Nearly two weeks ago, before I was really up and dressed, having just sat down to submit some more stories to a few lit mags, my landlady knocked on my door and said, “Uh, Mike, there’s a strange dog outside and he doesn’t look too good.” I put on a shirt and went out to look, and what did I see but a poor emaciated little pit bull. We took him in the backyard and gave him some food, and I called my girlfriend. While she called around, finding that all the shelters in our area were full, I set about to taking a better look at the dog.

First thing I noticed was that he was a she. Second thing I noticed was that she had a collar (no tags) that was thoroughly grimed up. Third thing I noticed was that she wasn’t nearly so bad off as I thought. She was clearly malnourished, underweight, and weak, and she had a heap of mange about the face, but I had exaggerated her condition at first estimate. Part of her small size and wobbly appearance was because… she’s a puppy! We took her to a vet who wasn’t entirely the best vet, and he recommended we put her down. She had a limp, the mange is demodicosis (better known as demodex), potentially generalized, and this was before even checking for worms and such. He told us she was probably between 6 to 9 months old.

We picked up a lot of supplies while the girl, who we’ve named Mitzi, slept on an old mattress in the back yard. Got her a crate, bought her some healthy food and gentle shampoo to soothe her skin, and picked up a couple toys. That was about, oh, 400 some odd bucks ago. We’ve since taken her to another (better) vet, gotten her more medicines including a dewormer, flea and tick stuff, an antibiotic, and an anti-inflammatory, and most of the other little things one needs to properly care for a dog. We didn’t get x-rays for her leg, hoping that the swelling in her elbow would go down with the anti-inflammatory and it wouldn’t turn out to be broken or fractured, and it looks like that’s paid off. She’s turned into a completely vibrant puppy, running and jumping and falling all over the place like she’s never known pain in her life, even several days after the pills ran out.

We’ve still yet to finish everything she may need, however. She needs to have the rest of her vaccinations once she’s healthy enough for them (likely at her next appointment, because she’s doing great now), she needs to be spayed and checked for remaining parasites, and we have more work to do for her demodex, including using some internal stuff to kill the mites, applying some essential oil blends topically to kill mites and help with the itching, and boosting her immune system to correct the deficiency that got her in that spot to begin with.

Originally, we were hoping we could watch her for a day or two until we could get her to a shelter. Then we thought we could rehabilitate her until she was healthy enough to be adopted. Now it’s starting to look like she’s doing so well so quickly that I’m not the best foster she could have, and though I would take her as my own in a heartbeat if I had the time, money, and space, I just don’t. I’ve canceled my trip home to California for Thanksgiving to make sure I can be here to take care of her until we can find her a good home or someone who could be a better foster to her than I can. She’s such a love, and so happy to be here. As I write this she’s sleeping peacefully next to me with the little zebra toy that Heather bought her (it has chewy feet, and dear God does she love to squeak it).

She’s super friendly, hasn’t shown any aggression of any kind toward people or dogs, and isn’t food aggressive at all. She’s been pretty good on a leash and has taken well to training. So far she knows when we want her off the bed, knows how to sit and lay down, and has done well staying for several hours inside a small crate when I have to leave the house. She whined a little initially but training has gotten her to quiet down, and she’ll do well enough with a few chew toys for 4 or 5 hours. She’s learned quickly not to chew on things in my room, and she’s more or less housetrained. We’ve had a few pee accidents, but she knows to do her business in the backyard and does so 99% of the time. I did originally keep her in the crate at night, but have started letting her out. She seems to do fine with it.

I’ve looked everywhere that I know to look to see if anyone has lost her and haven’t found anything, and I’m reluctant to post ads in most places because we live in a pretty iffy neighborhood with a lot of people who would love a pit bull for all the wrong reasons, likely including the people who may have owned her previously. I’ve even heard rumors about dogfighting rings in the area.

If there’s anything you can do to help us, it would be greatly appreciated. Her sweet temperament should make her a fantastic pet for anyone willing to help her with the demodex (she may fight it off entirely, it’s hard to say), someone who can be a strong pack leader, who will give her not just love but also reliable discipline, and lots of exercise.

She loves everyone, and all we want to do is see that love returned to her a hundredfold. Your prayers and support are very much appreciated. If you can foster her, know anyone who might be willing to foster her, or would be interested in adopting her, please contact me. And please spread the word. This little girl is counting on us to help her find a better life.

Oh, and for those of you finding this via search engine or who may be otherwise unfamiliar with me: we’re in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, in North Texas.

