Category Archives: Personal

Cleaning Out the Year at the End of it

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One of my favorite Japanese traditions is that people do their spring cleaning in winter rather than in the spring. It has something to do with cleaning out the crap of the old year and leaving the space clean for the new year. Some of them even burn their old calendars in ritual bonfires. (More on that later.)

The tradition is called susuharai ( 煤払い)–literally “brushing off the soot”–and is done in temples and homes. This year, I’ve decided to brush the soot off the variety room by getting rid of old projects, hobbies and habits.

One of my hardest to break habits is a tendency to keep old projects long after I’ve lost interest in the project. I do well on a project until I reach a distraction (exam time; work; family trips, etc.) and then never get back to the project with the same energy and interest.

Because of this, I have
–several partly finished books (“partly finished” being a very loose term of a few to many pages)
–an abandoned notebook where I’d intended to copy down famous poems I liked because, well, I’m sure there was a reason at the time;
–several half filled notebooks full of brainstormed ideas with notes that no longer make any sense;
–several notebooks full of daily “10 Ideas”;
–a handmade notebook where I’d started to record the most interesting of the 10 ideas;
–random scraps of paper that must have had significance a couple years ago when I decided to save them.
–Several folders full of random scraps and notes.

This clutter tends to occupy both physical and mental space. Lately it’s been creeping out onto my desk and the piles there are getting taller and more precariously balanced.

To go through things, I’ve flipped the piles upside down and started with the oldest layers where the dinosaur bones are. I then ask a few questions:

What the hell is this?
Did I finish it?
Can I digitize it?
If I digitize it, am i really going to do something with it?
No, really, what am I going to do with it and when?

In most cases it’s the last two questions, especially “when?”, that get things sent to the trash bin. I have a smaller pile of things to digitize (the most interesting of the 10 Ideas) and then I’m trashing the old notebooks and notes.

I actually like the idea of getting rid of the old year in a bonfire. A lot of stuff might end up there.

But that would be another project that gets put in a pile (the “to be burned” pile) and put off until another day.

Instead, I’ll just shred and throw away. The Japanese burn their trash so it’s already going to a bonfire. It’s not as much fun as watching it burn in person, but at least the clutter’s off my desk and out of my head.

The Last at Long Last

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The Test Time Continuum reared its ugly head today. In its defense, though, I did distract myself a bit.

I had 78 essays to mark and then had to add up all the scores. My usual routine is: read, decide on a score, doubt the score, skim again, write a score, add up the points, doubt the math, add up the points again, get a different number, add up the points a third time, write the score on the paper. Later, after all essays are read (multiple times) and all marks are ciphered (multiple times) I enter the marks in my spread sheet.

The morning started well: I finished half the exams with little trouble (minus distraction for hanging laundry and random exercise) and then decided to take a break and run to town to get money (it’s payday), lunch and a haircut.

I got the money with no problems and didn’t even have to stand in line. I deposited the rent, although I’m not sure I deposited enough (long story) and then did some window shopping that, oddly, actually included me taking a “grail” pen of my grail list (let’s just say the burnt orange is too light and too yellow for my taste now that I’ve seen it in person). I then tried to decide on a place to eat. This turned out to be complicated.

Because of my low carb rules, I found a place that served something called the “Chicken Chicken” plate, which seemed to feature a lot of chicken. (Granted, it was breaded, but it would fit my carb limits, at least that’s what I told myself.) I went in and got a seat, ordered my “Chicken Chicken” and was informed it wasn’t available (I didn’t catch if it was sold out or just not available because I was too busy screaming “NOOOOOOOOO!”) The only choices available were things I could get elsewhere for cheaper so I got up and left.

The next place I chose had a hamburger steak plate with vegetables and avocado on the side for a reasonable price. I went in and got a seat but when I got the menu, the “California Burger” wasn’t on it. I asked if more choices were available and was told that there were “after 4:00 p.m.” Because I was already running late, I decided to stay and ordered my second choice. It was good, but nothing special.

The next phase was the haircut, which happened surprisingly quickly (and the woman cutting my hair actually got it short enough this time).

At that point, denial was over and I went home to do the last bit of marking. Unfortunately, by taking a couple hours to do errands, I’d walked into the Test Time Continuum and the last batch of exams took longer than I’d planned. When I finally finished the last one, I was relieved, but not as giddy as I usually am.

Scattered and Awesome

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My plan was to sneak off to the lobby with the smokers and the bored dads and mark exams. It didn’t quite work that way.

Today was the annual concert for our girls’ piano “club” and a sister club. Dozens of kids of different ages took turns showing off their musical skills (for better and for worse) and the club teachers showed off their musical skills (for better and for worse).

