I didn’t quite expect to come out of my hiatus tapping into the darker depths of my soul. Bosses are strange creatures. Like I feel about most co-workers, I often don’t care what bosses are up to when I’m on my own time. Unfortunately, most people spend more time with the people they work with more than their families. Is it any wonder bosses, annoying co-workers, and students have gotten under my skin at one time or another? There’s more material here. Whether I want to go there or not is another thing altogether, but it always makes for something interesting.

I’ve got some lighter topics I want to write as well and there’s Comic-Con and Pride coming later in July. It should be quite a season on ShindoTV.

We’re at a party early on for the University’s MFA program and I mention working with Professor Joseph K. You ask me what he’s like and I’ll try to give you a sound byte answer. After all, this is a party, and the conversation’s not supposed to be too deep. So, here’s what I say: Joe’s a good guy and I work very well with him. I also enjoy his workshops a lot.

My answer would change much later, as I was only one year into my academic and professional relationship with Professor K. Being his secretary didn’t pay much, but I liked it better than working in the supermarket. There, I was paid better and I had benefits, but with Joe, I had keys to the mail room and his office, and I had a code for the English Department copier. I had a place to hang my coat, to read, to study, and even to write. I even had my own desk so I wouldn’t use his. What I had lost in practical terms, I gained in privilege. Which is essentially the case with anyone who goes into something arts or humanities related. I also harbored great hopes that my association with Joe would benefit me in the future. Perhaps I would become an editor or a professor, or even an editor-professor like Joe.

In other jobs where I was at an entry level and the boss were professional mentors, they were often happy to help someone like me move on to another job. They recognized that these jobs weren’t meant to last forever. They knew these jobs were starting points for a long term career track. For example, when I tutored for the English Center at the East County college, the professor who coordinated the program was happy to serve as a reference when I got an interview for a tutoring position for the University. She was definitely a good example of a healthy mentor.

Joe, on the other hand, was not. During the second summer I worked for Joe, the TA’ship that formally was my professor’s secretary job only paid $200 a month and I didn’t get paid after the spring semester was finished, so I tried to find a job. I went high and low. Not surprisingly, I could not get arrested for applying to Target, Trader Joe’s or even Borders. Perhaps I was overqualified with my bachelor’s degree. I sent my resume to a local subsidiary of a an international publishing company and I got an interview. My $200 a month assistant editor job qualified me for a job that paid at least ten times as much, even if it mean losing a title, privilege, and perks. My ability to abuse copier codes might vanish. However, being able to pay my rent and the bills would have been more secure if I got the job. Only, I didn’t tell Joe and he found out from someone else.

Rosalyn was someone I became good friends with in the course of program and she was also one of Joe’s acolytes. I helped train her to do some things for the avant-garde literary journal, including dealing with PageMaker, and I told her the news out of excitement. She then told Joe, who sent me a restrained, but nasty e-mail telling me I couldn’t work at this company and his university press enterprise at the same time. E-mail is often strictly text and it can be difficult to gage the tone. However, he seemed genuinely offended that I wanted to move on to something better.

I did go to the interview. The local publishing house’s subsidiary was located in a downtown high-rise and I even got to see my apartment building from my interviewer’s office. Looking back, I was unnaturally stiff in my shirt, tie, and suit. In this Southern California city, dressing up isn’t natural at all, even though the protocol applies to job interviews. I did not get the job.

I still had my $200 a month job, but the end was coming soon. My personal, academic, and professional relationship with Professor Joseph K had been strained since the middle of the spring semester, my second in the program. I had known him for two and a half years, and he had treated me like a son for most of that time. I looked to him as a paternal figure in my life, mainly because my own relationship with my father was strained. There was a dark side to all this. At one point after Easter, Joe summoned me to his home for an intervention. I became less diligent in my duties as his secretary/assistant editor, and he called me on my flaking out on some tasks. Fair enough. Then he said I had no loyalty to him.* Intuitively, I knew there was something wrong with that statement, even though I wanted to salvage the relationship. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue being his gopher, but I just didn’t want to quit. I have learned since then when it’s time to quit, I should definitely do so. To continue is to make things worse, which was the shape of things to come.

Also, he was supposed to chair my thesis. I hadn’t asked him yet, but working with Joe seemed to be the direction by default. There was that other guy, his rival in the MFA program, but I wasn’t sure about him. Joe has said enough to taint my views of someone I didn’t even know. If he was possessive of me on a professional level to the point where it was better for me to work for $200 a month rather than get a job with professional pay, then workshopping with other creative writing teachers was definitely anathema. There was a popular visiting professor and I wanted to take a workshop with her. Oh, I should have known that was the beginning of the end. Of course, I did know.

