Archive for the ‘personal’ Category

One Way to Leave a Lasting Legacy (that isn’t a successful writing career)

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I went through a phase as a kid when I was obsessed with liv­ing for­ever. Strike that.  I’m still in that phase now, but I was more inven­tive about it before I felt my own mor­tal­ity so keenly. Since my father died, I’ve mostly given up any belief that I will live for­ever, but I still wouldn’t mind it.

Anyway, I dreamed up my own after­life sys­tem, prob­a­bly because I found the Christian notion of Heaven very prob­lem­atic (and either absolutely empty or entirely over­crowded).  In my after­life belief, you were alive again in a meta­phys­i­cal plane of exis­tence after death only for so long as the liv­ing thought about you or some­thing you had made.  The only souls that lit­er­ally live on are the ones that fig­u­ra­tively live on in their work. Of course, the sys­tem is not with­out its flaws.  Some might find the notion of an immor­tal ser­ial killer or even Hitler a bit dis­turb­ing. It ele­vates impact on soci­ety as the high­est achieve­ment in life. Most peo­ple, in this belief, would just slowly fade from mem­ory, and, as those who knew them passed on, depart the after­life into oblivion.

What can I say? Science fic­tion taught me to con­cretize the metaphor.

I sup­pose I’m pur­su­ing remem­brance after I die now through writ­ing.   The web­sites I built prob­a­bly won’t last a few years in their cur­rent forms.  There’s no longevity to that work at all.  I may get lucky with my pho­tog­ra­phy and cap­ture some­thing time­less, but right now, my buy­ers rarely know who I am. 

And even­tu­ally, I’ll pass on some genetic material—that’s a pop­u­lar way of liv­ing on. 

Kids.  I had another really bizarre notion as a child, this time about why peo­ple have kids. It prob­a­bly grew out of hear­ing adults say of the deceased, “She lives on in her sons,” or some such words.  I fig­ured your soul mys­ti­cally down­loaded into your child’s body the moment you died in your own.  I was 11 or 12 when the idea came to me, right  when you have this deep sus­pi­cion that adults are all lying to you about some­thing impor­tant. I couldn’t rec­on­cile what hap­pens to the child’s mind in that sit­u­a­tion though–I thought maybe it lived on sort of mixed up in there.  The other flaw in my bril­liant meta­phys­i­cal con­struct: one has two par­ents, and par­ents can have more than two chil­dren.  It could get pretty crowded inside an only child, or, what, stretched out over 9 kids?

Invasion of the body snatch­ers, super­nat­ural style.  And the invaders are your par­ents!  I was kind of dis­ap­pointed when my dad died and his voice didn’t sud­denly pop into my head and start telling me what we did next.  The things you remem­ber from your child­hood when a par­ent dies are unpredictable.

Lately, I have been schem­ing a bet­ter plan for metaphor­i­cal immor­tal­ity.  I’ve been work­ing on this one all morn­ing, and I have to say, I think it’s my best shot.  The writing’s not going any­where lately.  So here it is, my plan to live on in mem­ory forever:

I’m going to “bury” my “trea­sure” in them there hills.

And no, that’s not sex­ual innu­endo.  We already talked about hav­ing kids a few para­graphs ago.

Step one: Establish the illu­sion that there is a trea­sure in the first place. A few weeks or months before my death (it helps in this sce­nario if I die slowly from some­thing like can­cer), I’ll trans­fer some money into gold coins and leave a few lay­ing around my home for rel­a­tives and friends to notice. I’ll post on future blog­gos­phere and Twitter IV updates denounc­ing our depar­ture from the gold stan­dard, and announce my intent to trans­fer all my assets into high value gold coins. Maybe allude to win­ning the lot­tery or mak­ing a lot of money on the futur­is­tic stock market.

