(This is another one of those personal posts you can probably ignore.)

It isn’t all fun and games out here, kids. I’m looking for a new place to live, I need to take our littlest kitten to a vet because she’s way overdue to see one, Vera needs some additional servicing since I didn’t get her an oil change when she was last in the shop after my run in with [INCIDENT REDACTED], and there may be yet more hoops my lovely wife and I must hop through in order to get her legally working here in these United States.

All these things are going to take capital, cash, moolah. And none of these things are included in my monthly budget, which is devoured in things like rent, car payments & insurance, keeping the lights on and information flowing through the Intertubes. I eek out what entertainment I can, in the forms of leaving the apartment with my intrepid Canadian companion at least once a week and bringing in new movies and games when possible, and I always make room in what finances I have to go see my son in State College. Anyway, the point is, to keep Damsel, my car and my wife’s immigration efforts healthy, more cash is required.

I was hoping that cash would be coming from Uncle Sam. But after dealing with a few other financial loose ends this afternoon I turned my attention to my taxes. Initially I filed, truthfully, as someone “married filing jointly,” which yielded a rather sizable refund estimate. Unfortunately, since my wife doesn’t have a Social Security number, it might not be possible for us to file in that way at all. And, if I file as “single” with the intent to amend the return later, the refund will be significantly smaller. 811% smaller to be exact.

Want to know how that feels?

That’s how that feels.

Add in another rejection from the Escapist and all the other day-to-day doings of the dayjob and, well, you can probably predict where my head is at right now. Nothing to see here, really. Move along.

My wife likes chocolates, shoes and shiny jewelry as much as the next woman. But the truest way to her heart involves things far nerdier than such pedestrian items.

See, I married a gamer. She carries dice in her purse, she knows the ins and outs of many character classes in a variety of games and she’s got very well-reasoned opinions on what’s worth playing and what’s a waste of time. She blogs about these things. And then there’s the fact that I met her playing World of Warcraft.

So when it came to picking something up for her in celebration of Singles Awareness Day (her name for the holiday commemorating St. Valentine), I knew I had to think beyond the normal bouquets of flowers and boxes of sweets. Of course, she’d just finished Mass Effect and its sequel was released late last month, so it was obvious what she really wanted. Even if she hadn’t reminded me in her signature subtle fashion. (That’s what we call “sarcasm,” kids)

I brought the game home last night, along with a box of chocolates, because hey, some traditions aren’t all that bad.

Happy Valentine’s Day, sweetheart. I know it’s actually tomorrow, but you prefer spontaneity in your gifts, not obligation.

So that idea I mentioned in yesterday’s IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! podcast? I got it off the ground. I actually got off my ass and tried something new. Basically, the idea goes something like this.

There are a lot of podcasts out there that get awfully boring awfully fast. I enjoy podcasting, but just because I enjoy talking about stuff that’s interesting to me doesn’t necessarily mean you’d be interested in listening to me talk about it. So why not open up the forum for people to contribute by sending me ideas? I mean, I don’t want to be boring and you don’t want to be bored. And you’re probably going to be more interested in what you’re hearing if you had a hand in making somebody talk about it. Give folks the keys to the city, so to speak, and let them vote on what’ll be discussed. One could even open up the possibility of having people donate to put weight behind their vote.

So I picked a song that’s freely available for some opening & closing music, brewed up a cup of tea, and blathered the first thing out. Oh, the other gimmick? Unscripted, unrehearsed, unedited. A little raw, as it were. Getting the creative goods directly from the source without worrying about little hiccups or snags. A more conversational experience, rather than me acting like a professional on a pedestal dispensing precious knowledge to you peons below.

Then this happened. Warning: Emo within.

This is just going to be a quick little reminder about an undeniable fact that is occasionally hard to swallow.

I’m imperfect.

Yes, I’ll blog about how I go about doing the writing thing as if other people should do the same, or venture my opinion about a piece of entertainment media that some others appear to consider having merit. But I never come out with these things under the impression that I know everything about whatever it is I’m discussing. Heck, my dayjob involves me dealing with Flash on a regular basis, but I managed to mess up my Star Trek Online preview to the point that it came out long after the Escapist did one.

