The Craft

Sometimes it's just too damned hard to put down the XBOX controller to do anything productive.

I was tentatively 'laid off' from my job as a Educational Finance Marketing Representative (Read: Loan Peddler) on November 7th of 2008. The news hit me like a ton of ACMEs. The thought that I would switch careers always lingered on the tip of my brain, but it remained caged in its place to keep me from confronting what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Somehow and really without me noticing, the first 27 years sped past and left whirling around like a dust devil on top of myself. Instead of looking at myself I buried my head in a pile of videogames and movies.

So there I stood, freshly married (October 11) and soon to be out of a job. The writing had been smeared across the walls for months, as the bank I worked for failed to meet federal reporting guidelines while the economy took a collective crap all over itself. I didn't know what to do. For the first week, I did nothing but park my ass in smelly gym shorts and play nine hours of XBOX per day until my wife came home. It was my therapy, and it kept me from recognizing that shit could very well hit the fan.

Luckily and by the grace of God the FDIC decided to keep paying me (at nearly double my salary), while I ran through Fallout 3. That shallow solace left me feeling empty after a few weeks, and before I knew I felt more worthless than the dollar after the Obama Stimulus Package. Then I remembered my book.

I began writing my first book in the winter of 2007 right after my wife and I became engaged. As I trolloped through the predetermined status quo exercises of courtship and wedding planning, I realized how ridiculous the entire process was, not to mention frustrating, too. So I began to put my frustrations down on paper, and before I knew it, I had enough of a start to make a book out of it.

Writing started slow at first, and I would go through spurts of creative flow before putting the book down for weeks at a time. Time became shorter as my wife and I spent more time together, and soon I chose to play videogames, drink beer and watch television instead of working on my book.

With my book stalled and my career dead as well, I took a long look in the mirror after catching Rocky on AMC one afternoon. Sylvester Stallone's tale of an everyman doing something great lit a fire inside of my belly, and I decided then and there I would do everything in my power to finish my book.

From there on out I set to work everyday, and instead of playing XBOX or Playstation I took to writing instead. It became my passion and drive to do something great. As fun as videogames were, they in the end were a path to nowhere that yielded nothing other than an escape from the reality that I was wasting my life. In three short weeks I finished the rough draft of my first book, "The Plunge." Elation ripped through my insides, and the sense of accomplishment was intoxicating. Sure the damned thing had grammar errors, organizational and flow issues, but by God I had finally done something that I dreamed of that didn't constitute a group of elves, dwarves and hobbits.

Armed with my flashdrive containing hours of my blood and sweat, I journeyed to Kinko's and watched like a kid waiting for Santa as the portly employee printed my 80,000 word manuscript, bound it, and laid two copies of it in my hands. Like Rocky Balboa I had gone the distance with a personal beast and tamed it. All those hours of pounding the meat (that's what she said) and chasing chickens paid off.

As of today I'm still unemployed, but getting paid (still double my salary), and I've taken the last three paid months as a divine gift to get something done that would have been difficult to do otherwise. "The Plunge," is currently in edit and my first rewrite is to begin shortly. Look for an excerpt from "The Plunge" shortly on the blog.

Until next time...