creating.  You stay in that place, focused, until you reach your word count.

I would love to take this advice, but I don’t have anywhere like this.  I have some space in the garage, but I can’t really close the door.  It’s not really a quiet place that I can go to get away from the world.  The world wanders in.  The washing machine and dryer rumble a few feet away from my computer.  It’s dark.  Too hot in the summer.  Too cold in the winter.  There are insects.  The world is very much present in my garage.

I wind up getting most of my writing done when I leave my house and go to someplace like Starbucks or Panera.  The world is around me, but most people keep to themselves.  There are worlds of silence in crowds of strangers.  Sometimes the music is too loud.  Sometimes there are friendly folks brave enough to cross barriers in order to make conversations.  Most of the time, however, people pretend that other people don’t exist.  They sip their drinks, their faces illuminated by the various screens they’ve brought with them.  Invisible social shields cloak us all, creating islands of isolation.

Maybe someday, I’ll have my own office at home.  That would be nice.  For now, I’m doing what I can.  I go out.  I buy a decaf coffee, my rent for the evening.  And I block out all of the distractions.

Speaking of distractions… time to get to work!  I’ve got a story to finish!

May 24th is coming, which is my Mom’s birthday.  I would wait to write this until then, but I know that May is going to be a very busy month for me.  If I’m going to write about my Mom, I should do it now while I have the time and the strength of mind to do this properly.

My entire life, I knew I was adopted.  They never made that a secret.  Until my early teens, I didn’t know anything about my biological parents, and I didn’t really care.  I had parents that loved me.  They made it clear that I was special.  That I was chosen.  I felt loved and spoiled, and that was enough.

In my teen years, I acted out a little.  I didn’t show proper respect.  I didn’t clean my room when asked.  Honestly, my teenage rebellion was exceptionally mild.

But I did have a smart mouth.  Upset with the way I was talking back, my Mom decided to drop an ounce of truth on me.  She let me know that my biological mother was alive, she knew who she was, and that maybe I should be a little more thankful for the family I had.

My Dad was not present for this conversation.  I don’t think he would have let it get that far.

Knowing that my biological mother was out there did not do good things for me.  But I’m not writing this to talk about me, or the psychological stress of holding onto that particular truth.  I’m writing this to paint a picture of what my Mom was like.

She loved her children, but she was careless with them.  She said things and did things that were outright brutal, not realizing what sort of effect her words would have.  The flaws in her humanity expressed most with regards to her children, of which she had many.  All of them left her before they finished High School, except me.  The youngest.  Maybe she had mellowed by the time I was born.

I’m not writing this to bash her.  I would be a really terrible person to besmirch her character all these years after her death.  My words are meant to paint a realistic picture, revealing some of the flaws, so that the beauty she did possess can be appreciated.

My Dad died October 31, 1988.  It is easy for me to remember the date, because it was Halloween.  I can remember the year, because he’d been present when I bowled my first 200 game on October 10, 1987, the day after 10-9-87.  He’d been a part of a special moment for me, and he died a year later.  It gives me an easy way to remember.

Shortly after my Dad’s death, my Mom left her stable job at the Medford Medical Center and became a consultant.  She traveled all over the country, working in different hospitals.  It was like I’d lost both parents, that year.

Again, this isn’t about me, and it’s not about my Dad.  This is about my Mom.  On the face of it, I thought my Mom had chosen to leave the job in Medford, and had chosen to go off without me.  I’d been fighting with my Mom, so it didn’t hurt my feelings at the time.  I wasn’t quite 16, and I wasn’t ready to take care of myself.  I didn’t have the skills to deal with the responsibility.  I didn’t think well of my Mom for leaving me, but I also didn’t hold it against her.

Many years later, I found out that she hadn’t left Medford by choice.  She’d been fired.  Going to work every day, walking within sight of the place where her husband had died, she hadn’t been able to work effectively.  They let her go, and she shouldered on.  She didn’t burden me with that ugly truth.  A decade after her death, I discovered the truth in one of her old briefcases.

I know pride played a part in her keeping that secret.  But I also know that she tried to protect me.  This is an example of the kind of strength she possessed.  She took the pain of the death of her husband, and the pain of losing a job, and she kept it away from me.  She shielded me from her pain.  If she had someone else to talk to, someone to help her deal with what she’d gone through, I don’t know who it would be.  To my knowledge, she took it all on herself and pushed on.

