Summer Progress Report – How Am I Doing?

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It’s been…a busy few weeks, which, as I talked about last month, was entirely my own fault for taking on too much.

I’m realizing that more than anything else, my tendency to say “Yes” to things (sometimes with an exclamation point attached) is really having an adverse effect on my productivity, because not only does having more things to do quantitatively reduce my amount of free time, it also pulls me in multiple directions, giving me more things to juggle and making me exponentially more stressed.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make this problem better, and though the solution definitely involves taking on less things, making this happen Continue reading »

I Don’t Drink As Much As I Used To, and I’m Cool With That

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At no time in my life was I ever a marathon drinker, but I definitely went to my fair share of parties in college and the years after.  The most drinking I ever did was probably during my first time in Japan, where I used to meet coworkers and friends for drinks almost every weekend and fairly often during the week.  Drinking during the week back then wasn’t much of a big deal, since I started work at noon and had plenty of time to sleep a hangover away.

More recently, back in America most of my hangouts with friends and family included drinks of some kind, though never to any kind of excess.  I also used to pick up new beers to try at home, usually with dinner, but occasionally after a hard day (or a very hard day) at my Day Job.  Drinking alone wasn’t (and still isn’t) appealing to me unless it’s a new, interesting, or Continue reading »

Life Update: I’m Swamped With Work and Things Are Crazy

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All right, gang—this is going to be quick, because as the title implies, it has to be.

I’ve had a lot going on spread across multiple fronts the past few weeks—Day Job work, creative work, daily life maintenance, and just about everything else you can think of.  On top of all that I had some friends visiting from the States last month, and while it was all kinds of awesome to see them again and take a sweet trip, taking two weeks off from creative work hit me hard.

To give you a better idea of what I’m dealing with this month, here’s a snapshot of the most pressing items: Continue reading »

Here’s What I’m Working on RIGHT NOW (Spring Edition)

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Hey all—this week has me caught in the middle of a mad cluster of deadlines, events, and a bunch of other things happening at once (lame…).  April’s also the start of the new school year in Japan, and the start of cherry blossom season, so I’ve been trying to make time for a bit of hanami as well…

With that in mind, here’s a rundown of what I’ve been spending my time on lately.  Some of it, like the TEFL class, have strict deadlines I don’t want to fuck around with, but most everything else is self-motivated as I try to get caught up after losing a lot of time in 2018.

In no particular order, I’ve been Continue reading »

Eikaiwa Bums is in a Brick and Mortar Bookstore!!!!

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The pictures don’t lie—that’s my chapbook short story, Eikaiwa Bums, on the shelf with the other authors at MainStreet BookEnds in Warner, New Hampshire.  The shelf price is a mere $3.00, with proceeds supporting both the author and a super-cool independent bookstore that’s been a staple of my hometown for over twenty years.

Here’s the coolest part—on Sunday, August 18th I’ll be at BookEnds giving an in-person reading and talking about what it’s really like to live and work in Japan.  The reading is totally FREE and will also be a good chance to catch up with me while I’m back in the States for summer break.  Watch for more updates closer to August…

It honestly feels pretty incredible to have something I wrote for sale in an actual bookstore and to have earned a place (albeit a very small one) among the writing community in my home state.  More than that, though, Continue reading »

Daily Creative Work Schedule in Japan!

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(This one took a couple of tries to iron out…)

After I got to Japan, I had trouble sorting out the best way to schedule my creative work time—like, a lot of trouble.  I finish work at 4:00 every day and get home soon after that, so it seemed pretty simple to walk in the door, throw down my bag, and get right to work on the novel, right?

Negative.

