Life Decisions – Page 9 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

The week is OVER!!!

I am so happy. Yeah, I’ve got a current events paper I’ve got to write for MESA 201…but I can do that in like twenty minutes. Especially since the paper itself is not due, just the stuff that has to be peer critiqued. And really MESA 201 is like a flashback to high school, so it’s really not that hard.

As for Arabic homework…I’m trying hard not to think about it…was trying…dangit!

This is the main issue I had with this past week. Every time I thought I was free, some assignment or deadline that I’d forgotten would pop up and smack me across the head. Today, it was the Poli Sci 201 midterm (take home, open book). There was no other time except today (when it was due) that I could take it, so I ended up clocking out at work and doing it then. Freaking test probably cost me $30 to $40.

But this blog isn’t supposed to be about my frustrations with school, it’s supposed to be about my frustrations with writing. And other life stuff. So I’ll write about something else.

I’ve started to think about what I want to do after I get my bachelor’s degree(s?). Which is to say, I’m completely clueless at this point, but I’m trying to get a feel for my options. Yesterday there was an information session for the Masters of Public Policy program at BYU, and it looks interesting. I would like to go to grad school, and it looks like this program would take me in a direction I’d be interested in following.

Basically, the program prepares you to work as a policy/research analyst, which seems like an interesting skill set I could take to a non-profit / NGO / lobby group / think tank, which is a career path (or set of paths) that I find intriguing. I’ll bet I could find some real satisfaction putting my mind to work for a social cause that I really believe in.

But is this really what I want to do with my life? Do I want to spend 90% of my time working behind a computer at a desk, crunching statistics? And what about Arabic? How would I be able to use that? These are questions that need answering.

As for writing, the plan at this point is to do it on the side if/until it becomes lucrative enough for me to support myself and my family. In other words, for the next five-ten-fifteen years / forever, I’m going to be a mild-mannered man in a conventional (at least partially) career by day, and a super-power world-saving writer by night. Writing, at this point, is a given, a constant–I know what I’m doing as far as my writing career. I just don’t know if/when I’m going to make it my primary, so I have to make other plans like grad school / career path / whatever.

I guess that’s one thing I find reassuring about all of this: writing leaves me a means of escape from being pegged down in a boring career for the rest of my life. And my pursuit of a career feeds my writing by giving me new and exciting ideas and perspectives to bring into my writing. I’m glad I’m not studying English.

And…that’s about it for tonight. Holy cow I’m tired!

Summer goals revision

So, it’s getting towards the end of the summer, I’m having a TON of awesome experiences out here in Jordan, I’ve practically abandoned the Quark writing group (for the time being…I’ll be back…), and I’m only 16,000 words into Genesis Earth, which I was hoping to finish before the end of the summer. My daily routine has definitely been flipped upside down since the end of winter semester, and I need to figure out how what I’m going to do with regards to my writing…

The end-of-the-semester crunch is starting to get to me

It’s that time of year for BYU students–everything is about to come to a wonderful, beautiful, liberating close, but before that you have to pass through the very gates of hell. Everyone is getting swamped with tests, papers, and projects, and I’m right there in the thick of it. Man, I’m starting to wish that I wasn’t in school anymore…or at least that I wasn’t a double major…

Brandon Sanderson speaks to Quark!

We had an awesome weekend in the Quark writing group! Brandon Sanderson came and spoke on turning your dreams of becoming an sf/f writer into reality…

The Lost Colony to be submitted by May!

We had an interesting lecture today in English 318–Brandon explained the format of the final to us, and part of the final is that we actually submit something we’ve been writing to a professional publisher! So, now not only will I finish this novel by the end of the semester, but I’ll be sending it out as well! And, you know what? It’s amazing how pumped up and terrified that makes me feel…

Something encouraging I read

I was surfing around on the internet the other day, looking on writing blogs, and I found something that was surprisingly encouraging. It was a comment by Muneraven on one of the pages of a really interesting blog called DeepGenre, and here is what it said:

English 318 has begun!

