Month: May 2010

We’re trying to sell all kinds of junk today in a yard sale outside my sister’s house: old shoes, striped mugs, a thirty year old food processor, baby clothes, and, among many other things, a kid’s riding toy that looks like a huge worm.

It would appear there’s nothing you can’t sell.

It’s kind of like being in a parallel universe where there’s a huge demand for over-sized rubber ducks, and there’s no shame in negotiating 25 cents off a 50 cent item.

Other reasons a yard sale makes me feel like I’ve gone through a tesseract?

1.  a dvd recently bought for $14.99 is sold for $1, and that’s after the customer negotiated it down from $2

2. a green robe hangs from the handle of a stationary bike, and there’s a My Little Pony on the seat.  You could own all three for $11.25. And this all seems completely normal

3. the cook book I thought I couldn’t wait to get rid of suddenly takes on new meaning and importance when I’m about to sell it to a stranger for 75 cents

4. all the best stuff gets snatched up in the first thirty minutes.  Then you have the rest of the day for someone to buy “Host Your Own 80s Night” which is sitting next to the book, “Dog Training, Fly Fishing, and Sharing Christ in the 21st Century”.  There is clearly no one person on the planet who would be remotely interested in buying either of these things, yet you can’t start packing it all up at 7:30am

5. who owns this stuff?  when did I buy it? and who am I trying to kid, offering for sale things I would gladly pay $20 to someone if they were willing to take away the whole lot?

6. my sister has four kids.  I have four kids.  Between the 8 of them all they want to do is buy each other’s stuff.

So what’s the strangest thing you’ve ever bought or sold at a yard sale?

This post is a continuation of a story I told Wednesday.  Click HERE to read that post first, if you’d like.

*****

By Monday night I already had the new salary budgeted out.  By Tuesday I was looking at houses.  But Tuesday afternoon I got a phone call.

“Hey, Shawn, about that second interview.  Look, I know you would do a great job in this position, but the guys above me really feel I should hire someone with this particular, specific experience, and it’s one thing you don’t have.  I’m really sorry.”

I blinked two and a half times.  I tried to swallow but it felt like my cell phone had lodged somewhere just above my already abnormally large Adam’s apple.

“Yeah, sure, no problem,” I said with the remaining breath in my lungs, one long exhale, leaving barely enough to say “bye”.

Wow.  That was a hard pill to swallow.  I called Maile and told her – she seemed fine with it (I think she was secretly relieved, in a way, because she didn’t believe we had given the writing thing a serious attempt), but when I hung up I thought I was going to start crying.  Crying!  Then I got mad at myself: what was I, in kindergarten?  I angrily fisted the tears from my eyes and set my jaw, completely ready to begin the long journey towards becoming a bitter old man.

Then God said something to me.

Now, before I get into that, I know that some of you are really uncomfortable with the idea of God speaking to people.  Some of you don’t even believe in God.  Look, I am totally cool with either of those, and if you’re still reading I appreciate you tolerating my theistic world view.  But let me try to explain this as rationally as possible.

As I was driving down the road I suddenly had this overwhelming feeling that things would be okay.  This makes no sense to me, because at that moment in time every logical piece of data said that my life, at least financially, sucked, and was heading toward worse than sucks.  I was driving back to my parents basement, where my four children and wife were living underground, with about 2 1/2 months worth of income, and beyond that just a gaping financial chasm.

Yet peace overwhelmed me.

And the thing God said to me?  “Why don’t you at least try really hard to make a living, doing what you love, and stop letting this fear of failure halt you in your tracks.  You haven’t even pursued the leads I’ve given you.  Just do that, as a first step.”

I remembered what I had prayed to God the weekend before.

“Fine,” I said, and I may have even said it out loud to myself in the car.  “Fine, God.  Look, if you want me to write, if you want me to take a risk, then I’ll do it.  But this is what I propose – I will focus 100% on writing as long as we have at least 2 months income in the bank.  Once it drops below that then I’ll take that as direction from you to look for a job.”

“And in the mean time I’ll make some calls.”

By the end of that month I landed three new writing projects that would keep us going for six additional months.