However, I’d just like to take a brief moment to outline the advantages of being completely unable to work. Today was one of those days, and all in all, it wasn’t so bad.

I strive to hit 2,000 words at the end of every writing day. I’ve started tracking it on the calendar, and thus far it looks like I probably only manage to do that on a third of the days of any given month. The other two thirds are split between doing 500-1,000 words or absolutely nothing. Yesterday I managed about 800. Today I managed about 20. I could take the low road and blame this on distractions, other people, my landlady deciding she needed to have the entire neighborhood over for dinner, or her obnoxious little dog who barks at anyone that goes anywhere near the vicinity of the back door (our main egress and busiest area of the house); but the fact of the matter is that life happens, and while some of us deal with it just fine and carry on, the rest of us beat our hands against our temples and wish everyone would go microwave themselves a nice warm cup of STFU.

But sometimes the inability to write can be a good thing. Maybe you aren’t getting anything down because you don’t know where your story is going, and taking some time away to think will help you intuit the solution. Maybe you’re stuck because you aren’t sure how your idea might pan out in real life, or because you don’t know how your characters are going to deal with a particular real-world obstacle, or you’re unsure how long it’s going to take for someone’s injuries to heal. In many such cases, putting off your word count until you’ve done some research at the library might be the best thing.

For me, frustrations yesterday led to rediscovering a game that I’d been meaning to play since I first bought it, not long after the launch of the Playstation 3: Folklore. Despite the ever-present din of Anthropoid Co-Lodger Party and accompanying parasitic canine, I fell back into a world of textured color, ruggedly beautiful Irish countryside, and the small town of Doolin where the living can commune with the dead. While it may not have broken the chains that seem to have wound themselves around my current manuscript, it did refresh and inspire me, provoking both an immediate emotional response and a lasting string of striking internal imagery.

Today I tried to simply escape the house, but still found myself at a standstill. My characters had just finished doing interesting things and I could only see them doing boring things while they made their way to the next stop. I was losing my grip on their motivations, wondering how I was going to evolve their relationships to one another, how the great wheel at the center of my malign machine was going to come full circle again. I decided to work at the park, and I did get the aforementioned 20 words down before I gave up. After that, I walked up and down the length and breadth of the place, across the train tracks on the little bridge over the creek, through the graffiti-covered caves under the freeway, past the basketball courts and the duck pond. And it was a wonderful hour. I solved a few problems in my head, said a few prayers for those I love, and got some exercise.

So as frustrating as feeling stuck may be, there’s always something worth doing, whether that be working on another story that’s speaking to you, reading or playing or watching something, or just going out and living a little bit. It doesn’t mean you should get up every time you feel stuck, as the best method for accomplishing writing remains and always will remain ass in chair; but if you know you need a break, don’t be afraid to give yourself one. Sometimes the simplest solution really is the best.

I’ve been writing. I suppose that much is a given, but I’ve really been writing. At least 2,000 words a day, sometimes more on good days, sometimes a little less on the particularly bad (or none at all on the rare day off when my brain stops working and requires complete lethargy in order to begin the regenerative process). I think this is a healthy daily amount when it comes to fiction. Sometimes it goes quick, on the order of a couple hours, whereas other times it can be a grueling all-day affair. It’s been less of a fight lately, though, and I am very grateful for that. I seem to be on a roll.

I’m dividing my time mostly between work on some short stories that I hope to send to several publications and work on a new novel that began as a short story then refused to shut up. Things went south after a side character who was supposed to die decided she was going to be contrary and just dust herself off after the ordeal. I hadn’t expected that, and it turned out that she and her co-protagonist had more to say than I gave them credit for. So after a brief apology for trying to kill her—and this is by no means a guarantee that I won’t try again—we were back on our way, exploring a new world together. It’s… different. The place the story began and the place that it went were both surprises, and I think that’s important. That’s the exciting part about writing for me. To relentlessly plot something is to remove from it the joy of discovery.

Beyond that, life continues roughly as normal. I spend between 4 to 7 hours every day at Roots Coffeehouse and the North Richland Hills Public Library mostly ignoring people in favor of working, though occasionally someone will offer me a compliment on a goofy shirt or marvel at the fact that I’m writing a novel on an iPod Touch via a wireless keyboard. That seems to get a lot of attention wherever I go, and because of my ingenious keyboard tray (the box that the keyboard came in, with a little piece of cardboard to hold the lid open taped to the back with electrician’s tape), some unpleasant attention at the airport while they made sure I wasn’t a terrorist. It would all probably be a lot more amusing if it didn’t label me an Apple user. I still hate Apple.

