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Recapping my epic 2012!

December 31, 2012 in Blogging, Book Reviews, Misc, Novel, On Writing

2012wall

Who would have thought I’d be counting down the hours to 2013 when it was all supposed to end for everyone 10 days ago?

But anyway, I’m here (at work, actually) and I’ve been contemplating what a colossal year 2012 has been. Of course, there’s the big one — learning how to be a father to the most adorable little baby boy in the history of the universe, who has taken up the majority of my time and effort and SLEEP. But it’s also him that has made 2012 the most remarkable and wonderful year of my life thus far.

On the work front, I started a new full-time job where I get to write and edit all day. For the first time ever, I actually don’t mind going to the office every day, and I love the fact that I get to go home at a reasonable hour every night so I can spend time with my son before he goes to bed. It’s also a stable job that potentially allows me to do a lot of extra-curricular stuff, whether it be freelance work or other personal writings, such as this blog. Unfortunately, my lack of experience and desire to “take it easy” means I have probably squandered many of those hours that could have been put to better use.

That said, I have done my fair share of freelance work this year too. I started off completing a mammoth editing job for a travel book that had been horrendously translated. It was definitely not worth it from a monetary perspective but at least I have now been officially named as the editor of a published book (which I am yet to see, by the way). Apart from that and my regular book reviews for a trade publication, I also did some work for a well-known international magazine, which eventually lead to my first cover feature article. I didn’t exactly love the way it turned out after the editor played with it, but it’s better than having no article published at all.

The highlight of my working life this year has to be my trip to Beijing to cover the Communist Party’s leadership transition, which was exhausting but rewarding. I’m glad I got to see and learn so much, but I’m also happy that it won’t happen again for another 10 years.

Health wise, it’s been a mixed bag. Physically, I managed to get fitter than I’ve ever been after commencing a daily exercise routine that began last October and lasted about 12 months. I’m still trying to get back into it, actually. However, the fatigue and poor quality sleep has also taken its toll, and I’ve been under the weather more times than I can remember. It’s frustrating because you feel like you’re rarely feeling 100%.

Despite the positives, it’s also been a year where a lot of my goals went unrealized. I basically did not touch either of my work-in-progress novels for the entire year, which is pathetic and not worthy of an excuse. I didn’t write that screenplay I had been itching to write either. And I also didn’t monetize my blog like I had promised myself I would.

On the reading front, I only read 14 books this year, dominated by the Hunger Games trilogy, Steve Jobs biography and the first two books of the 50 Shades trilogy (I’m still stuck on the third and final book). Actually, I blame it all on 50 Shades for turning me off reading this year because it’s been a huge struggle getting through them. Why do I torture myself?

These are the things I wish I had more time to complete, but my shifting priorities had placed them all on the back burner. In fact, I’m still putting them off until I can finish posting all of my backlogged movie and restaurant reviews, which means it might be a while before I can even get started.

So what’s in store for 2013? A lot. That’s my guess. I’m personally hoping that things will become more stable on a day-to-day basis and that I can be more motivated to work on my projects. My focus next year — my new year’s resolution, so to speak — will be on the things I failed to accomplish this year: the novels, the screenplay, and doing more reading. I tend to always oversimplify things and set myself targets that are impossible to reach, so this year I’ll just say that I’d like to at least do more on/of those things  in 2013 than I did in 2012.

So I guess if my 2012 was “epic” then I’d like my 2013 to be simply “productive.”

See you next year!

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It’s just not happening right now

September 8, 2012 in Blogging, Misc, Novel, On Writing

So I’m taking some time off from my busy schedule to do something I do best: whine.

Things never seem to work out like I planned. Not big picture, but small, day-to-day things — and it drives me nuts. Something always inevitably pops up and destroys my plans. Maybe my son will suddenly get sick, putting an end to sleep and turning me into the walking dead for a few days. Perhaps something will happen at work, such as the most recent debacle where I am forced to become the company’s legal adviser for a while. I can’t even seem to plan something as simple as a blog post in advance these days.