I grew up, and I grew more distant with my Mom.  At one point, I had to move back in with her in Sacramento.  She tried to “mother” me when I moved in with her, and I rejected it.  I walked away from her a lot.  I was 19, and had spent enough time on my own that I couldn’t appreciate her trying to take care of me like that.  It was at this point that I started to learn how to block her.  I learned that if I rejected her help and her gifts, she couldn’t use those things to guilt me into doing what she wanted.  I began to make it a habit to reject things from her, no matter how much I may have needed her help.

In 1993, I left Sacramento for the second time, joining the Air Force.  In 1995, I married Melissa.  In 1996, Bryanna was born.  In 1998, Chris was born.  1999, I returned to Sacramento, got a job in IT, and bought a home.

By that time, my Mom lived in San Bernardino.  She’d had health problems all the time I’d been in the Air Force.  She had an addiction to prescription medication.  She had suffered through angina, tuberculosis, and towards the end, a minor heart attack.  The last place she lived was an assisted living home in Riverside.  At one point, she’d been in the hospital so long that I’d needed to go down to Southern California and pay her bills, and get her household in order.

At the end of 2001, the hospital she’d been in for months transferred her to what was effectively a retirement hospital.  They gave her a different doctor.  She had bed sores, from being in bed so long.  She was weak, and often drugged, and she didn’t have anyone stopping by to visit her.

Melissa and I went to her.  I started to see something in myself when I looked at her, but it wasn’t clear.  Not yet.  She saw me, and she smiled.  She was so happy to see me.

Melissa and I made plans.  She would never go back to her assisted living home, so we needed to close that out.  We rented a truck, packed her things, and started moving her to Sacramento.  We’d find a place for her there.  We’d make sure she was close to family.  We’d take care of her.

The hardest part of moving her stuff to Sacramento was gathering her cats.  One came along easily enough, but Max was a terror.  When my Mom had her heart attack, Max protected her, intimidating the firemen that came to help her.  Max, the big white cat without claws, was a problem.  I wound up putting on oven mitts and a jacket as armor to grab him up.  We put him in the cat carrier, put the cat carrier in my Mom’s old car, and started driving to Sacramento.

I didn’t see my Mom again.  While driving north on I-5, my Mom’s condition worsened.  She died before we had a chance to go back.

My Mom was a hard woman.  She was about 5’6″, but her presence made her seem at least 6’1″.  People always swore that she was a tall woman.

My Mom was fiercely competitive.  It’s a quality that I share with her, often to my detriment.  She used to play Scrabble with me, with her 40 years of experience and vocabulary.  She’d crush me, then cackle.  To this day, I still don’t like to play Scrabble.

The Summer after my Dad died, I traveled with my Mom to Washington D.C. where she had a contract.  I stayed in the hotel most of that summer, played on my computer, wrote stories, and she worked.

We drove across the country to get there.  My Mom talked while she drove.  At one point, about a day away from Indiana where we’d meet up with her oldest daughter, Helen, she started talking about family history.  She wasn’t really thinking as she spoke.  It had started with her talking about Helen and her children, then went on to Sue and Ginger.  But she kept going.  She talked about Leslie, and how Leslie had been pregnant in 1972.  Leslie, that I had met a couple of times, but didn’t really know.  Leslie, that had two daughters that were younger than me, but no children that were my age.

I put the pieces together.  Leslie had to be my biological mother.  After meeting Helen, I took her aside and put the question to her.  I didn’t mean to put her on the spot, but I didn’t really have a choice.  She handled it well.  She told me, yes, she thought Leslie was my biological mother.

I have complicated familial ties.  Cheryl is my sister, though she’d biologically be my aunt.  Then there is Jennifer, that is my biological sister.  She needs a brother way more than she needs an uncle, so I think of her as my sister, too.

Then there is Helen, Sue, and Ginger.  Helen is awesome.  I don’t know Sue very well, but she seems nice.  Ginger seems to hate me.  Are they my sisters, or are they my aunts?  I think of Helen as my sister, but I’ll leave the actual relationship to them.  It doesn’t have to be complicated, to me.  They’re family, and that’s enough for me.

Again, this is about my Mom.  Ginger and Sue recently asked about how my Mom died, and I didn’t have good details.  When my Mom died, I’d been in the process of making sure that she wouldn’t die alone.  Yet that’s exactly what happened.  She’d been a hard person to get along with, and in the end, when she needed someone to be there and help keep an incompetent doctor from screwing up, no one saved her.

