Not Fun At All

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Today’s post is kind of a whiny one. So be it.

I have never discussed where I work. You don’t know the name of the company. That’s the way I want it to stay. This blog is about other stuff, not specific corporations.

However, I have a friend who works at a big company that is downsizing. Why are they downsizing? I’d guess that they want the stockholders to be happy. They might even be preparing the place for sale. That always starts with “trimming the fat” and making the place more attractive to purchasers.

Whatever the reason, along with downsizing there always comes the “We need to work smarter, not harder” phase of stupid. 

What is that phase? Well, in my personal experience, it has meant that in 7  of my 7 employers (including different groups within the same companies) there is inevitably the battle cry from management “Cross Train!!!!!” 

Ugh. Let me explain, for those of you in management around the planet: it is no longer 1750 in the British Colonies of the Americas. That’s when the industrial revolution started, and this crazy thing called “specialization of labor” kicked in. The theory, crazy as it sounds, is that if you have people do a single set of unified tasks they will get better at those tasks. If you have everyone do everything, they will commensurately suck at some of them.

I might add that in 7 of the 7 times I’ve personally ridden that train, the cross-training/work experiment collapsed in about 30 days. Why?  Because not everyone is good at everything. If you have people knocking it out of the park every day, why would you take them from the batting rotation and hand them a lawnmower? “Here, Dunlap, take this mower and make sure the field is properly striped for today’s game.” Dunlap then has to learn how to operate the mower, have someone explain the technique for “striping” turf (harder than it sounds), and then let him screw up until he gets it right. 

In the meantime, Reynolds has to put down his landscaping tools and find a uniform and cleats. He hasn’t swung a bat since his junior high school days – a solid couple of decades before. He’s nervous and upset that he’s not done at noon on game day, and instead has to go out in front of 10,000 fans at the park and face an experienced pitcher. The other team, you see, didn’t cross train this week. 

The game gets going and the field looks like crap. Missed tufts of grass all over left field, the lines between the bases are wavy and have gaps. After the first inning, the cross-trained team is down in 3 outs and takes the field where they make 57 errors. Only the fact that the manager kept a couple of ringers in reserve to rescue the thing from a total fiasco makes it even bearable to watch the game. We don’t even want to talk about the hygiene levels in the concession stands where the team’s trainers are making snacks. The first inning ends with the score 27-0. It would be higher, but the other team was tired from running the bases. 

How else does this impact the players, concession stand workers, and groundskeepers? Well, all of them are stressed from having to learn new tasks. We all get comfortable in our grooves, and most of us select our jobs based on what we like to do. Each resents being uprooted from their routine and comfort levels. Some mutter for the entire day about how they liked what they did and wish they could do it again.

Thirty days later they all go back to what they should do. Except for two of the groundskeepers who just retired instead of putting up with the stress.

My friend is miserable at work. He hates his job, whereas a week ago he loved his job. I feel for him. 

Nice move, big company.

 

Writing Stuff – About Writing

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Greetings from the keyboard. 

I have been on a tear the last few weeks, working on two different projects. One of them is slow-going, but about to quicken quite a bit.

The other? It’s a secret. But there’s no secret about how much fun I’ve been having while cranking out the words. It’s a story about something completely different, and because it’s out of my usual genre/genres, it’s fun to write. 

It is not Christian Fiction. I have grown to hate that term, and all that it implies. It is fiction that is well written and has an underlying base of Christian values. The hero is a Christian. But he’s very unlikely to show up at a church tea. Nor, unlike Kurtz, he’s not going to use his military skills to solve the problem with high-explosives or a ton of bullets. He could, if he wanted, but that’s not who this guy is. 

Christian Fiction is an unfortunate designation that some authors hide behind when they want to just blast out a story that wouldn’t sell at Barnes & Noble. “It’s really good for Christian Fiction” is a phrase I never want to rely on in marketing my work. Most of the authors I know writing “Christian Fiction” are good. Some are excellent, and deserve far more in the way of sales and recognition. But, sadly, there is a “it’s good enough” mentality in the mix and it’s painful. If it’s Christian Fiction, some overlook the poor writing. Hungry for stories that don’t offend them, they buy badly written books. 

