This post’s alternative title would be “My laptop’s mouse is trying, rather successfully, to piss me off.”
As I’ve mentioned lately, I’m working my first-ever full-time job with a big-name company that has grocery store chains and gas stations and so on (and is actually quite terrific to its employees, which is a very new, exciting, refreshing concept for me). Today’s mail featured my first-ever statement from my 401K, shredded courtesy of the United States Post Office. I also got my first-ever dental coverage card in the mail this week.
Those two things still sound weird to me, because they’re still filed neatly in a corner of my brain under the label “Adult Stuff”. No, not that sort of “Adult Stuff”, and don’t lie and say that phrasing didn’t make you think of explicit content because it honestly reads like I’m talking about porn. Whatever. Moving along.
I also wanted to post saying how I have mixed feelings about this week’s Short Story a Week story. It’s a fun concept, but I feel like I may be overreaching my grasp on it. Who knows? Guess that’ll have to wait until Sunday to be sorted out.
Phil's Misadventures In Fiction 
“Short Story When I feel Like It” is a less taxing theme and I recommend it.
Yes, so I’ve been told. However, the challenge has gotten to be rather enjoyable at this point. It’s also been something of an adapting process, what with getting used to forty hours a week or more but still making myself find time to do some writing (even if the end result isn’t necessarily something I’d stick on the fridge) even when I’m busy or would otherwise be lazy about it.
It’s very much of a push-pull thing for me, and I’m sure many others. Showing the discipline to write but making sure you don’t take all the fun out of it either.
It’s walking a fine line between challenging myself and making writing something not as fun. I actually waited until I had time to get on my laptop because, warning, this may get a little winded.
In the most basic sense, I have a good idea of my limit with writing and where difficulty makes writing go from a labor of love to an exercise in some sort of self-destruction. The Thesis Seminar course I had to take, and earn a B or higher in for the sake of graduation requirements that are designed to make students cry, helped with that immensely. It’s also why I haven’t looked at those seventy-two pages of writing that evolved from six short posts on DeviantArt from years prior.
This project was a semi-calculated whim decision of sorts in that I decided it sounded like a good idea, gave myself time to process it, and then implemented it. Only to be late for the first two deadlines. However, I feel like keeping up with it, as well as adjusting it to my new job and whatnot, are crucial to becoming a writer in my current life-situation (as opposed to maintaining the habits of when I was still a student).
Pithy closing comment because that got sort of heavy and serious, and people know I’m more of a handshake-with-a-trick-buzzer court jester type of guy.
Eh, you can show your serious side once in a while. Throws people off.