My Mom loved bowling, greasy food, and cigarettes.  She didn’t exercise.  She had high blood pressure, and was on blood pressure medication most of my life.  Her doctor should never have taken her off her blood pressure medication, but he did.  Consequently, her blood pressure got out of control, her condition destabilized after spending most of a year in a hospital, and she died without any of her many children around.

My Mom died in January, 2002.  I can never remember if it was January 11th or January 12th.  There is no cool memory trick for me to use.  I don’t have a great memory to draw upon to provide a reminder, the way I have with my father.

My Mom died before I learned to be a good son to her.  That’s something I will have to live with and learn from the rest of my life.

It’s a bit of a downer, but that’s the true, abridged story of my life with my Mom, Evajean Buhl.  She loved her children, but she didn’t know how to show it in a way that didn’t push them away.  I can trace all of my hard edges to her.  My stubbornness.  My competitive drive.  My strength of will.  For better or worse, I learned those things from her.

I’m not completely satisfied.  I could be referring to my weight, my job, my writing, politics, or even my blog.  I’m not completely satisfied with any of those things.  Not too long ago, I talked about how I’m having a difficult time enjoying other people’s writing.  Nothing is perfect, except maybe my pickiness.

This kind of constant discontent has its drawbacks.  When I reach the end of a project, I don’t feel as though I’ve truly finished it.  There is always something I could have done a little bit better.  During band practice, I get hung up on the wrong notes, ignoring all the notes I played well.  Being unsatisfied all the time with my work, my writing, and my music means I’m never really comfortable.

But this kind of discomfort can lead to good things.  I’m constantly looking to try to improve.  I work harder, trying to make my code more efficient.  I tweak things, experimenting with ways to improve myself and my craft.  Some experiments pay off.  Some don’t.

The trick is to draw energy from the discontent, to motivate positive change, while holding back the negative feelings.  This is easier to do in some areas of my life than others.  For example, it is easy for me to forgive myself when I don’t write a program perfectly.  I’m still improving as a programmer.  All I have to do is look at code I wrote a year ago, marvel at my own stupidity, then pat myself on the back for doing better now.

It is important to keep trying to improve.  I haven’t lost weight as quickly as I have in the past, but I’m still sticking with my diet, and I’m not beating myself up on the evenings when I eat some candy or drink a beer.  I still haven’t finished the second draft of the book I’ve been working on, but I’m still showing up at least one night a week, and I’m putting in the work.  I may only get one paragraph written or edited in a week, but it’s progress, and I’m not giving up.

The biggest danger I run into is when I really buckle down to try and do something better, but I’m unable to see the improvement.  This happened last night during band practice.  I’d been playing fine, and there was this one challenging section that I thought I was nailing.  But I wasn’t.  And I couldn’t see what I was doing wrong.  I just had people around me informing me that I wasn’t getting it right.  It didn’t matter how gently or sternly they put it.  All I could feel was the wrongness, and powerless to do anything about it.

These times will happen.  And handling these disappointments is one of the things I’m working on improving.

I guess what I’m saying is that being a little bit uncomfortable can lead to making things better.  While there are times when you may have to settle for what you have, settling is not how things improve.  It’s when we rebel against the status quo that we try to make our environment or our lives better.

I recently read that Toby Turner, YouTube celebrity, has been accused of rape on Tumblr.  The story showed up in my news and YouTube feeds.  It is a Bill Cosby story all over again.

When the Bill Cosby story hit the news, I didn’t want to believe it.  I tried to keep an open mind, but it was difficult.  I grew up on Cosby.  I also didn’t care for the Trial by Social Media that surrounded that whole situation.

So here it is again, this time with Toby Turner as the accused.  He’s a lesser known celebrity, but this is the same sort of trial outside the courts.  No lawyers.  No due process.  Just the story of two individuals, and people divided over which one to believe.

We need to do better than this, both for the victims of rape, and for those that stand accused.

First, we need to protect the victims.  We need to make them feel safe and secure.  We need to believe someone when they say they have been raped, and give them whatever support and treatment they deserve.  If it is counselling, or privacy, or medical treatment, or all of the above, we need to give them what they need.  No second guessing.  No victim should ever be subjected to further shame or humiliation after such a difficult trauma.

We need to make sure that rape victims can go to the police.  This means changing our culture.  A victim should not have to fear repercussions for reporting the crime.  A victim should not have to fear further embarrassment.  The seriousness of what they’ve been through should never be dismissed.  We should be treating victims of all crimes with compassion, but rape victims especially, so that they can report the crime and begin the legal process for bringing the rapist to justice.