I haven’t had any luck finding a job, as most of the writing jobs out there seem to want a ton of experience, don’t pay anything to make it worth the trouble, or are lousy jobs writing ad copy that would probably depress me. Let’s just hope that before too long someone will decide I’m the next [famous author] and start throwing money at me; because barring that, I may have to start marinading carpet-sample squares for future meals.

Mmm, carpet.

Prior to leaving Texas, I was frantically trying to put together a small resume and portfolio because of a job posting at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, a fantastic PC gaming website. I have almost completely convinced myself that I’ll never hear from them, mostly because in the short time I had to get everything together before leaving for California, the bulk of what I did manage to put together was a bit too dry, not nearly as humorous as it should have been. For a personality-driven site that asks for warmth above professionalism, this was akin to shooting myself in both feet after putting them in my mouth.

But I forgive myself. I’ve also had a variety of personal troubles that culminated in a time of introspection and (thankfully) a hopeful outlook, a reaffirmation of my God-given blessings.

So hey, things are pretty good, or at least could be a hell of a lot worse.

Enter Tiny Tower, a free game for iOS–you know, iPhone, iPod, etc. In the frustration of trying to prove to someone that no, really, seriously, I can write well enough to justify you tossing me a paycheck every month, I’ve found myself further frustrated by watching all the denizens of my adorable little pixel-tower go about their business.

If only life were so simple: my “bitizens” move in, show me their stats and tell me what their dream job is, and if I can fit them in with a job that would make them happy, I do. Just like that. If they suck at food service but are great with retail, they’ll sell shoes instead of sandwiches; and if their dream job is working at an ad agency instead of a health club (and if I have an ad agency with which to employ them), then that’s where they’ll go. They don’t have to prove anything. They just have to be able to do the job when they show up.

Wouldn’t it be great if those were all the qualifications needed to get a job in real life? Show your stats to a prospective employer, tell them that working for them would be a chance at your dream, and bam, you’re employed. Instead, we have to put together these collections of experiences, at least three quarters smoke and mirrors, and stretch the truth as far as we’re able in order to convince someone that we’re not too incompetent to deserve money for what we do. It ends up being more about who can put together the most convincing set of half-truths rather than who’s actually best for the job.

Ah well. At least our existences aren’t limited to the confines of a tower of business that never close. At least we aren’t beholden to some dictator who’ll immediately evict anyone whose dream isn’t to fill the opening at the Mexican restaurant.

Who wants to work for an awesome PC gaming news outlet anyway? Who wants to get paid to play and talk about games, cover exciting press events, and bitch about the deficiencies of the industry?

…

I think I just made myself sad.

So as you may have gathered, I’ve moved again, which accounts for the bulk of my absence, along with having helped a few other people move immediately after my own. It was four solid 10 to 14 hour days of packing, hefting, and cleaning, and thankfully I didn’t do any permanent damage to myself like throwing my back out (again). I wish Arlington the very best, but I’ll now be in Fort Worth for at least the next six months, not too far from downtown, living in a beautiful old house that’s afforded me both a gigantic bedroom, a sizable office (which has already been converted into a library), and 3 closets. Hardwood floors, crown moldings, two ceiling fans, and lots of trees in the neighborhood would have convinced me if the rest hadn’t. There are some cobwebs, dirty old rugs, and the kitchen isn’t the biggest thing you’ve ever seen, but the place would be a wonderful source of inspiration for any writer with all its thick auras and deep textures. And as if this wasn’t enough reason to express abundant gratitude, God has also blessed me with the second most wonderful gift ever given to man: a mattress set. I’m no longer sleeping on a futon, air mattress, or floor, having finally upgraded to a real bed, albeit sans bedframe. I can think of no finer thing this side of sliced bread. We’ll ignore how cheap it was and the fact that it will undoubtedly turn to mush in two months.

The most frustrating thing about all the mattress-buying, moving, and furniture-building is that it feels like I haven’t written anything in a year. It’s only been a week or so, and I have managed to push out a few lines here and there via Office² on my iPod Touch, so perhaps the perception is worse than the reality. I should also say, while on the subject, that as much as I hate Apple (and make no mistake, I still hate Apple), my Touch has more or less become an ultra-portable laptop with better battery life than my actual laptop, and I greatly enjoy being able to use Apple’s wireless Bluetooth keyboard with it when I wind up working at a café for a few hours. A dash of wifi and Dropbox access really tops it all off perfectly. It’s not a cheap solution if you’re starting from scratch, but if you’re already possessed of an iOS device, a portable keyboard of some kind might serve you well.

