First Post of 2011

[aadler]

 
New year, new stuff to deal with and consider. I let my LJ presence fall far back the last several months, partly because there wasn’t a whole lot to report (among other things, I haven’t written a word of fiction since sometime in October, and even then only a few sentences that I won’t be using), and partly because I just didn’t care enough to go to the trouble of chronicling the little that was there. All the same, a few things have gradually accumulated, and the first day of a fresh year is a good time to start up again.

Open first cut — Family Issues 1

Susan and I spent New Year’s Eve at a party at my younger brother’s church, at his invitation. I haven’t had much to do with him since I got back from deployment, our daily issues just took us in different directions. As an example, he recently married and moved to the next state over (last night’s gathering, then, actually was at his former church), and I didn’t attend — nor was invited to — the wedding. In fact, this was our first opportunity to meet his new wife, which was one reason we wouldn’t have declined the invitation except under the most dire of circumstances. This, unfortunately, is his fifth marriage, but it appears that he may have finally made a good choice.

I can’t criticize his judgment on the first two; disastrous as they turned out to be, I strongly approved of them at first exposure. The third was pure trash, with substantial questions regarding her sanity, and viciously abusive on top of that, and I never even met her till after they were divorced. I advised him against marrying the fourth, but she actually looked like a really good match for him, when I finally got the chance to meet her; I was surprised and saddened when various aspects of her character surfaced to turn that marriage also untenable. (Assuming, which I can’t do with full certainty, that it wasn’t his own shortcomings that undercut that marriage, with contributions to some of the others.)

Come to think of it, maybe he didn’t invite me to the wedding because he was embarrassed by four previous failures.

At any rate, Number Five appears solid. My brother got into the Mormon church about four years ago; I do not and cannot believe those tenets of the Mormon faith that diverge from more traditional Christianity, but there is no mistaking the benefits he has acquired from his membership and activity. He met his current wife when they were both delegates, from their respective districts, at a larger event, and she’s been a teacher for many years, so her bona fides are excellent; personally, she comes across as friendly, stable, and reliable.

Here’s hoping. He’s gone through more grief in his life than anybody else in my family, and deserves a chance at some period of relative peace, never mind happiness.

Close cut

Open second cut — Family Issues 2

Come to think of it, for all that I’m a believer in the institution, my family has not had outstanding success with marriage. My parents were divorced, but reconciled and remarried after a year; I managed the same feat, albeit with a ten-year rather than a one-year gap. My youngest brother, separated from his wife for several years after she engaged in a lengthy and unapologetic affair, is now also divorced; my niece, married straight out of high school, was left by her husband just after she gave birth to her second child because 1) she just wasn’t any fun any more, and 2) he’d met someone who was fun. For that matter, pretty much the same thing happened to Susan’s niece, except that this niece had her own two children with her second husband (to whom she remains married) rather than with her first. Essentially, every member of my family who has ever been married has also been divorced, even those who are satisfactorily married now.

Along the same line of discussion, we just had a similar but less stringent disappointment: two weeks before her scheduled marriage, my daughter and her fiancé decided this wasn’t a good idea, and called it off. The bad news of that is that we had already booked a nonrefundable flight/car/motel package to the expected out-of-state wedding; the good news is that she’s back with us now, and we and she and our son are all now living in the same state for the first time in nearly five years. She’s finally finished her GED (though she has yet to receive the certificate, she has the contact information for acquiring that item), and we’re ready to get her a driver’s license and some job training and start her on the process of joining us in the Catholic church. Too bad about the non-wedding (if nothing else, Susan and I were looking forward to the prospect of grandchildren before forced retirement), but some beneficial results all the same.

Close cut

Open third cut — Military/Employment Issues

Six months after returning from deployment, I still don’t have a job, but things are looking up on that front. My Army Reserve company’s unit admistrator (a government civilian post) decided not to return to his position after the latest unit mobilization. The company’s UAT (the position just below the UA post) applied for the vacant slot, and was just accepted for it, which will leave his position open. I had expressed interest in becoming the new UAT, should such an opening come about; the outgoing man had said he would give me his strongest recommendation, and I’ve now been advised that it would be a really good idea for me to submit a resumé immediately. So that could work out pretty well, pretty soon.

The thing is, I’ve been getting just a bit restless lately. I tried to get on as an independent contractor for Iraq or Afghanistan — at least three other members of my company are currently serving in that capacity — but didn’t quite get my application in before the opportunity closed. The money would have been good, and I already know I like the life, but some things just don’t happen. Now I’m thinking I’d like to volunteer to deploy with some other company, since mine isn’t due to go out again for another year; since 2002, I’ve had every even-numbered birthday arrive while I was in a foreign theater, and I’d hate to break that streak. Plus, I really DO love the life, plus I’m moving ever closer to the point where I’ll be disqualified from further military service due to age (I need to investigate what would be involved in getting an age waiver, a few years before it becomes an urgent matter), and I want to get in as much field time as possible before I’m edged out of such service.