We arrived early and secured seats and I then spent the practice period marking and giving dirty looks back to anyone who gave me dirty looks as I was technically occupying eight seats, including one that never got used (more on that later).

The problem was our girls were scattered around different places in the program which made it impossible for me, as official videographer, to run away. Our youngest closed out the first set with “Dolly’s Dreaming and Awakening” by Theodore Oesten. She Who Must Be Obeyed was worried about this performance as our youngest has inherited my tendency to suck at stuff in practice and then deliver a good performance. (Note: this does not apply to sports other than karate.) Our youngest did a great job with only a couple small mistakes.

She was followed by the piano instructors who showed off their skills on the piano and the Electone (or shockingly high tech electric organ).

I was then informed that I was to record our girls’ piano teacher’s performance and then informed that I’d recorded the wrong performance (despite instructions to do so) and was supposed to record the later piano performance. The problem was this performance came well after our girls duet on “Whole New World” from Aladdin. My plan to run away and mark was thus thwarted.

My father-in-law ended up sitting next to me and he 1) stole my extra leg space (Japanese concert hall seating was designed by the sadist who designs airplane economy class seats) and 2) fell asleep which meant I had to occasionally wake him up.

At the same time, the lady on the other side of the eighth seat seemed angry that it was occupied by exams and not a person.

Our oldest then did a terrific performance of Chopin’s “Puppy Waltz” (aka The Minute Waltz) and that was followed by her playing the piano whilst all the other piano students sang.

As always, our girls rocked, and some of the others were pretty good, too. However, I’m not sure the teachers needed three different performances to show off their piano and electric organ skills. That seemed self-indulgent (he said as he wrote a blog about his life) especially when the performances weren’t always that good.

Next year, I hope they cut back their performances. I also hope they move the whole thing back a week so I can enjoy it without exams.

Last to Know; First to be Blamed

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There’s a moment in the horror movie The Strangers when Liv Tyler’s character asks one of the masked home invaders why they were torturing her and her family. The masked invader (known as Dollface) says “Because you were home”.

In my case the answer is “Because you are husband”.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, our girls’ piano teacher and her colleagues schedule a large performance in the middle of December. It falls after the girls’ final exams but before the end of school. This is great for them, but not so great for me as I’m in the middle of marking exams and I lose most of a Sunday by going to see our girls perform for a few minutes.

The last couple years this has been complicated by the arrival of the strangers, er, the in-laws who arrive to see the performance. Last year they stayed at our small apartment and I told She Who Must Be Obeyed to never, ever do that again during exams. This is partly because I’m torn between doing my job and playing gracious host.

Gracious host, however, doesn’t pay that well so I tend to opt for doing my job whilst everyone else has a good time. I then get called out for being rude. My reaction usually is, “I know, I know. Now let me finish marking so I can stop being rude.”

Now, I know you’re thinking “Why don’t you just plan for this and get your marking done early?” First, we don’t control the schedule of the exams so we may not have much time to do our marking before pass back classes. Second, I only found out the in-laws were in-bound last Monday in an “Oh, by the way, did I tell you XYZ?” (I’ve been getting that a lot lately from other sources, too–more on that in another post.)

Granted, they aren’t staying the night, but they did spend the afternoon here and we had a big dinner out. Once again, I got to play the rude host. I did get a lot of marking done, though.

 

Journals Among the Piles of Confusion

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Yesterday, December 9th, was decreed by writer Patrick Rhone, to forever be known as Journal Day. It’s a day for people who keep journals to reflect on the past and for them to try to spread the infection, er, encourage those who don’t keep journals to start keeping them.

One of his suggestions is that people look back through their journals and wheeze, gasp, feel sick and get depressed (aka “reflect on the past as recorded in the journal”).

I dug through the piles of stuff in the variety room and decided to revisit my confusion journal. This is not always a good idea as it’s a bit like taking off the bandage and snipping out the sutures to see inside the wound “just because”. However, this year I didn’t have my normal (more or less) depressed October and I decided to go back and review what past entries have been about. Except for October, I don’t see any patterns, but this recent October was warmer and less rainy than usual so maybe it’s a weather related issue.

Now that it’s getting colder and darker I’ll probably find out.

Another part of Journal Day is for journal writers to encourage the people who don’t keep journals to keep them. In the past, as part of Christmas, I’ve given our girls blank books. and required that they do some sort of daily entry (which, until this blog became a daily event, was totally a case of “do what I say and shut up”–see this link again.)

This went well for about a year and a half until I felt they’d developed the habit. I haven’t checked in a while, though, so I’m not sure if they’ve been keeping up on their journals this year (I’m 90% certain our oldest has not, unless Twitter counts as a journal). This coming Christmas I think I’m going to encourage a different kind of journal idea–one more project based–but as the only parent interested in such things I’ll have to do all the follow up myself.