So yeah. I’m not perfect. I’m happy to share my thoughts on writing, the process I’m going through with The Project, my reviews of movies and/or games and whatever else manages to find its way here. I just never want people to think that I’m under the impression my shit doesn’t stink. Because it does. Dear God, does it ever.

The reason I’m letting my fingers fly about this is some of the other writing blogs I’ve encountered. Let’s face it, we can be a pretty pretentious bunch. Now, being a published author can give someone the rights to crow a bit, and I don’t blame them a bit. And we need to be all about the self-promotion and that means puffing up the plumage. That’s fine too. What gets to me is the occasional blog I stumble across that sounds like it’s being written by a wildly successful novelist about everything they’ve done that makes them so awesome but is completely undermined by the fact that they’ve gotten ink for nothing of note beyond perhaps a few articles. By the way, this is not directed at any of the writers I know personally. Most people I know personally are delightfully tongue-in-cheek about either their current success or their prospects for future publication. They know that publication is a hard, soul-crushing, will-sapping process and those that come out of the other side of it with any measure of success are either wildly talented or masters of salesmanship, especially when it comes to selling themselves.

These blogs which shall remain unlinked as I don’t want anybody else to suffer through their pretension fall into the latter category. They talk about endorsements they’ve gotten from celebrities. They gleefully tell us when their next draft is getting reviewed. They act, in short, like Shakespeare or Austin reborn, God’s gift to the bookstore, a veritable fucking revolutionary in the realm of modern entertainment.

I hope I never come across that way.

It wouldn’t be that hard. I could plaster the good things Bob Orci has said about me all over the place. I could recount every single pitch I send to the Escapist or other publications, with the assumption that Jordan’d be foolish not to put me into the issue in question. But I’m not going to. I know not everything I produce is worth publishing even in embryonic form, and things I do submit that have a chance are going to need rewrites. I know it’s not an easy process and it won’t always go the way I’d prefer. So it’d be foolish of me to act that way.

I guess I just have a low tolerance for the people who do.

If I ever should start acting this way, please, pick up a hardcover copy of Lord of the Rings or Stranger in a Strange Land and give my noggin a good whack. You’ll be doing the world a favor. I’d love to do the same for these people I’ve encountered, but I’d rather not be working on The Project from prison. It’d be hard to concentrate on character interaction when I’m avoiding gang rape.

I’ve mentioned sfdebris a couple times now, most recently in my post discussing my favorite critics. I bring him up because he’s relevant to something going on in my day job currently. In his review of the Star Trek: Voyager episode Good Shepherd, he covers the opening in which Seven of Nine gives an efficiency report, and mentions that a crew member with 5 degrees in theoretical cosmology is at the bottom of the ship doing menial engineering tasks.

Why no, I didn’t use this photo just because Seven of Nine’s in it, why do you ask?

Chuck puts it another way: “On a ship meant to explore the wonders of the universe, you’ve put Carl Sagan in charge of shoveling coal.” While this is more inexplicable than normal in a semi-utopian future world set in space, it still happens in the normal, everyday world. Over-qualification is something that happens in the workplace, especially when the economy isn’t behaving as well as most would like.

When companies cut back in areas, it’s usually in places they’d like to expand but simply don’t have the capital to invest. This means that a lot of the people who get axed are people with ideas, creative folk with esoteric backgrounds who might not be focused on business or profitability. When losing their jobs, they do what they can to look for further employment, brushing up their resumes and beginning the arduous search for a job, a search that is every bit as tedious and uncertain as the search for an agent or publisher. Those who still have jobs, on the other hand, might find themselves in a position where, in addition to their regular tasks, they’re doing things like answering the phone for other departments or watering the boss’s plants or something.

Times are tough, even for a Nobel laureate physicist like this gentleman.

Either way, you have creative people doing menial tasks – like Carl Sagan shoveling coal. I don’t have any sort of real solution in mind for the issue, other than keeping one’s eyes peeled for better employment elsewhere. And one should continue to make time for creative pursuits, because as the man has said several times, if one isn’t fortunate enough to be pursuing their dreams on a full-time basis, it becomes a spare-time endeavor. But that doesn’t mean one should give up.

It just means one might have to get by with less sleep and, really, who needs sleep? I don’t. And now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s coal that needs a-shovelin’.

At least, if I’m lucky, it’ll be coal and not something else.