So, we’ll see. If I get the UAT, I figure I’ll spend a few months settling in before investigating the possibility of volunteering for a new deployment ahead of the current schedule. If I don’t get hired on, I don’t think I’ll have any need to wait.

Close cut

Open fourth cut — Minor Personal Issues

Susan continues to lose weight, as do I, whereas my daughter has gained weight since the last time she was here. As it stands, I am now the lightest member of the family (and hope to lose another ten, fifteen pounds in the coming months); Susan is currently still the heaviest, but only by a pound or so, and within a few weeks she’ll be in third place instead of fourth. Last night, for the New Year’s Eve party, she tried on the suit she wore for our wedding, and had to put it back in the closet because it was too big for her; I’ve gone down one pants size and have now had to switch to a smaller belt, and should within a month be able to drop another pants size. Right now, I’m the lightest I’ve been since I was working out daily at Guantanamo; by summer, I think I can be back at the weight I was when I was in my twenties.

And, I’m ready to begin exercising again. If I want to get age waivers to stay in the Army — even the Reserve — I have to be able to show good scores on the Army Physical Fitness Test, which is sprung on us anywhere from two to five times a year.

Close cut

Open fifth cut — Writing Plans for the Coming Year

Not New Year’s resolutions per se, but things I want to do and now’s the time to begin.

Different aspects to this. First, I’m committing myself to a minimum of an hour per day spent on writing output. I can do more — and will, when scheduling permits and inspiration supports it — but I won’t allow myself to settle for less. I have a number of stories that I’ve been meaning to do for years; let’s see if I can manage, say, half a dozen of them this year. Along with that, I’ll be entering RemixRedux again, and also intend to take another try at NaNoWriMo (and finish it for once), and participate in the Yuletide challenge for the first time.

As my daughter is also known as sroni, our being in more immediate proximity gives us enhanced opportunity to produce further installments in her Queenverse series. (Just a month ago, I told her about an idea I’d had that I was willing to let her try, and in the course of discussing it we both realized it would beautifully dovetail into the currently-planned next installment.) Our partnership has never been smooth — she can occasionally take a long time to finish something, and then I can take even longer to complete my contribution/revision — but we’ve had some good results as well.

In the summer before my first child was born, I finished a science fiction novel I’d been working on, now and again, for over ten years … then, exhausted and burned out by the sprint at the end, I put it away and haven’t more than glanced at it since. I believe I’m ready now to give that another look. I’m better than I used to be, and have more experience at sustained output and finishing what I start, and the idea is still good enough to make work.

Finally, I have another idea — neither fanfic nor strictly fiction, but not really nonfiction either — that I believe could actually attract a national audience. I want to work on that as well in the coming year, and if I feel good about it, I might let it take over the whole of my attention. We’ll see.

Close cut

Open sixth cut — Rounding Out the Last Details

Since we’d already paid for the travel packet — let’s say it’s to Nebraska — for my daughter’s wedding, we’re still going even though the wedding is off. (Money’s already spent, so we might as well get some benefit out of it.) Vacationing in the northern Midwest in the second week of January isn’t actually something I would normally recommend, but we’ll go and we’ll have a good time. We will not, I expect, spend much time talking to my daughter’s ex-fiancé or his family, but neither does there currently appear to be any reason to hold grudges on that account.

Our son is about to begin his last semester of college. He’s wondering about graduate school, but accepts without resentment that if he follows that road, he’ll be paying for it himself. Susan did so, I did so, and trust me: you value your education a lot more if you have to balance study and work (never mind study, work, and marriage/family).

I got caught up in other stuff, but I haven’t quit on my desire to learn Esperanto. And now that Roni is here, I have someone else with whom I can study and practice. (My son likes languages, but he’s still studying Chinese in college, and I don’t want to impinge on his focus at this time.) I’m now sorting through a dictionary I copied from online, and once I have that settled to my satisfaction, I’m going to practice by translating various stories of mine into that language. Other people are doing it, both at AO3 and at Fanfiction.net, so it may not be a crowded field but neither is it unbroken ground.

Close cut

There may be other significant things I haven’t touched on, but I’ll get to those as they occur to me. It’s a new year, and — as always — a chance to make a new beginning.

Comments

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

Well, best to get things figured out *before* the ceremony, I guess.

[aadler]

Our own thoughts precisely, though we’re still trying to get a better understanding of precisely how it came about. (Susan is more dissatisfied than me about not knowing the specifics; my own observation is that Roni is showing quite a bit more equanimity than I ever did in any of my broken engagements, offering at least a hint that this might have been something of a relief to her as well.)

[PS: I let her use my laptop last night, and she apparently logged in to LiveJournal with it; I came within a hair just now of posting this reply to you, AS sroni.]

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

I saw her latest post, and I think you're right that it was a relief to her as well.

"[PS: I let her use my laptop last night, and she apparently logged in to LiveJournal with it; I came within a hair just now of posting this reply to you, AS sroni.]"
Now, THAT would have confused me!