First Post

I am a blogger now. Hooray for me.

Something rubs me the wrong way about blogging--perhaps the notion that everything I think or do is worthy of consumption by others. But I like reading blogs. So maybe I'll like writing one, too, now that I'm starting.

Anyway, I'm a 28-year-old Chicagoan with almost a year and a half of sobriety, and I'm between careers, going through some major life changes, and all that blah blah blah. Friday was my last day at a job I worked at for damn near five years. I survived the bursting of the New Economy bubble and watched my company go from about 480 employees to somewhere just north of 60 once we got out of Chapter 11. (When I started, we had free snacks and pinball machines in our lounge, and I used to take a pinball break in the morning and another in the afternoon. That didn't last.) I survived all that craziness, but I couldn't survive my own lack of motivation once I realized the bulk of my day was wasted on work I truly loathed. Not because it was bad, but because it was keeping me from things that were truly good.

So now I'll be spending more time writing and helping people, and hopefully I'll figure a way to make money with the writing, but if not, I'll just have to figure a way to live more cheaply. I have a book, Pottersville, that's available on Amazon, a 50s Las Vegas crime thriller called The Impostor that I haven't published yet, an untitled World War II screenplay that exists as only as a rough first draft, and another book, Rhinoceros Skin, that's about 2/3rds done. (I think.)

Tomorrow I have to start trying harder to find an agent and sell these things in earnest. Maybe it'll happen and maybe it won't; I've learned in sobriety that life doesn't happen on my terms, but on God's. But I'm excited about finally having the time to really give it my all.