My apologies for the scattershot nature of this entry, and the lack of an update yesterday, and a late update today. I’ve been working ten- and twelve-hour days to support a computer that can only be used after business hours. This is my last day of it, though, except for one more day next week.

And it’s affected my sleep patterns in very odd ways. I got home last night and went straight to bed. Tonight, though, I’m wired and can’t make myself to go sleep. I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing; I suspect it’s neither. Or both. It just is.

Meanwhile, my mind’s been percolating with suggestions from Tom Peters’ Brand You 50, in particular his suggestion to catalogue 25 observable aspects of ourselves. That is, if someone were to judge you (not negatively), what are some things they’d use to do that? Things like hairstyle, posture, even handwriting. I’ve only managed to catalogue twenty, but even that has revealed a few things that I’d like to work on.

It made me realize how much I’d like to improve my handwriting. It’s a bit better than the ”chicken scratches” that everyone I know describes their handwriting as, but it could be a lot clearer. So I did a bit of Googling and found Dyas A. Lawson’s Tips for improving your handwriting. Briefly: When writing, hold your fingers still, and move your whole arm plus a bit of your wrist. I tried it, and it made my handwriting a lot easier to read. Takes a lot of practice before it becomes natural, but then, doesn’t everything?

Ha! I never described how Thanksgiving went. In a word: Perfect. All the food was delicious, nobody stressed out, we all chatted pleasantly, we went on a brisk walk around the neighborhood, and we watched two Jackie Chan films (Dragon Lord and The Medallion). We ate succulent turkey, flavorful stuffing, plump sweet potatoes, corny corn muffinsh, and thick slices of apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Couldn’t be better.

As mentioned before, I then spent the weekend on various purchases. Friday night, as I lay in bed thinking about the morning, I had an idea shocking in its odd yet perfect logic: I needed a coffeemaker in my bedroom, despite not drinking coffee.

No, all that anime hasn’t rotted my brain. My morning pages (three pages of journalling in the morning) have become a tradition, but I’ve had difficulty waking up in time to write all three pages. I usually wake up to the alarm, then lay in bed luxuriating for half an hour or so. I realized that, if I had a hot cup of tea waiting for me, I’d be much more inclined to get up immediately.

So I bought a cheap, programmable coffeemaker and set it up for the next morning. I woke up and listened to the tea cough and burble into the carafe, and up I sat. Went right over, poured myself a steaming mug of hot tea, sat down at the desk, opened my journal, took a sip of the tea…and nearly spat it out. Tasted horrible. But I was up and journalling.

I still don’t know why it tastes so bad. I’ve washed everything, but maybe it needs a more thorough cleaning. Very odd. But I still get up.

And I do enjoy the mornings, especially calm, grey mornings like this one. It rained last night, and the sky was that lovely, velvet grey that looks soft and inviting like a worn blanket. The street outside was still empty, but with a promise of further activity. Kids were no doubt lined up on the corner farther down, craning their necks to look for the school bus, another week of lessons and friendships begun.

And I’m preparing for another week of work, to which I’m increasingly looking forward with good anticipation. Tom Peters writes about “reclaiming work from Dilbert,” that we are not simply slaves to corporate culture; we’re accepting slaves. We not only work in insane bureaucracies, we sit back and take it. No. No. We can reclaim the idea of work as a fun, amazing, exciting thing to do. We can leap into our workweeks with the ferocity of a pit bull and the excitement of Peter Pan. We can become masters of our own work.

And I suspect most of my readers are rolling their mental eyes, saying, “Yeah, right, whatever.” I was the same way. But I’ve been thinking about this, and observing my work, and wow do I have opportunities to reclaim my work, to stake my claim, to turn this mundane project into an experience that makes people gasp in awe.

Why on Earth would I want to settle for mediocrity when something like that is possible?

Spent the afternoon Christmas shopping, it being Black Friday and all. I surprised myself: I have presents (or know exactly what I’ll be ordering online) for everyone on my list. I usually suck at Christmas presents, but this year, for some reason, I’m on the ball, and early. Now if I can just get all these presents shipped in time, which is one disadvantage of having so many online friends.