*As someone who got involved in a Christian fundamentalist cult in my mid-twenties, this raised a red flag. Intuitively, I knew there was something wrong with it, even if I couldn’t rationally defend it as valid. It was only later when I met with a counselor did I find my instinct about Joe’s loyalty remarks validated.

Last week, I began coursework at San Jose State University. This, of course, is for my MLIS degree, and I didn’t even need to relocate. I’m doing the program online. As I’ve never truly had the full online course experience, I am glad that they have provided much resources to facilitate being a remote commuter student, including a class on social networking. Lest you think I’m taking a course to learn about Twitter, Facebook, etc, this is more about using technologies such as ANGEL (an internet course format), Elluminate (for real time class interaction), Second Life (for the same reasons as Elluminate), and overall tech literacy.

I’m a casualty of the California economy. I’ve wanted to get off the adjunct teaching boat for a while, but budget cuts more or less pushed me off. I have found teaching to be an emotionally draining experience, especially one that was hard to turn off as a community college instructor. Being in front of students would take a lot out of me and then I’d be faced with their papers and lesson plans. I’m simultaneously relieved and worried. I’m now looking for a new job, hopefully one that doesn’t involve classrooms.

I’ve been gaining some experience ever since earlier this year, around March, with my local branch of the public library. The library is wonderful, I like the people who work there, and the librarian’s great. I’ve been looking around for a gig that pays, and one with the public library would be nice. I’ve also looked at the various websites that have jobs listed in the library field (locally) and I’m definitely networking.

Now that I don’t have any courses, I’ve been trying to de-clutter my life. Whenever I’ve taught courses, I’d be afraid to throw anything out as anything I’d get would be crucial. Student work I can put in a box for the next several years just in case someone challenges a grade. With some other things, I need to decide whether to file them away or make use of my paper shredder, or simply recycle if there’s no vital information.

I’ll be glad when this whole economic nightmare is over. I’ll be glad when I come out of my own personal recession.

I’ve been interacting with Chris, Brian, and Fredo through the blogosphere for the past two years, which has also taken to Twitterville (for Brian and Fredo) and Facebook. I’ve met all three of these guys in person in a one year period, and I look forward to more blog correspondence in the future.

With Joshua Minton, I found a friend who was putting forth his BFA creative writing afterlife on his blog. He put his fiction, poetry, rants, and articles out there. Actually, it was one of his articles on Every Writer’s Resource that got me in touch with him. While there isn’t a high level of blog banter and interaction going on between us, I read his Online Pulpit regularly and I have the upmost respect for him.

There are a couple of other bloggers I’ve met in that period, but those mentioned above have been a more significant part of my experience with ShindoTV and the blogosphere.

In the latter part of 2008, I started attending the local blog and Twitter meetups. On the surface, they were parties with lots of alcohol, but I’ve been making some new friends and some online contacts. One such friend is Melodie, who has shown up in some posts as a recurring character, and Rich, aka richandcreamy, who has been commenting on my blog lately. Along with developing some real time friendships, I hope to develop some good blog friendships amongs some of the local bloggers as well this year.

I’ve come across some interesting blogs out there as random people out there started following me on Twitter. Scott Campbell is a writer out in New York City with a quirky blog name, ThePete, which provides a lot of pointed commentary and discusses various projects. Another’s a more anonymous blogger, One Mean MFA, who’s currently working on the graduate creative writing degree and posts on teaching and the writing life. I’m following both of them for sure.

Then there are people I meet briefly and they move to other towns. Tamika‘s one such person and I’ve gotten to know her a bit more through all the Facebook witticisms and her blog. We’ll hang out a bit whether she visits San Diego in the future or if I head out to visit Dallas. I look forward to chatting it up in real time again, but I’m tuning in to the Gran Diva in the mean time.

I may come across some cool people to add to this community this year. Also, I hope that those I met also continue to enhance my blogging experience and I theirs. As for me, no flight plan, no problem. Here’s to seeing where this blog takes me in 2009.

There are some I can’t embed a header image into, but I want the Helvetica aesthetic. I’ve downloaded a few templates and tried them out on Saturday. Here are the screenshots.

I like the Neutica template a lot. First of all, it has the Helvetica font and it’s used artfully. The homepage layout has a wonderful order to chaos feel to it, words and texts arranged into something very attrractive. The default background color is yellow, but it’s easily switched to white. Photos used in blog entries are condensed into small squares and the entries are cut short into a click to read more form. An attractive feature is the are sidebars on the posts that display author’s name, date posted, category, and comments.