Looking back, I wasted a lot of time when I first got here, especially in the afternoons between 4:00 and 5:30, when I’d come home, plop down on my bed, and scroll through my phone or listen to a podcast for longer than I intended.  I was also losing a lot of time after dinner to inactivity Continue reading »

I’m Querying My New Novel! (Here’s How That Works)

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Quick Note: If you’re a literary agent who’s stumbled across my blog, this might be a good place to start reading ;-)

I’ve had this one in the works for a LONG time—MFA Thesis Novel is my satirical novel inspired by my experiences in grad school at the University of Nebraska.  It’s about a twentysomething writer from the Northeast named Flip (who’s totally not based on me at all, btw) who leaves his mind-numbing office job to start an MFA in creative writing program in an unnamed midwestern state.  The problem, though, is that Flip’s a literature nerd who’s stuck in the past—his heroes are Joseph Heller, John Updike, and Kingsley Amis, and he hasn’t read much of anything from the past twenty years—which means his fellow grad students are more than happy to tear his novel to pieces on the first day of workshop.

While Flip’s main goal is to create great writing, the other grad students…think differently.  Everyone around him is obsessed with getting published, beefing up their CVs, Continue reading »

Productivity, Burnout, and Trying to Do It All

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I’ll start this (short) entry by doing something I don’t normally do: pointing you toward something I didn’t write.

That something is this BuzzFeed News article by Anne Helen Peterson entitled How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, and it covers a social phenomenon I’ve talked about elsewhere but haven’t seen explored in this kind of depth.  The gist is that by trying to do it all—and by trying to harness every ounce of our productivity and working efficiency—we’re not only burning ourselves out, we’re overlooking simple errands like registering to vote or taking knives to get sharpened (something I’ve never done, btw.), which in turn is having adverse effects on our sense of fulfillment.

In addition, the article reads like a laundry list of issues that I’ve dealt with myself and/or have had friends deal with, including putting off low-reward errands, maximizing time by cutting meal prep, excessive multitasking, learning to overwork while in grad school (!), Continue reading »

I Paid Off ALL My Student Loans!!!* (with an asterisk)

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Happy New Year everybody—I’m feeling rejuvenated after my vacation and ready to take on a whole new set of challenges for 2019.  Hope you’re feeling the same way.

I also reached a big, BIG milestone, as implied by the title: last month, after making my first wire transfer of money back from Japan, I paid off the very last $3,400 of my very last student loan.  At 5.8%, that final loan was costing me $16 bucks a month in interest, but moreso than the monthly savings is knowing that I’m now COMPLETELY FREE OF INTEREST-ACCUMULATING DEBT, which just feels all kinds of awesome.

It was hard to describe the feeling of pure freedom I experienced when I clicked Send on that last payment, Continue reading »

I Edited a Writing Anthology!!!

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So this one’s pretty cool.

Last spring I put together and edited Concord Writers Night Out 2018: An Anthology of Writers and Writing in association with the New Hampshire Writers’ Project.  It’s a collection of short stories, novel excerpts, poems, and essays from writers around the area with an introduction and a short story by yours truly. (My piece is called “Rejection,” a fictional rejection letter to a REALLY bad writer).  I handled the editing and the bulk of the organizing while fellow writers Gary Devore and Kevin Barrett formatted the e-pub and distribution ends.

It was a pretty rad project to work on, and I’m happy to say that it’s finally out.  After much discussion we decided to make the electronic versions available FREE to literally anyone who wants one, so if you want to check it out you can download the PDF from the NHWP website or get the e-pub for Kindles and tablets directly from the publisher or the iTunes store. Continue reading »

Here’s What I’m Working On Right Now

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A lot’s changed in the past six months—the most glaring thing being that I LIVE IN JAPAN NOW so my routine’s changed a lot from what I was used to back in the States.

On a grander scale, though, the landscape of how I’m spending my time and which goals I’m pursuing is also different—not because my goals have changed, but because I’ve made some decent progress in the past few months in crossing bigger projects off my To-Do list, and that feels pretty good.

So without further ado, here’s an up-to-date list of which goals I’m pursuing right now, in approximate order of importance: Continue reading »

A Short Piece (Promise!) About Making Good Use of Your Time

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I think a lot about time.  Namely why I never seem to have enough of it.

I think about the things I do in the short term to waste time, like scrolling through news after work and watching chains of Youtube videos after dinner and lying in bed too long on weekend mornings.  When these things start to become habits, that’s dangerous, because the amount of time they take away increases over a longer period and you lose even more of your time in these small chunks.

So, I’ve been trying to catch these habits and get rid of them before they do more damage. Continue reading »