Step two: Take long, soli­tary hikes into the hills car­ry­ing a shovel and a burlap sack.  While on these hikes, I’ll plant my seed money (so to speak).  A few coins here and there–not more than a few hun­dred dol­lars worth, but enough so that when they’re found, word of the Old Man Tolbert’s lost trea­sure will spread in the media.

Step three:  On my death bed, let out my inner impres­sion­ist painter and scrib­ble inscrutable maps.  Dozens of them.  Become agi­tated if any of my dot­ing fam­ily ask what I’m doing and tell them “you’ll never find it!  Not even with one of these!”  Then wink at the one grand­child who’s in on the scheme with me, in return for a hefty inher­i­tance and a promise to reg­u­larly bury a few more gold coins every decade or so. Hmm, I should prob­a­bly put that in a secret will or something.

Step four: the hard part.  The tim­ing here is cru­cial.  My last words.  When I feel death creep­ing in, after hav­ing lived a long full life at the age of 154, I’ll have my many descen­dents and friends draw near.  I’ll apol­o­gize for my sins, and say that my pain has brought me clar­ity in these final moment. “It was wrong of me to deny you my trea­sure.  You… you can it…”, wave a fist­ful of crude maps,  and then die.

I think I can pull it off.  And if not, well, at least I have some­thing to occupy my thoughts as the end draws near.

So what’s your backup plan for liv­ing for­ever if writing/​creativity doesn’t work out?

Labeling Oneself as an Artist and Why I Have Avoided It

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve strongly resisted the label of artist for a long time, because I don’t feel wor­thy of it, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to avoid the neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions that are entwined with the label in my back­wards, red­neck brain.

Who is an artist? (the ingrained notions)

Here’s what I grew up think­ing of artists–not actively think­ing or delib­er­ately decid­ing to believe, but just absorb­ing in Kansas/​Midwestern culture.

Artists are peo­ple who do not have real jobs.  They are as likely to spend their time drink­ing absinthe, doing drugs, and sleep­ing around as they are to do any­thing hon­est and deserv­ing of com­pen­sa­tion.  Artists do not con­tribute to the growth and wel­fare of soci­ety in mean­ing­ful ways.  They are prob­a­bly not very smart, because if they were smart, they would have gone into a pro­fes­sion like engi­neer­ing or med­i­cine where they could actu­ally do some good and make real money to sup­port their fam­i­lies.  Artists, above all else, are irre­spon­si­ble, child­ish, and poor.  POOR!

Conversely, artists are tal­ented (even if that tal­ent isn’t val­ued very highly).  They can draw any­thing they can imag­ine effort­lessly.  Their imag­i­na­tions are supe­rior to almost any­one elses’s.  They speak a secret lan­guage of color and form, and really, if you want to rearrange your liv­ing room and get some new cur­tains, an artist would not be a bad per­son to ask.  They’ll prob­a­bly help for beer money.

Why I am not an Artist (the rationalizations)

I’m cre­ative, sure.  I do a bit of writ­ing, but writ­ing isn’t art, because art is visual, and writ­ing is lan­guage.   And yes, I know how to oper­ate a cam­era, but art­work should con­vey emo­tions, tell a story, and my pho­tog­ra­phy doesn’t con­vey any such thing.  Anyone can pick up a cam­era and point it at some­thing.  Anyone can take enough shots, throw­ing out the bad, to make them­selves look like a mod­er­ately decent photographer.

I’m a web designer, but design is not art.  Design is com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and it has strict rules (rules that I strug­gle every day to learn and under­stand bet­ter).   And any­way, I pri­mar­ily excel at writ­ing code and solv­ing tech­ni­cal prob­lems, less so than mak­ing things beau­ti­ful and artistic.

Despite my ingrained beliefs about artists as pro­fes­sion­als, I grew up secretly wish­ing I could be some kind of sci­ence artist, but I  wouldn’t ever really because I wanted to con­tribute and make money. And finally, for some rea­son, I can­not ever be an artist because I can­not draw any­thing that I pic­ture in my head.