Yesterday was the first day of English 318 with Brandon Sanderson! I’m really excited for it! I can tell already that this is going to be a very interesting class–especially because it’s taught by someone who actually writes good fantasy, not just someone who can criticize it. Brandon is a real cool guy and I feel that there’s a lot that I can learn from him writing and publishing wise. Even just the first day has given me a lot to think about…

Resolutions and Alpha Centauri

Here are my thoughts on New Year’s resolutions (and goals in general): they need to be short, simple, specific, measurable, realistic, easy to remember, and before you set them you need to realize that success (or failure) is not measured by how well you keep the goal itself, but what you accomplish as you strive to keep the goal. Of course, they should also stretch you, but at the same time you need to recognize that you have limitations, and that if you set a really hard goal in one area, it’s going to limit the amount of energy you can put into another difficult goal in another area. In general, I think it’s better to set one or two goals and achieve them than to set a dozen goals, overwork yourself, and fail to meet any of them. So here are my New Year’s resolutions (and I only really have two of them):

The Writing Philosophy of Madeleine L’Engle.

I just recently finished reading a book of quotes from Madeleine L’Engle. Her children’s book A Wrinkle In Time had a huge impact on me as a kid, and was influential in the development of my love of writing and of Science Fiction. I found this quote book at a BYU Bookstore sale a couple of years ago, and never really got around to reading it until now. However, now was the right time to read it, as I’m thinking more and more seriously about developing myself as a fiction writer.

grrrr…!

Ok, so real quick, I didn’t do any writing today. That was very annoying. The really annoying thing, though, was that it took nearly six or seven hours to do less than two hours of homework. That’s what happens when I hang out around the Arabic house–too many distractions. Not that it wasn’t all unpleasant. Got into some really interesting discussions with my Arab friends, Basseem and Yanal. But when I find myself getting sucked into an hour long discussion between my Arab friends and my roommate David over who is the better prophet (Joseph Smith or Mohammed), and I’m trying to read a really dense article on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I lose quite a bit of efficiency. Bah. I should have gone to the library!

But, things will be better because tomorrow we’re having a Quark writing party over at Jakeson’s and Gamila’s! Yay! I am very much looking forward to that! I really love having these get togethers; they can be very relaxing and enjoyable. The only problem is that I feel a bit guilty for not hosting one here. The problem, though, is that there are too many people coming in and out. Maybe if the weather weren’t so cold, we could just go outside or something. Maybe when it gets warmer.

Also, as a sort of unrelated side note, I went to an open house today on the Masters of Public Policy program here at BYU, and it really sounded interesting. Very interesting. As in there’s a greater than 50% chance that I’m going to do this. I need to sit down one of these days and ask myself “what are all the possible things I can do with a Poli Sci degree and fluency in Arabic?” and then write out a decision tree that I can use to formulate some idea of a plan for what I want to do. But as far as gut feelings go, this public policy program sounds really good. It sounds like just the thing to shoot me in the general direction where I want to go. And it also means that I would have a little bit more time to get married before jumping into a vocation. I know–I didn’t come to BYU to get married, not at all, but it is pretty important, and even though I probably worry about this more than I should, it is something I would like to figure out before I get too deep into a career.

Tomorrow will be crazy busy as usual, so here are some things I’d like to post about soon: review of Citizen of the Galaxy, review of The Forever War, some thoughts on L’Engle’s philosophies about writing, a pro/con post (or two) on doing writing as a career (from the limited perspective of a mere undergrad such as myself).

Oh, and one last thing. I noticed on this really awesome site that gives out free audiobooks that they have this artificial voice that generates a lot of the mp3 files. I’m assuming that they have a program that can convert word documents / pdf’s into mp3s, which is really cool, especially because the artificial voice isn’t all that bad. Does anyone know where I could get one of these dictation programs? It would be WAY convenient to just plug some of the readings from my classes into a computer program and have it generate an mp3 of the texts.