Excerpt from my short story

Some of you will recall a while back when I had posted an excerpt from a short story. The following is part of my finished short story that is currently going through the editing phase. The concept is pretty much the same as the one mentioned above so if there are any similarities it's because this is the evolution of that story. This should give an example of how it is written without giving away anything that would compromise the plot. Oh, and there's a surprise ending too.

Several months after first meeting Catherine we began seeing each other. The romance evolved naturally over many small visits. We found that we had a certain chemistry; that her nascent passion mixed freely with my bottled potential. Simply put, the two of us were compliments, covering for each other’s faults. We revelled in our time together.

            We were passionate in all the ways of life, including the bed chamber.

            One night, after Catherine and I had gotten closer, I had invited her to a ball to be held in the palace celebrating the zenith of the moon’s cycle in summer. It was the most popular event of the summer and I wanted to share it with her. I had so many fond memories of the event as a child, both for the pleasure derived from the event itself and the mischief I frequently got into whilst attending it.

            Feeling particularly sly, I was wittier than usual and Catherine seemed impressed. I wasn’t sure if it was due to my wit or the fact that I was happier than I normally would have been, excited for one of my favorite days of the year. Either way, Catherine seemed particularly amenable to my affections.

            Between dances I took her into a dimly lit corner of the hall.

            “Come here, I want to show you something,” I said. It was the place which I’d launched many mischievous schemes from as a child; one such scheme involving pelting one of our most beloved dukes with stink balls launched from that very same dark corner by slingshot. My father was furious when he found out it was my doing and restricted my activities for two weeks. Still, the novelty of it was more than worth it in the end.

            “A dark corner?” she asked curiously.

            “Very astute,” I teased, putting one hand on the small of her back and pushing her up against a pillar. I drew close to her and could feel her breath quickening, small bursts blowing on my lips. “Actually, I just couldn’t wait to get you alone.”

            I kissed her lips gently, teasing her with half-kisses and finally moving to her neck where I began to kiss her more passionately as I moved to undo her bodice.

            “Claude,” she gasped, seemingly both surprised and aroused. “Claude! Not here. Let’s go somewhere else.”

            I smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Time may change me?

I realized something today that surprised me a little bit. I was thinking on the rapid change I've endured over the past two years or so and wondered if I was rapidly changing myself. To be specific, I'm wondering if I've gone from wanting and wondering if I wanted to be a business person to actually becoming that business person.

If you take a little bit of time to think about it, the evidence is all there. The way I think is changed, my interactions with people seem different, and my opinion of my role in society has changed a lot too.

I know now that I'm a marketing guy. I see something and I immediately think about how it could be promoted, what it's strengths and weaknesses are, who would be compelled about it, and what the best way to communicate that thing is. Is this really such a drastic departure from my former method of thinking? Probably not. Even if some of the things I've done before were hard for other people to figure out they were usually always based on strategic gains.

My interactions with people are both more casual and formal at the same time, if that makes any sense. What I mean by that is that I tend to want to have a very measured conversation with people in which I know exactly what I want to get across and what I'm expecting out of them. I like that; it makes me more calculating. In addition, it seems like I'm far more interested in personal details of people than I used to be. I like that too. I genuinely do want to get to know most people I meet better so I'd like to think I make the effort to be nice within reason. I'm not about to let people walk all over me but if I find that they're pleasant to be around then I'm going to be more likely to want to interact with them again.

I think my position in just about everything has changed a lot too. I used to be a chemist - or at least an aspiring chemist - with some hobbies and the usual disposition of a chemist, if a little more social than what you might stereotypically think of. Slowly, and over the course of numerous life experiences and career choices, I've come to think of myself more as a business person in society instead of someone who wanted to go back to school and re-tool their skill set. I find that I feel more professional and even that my confidence is higher than it was when I was stuck in career limbo (although I'm a pretty confident person normally, anyway).

It's funny how little realizations can lead to a decently detailed self-analysis (put on the internet, of course, for anyone to see). I think that writing in this blog has actually helped me make a few of these changes as well. As a result, I'm very pleased that I have this outlet to express what otherwise might not be so appropriate to just randomly say in an unrelated conversation. (That would be too serious and I prefer to be a lot less serious when not on the internet)

An Over-communicated Society

Everyone has a cell phone. Wireless internet is ubiquitous. Society is increasingly becoming over-communicated;  Much more even than what the experts who wrote about such things in the early nineties could have imagined. The world is changing - has changed, really. I wonder to myself what the consequences of such a change will be and find myself thinking about life in the seventies and eighties; Or at least how life was portrayed in those times.

The world was seemingly a simpler place. If you wanted to get in touch with someone you had to call them. There was no email and snail mail took a long time (although it was effective for written missives and the like). If you didn't know someone's phone number you had to look it up in the phone book, get it from someone else, or ask the operator. Nowadays, if you don't know the phone number you Google it. If the phone is too "traditional" you email them. If it's someone in a closer relationship you text. Hell, you can even send messages on social networking websites. Even the very blog I'm writing in, as a tool of communication, is becoming dated.