Why I am an Artist (the realization)

First of all, most of the bull­shit I grew up believ­ing about artists is just that–bullshit.  Artists are as intel­li­gent as any­one else, if not more so,as respon­si­ble, and they are no more likely to drink heav­ily and do drugs than any­one else.  They con­tribute to soci­ety in less quan­tifi­able ways than say, an engi­neer, but they act in a way as society’s con­science, as it’s out­let.  As a means of self-​​reflection.  Artists play a role, and while I don’t quite under­stand that role, I know they have one and it’s deeply impor­tant.  Being an artist is a real job, and has all the bag­gage that jobs have.  It’s also really, really hard to make a liv­ing at.

Being any good does not deter­mine whether one is an artist or not.  And art encom­passes many more skills than just draw­ing.   My pho­tog­ra­phy may be some­thing any­one can do, but every once and a while I make some­thing nobody else  but me could make.  I’m actively try­ing to sell prints of my work actively, so I guess that right there makes me an artist in the same way that actively pur­su­ing pub­li­ca­tion made me a writer.

Design may or may not be art, but I’m a work­ing cre­ative indi­vid­ual.  Sometimes, what I cre­ate is art.  Sometimes, it’s crap.  Well, more often than not.  But I share more in com­mon with work­ing illus­tra­tors and painters now than I do with my friends who spend their days slic­ing DNA in laboratories.

So, yeah.  I am an artist.  Whatever that means–I’m still learn­ing. It’s not all that I am, but I’m done not call­ing myself that just because I can’t draw and I grew up believ­ing some kind of dumb things about who writ­ers are.  My life is cen­tered around cre­ative acts of one form or another, so.  There it is.

Have any of you ever resisted label­ing your­self like that, for sim­i­lar mix­tures of rea­sons?  I’m curi­ous to know if this is dif­fi­cult just for me, or if it is for others.

PS:  I keep try­ing to fix that draw­ing thing.  I’ve been stuck in the first cou­ple of chap­ters of “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” for a cou­ple of years.  Maybe this year will be the one that I finally get past the weird trac­ing stuff and start learn­ing how to stop myself from draw­ing on the left side of the brain.

Announcing JT365

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Today is my 32nd birthday.

I can’t say that I’m happy about it.  But I’m com­ing to terms with it.

At this point in my life, birth­days for me are a reminder of my mor­tal­ity.  They ceased being about gifts when I was in my teens.  For a while in my col­lege years, I thought my birth­day was bad luck due to a string of nasty events around my birth­day, so I went out of my way to hide it from friends well into my late 20s.  I’m past that non­sense, but I still grow melancholy.

I wanted to do so much more with my life than I have.  It feels as if I have squan­dered the last ten years, even though I know this is not so.  I have some won­der­ful things to show for my time.  Nothing of seri­ous con­se­quence in the greater world, but… I am con­tent with this.

It’s time that instead of doing things to impress other peo­ple and draw atten­tion to myself out of some mis­guided sense that it would be a way of achiev­ing a kind of immor­tal­ity, I have instead deter­mined that I will attempt to ded­i­cate my remain­ing time towards liv­ing a life that I can look back on with­out regret.  As my old boss used to say, each day is a gift, and it is up to us how we use them. I have long squan­dered them on things that I will not remem­ber when my time comes to pass.

So today, in an attempt to live each day more fully, to con­nect more with the pas­sage of time and develop more of a sense of being here in the now, I am launch­ing my 365 day pho­tog­ra­phy project.   I am tak­ing and select­ing one pho­to­graph each day for the next year. There’s noth­ing orig­i­nal about it.  Many peo­ple have done these before, but I have not.   I  At times, I will exper­i­ment with new tech­niques. Sometimes, I will prob­a­bly not be able to get out of bed, and so I will be forced to find some inter­est­ing way of cap­tur­ing the ceil­ing of my bedroom.

