I’ve been working very hard over the past several years to work on my writing with an eye toward publication in a number of different periodicals as well as creating books and screenplays. Writing has always been my true calling, but up until recently, I’ve felt like I had to please other people or work in “mainstream” jobs in order to make ends meet. To some extent, the latter is still true. I’m job hunting for work in several areas, and I plan to be employed again by the middle of March. However, the primary goal is to make a living as a writer, and so I decided to make a promise to myself to write five hundred words a day, minimum. That starts right here with this blog.
The main goal is simple: Write five or more posts a week, Monday through Friday, and preferably as early as possible in the morning. I plan on covering a variety of topics, but the idea is simply to create a habit of writing every weekday. I reserve the right to have weekends off if I need them, but if all goes well, I may find myself writing seven days a week, which is just fine with me.
Some of you might be wondering why this is so important to me. In a nutshell, writing is the first thing I want to do every day I get up in the morning. The desire to write follows me throughout the day by reminding me of stories yet untold that I’ve recorded in my journal. At the gym I might skip socializing in the swimming pool during water aerobics because I’ve had an idea for a screenplay that needs retooling. And at bedtime I’m thinking about superheroes and the various ramifications of having superpowers. In summary, writing matters, and it’s the one form of employment I feel most qualified at doing, despite having over twenty years of experience in medical and general transcription.
It should be noted that the five hundred words I write a day might not all be in the blog but rather spread out throughout the day in various projects. In addition to writing essays, fiction, and screenplays, I also enjoy writing on a website called Quora. You can find me on there answering questions and maybe posting a few of my own. I look forward to hearing your responses to my writing should you choose to leave comments, and you can also hold me accountable if I don’t make a posting on a given weekday. See you soon.
What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?
I’ve known since the age of four years old that I was meant to be a writer. When my brother and I were much younger, we both loved to listen to our mother read to us. Eventually I told her that I wanted to start telling my own stories. She would write down what I said, and I would get very upset when she wouldn’t put the right words on the page. Later on, our mother would create “books” for me by stapling together a few sheets of typing paper, and I would begin writing my thoughts and stories down. (Yes, this was long before the age of personal computers, and it wasn’t until high school that I would take typing classes, which to this day I have never once regretted doing.)
The thing that was so unusual about my writing, especially according to my parents, was that the punctuation and spelling were perfect. No one knew how I was doing this at such a young age, and it was a strong indicator that despite my facial paralysis, I wasn’t at all intellectually impaired, despite what doctors had told my parents several years earlier. My uncanny facility with language led to me being placed in the talented and gifted program at school, which is one of the few places I thrived in for quite some time.
The thing is, I’d dealt with a lot of people underestimating me, especially during my younger years. This impacted how I saw myself, of course, but worse than that, it meant that I couldn’t trust my own voice. Even though I had the support of teachers and others who could see my potential as a writer, it took me many years to realize that I had something of value to say. Thankfully, in the past few years through a number of different circumstances, I realized that I wasn’t living the life I most wanted and began to write again. My blog in particular is an ongoing project that is meant to be the centerpiece of a number of activities including acting, singing, public speaking, and of course the writing itself.
Writing is its own act of defiance and helps me face my fear of failure. Each day I sit down to write is a day of repudiating that fear and making sure I don’t give in to doubt or insecurity. Some days I may simply not know what to write. On other days, several projects may clamor for my attention all at once. Sometimes I’ll go onto Quora, a website where people pose questions and get answers to them, and jot down my own responses to various inquiries. The point is to keep writing and eventually find my own voice, regardless of what my insecurities might be trying to tell me.
I’ve been a member of the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus for over 30 years, joining in 1992 straight out of college. I’ve also been privileged to be a member of our subgroup, Cascade, several times over the years. Cascade is a smaller ensemble of singers who perform both at our regular concerts as well at for outreach events. Cascade will be performing their next concert at the Alberta Abbey, 126 Northeast Alberta Street, Portland, OR, 97211 on February 11 from 8-10 p.m. The description of the concert as well as our website information are below. I hope you can make it.
From the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus website:
“Let’s face it – sometimes Cupid’s arrow misses its mark or strikes the wrong target, love’s rosy path hits a bramble patch, or the planets simply fail to align. Taking a chance on romance can feel like a fool’s errand, but we plunge in headfirst anyway. Come fall in love with Cascade all over again as we explore the many moods of this thing called love.”
Hi folks. In my latest piece, “From Impossible to Possible,” I talk about defining an impossible goal and why it’s important to keep striving for success even when the end result seems far from attainable. The article is on Page 36-37. Enjoy!
Star Trek has been a major part of my life since I was a child. From an early age, I would watch The Original Series as often as I could. While I still consider Spock to be perhaps the most iconic figure in Star Trek’s history, it was Lt. Uhura who was the franchise’s heart. Long before I could understand the historical significance of Nichelle’s role, I was delighted to see a strong woman on the bridge. In fact, I always wondered why Lt. Uhura wasn’t given more to do, not understanding that strong female characters at that time were in fact a rarity, let alone a woman of color who could serve equally with the men. Nichelle truly was the First in many ways, both in her role as Lt. Uhura and her contributions in helping women and people of color secure more influential positions in scientific fields and other industries.