The world was simple but still over-communicated - even at that time. There was a slow transition taking root in society. One in which we would move from life being centered around the people you physically know, blooming into life in which we can have full-grown relationships with people we've never "met." In many ways, I find this a bit scary. In many ways, I long for the simple and rustic approach of the past.

The world is changing, the world has changed. Is it for the better or is it for the worse? I honestly don't know and I don't think anyone can. It's not so much that the change is bad per say, as much as it's simply different. I think it depends on what kind of person you are. The thought of people in a large city like New York or something mostly staying around their own area, going about their lives and knowing who they know and no one more does make me smile a bit, much in the same way that the thought of someone living simply in a wooden hut in the wilderness does. The fact that my mind even draws that comparison is evidence enough of how much times have changed.

For me, the main issues at hand when thinking about the over-communicated society of the past and that of the present are the pace of lifestyle and quality of relationships. I feel that most of our lives are running on a pace that will later prove tantamount to burnout. Everyone is so busy and I'm no exception. But are we busy with the things that matter the most? Everyone has a lot of work to do and it's important to make money in a society that runs on currency, but aren't we forgetting that the most important things in your life are family and friends? That very point brings the quality of relationships to the forefront of the argument. I feel that has communication gets less and less personal, the quality of the relationships that we have with those whom we communicate with is getting worse. My blogging to convey this opinion serves to strengthen my point. I would love to sit with someone and have an intelligent conversation about all of this but we're all so busy I doubt that will happen. Instead, I'll post it on a blog, post the link to Facebook, and see if whoever is interested will have some type of commentary when they feel they have both the time and the interest to read it.

It's not all negative either. In many ways, the over-communication that inherently comes with the advent of new technologies is a necessary evil, if it can indeed be called an "evil." Bear in mind, these are some of the same technological principles that are making medical care more intelligent and effective and the economy on which we run more efficient (at least in principle). What I'm wondering is whether the negatives outweigh the positives.

In the end it all comes down to opinion because the issue deals with how we feel about the current situation. I feel that all of these new gadgets and technologies are absolutely awesome and should be explored to further the potential of humanity. I think it's also important to remember who we are and how we got here and to make sure that we don't advance at the expense of ourselves. I love being better but I love being human even more.

Long overdue update

This past month and a half has been an absolute blur! I've been extremely busy and have struggled to keep balance with all things in my life. Unfortunately, this blog has fallen by the wayside a little bit. But I'm back on it and will try to write a little more in it since I'm scheduled to be far less busy for a little while.

It'll be no surprise to people that I have a few thoughts I'd like to get down on paper, having been so long since my last post. I'll get right to it.

The future. Busy, busy. I've got a few important decisions on the horizon such as where I'll be working in the summer, whether or not I'll be able to get into my program in the fall, and so on. The working in the summer thing is of particular importance seeing as I want to choose the correct position that will advance my career and not something lucrative that won't really get me anywhere. It's tough to find those kinds of places in Fredericton but the search will be on as soon as I get out of midterm hell. School next year is relatively assured and I've made the decision to pursue marketing full-time as it's what I'm truly interested in (This despite tugging and pulling to pursue studies in fields that don't apply to what I want to do from people who just want me around in their circles).

There are a few other aspects of the future that I need to consider as well. I've taken up two things that I hope to pursue seriously. I want to write something and I want to learn piano. Both are going to be pretty tricky to pull off and will require a lot of work and learning. The writing thing I can start with a little sooner. I'm long overdue to produce some type of story or the like. I want to get another one out there and prove to myself that I am improving. The piano stuff, I've decided, will have to wait until the summer when the MBA and remnants of curling are not eating up my time. To that end, I'll start looking for someone to teach piano to me over the summer. Perhaps after a summer doing that it'll be a lot easier to find small time to play in between. It's just that I want to be committed when I learn it and I can't deliver that commitment right now.

Everything else is going well. I've put my social life on hold for a while now while I deal with more pressing matters.

There's a larger concern that I've been wanting to write about, though. I often wonder whether I have too many things on the go at one time. It's difficult since it becomes a juggling act. Not all the things I'm juggling will receive full attention at all times. For instance, sometimes curling suffers, sometimes writing suffers, etc. It's tough to maintain balance with so many irons in the fire. I do honestly believe that I can be good at more than one thing but that's a tricky thing to pull off when you simply don't have the time for some things. I imagine all that will change in the summer when I'll no doubt be complaining of having too much time. Oh well, such is life.

Crown of laurels or crowning morals?

I'd like to keep this blog personal. I do like to write the occasional essay on a topic that I feel strongly about but feel it's also very important to provide a little bit of a window into who I am for those who are interested.

One thing about me is that I have very high expectations of myself and might be self-confident to a fault (or maybe not, that's debatable). Given those facts, I'd like to do a little bit of an informal self-analysis to discuss the pros and cons of such beliefs.