That has led to a narrowing of definitions, and forces out people at the edges. This is not to say I’m abandoning my values and faith, but that I’m working on a project that doesn’t neatly fit in the box. Okay. So it is. 

 

I have written two novels with explicitly Christian themes. In neither of them was the hero a “Bible-banger” or a preacher when the story started. In Assault on Saint Agnes, Kurtz just gets more deadly with every chapter, and wrestles with his values as a believer. In Nicholas of Haiti, Nick has no faith at all, and God calls him out for a very specific role. Kurtz is a long-time believer, and Nick is fresh out of the bottle. 

But all the writing was from a faith perspective. This new book is never going to sell in a Christian book store. That’s too bad. It’s a story of redemption as much as either of the first two. It’s given me liberty to add a few words that you can’t use in the industry. Nothing awful, but it allowed me to accurately write dialogue for a couple of characters who were not exactly Deacons at the local Baptist church. I’ve noticed there are way more people like these characters than there are Deacons. Funny, eh?

In the past two weeks, my candle has burned brightly. I’ve put out over 10,000 good words while working full-time at the day job. Not on the clock, but by getting up at 0500 and annoying Chewy by putting him in his box and stealing off to the coffee shop, an unused conference room at work, and other hidey-holes where I can listen to the Bangles on my headphones and just write uninterrupted for a few hours. My boss and coworkers know that if they find me hiding in a corner I will not make eye contact and they should back away slowly while I continue to type. I just tune them out.

I only tell you this because I’m getting ready to do some power writing and I’ve neglected to blog this week. I like this blog. It’s sometimes inconvenient to crank one out, but other times it’s as easy as opening the page. 

I hope you enjoy all that I write. If you haven’t yet purchased the books linked above, it would be nice if you’d do so. And, if you’re an audio book listener, and can handle some real-world words and sexual situations, there’s a page here, and the books are listed on the right, of my work for both my books and Mr. Michael DiMercurio. Give them a listen. Good stuff.

 

See you next week. But first, the gratuitous dog picture. Because everyone likes Chewy.

 

Checking for spinach.

Prayer War

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I’m old, and may have mentioned this before, but I changed my prayer life a few months ago, and it’s been the most wonderful thing.

I’d been contemplating how I responded when people asked me to pray for them, and wasn’t satisfied with my answer. I always did pray for them right on the spot. I’d usually remember to pray on at least one other occasion, and then randomly if they popped into my mind. Post it notes on the desk kept the more prominent needs front and center for a while, but they faded into routine as well. 

So, I promised God I’d up the game. I did nothing about it until we watched The War Room one rainy afternoon. 

This move has been out for a few years, and I somehow managed to miss it. I like the Kendrick product line, and so I sat down with high expectations. 

Listen, this isn’t a movie review, but you should watch the movie. It’s way better than the 3 stars the general populace gave it. I suspect this audience will love the movie. 

I finished the movie and proceeded immediately to start searching for prayer applications. I wanted one I could load on my tablet/phone/windows computer. Nothing I found synched very well. But, as is usually the case, God provided an answer in a note-taking software on all three. 

I started adding people to the list as I thought about them, or they asked. I would take them off the list once the prayers had been answered. The list grew from 1 minute to about 15 minutes now. 

Do I pray like I should every day? No. But I pray more than ever. I even bust out the phone and work on the list when I’m stuck waiting on something/one. I pray on my knees before I go to bed- Chewy licks my face if I get too engrossed in it, and that’s an okay distraction.

Overall I feel closer to God, pray more, and have more hope than I did a few months ago. 

I’d strongly suggest you try this – after watching the movie – and see how you feel. It’s one thing to say you will pray for someone, or put up praying hands on Facebook, and quite another to take the time to do it. 

 

I’m glad I did.