Is this a matter of bad luck, naivete, stupidity or all of the above? It explains why I haven’t been able to write regular blog posts like I promised myself a couple of weeks ago. It probably also explains why I haven’t gotten close to getting back to my sleeping novels for more than a year. I suck.

To be fair, I don’t have a whole lot of spare time or a sizable margin of error. After dinner and putting my son to sleep I only have a couple of hours, one of which I would usually spend doing some form of exercise to prevent myself from turning into a fat turd. Weekends are usually also family time, and I’m usually too exhausted to do anything else anyway. So that leaves work, which is supposed to offer ample time for personal stuff (it really is) but things haven’t always turned out that way.

Like right now, I’m working on a feature article that’s due the end of the week. It’s for a pretty decent international publication and will be by far the most important article of my writing career. But man, it’s just not happening right now. I had planned to pump it out during work hours last week after transcribing the interviews, but that annoying legal issue (which had nothing to do with me) drained whatever free time and creativity I had out of my system. I spent most of today, my day off, working on it but I barely produced a few hundred words.

It was brutal. It was as though I had forgotten how to do anything. The sentences flowed so beautifully in my mind, but as soon as I sit in front of the computer with my hands on the keyboard…I get nothing. And what does end up getting typed is not pretty. What I need is a first draft mentality but what I have instead is a perfectionist’s attitude.

Hopefully I’m just having a rough day. I need to be on fire, and soon. It’s gotta be done.

PS: Perhaps this is what I need to do:

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Recurring Nightmares

July 8, 2012 in Blogging, Misc, Novel, On Writing, Paranormal, Study

I’m not so sure about dream interpretation. It is possible that some dreams might have meanings, but most of mine (the ones I can remember, at least) are incoherent and senseless.

In recent times, however, I have been experiencing a couple of recurring dreams. Not the exact same dream, but dreams with the same theme. I wonder what they could mean.

In the first, which have been happening for quite some time now and come back every now and then, I would get the feeling that I have a loose tooth. It could be a wobbly front tooth that I can twist around, or it could be a dislodging molar with a gap I can play around with using my tongue. It’s a sensation I haven’t had since all my baby teeth fell out, and it absolutely freaks me out, every time.

The tooth could be looser in some dreams than others. Sometimes, it could be more than one tooth. Occasionally, I might even twist and pull the tooth enough that it comes off, and I would distinctively recall licking that empty space on my gums, horrified and panicking. I suppose with modern technology I could just get a fake tooth that probably looks better than the one it is replacing, but it’s never something I think of during the dream. I simply remember being saturated in fear.

In the second recurring dream, which only started in the last few months, I would find myself suddenly realizing that I have a major exam the next day, or the next couple of days, and it would be on a subject I know absolutely nothing about. It never occurs to me that I haven’t sat an examination for three years, or that I never studied the subject before. In that moment, I feel as though I had either never attended my classes or never paid attention, and certainly didn’t do any of the readings.

If the realization comes the night before or several nights before the exam, my initial reaction would usually be — you’ll be okay, you have essentially crammed entire subjects for exams the night before. It’ll just be another all-nighter, which is nothing new for you. But the fear of not being able to study everything in time is still there.

More recently, the timing of the exam has gotten closer and closer, and hence the fear has gotten greater and greater. A few weeks ago, I dreamed that I was on the way to the examination location and I still had no idea what I was doing. Last night, I actually dreamed that I had already missed an exam. I had three exams and I somehow “forgot” about the first one, and I still had two more in the next three days. Lucky I woke up from fright, or else there might have been a wet patch on the bed.

So what could these nightmares mean? Surely there has to be something in my subconscious stirring things up.

For the tooth dream, my guess is that I have a fear of losing my teeth. No offence to anyone out there, but I kind of do have an obsession with clean teeth. I brush religiously and can’t stand the sight of stains and discolourations. Could that be it?