High expectations will be first up. Some will argue that having high expectations can be dangerous since it sets you up for disappointment more easily if things do not go the way you want them to. That seems fairly logical and I do agree with that. Others say that you should have high expectations if you want to accomplish great things. That makes a lot of sense to me too seeing as if you set the bar low you'll only aspire to mediocre things. So which is better and why? Well, as you've no doubt guessed, I've already decided that high expectations are better. I want to be a big hitter in life. It kind of reminds me of that saying, "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." I think there's a lot of wisdom in that quote. Besides, even though it does set me up for disappointment, I'd rather have the opportunity to do something amazing down the road. In order to swim you've got to be okay to sink.

How self-confident am I really? Does it interfere with my humility? Oh yes, I'm sure it does at times. But to be honest, I'm usually pretty humble. I know how lucky I am to have a lot of the things that I have and try to maintain realistic views. But I'm dodging the main question a little bit. I'm extremely self-confident - even in failure. In my view, I'm bound to fail because that's how life works. I think that if I'm able to maintain self-confidence I'll have a greater probability of succeeding again down the road. So, is this ever a bad thing, really? Not really. Not if it stays in the realm of self-confidence and doesn't evolve into cockiness. At that point, I would be characterized by believing that I have a rite of passage to do whatever the hell I wanted just because of who I am. That would not be good.

Better not to rest on a crown of laurels.

Mistake Equity

School is back. School is all-consuming.

You'll have to forgive my lack of posting lately. I'd like to say that it was because I was so busy - and it is - but I know that I haven't felt particularly inspired to make a new post anyway. Evidence of my writing here and now would seem to indicate that this has changed, right? Well, yes. A little bit, anyway.

I've had a few thoughts I would like to express on "paper." I'm a late starter; it takes me a while to get in the groove of things. I've definitely felt that way about school this term and I think it trickled into other areas of my life as well. What this has done is giving me a reminder of how making mistakes can lead to good things.

It goes without saying that I was in a little bit of a slump at the beginning of the month. School felt hard, curling didn't go well at all. Social relationships seemed pretty much unchanged, which I take as a good thing. (No change means no bad change, right?) I felt myself slowly digging out of that groove. Now that I'm out of it and back to performing the way I usually would, I find myself taking a few moments to reflect on this type of experience and the countless times that I've had it happen to me.

I've made mistakes. I've made a lot of mistakes. I probably make more mistakes than your average person. I probably know a little bit more than your average person. Well, about certain things. I've learned over the years to look at mistakes as opportunities to learn. Keep in mind what you did to make the mistake and what course of action led you to the desired outcome and you come out on top in the future. Example: I fuck up on a test. I find the underlying reason is not that I didn't study but was actually in the method that I used to study. Solution? Use a better method from now on and apply that to avoid making the same mistake again. It's kind of like that. Now, as you can imagine, this gets way more complicated for things like social situations and the like but it's a good example in that it illustrates a principle.

I think mistakes and learning go hand-in-hand. I've found through observation of others in myriad disciplines that those who learn slower by making mistakes usually make less later on than those who learn by blindly following the advice or teachings of another. Maybe this is because the lesson doesn't mean as much until you see directly, for yourself, how you can benefit from the action. Maybe it's some psychological and philosophical thing where we're all a little self-centred and absorb information better through personal experience. Seeing as I learn best this way, it's no small wonder that I've come to prefer things written in the first-person perspective.

To put the whole thing into a business analogy, let's say that you are a firm. You produce awesomeness and need to succeed at things in order to do stuff. You need to learn. How is that learning financed? In other words, what are the ingredients required to learn effectively? My answer is mistakes. The other answer is following or being taught in a less direct manner. You are your greatest asset. It goes without saying that we prefer to be financed by equity rather than liabilities; rather than debt. If you blindly follow, you risk the debt. The debt in this case is what you owe to life for learning this way: potentially incomplete understanding. Why do dentists have to sculpt teeth moulds out of soap before they work on a real mouth? Why do people assist before they become the masters? The answer goes to the point I've been trying to make: We should all take some time in our lives to generate a little mistake equity.

A few resolutions

New Years Resolutions. Typical, eh? Oh well, it's pretty much just like a casual update anyway.

Concerning this blog, I'm going to try to find ways to make the posts more interesting. Might change the layout, add some special things, etc.

Concerning my own life, I'm resolving to get in better shape and take a big break from drinking after the upcoming party (assuming we do indeed have one). I'm also going to learn piano with the keyboard that I got for Christmas. In somewhat less of a "changing" frame of mind, I also resolve to do just as well in school as I did this last term and to try and find a better balance between school, work, social life, piano, curling, and all the other stuff I do.

It sounds like a lot but it's really just a lot of little things that add up. With that in mind, I'm sure all of you have a ton of resolutions as well. Let's hope that we manage to stick to them! So that being said, I'll try to find something interesting to post for next time!