If you all, the audi­ence, serves a pur­pose in this project, it is to keep me hon­est.  I find that when you do some­thing like this out in the open, you feel more ded­i­cated to the task.  I let myself down often enough, but it’s a moti­va­tor to avoid let­ting oth­ers down. Ultimately, how­ever,  this is a project I do for myself.  You’re wel­come to take plea­sure from the project, and I hope you do. But I’m doing this for so many more rea­sons than usual.

The 365 project can be found here. You can fol­low it on twit­ter here.

So that’s my pri­mary goal right now, on the road to turn­ing 33.  We’ll see how it goes.

Exit Funk, Stage Left

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

You might have noticed that I was in a bit of a funk last week.  Thank you to every­one who made lovely com­ments on my last post.  I was feel­ing a lit­tle ashamed about my whin­ing there, so I haven’t thanked or replied to any­one indi­vid­u­ally.  I appre­ci­ate you all being there for me when I get like this. Thank you for putting up with it.

I’m see­ing things  more clearly this week, and I feel some energy return­ing. Part of the prob­lem I sus­pect was that I had a really nasty cold, com­bined with com­ing down from all the excite­ment of being back home to see folks.

I’m focus­ing all my energy right now on becom­ing the best web designer I can.  I think the time for explor­ing other poten­tial careers is not when you’re scrap­ing by as a free­lancer.  I’ve been slow to com­mit to life as a free­lancer, wor­ried about any num­ber of things asso­ci­ated with it, but I’m slowly con­quer­ing those fears and start­ing to treat my busi­ness like, well, a busi­ness, instead of just a guy work­ing out of his office all day.

I have plans to rebuild this site from the ground up, as well as build a photo store to sell prints of my land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy.  Stay tuned for more about all that in the future.

Thanks for hang­ing in there with me.  I will hope­fully start to have cool things to show and share again soon.

A Return Home, and A New Starship Sofa

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The guests this week are  Jeff VanderMeer, Amy H. Sturgis, and of course the sofa is piloted by Captain Tony C. Smith.  Oh, and this guy writ­ing this post.  This week, we talk about the con­fer­ence in Austin, cover art, and I lose my shit entirely about the new “Hitchhiker’s Guide” book (those are scare quotes).  If you enjoy me rant­ing like a rabid dog, this is an episode for you.

I hope to write up a post about the amaz­ing time I had at the Austin Game Writers Summit when I have had a bet­ter chance to digest the expe­ri­ence.  I’m dip­ping down into that post-​​con  low today.  It’s hard to go from being super-​​social and hang­ing out with amaz­ing peo­ple to being back at your com­puter alone with nobody but your cats for com­pany (Sarah’s putting on a show, which I get to go see tomorrow).

I’ll be turn­ing around and fly­ing out to Vermont on Monday to meet the fine folks at Chelsea Green, a pub­lish­ing com­pany that spe­cial­izes in books on sus­tain­abil­ity and green liv­ing.  It’ll be a whirl­wind trip of meet­ings and dri­ving in a place where I have never been.   I’m less anx­ious about the job inter­view than I am about the dri­ving in Boston.

So what did I miss this week?  Anything cool hap­pen with you folks?

Travel Plans

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am headed tomor­row morn­ing bright and early for the Austin Game Developers Conference for the writ­ing track.   My time is pretty well com­mit­ted while I am there (look­ing for­ward to see­ing Jeff Spock and Marc Laidlaw, along with some friends from col­lege), but I have some time on Thursday if any­one wants to get together.

To my clients, I will be only spo­rad­i­cally avail­able until Friday, so if it isn’t an emer­gency, you may want to wait until then to talk to me.

Next Monday, Sarah and I are fly­ing to Boston and then dri­ving to Vermont. I have a job inter­view in White River Junction. We’ll be back from that trip late Wednesday night.

As you can prob­a­bly guess, post­ing around here will be light until then.