As for the exam dream, it could be any number of things. It could be the deeply-seeded guilt I have accumulated over the years from doing relatively well in exams without genuinely understanding the subject. It could be from the fact that I tend to forget just about everything about a subject almost immediately after the exam finishes. But I have a feeling this is quite common.

It could be another thing. When I studying for my master’s finals  in Cambridge three years ago, it was the first time I ever felt I could not possibly complete by preparations in time, or at least not up to a level that was satisfactory to me. These final exams accounted for 100% of the grade and were all three-hour monsters. A big part of the lack of preparation was because I had spent the better part of the year working on this blog and my novels. A second reason was because I spent about half the pre-exam holiday period travelling around Europe. A third reason was probably laziness and not wanting to miss out on any sleep (I was getting soft).

I ended up doing pretty well in the end, but I do remember a pang of regret because I knew I probably could have and should have done better. So to cut a long story short, maybe it was the subconscious realization that I didn’t give it my all that continues to haunt me.

I’d like to think it’s something else: that I need to finish my novels so that the grades would not have been sacrificed in vain. Yes, and maybe do something about this blog too.

 

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I want my sleep back!

March 13, 2012 in Best Of, Fantasy, Novel, On Writing, Parenting

It’s amazing how little sleep you can function on when you have no choice.

As a new father, I’ve repeatedly astounded myself by sleeping less than I’ve ever slept in my life, even worse than when I was working my tail off as a lawyer. The problem is not just the lack of sleep — it’s the continuous breaks in the sleep when you actually do get the chance for some shut-eye that really kills you.

I used to be a relatively deep sleeper, but now I wake up over the sound of a pube hitting the ground. You can’t sleep when the baby is crying or making noises, and you can’t sleep well when they are completely silent because you wonder if something has gone horribly wrong.  It’s f&%ed.

That said, I am getting used to it. Kind of. I had my first five-hour sleeping spree last night in months, followed by an uninterrupted two-hour nap. I am hoping my little boy has finally turned a corner (I probably just jinxed myself there), but I’ll have to wait and see tonight if it’s just a once off miracle.

I long for the day I can get a full night’s sleep again.  I hear maybe from six months onwards, babies will be able to sleep through the night.  Looking back, I deeply regret the times I took sleep for granted.  Ahh…sweet, sweet, beautiful sleep. How I miss thee!

Life has slowly entered a routine around here. Well, kind of.  I go work in the morning, stay there for nine hours, come home, have dinner, try and finish off my freelance work, maybe watch some TV or a movie, play some Words With Friends or Scramble With Friends, exercise a little, feed the little one and put him to sleep, before I collapse in exhaustion myself.

Not that I’m complaining. Despite the general exhaustion and sleep deprivation I have never been happier.  It’s such a wonderful thing watching my little boy grow everyday — he has already doubled his birth weight and has gone from a skinny alien into a fatty with a couple of chins.  I love watching his big wandering eyes, seemingly curious at every little thing in this new world around him.  I love how he cracks a little smile when I steal a kiss on his chubby cheeks.  I love the look of satisfaction on his face when he finally gets that hard-fought burp, fart or poop out.  I even adore (love is too strong a word) the way he sobs and cries.

In fact, it’s one of the rare, perhaps unprecedented times in my life where I actually know how special things are right now.

The best part about my current situation that I no longer hate my job.  I wouldn’t say the work, working conditions are pay are ideal, but it feels good not waking up to a tsunami of overwhelming dread every morning just because you have to go to work.  Amazingly, I enjoy what I do and almost look forward to it.

It’s only been a month, so I probably just jinxed myself again, but it’s been the first time I’ve ever actually thought about work outside of work hours because I want to, and not out of fear. I want to write good articles and I want to come up with better ways to write and improve my writing. I also enjoy reading my articles after they’ve been published, particular so I can see the changes our copywriters have made so I can learn to be a better writer.

The working hours are good, the work itself is varied and most of the time it’s interesting. Occasionally I still get the dud article but I take it on the chin and think of it as a learning opportunity. On the downside I thought I’d have a lot more spare time during work hours to do other stuff, such as doing my own writing.  But not only does it feel wrong, I actually don’t have that much time — maybe five minutes or ten minutes here or there, which is never enough to get into the writing mood.