Amish Werewolves Of Space – A Book Review

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Quiet out there. I know you people are all laughing at my taste in books. But while you’re laughing, I’m enjoying some darned fine science fiction/speculative fiction works which you, with your snoot in the air, will miss. 

Now, let’s start the tale at the beginning. Several years ago, Kerry Nietz wrote a book that broke the mold, or set the tone for the future: Amish Vampires In Space – Or, AVIS for the fans. What he did was take some deep insights into the Amish culture, and religious beliefs, and introduce space travel and vampirism. It was well written, fun to read, and spiritually sound. It even made the Tonight Show as the worst cover of the year – and helped Kerry sell a lot of books.

 

A couple of authors (myself included) jokingly said, “Any idiot can do vampires. Can you do Zombies?” It was at the height of teen vampire books, and Zombies were just ramping up.

Kerry, being Kerry, ramped up with Amish Zombies From Space. Now, “Take that!” was implied, and it was even better than the first – because now he’d created a universe for the Amish with Zombies AND Vampires. I mean, seriously, how could you top that?

The answer is his latest book, Amish Werewolves Of Space. 

You’ve probably read my reviews before and trust me if you’ve gotten this far. So, listen closely: reread the first two before picking up the third. Not that the story doesn’t stand alone, but it’s not as much fun if you don’t have the other two in your pocket. That’s the struggle with any series. You might get the second one to stand alone without the first, but by number 3, especially in a true trilogy, you had best have read the first two.

I enjoyed it immensely. It was fun, logical, fit in the universe he’d created, and answered a lot of questions. The only down part was that I don’t know how he’ll extend the series. But since he’s messed with me twice already, I’m expecting great things.

But even if he doesn’t come up with another member in the series, he’s a heavyweight in the writing world. If you want to read great science fiction, with a light Christian undertone, you have to read Kerry’s work. He’s a very good writer. So, try some of his other books as well – I have. And I enjoyed them.

Now, Kerry – can we do something with Cuckoo clocks? 

 

Age Has Its Benefits – For Others.

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As we age, we strangely accumulate wisdom at random moments. Sometimes, we don’t even realize we’ve pulled it off until someone points it out to us.

Today it occurred to me that I have accumulated some wisdom. Some of it on my own, some by watching others exhibiting their wisdom. Either way, it’s kind of cool. Yeah, it’s a combination of tooting my own horn, and showing you that you too can do the wisdom thing. 

Let’s start with the observation thing first. I have two good friends who are entering a new season in life. Each of them is facing a gigantic change in their lives. Each of them has a spouse with early onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

None of us want to face the sort of situation that they are up against. Yet I’m gaining wisdom by contact with them. They are both exhibiting grace, calm, and love. They aren’t running away from the problems, but instead finding ways to continue their  romance. I admire them, and the fortitude they display, in the face of trying circumstances.

I have spent weeks praying for them. Hoping God reaches out and touches them with the love I know they need. They know as well as I that you can’t earn grace, because it’s bestowed. I hope they find it bestowed soon.

Today a coworker came to me with thanks for some advice I’d given several weeks ago. So as not to embarrass them, I will not say what the advice was, but it was a gratifying moment for me. I had done something rare for me: I listened to their problem, evaluated all that they’d told me, and waited until they finished before answering. 

And then I used the accumulated wisdom that was layered like bluing on my shell. I had relevant experience to the problem at hand. I did not go on and on about the proper course of action. I merely laid out what would be the best course to save them some serious agony: the kind of agony that ultimately results in you being in dire straits. The kind of advice that someone with a lot fewer years on their chassis had no way to accumulate. The kind of wisdom that comes with age and damage you pick up from not listening to others.

Maybe that’s what we should all be doing: listening to the wisdom of others. It is often said that we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Using them in the proper ratio is what most of us miss in the game of life. 

Age. It’s allowed me to pay attention, and it’s giving me the skills to not just do better in my life, but to help others in theirs. I really would rather be an example than a cautionary tale. Seems that may be working out after all.