However, the info boxes were a dealbreaker for me. When I clicked to view the individual posts, those info boxes were still on the side of the entry. Unlike the homepage view, the individual post’s view does not truncate the photo. especially if they happen to line up with the boxes. Instead, the boxes run right over the photos, embedded videos, or any other image 500 pixels wide. This was definitely unacceptable to me. A shame, because I really wanted this to work.

Ever since I migrated my blog to WordPress, I’ve contemplated using the Andreas template. It’s severely clean in design, very Scandinavian. Unlike Neutica, the font isn’t Helvetica, but that’s nothing that can’t be tweaked. It has two sidebars that can be customized and the header can take about any image. It’s very well constructed and my blog posts don’t look strange when I look at them individually.

When I applied the Andreas to my blog, I felt, to use something overused on Project Runway, underwhelmed. I was hoping to go retro (reverting to a decade-old website design of mine), but it felt blah.

Now the Upstart Blogger Minim‘s even more severe than the Andreas in its minimalism. However, it has a certain charm with declarative headlines for post titles and even a space for the signature image in the upper right hand corner. What’s even better is that this template is extremely low fuss. No funky conflicts with images, and the presentation has a visually pleasing newspaper format.

My one issue with the Upstart Blogger Minim is that the blog’s title isn’t very prominent, especially in contrast the headlines that give the template its charm. I’ll have to think about this whether I could live with this feature or not, but I haven’t ruled it out yet.

Overall, I’ve still have some looking around to do. If you know of any templates that fit what I’m looking for, please send the links my way.

For this year, I plan to keep on going with the blog. I’ve had my blog-ennui already. Plus, everyone (including yours truly) is hooked on Facebook, and I’m waiting for that moment where they get super-douchey and yank the carpet out from under the biggest Internet party ever. It may never happen, but one should always be prepared for the aftermath. For me, that’s keeping my lovely crayon-adorned channel (or whatever appearance I adopt) because my words are mine here.

That said, here are some of my goals this year for ShindoTV:

• continue the serializing of Resplendnence. I’ve put out a good portion of the story already. There will be new installments starting Monday, January 5, and it will continue the Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule.
• Sometime down the road, putting up some original fiction (apart from Resplendence).
• write and post some interesting posts. Rants and some humorous posts are always fun, but definitely some essays. I’d also like to get back into providing evidence that I watch too much tv (my recaps/reviews). A post series I’d like to do is where I go through my book inventory, read (or re-read) them and then do my reviews.
• revive the podcast. I have a camcorder and some audio recording equipment, so why not? I can do v-logs and other things, such as reading of stories.
• Expanding the online community and meeting new people as part of the online community. Also, there are the friends I’ve had a correspondence with over the past two years. I’ve had a chance to meet several of them and I hope to meet them again in the future.

Those are the things I’d like to accomplish for 2009 blog-wise. Friends, I wish you the best on yours.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s entry, I want to stop procrastinating. It is my goal for this year, even if I might not cut out all of my bad habits. The idea is to start.

One manifestation of living on Procrastination Street is writer’s block. It is easy to put off writing because the rewards aren’t so immediate. Twittering my time away or posting witticisms on Facebook get more response, but those sentences are sent out on the quick and don’t take much process to make it into a story or a poem that expresses an idea.

I have an MFA, dammit, but I knew a hundred or so people in my program and we were all crammed in the same workshops trying to get attention and feedback, and even praise. Unfortunately, it’s a horribly expensive way to get a writing audience and I’m still paying for it. Another drawback is that some participants can be downright stupid. It’s even worse when it’s framed with smart, intellectual phrasing. All I wanted was the writer’s equivalent of an art studio, but I’ve learned that I couldn’t find it in the classroom or through all the alcohol soaked events I had with my fellow MFA program friends. I even found that a certain professor who should have been my mentor in the program turned out to one of my biggest detriments to my MFA career. Yes, I have written about him too. Thank God I was able to walk away from that and find someone who was a help to me.

Even with the helpful professor, I found I still had to deal with myself and my writing habits. He helped me find poets  and writers to read for my benefit and I took used unstructured spare time to get into the zone. Some semesters I was blessed with plenty of time on my hands, while the last couple of semesters where I worked as a TA were taxing. When it was just a few classes and a nonsense job a few hours a week, I could find the time to creatively zone it. With being with students, I found the experience emotionally draining and I could not get lost in unstructured writing or art time as I would like. Instead, I felt like I was hung over after teaching and that I needed to recover.

Even after a couple of years teaching post-MFA, the energy issue hasn’t gone away. I still feel spent after a class session with students and I have to pull myself together to meet my obligations. After the classes, I feel ruined and I don’t even want to touch a book or to string words together into a coherent story. I don’t completely hate teaching, but there clearly is a personal cost to me. A benefit is certainly unconventional hours—I’m not penned up in a cubicle all day pretending to work while doing Facebook and having my three square meals of I Can Has Cheezburger. The issue, however, is balance.