Right now the only thing preventing me from getting back on the novel-writing wagon is this freelance job I’ve been doing. After three months of crawling through this turd, I can finally say I am in the home stretch.  I’m just about in the colon.  My guess is one or two more weeks, and then I’m done.  It’s a good thing to have on my CV, being able to say I edited an entire book and all, but it’s just too hard and the pay is too low.  Besides, I’d much rather work on my novels again.  I’ve been in touch with my friend back in Oz and maybe we will get my masters project back on track.  I still believe it has potential.

As for my fantasy novel, I’ve been dreaming about it a lot lately. I guess it’s always like that — the scenes are written in your head much easier than they are written on the page.  Having kind of ‘figured it out’ at last, I know I’ll have to rewrite most of the damn thing, but I look forward to the challenge. Thanks to Game of Thones for getting me back into fantasy.

That’s the life update. I have about 40 posts in wait, and I promise I’ll eventually get to them. The only problem is that new post ideas are popping up quicker than I am writing them. Oh well, it’s time for the night feed. Sweet dreams (fingers crossed).

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I don’t know how people with kids do it!

February 8, 2012 in Blogging, Fantasy, Misc, Novel, On Writing, Parenting

Ned Stark had kids (including illegitimate ones), and he still accomplished a lot

Action has been somewhat slow on this blog lately, and with good reason.  My baby boy had been caught a little cold, as have his parents.  A healthy baby is brutal enough, but a sick baby is the cherry on top. Man I wish I cherished my sleep more in the past!

On top of that, I have commenced a full-time job at a place where I can write and edit  for a living.  It’s mainly newsy, journalistic stuff, but it’s better than nothing.  I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn as much as I can and hone my skills, which need a lot of honing. It doesn’t pay nearly as well, but on the bright side, it’s soooo cruisy compared to being a lawyer.  I finally feel like I belong, doing stuff I believe in and that I am comfortable with, without feeling totally stressed out all the time and like a fraud who has no idea what’s going.  And the best part is that I can leave work at 6pm, not 6am, meaning I can get home in time for dinner with the family and spend time with my wife and son.  That would never have been possible before.

I’m not quite sure what this means for the future of this blog, which still has at least 2 dozen posts waiting in the wings for me to write.  I started this blog as a hobby and it will remain so, but finding time to write posts is going to be difficult.  Time is a premium commodity these days, and even finding time to read is difficult, let alone exercise or play video games.  And what about my novels, the novels I so desperately want to finish (especially my fantasy novel, which has garnered renewed interest after I recently watched the first season of Game of Thrones — I also need to read all those books, by the way)?  Your guess is as good as mine.

Seriously, I don’t know how people with kids do the things they do.  How and where they find the time to go to the gym, catch up with friends, see a movie, write bestselling novels, change the freaking world.  I’m sure it gets easier as the kids get older but seriously, there are so many other excuses to prevent you from doing what you need to do!  You can count me in as someone in awe of anyone who can finish writing a book with young children in the house.

I remember reading somewhere that John Grisham used to get to work (at his law firm) an hour before everyone else and write at least a page on a yellow note pad.  Every day.  In a year or two, he had A Time to Kill.  I also remember reading that Dan Brown would get up at 4am every day to write.  Are these people even human?  I mean, come on.  Don’t these robots need sleep?

The good news for me is that my new job is a get-your-work-done-and-you-can-do-whatever-you-want kind of place.  I’m still as slow as a snail’s turd at the moment, but if I can train myself to be an article generating machine, then chances are I’ll have some time during the work day to pump out a couple of posts or even work on the novel.  In the meantime, however, I still have a bunch of freelance editing work holding up my “free” time, so it might be a little while longer before I can get into the groove.

That’s all I’ve got time for now.  As a butt-groping former governer once said, I’ll be back.

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