If a rape victim chooses to go to social media instead of the police, we need to continue to believe them, and give them the support that they need.  It’s difficult enough admitting to something like that.  We don’t need to make it more difficult by dismissing their pain.  We need to show rape victims compassion, without judgement.  It is not their fault.  They haven’t lost their honor, or their innocence.  They are the same person they were before.  They’ve been made to suffer something no one should suffer, and they deserve to be treated with respect, humanity, and love.

However, if a rape victim chooses to go to social media and not the police, we also need to be careful how we deal with the one that is accused.

This is the difficult part.  I just said that we need to believe the victim, and give them what they need.  Does that mean that we need to believe them when they’re accusing someone publicly, and they are seeking justice through social media?

No.  Social media is not a court of law.  Social and news media is not a place of evidence or due process.  Social and news media is not the place where we should mete out justice.

When we crucify people like Bill Cosby and Toby Turner in the press or on social media, we create a culture of divisiveness and hearsay.  We create situations where people siding with the accused attack the accuser.  I have no doubt that people supporting Toby Turner are attacking his accuser right now.  She does not deserve that.

When someone accuses someone of rape on social media, we need to focus our attention on the accuser and give them help and support, rather than focus on the accused and destroy them.  No harm will come to anyone by supporting the accuser.  If the accuser is lying, they’ll get some attention they may not deserve, but it won’t hurt anyone.  On the other hand, if the accuser is lying and you destroy the career of the accused, then you’ve perpetrated a gross injustice against someone innocent.  The kind of damage that is irreparable.

One other point before I close this uncomfortable post… when we write blog posts or news articles passing on the story of the accusation, it is vital that we be accurate and fair.  Cherry-picking details in order to make the story bigger should be criminal.  For example, the article from PerezHilton.com that I linked at the top mentions Jaclyn Glenn coming forward and corroborating April Turner’s story.  It is a little misleading.  Jaclyn Glenn did mention that Toby pressured her into the things, but she also made it clear that she didn’t think Toby was capable of rape.

This whole story with Toby Turner is troubling.  If he did it, then he deserves to be punished.  Whether he did it or not, his career is probably finished.  That is a real shame if he is innocent.  And realistically, there isn’t anything he can do about it.

We can do better than this.  It starts with making it easier for victims to seek justice via the proper route: the police.  The alternative is anarchy, and creating a culture that is toxic for both the victim and the accused.

I’ve just finished playing with the Rancho Cordova River City Concert Band at an event dedicated to supporting veterans.  We passed the hat to raise money to go to Semper Fi.  We played with the River City Choir.  There weren’t many people in the audience, but the performance went very well!

Now I’m home, trying to figure out what to do.  I’ve written before how critical it is that I manage my time well, because I just don’t seem to have enough of it to go around.  This afternoon is one of those rare times when I don’t have anything specifically planned.  I can choose to do what I want.  So what do I choose?

It’s times like this that I face a kind of strange paralysis.  I can choose to do just about anything, but I often wind up choosing to do pretty much nothing.  It’s all because there is so much that my mind tells me that I should do.

Here’s a list of things I feel like I should do, in no particular order:

1. Edit The Repossessed Ghost
2. Work on some new story
3. Work on programming projects for work
4. Work on a programming project for fun
5. Clean the garage
6. Go for a long walk, even if it is raining
7. Work on the laundry
8. Finish watching Season 2 of Daredevil
9. Play a game
10. Please, just do something other than sitting around, watching YouTube

So many times, I wind up sitting in front of my computer, doing the thing I least want to do.  It feels like I’m letting myself down, and wasting what little time I have.

I know why this happens.  I’m legitimately tired, and I need to do something mindless for awhile.

Every week I maintain a packed schedule full of long hours.  Many of those hours are spent dealing with and interacting with people.  I’m not antisocial, but that type of interaction wears on me.  I need a break sometimes.  I need to do something mindless for awhile, so that I can recharge.

I drive myself hard all week.  When I reach a break in my schedule, the urge to keep pushing is strong, but not as strong as the need to just sit and catch my breath.

Well, those are the excuses, anyway.  I’m not the only one that goes through this.  I’m human, just like everyone else.  Today, I’m settling the paralysis by writing about it.  Examining it.  Sharing it.

Maybe I’ll find something else to do that isn’t on the list.