Suddenly I had 8 months of income lined up.  And we were paying off huge portions of our debt.  I was making more as a writer than I would have made at that job I didn’t get.

*****

Whenever I share my story I always feel the need to clarify my position – I am not in any way trying to encourage people to recklessly quit their jobs, or turn down really good ones.  I’m not saying that working 40 or 50 hours a week for an employer is an inherently bad thing.  But I do want to challenge you – are you doing what you are passionate about?  Are you pursuing the leads that you’ve been presented with?  Have you reached out to others in your field of interest and made connections?

Don’t let fear, or the thought of discomfort, keep you from reaching a higher level of self-fulfillment and happiness.  Don’t let our culture’s overemphasis on stability and materialism shackle you to a life you don’t want to be living.

Don’t be afraid to spend your life doing something that you love.

*****

To read the very first segment of this story, which tells about how Maile and I made the decision to move from Virginia to Pennsylvania (and into my parent’s basement) click HERE.

So I’ve been thinking through an idea and am ready to share the beginnings of it with you guys.

I want to have a writer’s conference this fall in Gap, PA.

So far I’ve lined up some great speakers:

Andi Cumbo (professor, tutor, writer extraordinaire) to talk about the beauty and pain of honesty on the page;

Bryan Allain (successful blogger and talented writer and the funniest man IN THE WORLD…or at least in Pennsylvania…c’mon, at least give him Lancaster County?  the east side of Intercourse? – for all you dirty-minded folk out there, that’s the name of a town) ANYWAY, Bryan’s working on an e-book about getting your blog from 50 followers to 500 followers, and he’ll be sharing all/most of his secrets with us;

Ken Mueller from Inkling Media (he’s a social media ninja) will be talking about how to use social media to explore your identity and increase your platform.

I’m also working on lining up some more published authors to create a panel for you to grill (with questions, not over hot coals).  And an agent.  There might be a real, live literary agent in the flesh for us all to question, urgently, about why our unpublished book is not yet on the bestseller lists.

I’m really excited about this event and hope to make it an annual thing. Check out some more details HERE, and let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions for activities, speakers, or topics you’d like to hear about.  Eventually I hope to have a website up that’s dedicated to the event, but for now we’ll work off the page I just linked.

This is the continuing story of my life last year and into the early part of 2010.

*****

So anyway, it turns out my determination to not get a regular job lasted about four weeks.  By early January I seriously doubted my ability to make a living as a full-time writer.  I’d stare at the screen for hours at a time wondering what it would be like when my kids starting having grandkids and they brought them home…to the basement which we would surely still live in.  I kept looking around that subterranean dwelling (a lovely basement, but a basement nonetheless), and I wondered what I had done to deserve it (you know, all those self-pitying types of thoughts).

“I’m 33 God.  If I would have seen this future when I left college 11 years ago I probably would have jumped head first off the campus bridge and into the Yellow Breeches.”

(The Yellow Breeches is about 32 inches, at its deepest.  Jumping off the covered bridge was a metaphorical threat).

As I continued to dwell on how hopeless my situation seemed, I received an interesting bit of information: there was an employment position open at a local company, and I knew the person doing the hiring very well.

The new part of me, the part that wanted to follow my dream of being a writer, take a radical leap of trust in God and make an attempt at living a simpler life, fought this plan.  I still had a few writing jobs that would carry us for about three months.  But that side of me didn’t fight hard.  The part of me that wanted a nice salary and a 401k and dental benefits fought harder, was kind of ruthless.

So I sent a text to the person who was hiring.

“When can you start?” they texted me back, only half joking.  We arranged for an interview on Monday morning, first thing.

Sunday night I tossed and turned.  Was this the right thing?  Did I want to jump back into the dog-eat-dog world of business so quickly, just for a sense of stability?  What if I focused on writing for the next few months – would more projects come along?  Or was the whole writing thing just a big mirage?

And the biggest question: how would we ever be able to afford our own place if I didn’t have a steady income stream?  I began to wonder if there were any basement walls we could dig out, you know, add some tunnels, turn the whole thing into Bag End.

I remember praying hard that Sunday night, and then, just before I drifted off to sleep, I told God that if there was a writing life for me out there, help me not to get this job.  Really, I mean it (as soon as I said it, I wanted to take it back).