Whatever happens, it’s a chance for me to visit various stationers and see what the latest products are. That’s the other fun part of Journal Day.

 

The Family of NaNoWriMo Pens–Follow-up

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I’ve mentioned before how, in a fit of madness, I decided to hand write my National Novel Writing Month novel this year. (I’ve also mentioned how I fell short.) I did this partly as a way to use up homemade notepads and to put three of my fountain pens to everyday, intense use. To wax fake Shakespearean about not “winning”, the fault, dear reader, is not in my pens, it is in myself.

Well, some of it was the pens’ fault.

Out with the old, in with the next.

For the most part, I cannot blame these pens.

It was fun to be writing by hand again. As tedious as it can be, there are a lot fewer distractions in a paper tablet than a piece of electronics attached to the internet. The main hassle, as I’ve mentioned before, is that writing two pages takes long enough that you begin to feel as if the scene is dragging on endlessly when, in fact, it’s only a page of printed text. I find that I underwrite when I write by hand as I always feel compelled to change scenes and get things moving. The result is more of an outline and random scenes than a coherent work.

There’s also the problem of random ideas coming in and demanding to be recorded. This can lead to lots of confusing shifts and asides that cause me to go “what the hell was I thinking” and “is my handwriting really that illegible” on a read through.

To help provide a meager sense of order to the proceedings, I used different color inks to show when I changed scenes or when I switched to character background and other forms of world building. I also developed a system of marginal marks that let me know when I was changing direction. This will make assembling the “assembled draft” a lot easier. (Note: I reread and cut up the manuscript and past it together in a better order before I start typing.)

The TWSBI 580 did most of the writing at first. I like the larger ink capacity of its piston filling mechanism and that its nib is broken and write’s well. Towards the end I started using the Levenger Sunset and the Namisu Nexus more.

The Levenger Sunset was, at best, okay. The nib is scratchy and in need of some tuning and it didn’t seem to get better the more I used it. I’m trying it now with a different ink, but unless it gets worked on (or I learn to work on it myself) it may be destined for a return to long term storage.

The real surprise was the Namisu Nexus with a titanium nib. Out of the box the titanium nib was squeaky but I wrote with it until the squeak went away and was replaced with a dull scratch. Towards the end of the month, I found myself reaching for the Nexus more often than before and I could feel the difference as the nib broke in. It doesn’t quite have the ink capacity to by my number one workhorse, but it may have just earned its way off the sales block.

I’ll keep working on the novel, by hand of course, but at this point it’s more of a long outline and random notes than a novel.

A family portrait, with a celebratory whisky.

A family portrait, the pens and the notepads, with a celebratory whisky and one of the marginal marks.

 

20,000 Words Short of the Win

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If I hurry, I can finish my current novel and win NaNoWriMo by midnight Japan time. All I have to do is write about 171 words per minute for the next two hours.

Although I maintained a reasonably consistent writing habit, which is the entire point of NaNoWriMo, I wasn’t able to sit down and grind out the pages needed to “win”. Starting the evening classes twice a week also stole away a lot of time and although i had a lot train time my routine amounted to 1) if you get a seat, nap on the way to Tokyo; 2) get a seat at a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi and write your blog entry; 3) after the classes, if you get a seat, read all the way home because the seats are too cramped to write comfortably and you don’t want to risk looking up into the eyes of the little old lady standing in front of your seat.

(Note: Yes, for the record, my mother raised me better than that.  However, the rules are if you don’t see the little old lady, you don’t have to give up your seat too her. Something like that. Either way, gentlemanliness and gentlemanly virtue vanish on the last train and that little old lady would have killed someone for that seat and probably tried.)

The other hassle was exam preparation time which filled up slots that could have been used–totally unofficially of course because “salary” and “good worker” and “contract”–as writing time. Today for example, I had an extra hour of down time (long story) and ended up doing actual school related work at the school where I work. (I am as surprised as you are.)

If I do this again next year, and I almost certainly will, I will aim to trade off some of my free days in October with my busy days in November. I’d intended to do that this year, but it didn’t work out.

The results of all this were 29,524 (ish) words; a lot of world building and rebuilding; several pages of character description and character design; the basics of a plot and a couple usable scenes; the chance to use three pens in “real world” conditions (more on that in another post); a novel worth pursuing.

As always, it’s been an interesting month of writing. It was easy at first, then not, and then life and work took over to make it even more difficult. I’ll keep working on the book but will also make time to finish the editing and typing projects that have been put on hold this month.

(Also, next year, if I’m still doing this blog, I might count those words as part of my daily word count…)

 

Sitting Waiting Writing Watching Waiting and Waiting

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I spent most of the day sitting in an uncomfortable chair waiting for one thing to happen. After it happened I kept waiting.

