The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 224): No Men Helping Please

We went to the library to find me something to read. I went through art, design, fiction, philosophy, and software before finally deciding on three books about writing. When I was finishing up, #1GF! walked by with a crying little girl. The kid was lost, and #1GF! was gently walking the hysterical kid to the front desk, where a clueless mother happened to be standing. #1GF! gets pretty pissed when people don’t pay attention to their kids, and this woman hadn’t even noticed that her kid was missing. When #1GF! got back I said, “You know I could never do that. If I walked around this place holding a crying kid by the hand, people would think that I was trying to steal her.” #1GF! looked at me like I had just stated that the sky was blue or Boston was cold in January. It was a strange realization that in general men are discouraged from being around children by the risk of being cast as deviants. Yay, America.

Monday (Day 225): Mostly Writing

There was a snowstorm, so I got up and watched Nightwatch through Netflix on demand. It feels good to sit and watch a movie when it’s snowing out. I spent the rest of the day writing, which ended up being sub par. I talked to the architect who said he’d get me my plans in a couple of days.

Tuesday (Day 226): Pull Your Own Weight

Started the day reading a book on freelancing from Mediabistro. It made freelancing seem a lot more complicated than I had thought, but it gave some good tips on how to pull it off. The book seemed like it was geared more toward journalism, and I’m not sure if that’s the direction that I’m looking to go.

I spent the rest of the day editing a post I wasn’t too happy with and watching a video on permission marketing. Permission marketing is getting a specific segment of buyers to opt in to a newsletter in order to sell them stuff. In between all that selling you have to give them a mess of useful and pertinent information to keep them subscribed. It’s sort of like building a niche blog for e-mail.

When #1GF! got home, she asked me very nicely to pull a little more weight around here. In recent months, I’ve been focusing on writing more and chores less. She was right. I might have disagreed if I were making enough money with blogging to justify the time, but I’m really not. I need to dedicate some of that time to things that are more worthwhile.

Wednesday (Day 227): Running Errands and Getting Advice

I left the house early and went to the store to buy rock salt for our walkway because I was going over to the house to shovel and expected a lot of ice. The store only had 80 pound bags, which was way more salt than I needed, but it felt good to carry to the car. There’s something about lugging heavy objects on your shoulder that makes you feel like a man. I drove the salt over to the house and found out that the snow had either melted, or one of our good neighbors had shoveled our walkway for us. I sat in the car and stared for a minute before heading out to get milk.

When I got to the store, I was amazed at how empty the parking lot was and took my time picking a space right up front. When I came out five minutes later with a single jug of milk, I realized that supermarket parking lots are probably always empty at 9AM on a Wednesday morning. Isolated moments where I feel like a stranger in a strange land who is doing the opposite of what everyone else is, make me enjoy being a hobo. It feels like getting a jug of milk is a privilege that the rest of the world is missing.

The sun was out, so when I got home I threw my coat on the couch with the promise that I would go back out. That’s when I realized that I had no money and no errands to run. I gave up on going out, but because I was determined to interact with the world, I spent a couple of hours sending out e-mails to people I had been neglecting.

In the process I decided to send e-mails to a few writers to see if they had any advice for for writers who are just starting out. I sent one to Cory Doctorow, whose response was so odd that I found myself shaking my head at the screen and laughing. It was honest, yet inapplicable to my situation, making me examine why I was asking for advice in the first place. I want to think that the Jedi mind trick was intentional, but I don’t think it was. I think it was an honest answer that I was reading into.

Two others sent me advice as well. Another Jonathan Dyer who I talk to every now and then sent me a practical, yet inspirational reply. The third, and what I consider to be the most practical and extensive response, came from Sarah Veale, a freelance writer in Toronto. It was honest and reinforced a lot of what I had been thinking.

I spend a lot more time editing than actually writing, so I spent the rest of the day editing two posts that I couldn’t get right. I don’t know if that’s normal for writers, but that’s my process. I topped off the day by finishing Mediabistro’s Get A Freelance Life. I would recommend it for anyone dreaming of having the life of a freelance writer.

Thursday (Day 228): A Day Wasted With Too Many Directions

I added the ability to get this site’s updates by e-mail to my subscription page for people who want to keep up with my posts, but aren’t ready for RSS.

The architect finally called to tell me that the plans that were supposed to be ready on Tuesday or Wednesday were close to done. Unfortunately, I had used up all my retainer. That wasn’t great news. I spent the rest of the day floundering between social media, writing, art, and brainstorming for new site ideas. Rather than focusing on one topic at a time, I tried to do them all at once, which created a mess and I got next to nothing done.

Friday (Day 229): Details? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Details?

I met with the architect in the morning, and one of the first things that happened was that he laid the plans on the old stove in the kitchen. The stove is so old that it still has a pilot, so the plans started to burn. That was a sign of what was to come. Within ten minutes, he realized that the plan he had devised put the new stairway in the way of the plumbing stack. He then suggested a plan that was similar to the idea that I brought to him several thousand dollars ago that he said wouldn’t work. He also pointed out that the plans weren’t exact. Being that I am fully qualified to draw plans that aren’t exact, I was wondering what the point of having an architect was. I started getting really frustrated, and told him what I thought about spending a lot of money and time for plans with major flaws. Then, I just stopped and decided to focus on how we could fix it. Unfortunately, he had no answers beyond seeing what a builder thought of the plan, although he did promise to make everything right.

After the meeting, I went to BestBuy to get a gift for #1GF!’s niece’s birthday. It was raining and the store wasn’t open yet, so I sat in the parking lot listening to the rain and watching it on the windshield. As the world melted outside, I thought about how isolated driving is. Other than voices on the radio, we are alone in our cars. We only see other cars as objects, not as people. I decided to get out of my rolling isolation booth and around some other humans.

When I went into the store, there wasn’t really anyone there. I stood in front of the rack looking for the gift I was buying, and then wandered through the music section. There wasn’t any reason to be looking at music, and I didn’t really have any money earmarked for it anyway. I just stood there staring at a batch of CDs for a few minutes before deciding that being in the store was a waste of my time. I had nothing to shop for and nothing to escape from, so beyond the gift I had, the store was of no use to me. I decided to put the gift on one of my last remaining gift cards and head home.

Once I started my PC, I worked on a mock up of a new site until #1GF! came home. After she got settled in, we went over the plans that the architect had given me. She picked out a bunch of issues right away, creating a number of points where the plans were incorrect. I got pretty wound up. As if the plans weren’t bad enough, they just got worse. To top it all off, professional wrestling came on TV at 8PM. I was not only aggravated with the plans, but with society, too. What kind of world do we live in where architects don’t care about details and wrestling has been moved from 11AM to a prime time slot? What happened to the Brady Bunch world that seemed so safe and normal?

Saturday (Day 230): Web Games and Boogers

We read and played web games against each other for half the day. Afterward, we went over to #1GF!’s mom’s house for #1GF!’s niece’s birthday. There were lots of kids, lots of pizza, and lots of boogers.

What I Learned

• Society doesn’t want men around kids.
• Watching a movie in the morning is great when you have nothing pressing to do.
• Freelance writing seems more complicated than I thought.
• I learned more about permission marketing.
• I need to cut the writing and up the chores.
• There are people out there who are happy to help you if you ask them.
• Some web celebrities are pretty easy to reach and will respond to your e-mails.
• Multitasking too much spreads my attention too thin and ends up wasting more time than it saves.
• This is not the world of Mike Brady.
• Kids think it’s funny to wipe boogers on you. They’re right, as long as you are not the one getting wiped on.

Share, Bookmark, or E-Mail This Article

Posted in Leisure