Personal Interlude: A Project Awesome update

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

When I’m too busy to write a nice, well-​​thought out blog post ahead of time, then things are actu­ally going pretty well.

Project Awesome launched a month and a day ago.  Since then, I have had no more suc­cess in find­ing a job than before, but every­thing else has improved dra­mat­i­cally.  Freelancing is going very well, with enough work to cover a cou­ple of months, and I haven’t even mar­keted myself.

Rule #1 has been good.  I have lost my tem­per a cou­ple of times and shared it online, mostly deal­ing with com­puter fail­ure.  For the most part, I believe my atti­tude por­trayed online has improved very much–you’ll have to let me know if you don’t think so too.  I don’t always feel great, but I keep it to myself., which leads me to rule #2.

Rule #2 has prob­a­bly had the most amaz­ing impact on me out of every­thing.  When I start to feel down, I remem­ber this rule and push onward.  In no time, I go from fak­ing feel­ing good to actu­ally feel­ing good.  My writ­ing has improved and my design skills have improved because I have decided to pre­tend I am great even if I don’t think I am.

Rule #3– I don’t think I’ve bro­ken this rule.  Nobody owes me any­thing, except my clients, and I take paypal :)

Rule #4– def­i­nitely.  As I exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent top­ics for posts on this blog, I’ve failed at gen­er­at­ing inter­est with some.  But I take it as a learn­ing expe­ri­ence, and it’s help­ing me tai­lor where I want to go next.

Rule #5 & 6– sharp­en­ing my tal­ent is pretty much my dri­ving goal in every­thing right now.  I’m see­ing fan­tas­tic results, I think.

I do like work­ing.  Even with­out a job, I find work.  Things are fine.

All the rest, I think have been mod­er­ately suc­cess­ful as well.

To sum­ma­rize, I feel much bet­ter, and I feel like I’m mak­ing real progress in my life goals thanks to Project Awesome.  Opportunities keep com­ing, despite the dire sit­u­a­tion of being laid off.   Right now, I don’t miss the grind of an office job at all.  My stress lev­els are lower than ever.

If it weren’t for the insur­ance issue (which I have yet to resolve), I could do this indefinitely.

I hope you’ve been enjoy­ing the blog.  I will  get back on track with reg­u­larly sched­uled high-​​quality posts tomor­row and over the weekend.

Down Computer

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My pri­mary work machine is down.  I have back­ups in place, so no data is lost, but I am not able to get much work done for the rest of the week thanks to this prob­lem.  If you’re a client won­der­ing about the sta­tus of some­thing I’m work­ing on for you, feel free to ping me.  I should be back up to speed by next Tuesday.  Ugh.  Computers, right?

Make Your Own Path

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’m step­ping in between the reg­u­larly sched­uled reader ques­tions posts to talk a lit­tle bit about a post that I wrote at a low point at the begin­ning of the month.  I try not to let my per­sonal emo­tional life affect things on the blog, but I was really strug­gling, so I turned to my blog for cathar­sis.  Project Awesome is still in effect, and so far, it has really had an impact.  Let me quote from my first post,    The Life and Times of Jeremiah Tolbert.

Struggling  isn’t depress­ing. I am tread­ing water, unable to move for­ward or back.  I can’t move from the place that I am in, in my life, until I have some path to a future.  There are a lot of paths but I am con­strained on which ones I can accept.  Right now, the only path I can accept is one that gives me enough income to sup­port Sarah and I while she returns to school full time for 1–2 years.  After that, she can get a teach­ing job and quite pos­si­bly I can actu­ally ded­i­cate myself to the pur­suits that I love.