Ideally, before or after I’ve prepped and graded work and have done the lecture, I could do those things I need as a writer such as write, of course, and read to feed my writing. Even with the constant practice of writing, some rewards, such as publication or adoration, are not guaranteed.

Unfortunately, some rewards are more immediate. Tuning the world out, giving myself over to sloth and watching tons of movies on Netflix Instant Viewing are some quick returns, but I ultimately accomplish very little in the end. And, I just hate myself even more.

I may often desire a “room of my own” or some ideal writing environment. When I lived in Downtown, I had a great room, one with a view. Forster allusion aside, that is an apt description of the place. Living there, all kinds of thing happened to distract me, so having the room wasn’t always the answer. I had some people who stayed with me for a while and overstayed their welcome, but the solution is simple: KICK THEM OUT. However, in that room, all by myself, I could fritter away my time watching too much TV or doing nothing and that was the bigger challenge. It’s something I still face post-Downtown apartment.

Essentially, I need to just sit down and take time to write my stories. That’s what I’m doing right now in the middle of the night with this post. The TV’s not on, Netflix Instant Viewing is not running, and my Twitter Profile/Facebook statuses are silent. If I’m going to sit on my ass, I might as well make it productive. I may not get a perfect draft the first time, but writing’s never been about instant gratification. If I have that great story idea in my head, it’ll take some work for it to translate on paper.

Trying to run to cafés may not always be the best way to go about trying to get writing done. The idea is to be able to write anywhere, anytime, especially where you live. Also, there aren’t always perfect times to write. Just do it. That’s how I’m going to proceed with it.

With that said, I think 2009 is going to be a good writing year for me.

Scott and I claimed two tables at the Adams Avenue Twiggs and had a computer tête-à-tête. This works more for social coffee/internetting versus actually getting anything done.

Coffee and bagel – nice way to start the new year’s, though not to be done every day. They’re handy props to have near a pen and notebook, or even a laptop for writing, but not always good for writing.

It’s a new year, and hopefully a fresh start (of sorts). I’ve got my health, I’ve got work, but no telling how long either’s going to last with the economic downturn carried over from last year. However, that’s as much pessimism I’ll commit to text.

This year, I would like to deal with procrastination, which is the core of many new year’s resolutions. I could name all my goals, but it all boils down to this issue. I’ve always put things off, and it’s a miracle that I’ve even finished high school, especially in my senior year. When I was in college, activities such as cramming for exams and last-minute term papers were such time honored traditions that I kind of felt normal. In graduate school, I found that such behavior almost killed me.

When I was in my first year of the MFA program, I took an incomplete in a lit seminar on the condition I’d eventually turn in my paper. Of course, one has a year to fulfill the incomplete, so this essay I was supposed to write was a monkey on my back. I thought about it every day and I kept putting it off until I absolutely had to write it and turn it in, which was in the last few days it was due. Needless to say, I would not ever do it again.

But, I do stuff like that paper all the time in my life. I let clutter pile up until it’s unbearable, I put off grading papers or making lesson plans until the last possible hour, I intended to go to the gym and not gone, and I keep meaning to get myself into a writing routine. I then hate myself for not following through on these things.

So, I think you get an idea of what I want to get done. However, dealing with procrastination is the start of breaking a multitude of bad habits, even if they don’t all go away in 2009.

With that said, “Happy New Year’s.” I hope you find a fresh start this year as well.

Last night, I went out with my friend Scott to ice skate at Horton Plaza. It’s an annual tradition in San Diego; however a lot of people here can’t skate. I just do the San Diego thing and deal with it – for a while.

Happy whatever festive occasion you choose to celebrate. Happy Holidays from ShindoTV.

While Facebook, Flickr, and even Twitter don’t even come close to the same level of evil and sliminess of Helium, one isn’t necessarily safe.

I suppose I’m not completely safe regarding the web service I’m hosted with, but if they ever decided they wanted to eject me, I’d still have my files. I can always move on to another service and keep posting. Also, I don’t have to worry about if I forfeited ownership to my own material. Nonetheless, back up.

I’ve already had a variety of topics I’ve been doing before I tried to move in the direction of the fiction blog. I figure it’s best to return to that, but how do I come up with a soundbyte answer to describe ShindoTV? I’ve never been good with the short, condensed answer that says it all, especially if a reporter had a microphone shoved in my face. The best answer I can think of right now is that is is my online magazine. It’s in the name too, so this is my broadcast.

Thank you for tuning in to ShindoTV.