Monday morning I got up and shaved (not something I do on a regular basis) and put on a suit (not something I do more than once a year, if I can help it).  “Good luck,” everyone said to me as I walked out the door.

But I never felt more like a fake.  Seriously, was I doing this?  It just didn’t feel right.  But the paycheck, the security, it all looked too good to pass up.

The interview went great.  We both felt confident I could do the job well.  My resume included all kinds of similar experience.

“Looks pretty good,” he said.  “I’ll call you tonight and we’ll line up a second interview.”

He called me later in the afternoon.  “Can you come back in on Wednesday?”

Sure, I said.  It was starting to sink in.  I really thought I was going to get the job.  I was starting to feel a little nervous – what would happen to my dream of writing full time?  Would I ever be in this place again, or would I start using the money I made to live a life that could only be supported by a continually increasing income?

I found myself talking to God again: “If you happened to catch the tail end of that prayer the other night, you know, where I said that if there was a writing life out there for me that I’d like you to keep me from getting the job?  I was really tired when I prayed that.  You can probably just disregard it.  I may have even been talking in my sleep.”

*****

If you’d like to read the very first post which tells the beginning of the story of my wife and I deciding to move our family of 6 into my parent’s basement because we were in debt up to our eyeballs and needed to get back to basic living, click HERE. Check in HERE for the result of this particular job hunt.

First of all, you should know: we’re making progress. The tension and conflict has finally become too great for just one blog to handle.  Check out last Friday’s post by Bruce Nuffer over at The House Studio, and see how our Top 10 Candy debate is continuing…ad infinitum…ad nauseum…ad every-latin-word-you-can-think-of-um.

But it’s time to move forward to a new topic, so today I reflect on the good old 1980s (again) and the top 10 movies from my childhood.  They are as follows (in no particular order):

Can’t Buy Me Love – since this list doubles as a virtual “Top 10: Where the Stars Got Their Start”, this is the perfect place to begin.  Do you recognize the now-famous doctor in the glasses?

Annie – one of the first movies I ever saw in a real, live theatre.  The scene at the end, with Anne climbing that train bridge thing, while being chased by Rooster, scared me for weeks.  Okay, I’ll admit it – there are ongoing bed-wetting issues.

The Goonies – quite possibly my favorite childhood movie of all time.  Remember the scene where they are shouting for help up through the well?  For a long time I believed every single well was a portal into a world of adventure, and I never saw a well I didn’t want to climb down into (until I saw The Ring, that is, and now I never see a well without running in the opposite direction as fast as possible).

The Karate Kid – was I the only kid who wanted to sand something, anything, just to practice sand-the-floor? was I the only kid injuring himself while performing crane kicks off the front porch?

Rocky IV – “if I can change, and you can change” . . . go on Stallone, give that tear-jerking “then we all can change” speech one last time.

Space Camp – this 1986 movie launched my Kelly Preston crush.  And I totally forgot the little kid was Joaquin Phoenix

Flight of the Navigator – what if you returned to your house today only to discover that 8 years had passed and you didn’t realize it?  What if I watched this movie again and realized Sarah Jessica Parker was in it?  Both concepts still totally blow my brain.

Back to the Future -Michael J, you’ve never regained your glory from this movie.  But who expected you to?

Top Gun -I definitely watched this on the down low.  There was no way that I would have been allowed to watch Top Gun when it first came out (I was 10), or at any point in the subsequent 6 – 8 years (but I know that at some point I did).

Airplane – surely you’ve seen this one? Surely?

So what did I miss?  And before you say ET…I’ve never seen it.

Last week in the comments section someone mentioned that they were following this blog from Poland.  Poland! That seems really far away.

And it also got me wondering…where are all you folks checking in from?  So if you don’t mind, go down to the comments section of the blog and answer three questions:

1) your name and where you live

2) the view out your window (pick any window in your life right now)

3) your blog and what it’s about (or what you’d write a blog about if you did such a silly thing)

I’ll get things started by answering those questions myself.  And don’t leave me hanging, or I’ll start to feel very lonely and misunderstood.  And all you Google Reader folks get off your lazy readers, come to the site, and comment for once.