Pocket Revolutionary

I am officially working on my first dead-tree book. I know I technically spilled the beans on Twitter at the end of last week, but this is my official announcement. I was approached by Packt publishing a couple weeks ago to see if I would be interested in writing a book on building and pimping out (not their words) templates in TYPO3. I decided that I’ll never know how little sleep I can live on until I really push it and accepted the challenge. So, over the next six months, I will be writing, screaming, crying, and having at least a couple breakdowns just so I can officially say that I’m a published author. I can only imagine that as a published author I’ll be able to raise my hourly rates, fly first class, smoke a pipe with gusto, and generally live a life of leisure and self-imposed solitude. I haven’t decided who’s going to play me in the movie, yet, but I’m leaning towards Lyle Lovett or a very disgruntled Randy Newman.

How does this affect this blog that I’ve been trying to write in more consistently? Well, I’m forcing myself to write an extra hour a night, and at least every once in a while that has to mean something other than “the book”. In fact, in the interest of writing a clear instructional book, I will be channeling 90% of my snarkiness, obscure cultural references, and general temperament toward outlets like this and the occasional telemarketer. The remaining 10% will probably make it into the book in a much more palatable dosage. On the side of helpful effects, though, this will give me more experience writing genuinely instructive articles. I’m already planning on blogging my process a little for those who haven’t already read the thousands of blog articles covering the same topic (I promise, I’ll offer something different…  like what word processor and meth dealers I use for late night working).

One week ago, I said goodbye to my number one fan. My mom, Kathleen Anne Gabrielle, read every single word I wrote, and she’s the biggest reason that I write today. She encouraged me when I was the scrawny kid with the Tom Clancy novel on the playground and a notebook in his back pocket, and she was my most active commenter when I started blogging.

More than that, though, my mom was my model of a great writer. She spent her whole life wanting to reach people with her words, and she loved the writing freedom that came with the web more than anybody I’ve personally known. She blogged, twittered, and Facebook-ed her way into so many lives this past year, and I know it’s because she reached people with honesty. Anybody can say you should “write with honesty”, but it’s so rare to have a model of what it really means to write from your pain and to truly connect on that deepest, scarred level that we all share.

Because of this slow digression it is easy to catch myself dwelling on all the things I can no longer do or will never do again. A Coleman commercial on television reminds me that my camping days are permanently over. A Six Flags ad reminds me that my last ride on the “Superman” ride three summers ago was my last. Are these laments true? Yes. Honest? Yes. Just? not really (in my eyes) and they are certainly not pure or lovely – and contentment goes right out the door.

I will not find contentment concentrating only on the possibility of my healing but on focusing on those things that are EVERYTHING Philippians 4:8 lists. We cannot cajole anyone into their healing by carelessly quoting Scriptures or platitudes. That is exactly what Job’s friends did and in the end their voices (and I think their ears) were silenced by the booming voice of God who boldly asked Job dozens of rhetorical questions that all had the same answer – God and God alone because He IS Sovereign – period.

How Content I’m Not…  An Honest Confession – Kathleen Gabrielle

Kathleen Anne Gabrielle passed away quickly Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 in her home with her roommate and my wife by her side (and me running to the store to grab her a fan to help her breathing). She wrote many places, but the last place she wrote (with a final posting three days before she passed) was her most devoted project, An Open Heart Journal, which I recommend reading from the beginning. Many of her final posts took her almost a whole day to type (and included actual typos for the first time in her life), but she never quit. I guess that was her final lesson to me.

I tested out the new bing.com “decision engine” with a good ol’ fashioned vanity search for “Jeremy Greenawalt”. You cannot imagine my horror to see that the #8 result is this site with the words “Animated Logo designed and created by: Jeremy Greenawalt”. I will go on the record right now to any future clients and say “It’s not me”. I’m sure he’s a nice person. I feel bad knowing that my site is at the top of the list of “Jeremy Greenawalt” responses in Google and he would probably find this post in his own vanity search, but I must disavow this logo right now. I’m not sure I can legally send a cease and desist order over his name as a “designer of spinning logos”, but my lawyers are working on it right now and I will keep you apprised.

I’m still recovering from my second major brush with burnout, and this last one (quietly) almost took me out completely. Scott Boms has put together a well-researched (and lived) article at A List Apart that I recommend for anyone working in “the industry”. Even if the phases outlined below don’t sound familiar, that just means you can read up on preventing burnout before it’s too late.

The identified phases [of burnout - not in a particular order], several of which I bet sound familiar, are:

• A compulsion to prove oneself
• Working harder
• Neglecting one’s own needs
• Displacement of conflict (the person does not realize the root cause of the distress)
• Revision of values (friends, family, hobbies, etc., are dismissed)
• Denial of emerging problems (cynicism, aggression, and frustration become apparent)
• Withdrawal from social contexts, potential for alcohol or drug abuse
• Behavioral changes become more visible to others
• Inner emptiness
• Depression
• Burnout syndrome (including suicidal thoughts and complete mental and physical collapse)

A List Apart – Burnout

I hate blogging about blogging, and I agree with Jeff Atwood’s rants against “meta-conversations” (semi-ironically in his blog), but the act of blogging (or not blogging) is a valid part of my life to talk about right now. I am writing again after more than six months of nothing, and I want to explain what happened. Everyone struggles with ruts, but once or twice in your life you hit the rut, get thrown from your moving vehicle, and get hit by a train that whisks you away from your pursuits. After mixing metaphors like that, I’m sure you want to know what happened.

I was (kind of) committed to writing last year. I had worked myself to a quivering puddle, but I had saved up all of my vacation days to splurge them in December in a relaxing three weeks of writing, reading, and video games. Unfortunately, just a few days into my bliss my father died. My world turned upside-down, and I dropped everything that didn’t have to do with family or funerals. I dedicated the front page of this blog to a memorial and watched as comments rolled in dedicated to my dad. At that point, I was swept up in the tornado of family, funerals, and estate management, so I couldn’t write. Honestly, though, sometimes I just didn’t want to see my dad’s picture move off the front page. It felt disrespectful or “too soon” for those who were still grieving. Then my mom got sick, and I had another project to keep me away from the keyboard as I drove back and forth to the hospital while trying to keep the web department at Generals International running. I tried off and on to post again, but it just didn’t feel the same and I only finished one article.

My dad’s death and my mom’s illness has thrown me off in every single way… so how do I recover or at least start writing again? Well, I’m not really sure, but for now I’m forcing myself to get back to good habits. My habits were formed over years and were wiped out with one phone call, so I have to force them back in. I’ve added a special repeating “Daily Tasks” bucket to OmniFocus. It forces me to repeat new habits (short ones, at least): read for 20 minutes, write for 20 minutes, clean for 20 minutes, etc. I could say that I’m turning over a new leaf and changing my lifestyle, but that wouldn’t be true. I’m just structuring in tasks that used to naturally be a part of my day until I can “want to write” without a checklist reminding me.

What else am I doing? I’m doing [whatever is important to me] now. I’m not putting my dreams off to wait for a long vacation in December when “I’ll have more time.” There’s enough unimportant tasks to keep me busy for lifetimes, but they won’t matter in the end. I don’t know what the end of this year will look like for me, but I do know my dad’s only regrets were the goals that he didn’t start pursuing until he was 50. He died after accomplishing so many dreams, but he spent decades waiting to start even more.

I don’t write in bullet points, but if I did, this article would be simple:

• Create habits
• Do something important