Today was the annual competition for our youngest’s rhythmic gymnastics club. Clubs from all over the area gather and their members put on one performance along with a hundred or so other girls.

The spectacle involves lots of sitting, a few speeches (this is Japan after all) and then a series of warm ups and practices. One hour after we arrived the competition started. The competitors paired off with someone of the same age group and performed their routines.

The problem with RG is that each performance (ball, hoop and dance) has a different song and that meant the different competitors cycled in and out as the people in charge cued up the right song. Also, it apparently wasn’t possible for the judges to watch more than one person so only two girls could perform at the same time.

The other problem is that each girl only performs once. Our youngest did a performance that involved the ball and some dancing and then got to join us in the stands to watch the rest of the performances. After that, we had to wait to see the final awards ceremony with, of course, more speeches.

Along the way I wrote 10 pages for my NaNoWriMo novel (more on that tomorrow) and every now and then looked up and clapped. In my defense, everyone else was using their smartphone when their loved one wasn’t performing.

Our youngest did a good job, but not a great one. The difference between good and average in RG is shockingly large. She lost control of the ball once but mostly her weakness is she lacked any polish. Her jumps and turns aren’t smooth and she didn’t seem to have much energy.  She finished in the middle of the pack but far from last.

Next year we’re going to have to sit down and talk with her about if she wants to stay in or not. If she does, I’ll be there again, writing tablet in hand, only watching when she’s performing.

More Than One Challenge Causes Strife

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I annoyed our youngest today. Like all kids under the age of teen, she has a natural desire to help out and do stuff. However, because she’s a tween, she apparently only likes to help out and do stuff once.

She Who Must Be Obeyed and our oldest were off to visit schools today which left me in charge of our youngest and random chores.

The first chore was to hang the laundry outside but that involved a couple steps. The first step is to unpack every other item from mesh bags She Who Must Be Obeyed insists on putting things in and which adds extra complications to what should be a fairly straight forward process. (That’s another post. If I’m smart I’ll never write that post.)

The other step was to take down and fold the laundry from yesterday. (That’s another post. If I’m smart I’ll never write that post either.) I took the dry laundry off the hangers and handed it to our youngest and said “fold this”. I had to provide a little instruction but she did a good job.

Later, it was my job to throw together some lunch. I reheated yesterday’s mushroom rice and whipped up a wilted spinach salad with bacon, tomato, olive oil and a dash of lemon juice. Our youngest seemed to enjoy the meal.

After we ate I cleared the table and told her to do the dishes. She went into preteen mode and ignored me. Later, when I reminded her to do the dishes, I got the “why?” and, oddly, I gave her an answer that didn’t involve “I told you so”. I told her I’d cooked and she got to clean. Also, it wasn’t that many dishes and I would do the biggest and most dangerous things (frying pans and knives). She grunted a response (which is clearly proof she’s practicing to be a teenager) and did nothing.

Eventually, I had to remind her to do the dishes. At that point she did them and even dried them and put them away.

Now it’s my turn to do the dishes. (Insert grunted response.)

Halfway There But Not Halfway Home

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I may not get there. I’ve already juked the stats but it doesn’t look as if that will help.

Yesterday was day 15 of the 2015 National Novel Writing Month and I should be at 25,000 words. Instead, on day 16 I’m at 19,190 words. If I’d stuck with my plan of writing on the days off during October and swapping them out with days in November, I’d be in better shape.

Instead I spent a lot of time doing research and doing some basic world building.  That was useful, but didn’t produce many pages of text. (More on that later.)

After a good start, I hit last week. I was busy and I didn’t get much chance to sit down and write. Over the weekend I got a lot done and then sat down and recounted words. I’m putting down about 195 words per page on average and decided to bump my official word count per page. That helped a little, but not that much.

(Note: With those accounting skills I am available to help governments of all kinds with revenue and harvest predictions and five year plans.)

The coming weeks will be just as busy as last week.

I’ve finally got a plot and an ending and am forcing myself to slow down and overwrite. One of the problems with writing by hand is you feel as if you’ve written more than you have and you’re convinced the pages you’ve just written are wordy and boring. Then, when you enter them into a word processor, you realize they are only one page of typed text and that you’re actually rushing.

I’ll keep working on the book. I have a couple weekends yet to go, including one three day weekend, and I could manage my time after school and before my evening class better. I could also, hypothetically, work on bits of it during class. Hypothetically, of course.

The last ditch plan will involve incorporating the research I’ve done. It’s not very much, though, and I’ll have to get a lot closer to 50,000 for those notes to help. I’ve already dropped a couple days of writing anyway, so I won’t feel too bad about adding them to the total.

I will also need to find a place to hide and write when I’m at work.