I hope that once I manage to get things set up here, productivity will resume. I wish I could promise something interesting, but the necessary doldrums of practical life have so completely taken over at this point that it will probably be some time before I have anything exciting to announce. I’ll keep at it, either way, and with any luck be ready to roll out something new soon.

For now, I think I’ll eat something. It’s nearly 4:00 PM and lunch is just a tad overdue.

As any who follow me know, I recently took an extended hiatus from my usual life and routine by relocating to Texas for an indefinite period. In packing my belongings, it came to my attention that I own a rather alarming number of books. I always knew that I had a fair number of them, but the sheer volume wasn’t apparent to me until I hopped onto LibraryThing.com and began cataloging them all, a process I undertook primarily so I’d have an easily-accessible digital inventory to track which books I’d left in California. I took every volume from every shelf, laid them on my apartment floor in stacks by genre, and proceeded to enter them into the computer by ISBN number or Library of Congress card number. If the books were too old to have either of those identifiers, I entered them manually. Several days later, I was still nowhere near finished, due in large part to how many books I have from around 1930 to 1960 that required a little research and time to input. It was a task, and thinking about how to properly transport their collective physical mass was definitely one of the major considerations of my move.

Thus I have begun to understand the arguments in favor of a paperless library. It takes up no real space, doesn’t eat up more of your home as it grows, and is much easier to take with you when you inevitably uproot yourself. And yet, this discovery: I love my books, and even after taking pains to pack and move them, it was quite obvious to me that I consider them worth every bit of the effort that I’ve invested in their storage and care over the years.

A person’s library says something about them, and by extension whether that library is digital or traditional says something as well. Am I an old and outdated person because I don’t embrace the concept of owning so much digital property? One could argue that it’s strictly a generational issue, or purely one that concerns the telescoping nature of human advancement, and perhaps this is the case. If the scope of the issue is truly that narrow (at least on the whole), then this surely shows just how quickly age groups can now form opposing ideologies about technology. I’m not even quite 30, and I have friends several years younger than I who aren’t so keen on the digital bandwagon even though we all were some of the most active supporters of the mid-stage digital revolution.

So I will say this much, and you may choose whether to take it as a young person mistrusting a fundamental concept, or as an issue of telescoping advancement causing mistrust of change to happen far more rapidly in an increasingly more youthful demographic. While I don’t claim that eBooks have no purpose as useful tools, I don’t think a world where parents have their iPads read animated books to their children before bedtime is going to be a better world, and that’s a story I already hear far too often. If I said it didn’t alarm me, I’d be lying.

To put a point on my own view that this is more an issue some take with a fundamental concept rather than fear of something less comfortable (after all, most of us have embraced digital mediums over print in at least a few sectors, if not all across the board), it seems to me that–especially in these uncertain times–people might fear having so much non-physical property; when it comes to digital distribution platforms for games and music where some of that content may not even be wholly under their control, I’d expect such concerns to increase exponentily. We can forego the oft-posed argument about what may happen when these businesses shut down via economic collapse or lack of profitability and simply ask: shouldn’t there be some logical concern about purchasing too much insubstanial property? For many, especially young people, this concern never seems to arise, and this likely has much to do with the perceived value of money and the way that it’s handled in this new epoch of digital fundamentalism. What may be most fascinating about it is the huge differences in opinion coming from people whose lifestyles really aren’t dissimilar on the whole, this also being hard to pin down as either a side effect of the rapidity of technogical increase or simply a judgment call by individuals based on personal experience.

Ultimately, it seems the magic of words transcends the method of their delivery, so for the average person, their chosen manner of ingestion seems of little enough consequence; and it isn’t as though the record of human experience is going to suddenly be consigned to oblivion just because more people choose to purchase their latest medical thriller for their e-reader instead of their bookshelf. Yet the movements within the digital phenomenon do both affect and reflect some of society’s own maneuvers, not to mention the way established industries have and will continue to attempt to enter that “new” frontier. Thus I hope we will remain cognizant of how our actions shape the future, of where the small steps are likely to lead, and of what things are in our best interests going forward. Because if you think about it long enough, you’re likely to realize that just because something is more advanced or more convenient doesn’t make it more worthy. Sometimes, it’s mostly just a quicker way for others to get our money.