(Note:  the real issue wasn’t income, it’s health insurance)

The notion that my path is con­strained was an arti­fact of my emo­tional state.  When you’re down, you start to feel like your options are lim­ited.  Project Awesome, and fak­ing opti­mism, has had a pro­found effect on my life so far.   While I haven’t had much suc­cess on the job front, I have picked up or am in the process of pick­ing up sev­eral free­lance jobs.  I feel bet­ter about myself in gen­eral. I  wake up in the morn­ing and I look for­ward to the day ahead of me.  I feel more con­nected with peo­ple, and while I still suf­fer from attacks of fear and anx­i­ety about the future, I have the sense now that I can do so much more than I have.  Possibilities have opened up that I couldn’t see before.

You make your own path.  Your paths aren’t just options pre­sented to you, from which you pas­sively choose.    I’m push­ing for­ward with my free­lanc­ing career, tak­ing on excit­ing new work, even though I know that ulti­mately, I need a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion.  But the truth of the sit­u­a­tion is that I need health insur­ance and pre­scrip­tion ben­e­fits.  It don’t need a job–but at first glance, a job seems like the only way to get it.

Yesterday, I did some Googling and dis­cov­ered that there are some ways that free­lancers can get insur­ance.  I’m not sure if we will be turned down for them like we were rejected for pri­vate health insur­ance plans last sum­mer, but I’m will­ing to ask around and inves­ti­gate my options.  There are asso­ci­a­tions through which I can try to get a plan, and I’m going to check with the local cham­ber of commerce.

The les­son I’ve learned is that when some­thing seems impos­si­ble, it just means I haven’t googled the right search terms.  I can find my way around the bar­ri­ers that seem to block my path to fol­low­ing my bliss.    Creative problem-​​solving goes a long way.   Having opti­mism seems to be an impor­tant step in lever­ag­ing that cre­ative problem-​​solving skillset.  You have to believe, despite evi­dence to the con­trary, that your prob­lems are sur­mount­able.  Starting from that posi­tion makes a world of difference.

Thank you to every­one for your sup­port.  It’s helped put me on the right path, and some of you have been watch­ing me care­fully to help make course cor­rec­tions if it sounds like I’m drift­ing off track. For that, I can’t thank you enough.  You are true friends.

The New Rules of Project Awesomeness

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Here are the new roles I’ve pinned up beside my desk.

  1. No more bitch­ing and moan­ing online.   If you don’t have some­thing pos­i­tive to say, don’t say it at all.
  2. Pretend to be pos­i­tive until you are pos­i­tive.  I hear good things about “Fake it til you make it.” We’re gonna try that.  It is not my nat­ural ten­dency to see the pos­i­tive.  Change your nat­ural ten­dency. Hey, you learned to eat some veg­eta­bles, so this can’t be that hard.
  3. Nobody owes you any­thing, so don’t ever act like it.   You are not the cen­ter of the world.  You are not a unique snowflake.  No big deal.
  4. Try harder.  Fail.  Try even harder.  Failure is just a word for ‘learn­ing expe­ri­ence.’  It’s not some­thing you can “be.”
  5. Talent is just another word for skill.  It can be sharp­ened like any­thing else.
  6. You will not wake up one morn­ing and mag­i­cally be more awe­some.  You are good enough to do what­ever you want, but it isn’t going to come with­out tremen­dous work.
  7. You like work­ing.  So it all turns out okay in the end.
  8. You are not your job.  Jobs are clothes we wear, not who we are.
  9. Stay hum­ble if you do find suc­cess. Hubris is unat­trac­tive on fat guys.
  10. Laugh!  Life is about laugh­ter and joy, not sor­row and self-​​pity.  You have a sense of humor.  USE IT!

To those of you who I’ve frus­trated or upset with my atti­tudes lately–I will try harder. Thank you for stick­ing with me through my roller coaster of emo­tions.  I’m deter­mined to make it worth your while in the future.  I must be kinda awe­some for you to put up with it.  So I coin this attempt in self-​​improvement “Project Awesomeness.”

Project Awesomeness is now  in alpha release.   We’ll call it beta when I think I’ve installed half the rules/​features into who I am.   Then we’ll have a party. A big one.  With stream­ers and balloons.