Rest in peace, Nichelle. You kept the hailing frequencies open for everyone.
It’s never too early to count your blessings. In my latest post to Voices Magazine, I talk about the reasons we should be grateful for what we have. The article can be found on Pages 34-35 of Voices. Enjoy!
SoundsRight Transcription is back in business, and we’re making a very important addition to our services. In addition to continuing to transcribe, subtitle, and captioning videos, we are now transcribing paper files into Word documents. I will accept scanned documents that are written or typed, the main criterion being that they should be legible enough for me to transcribe them into a proper Word file.
As these transcripts will not be taken directly from audio, I will instead be charging a flat fee of $30/hour for transcribing paper or scanned documents. I accept payments via PayPal; my email is ideaguy3000@gmail.com. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
The link for the SoundsRight Transcription website is at the end of this post. I look forward to hearing from you: http://srtranscription.com
It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I love performing. Improvisation in particular is a wonderful skill to have. However, for many people, speaking off the cuff or doing improvisational exercises can be exceptionally challenging. I offer a couple of different solutions for these problems in my latest article on Pages 36-37 of Voices! Enjoy!
As fall commenced, I started thinking about new goals that I wanted to set for myself. I also acknowledge that embracing change these past couple of years has been challenging, to say the least. You’ll find the full article on Pages 36-37 of Voices! Enjoy!
When you visit the Hollywood Transit Center in Portland, Oregon via light rail (MAX) or bus, you’ll come across this wonderful mural. I don’t know for sure if this is the same sentence repeated in different languages throughout the mural, but in English the quote is, “Why would a flower hesitate to open?” I took this picture because the quote was a reminder to me how circumstances in life can hold you back from achieving your goals. In nature a flower might not open because it has died or the weather has made it harder for it to bloom. Likewise, in my own life, I’ve found two examples in which it’s been hard to flourish.
The first example relates directly to writing. For a long time, I found it hard to write was because I didn’t completely believe in my own voice. I grew up with an extremely rare neurological disorder called Moebius syndrome which affects the sixth and seventh cranial nerves that control facial and eye movement. This condition left me with a bilateral facial paralysis and was also responsible for what I lovingly refer to as the speech impediment from Hell. I was routinely bullied, teased, condescended to, or underestimated because of my disabilities. In other words, how can you find your voice if no one wants to hear it?
Even though I knew from the age of four that I wanted to be a writer, too many times I’d hear people saying, essentially, that I wasn’t good enough. By internalizing that behavior, it’s no wonder that my writing faltered, even though the desire to write remained constant. During the years that I didn’t write at all, that desire to write became a constant pressure in my stomach that felt like a scream waiting to be released. When I did write, it was in fits and starts, and it was only recently through a friend asking me to create a column for our local Toastmasters magazine that I finally began to focus on my dream of becoming a writer in earnest.
The second example came as a bit of a shock on multiple levels. After many months of pandemic-related worry about where I’d find a job, an opportunity came knocking. I’d signed up with a temp agency, and to my surprise, they notified me about a chance to work for the City of Portland. I would be employed in a department focused on maintaining contracts for the city. This was an area of expertise I’d never even considered and had absolutely no experience in. I nearly said no, then took a step back and thought about the implications of this invitation. If I took the job, there was the possibility of my employment becoming permanent and gaining excellent benefits with the city. I said yes, went to the job interview, and landed the job.
I lasted two months on the job. Despite the fact that I was told that I would be on a year-long contract, I was let go two weeks ago on my first day of staycation. The explanation given to the temp agency was that I hadn’t met the technical standards of the job, even though I’d been open during the job interview about wanting to expand my computer skills as well as take whatever classes were offered in order to better learn how to create and maintain contracts with the city. I was justifiably devastated.
Then I took a look back at the job, and I wondered whether I’d dodged a bullet. As I’d mentioned above, I had no experience with contracts and found learning some of the material extremely challenging. Worse, I had started to eat junk food to stave off some of the nervousness and stress I was having on the job. But perhaps the thing that bothered me the most was the intermittent amount of training I received. I’d arrived near the end of the fiscal year which meant that many last-minute projects needed to be completed, meaning that our training opportunities were limited. Not long after that, people started taking vacations, including our supervisors, which meant even less time learning what I needed to know for my job. I would train myself on a number of subjects as a result, including becoming more educated on the basics of Adobe Acrobat and Excel, but I wouldn’t have that many more training sessions before I was let go. Talk about a flower hesitating to open. What happens if you’re the person who’s not getting the support you need in order to thrive at your workplace?
In summary, this quote was a reminder of my own feelings of inadequacy, but it also illustrates the need to grow even under the most adverse of conditions. As of today, I’m working on my blog on a regular basis and will start to monetize it shortly. I know that it won’t be an overnight success; in fact, most blogs can take over a year to make money at all. Nonetheless, the goal is for me to make writing my primary career. If I need to take other work to make ends meet, I have no problem with that. However, I will be much more open about my needs in the future regarding receiving training and growth opportunities. My assertiveness matters because I matter, and if I want to be of greater benefit to someone else’s company, let alone my own, I need to allow myself as many opportunities to grow as possible. If I can bloom and thrive, perhaps I can help others do the same.