While I was out, I bought a few things for myself, including a Hartley & Marks journal, the Generatio. Its cover is the beautiful image from the Book of Kells above. I’ve resisted buying an expensive journal, but I’ve also heard that you’ll write more if you own things that make you want to write. And I’ve been wanting to write in this thing ever since I laid it out on my desk. So, I suppose, it’s true.

Because I increasingly believe that knowledge workers can’t afford to let their skills atrophy, I’ve been learning the Python language lately. To learn it, I started a simple project: writing a text adventure (like Zork, only much less ambitious). I just finished it and uploaded it, so now you can explore Castle Doune yousrelf.

(Castle Doune is the name of the first castle seen in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The layout of the game’s castle is similar to the layout of the real castle.)

I finished it this morning, actually, as I waited for my parents to arrive for Thanksgiving. I baked an apple pie last night, and will be making muffins once they arrive. Mom’s bringing potatoes and the pumpkin pie. I’m looking forward to it greatly; this has become a family tradition.

I’ve been in a sysadmin mood lately. I want our server to be a model of efficiency and automation. I want us to be able to recover instantly in case of disaster. I want to describe our setup to other people and hear them reply, “Wow.”

Partly, this is because I’ve been re-reading Tom Peters’ Brand You 50 at work, a few chapters at a time. Here’s one of his suggestions (paraphrased):

1. List all your projects at work (a project is just work with a specific goal).
2. Ask yourself—and others—what it would take to make people gasp in amazement and delight when they hear about each project.
3. For each project, list ten ways you could make it more of a ”Wow!” project.
4. Pick a couple.
5. Do them.

I agree, which is why I just set up a cron job that backs up all web files changed in the last 24 hours.

Hey. You’re working on stuff. What would it take to turn that stuff into “WOW!” work? Why not do some of it?

Sorry for the long down-time. Our server died almost exactly a week ago, and we’ve had some trouble with our provider in getting it back up and running. Suffice to say that we appear to be back to normal.

It’s been a nice day, really, dependig on your definition of ”nice.” It’s been cold and drizzly all day, but that’s felt cozy to me. Perhaps it’s because this feels like the first real day of winter we’ve had. It’s been cold lately, but only recently has the wind swept through and tugged most of the leaves off the trees. Now, the naked trees standing against a stark grey sky symbolize winter. It feels like the perfect day to wrap yourself in a blanket, wrap one hand around a mug of hot chocolate (complete with wraiths of steam dancing above the rim) and with the other hand open a good novel. The Three Musketeers or Treasure Island would be good; something adventuruous and out of the ordinary. Something to take you away from the blasted cold and rain.

I spent the weekend at Anime USA, mostly sitting behind a table at Artist’s Alley. I didn’t sell anything, but I talked to a fair number of folks, and gave away a lot of business cards. It was a success in the sense that I got the word out, though it was certainly a failure financially. Oh well. I’m just not a salesperson.

Don’t have time to write much. Just got back from a performance of Chinese acrobatics, incorporating a lot of the maneuvers of the Peking Opera with the concepts of Circus acts (juggling, unicycles, etc.). No clowns, thankfully.

It was a good day, if short. Unfortunate that I had to spend so much of today catching up; Sundays should be days of rest. Next Sunday will undoubtedly by the same, what with Anime USA that weekend. Ah well.

Just returned from a wedding, in which the groom is a friend that grew up next door to me. We played practically every day, then drifted apart. A story as common as grass. And now he’s married.

That was a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride. I’m a bit jealous, honestly; his bride looks terrific, in all the best ways: fun, vivacious, smart, pretty, thoughtful. I have nothing. I’ve never even had a girlfriend.

But I looked at the two of them and realized that the groom could have taught me a few things about getting a girl. He searched for a long, long time. If I had nurtured that friendship, kept up with that connection, I would at least known more than I know now.

Tom Peters writes, “YOU = YOUR CONTACTS.” More accurately, the better your contacts (and your connections with those contacts), the better you are. Very true, in the working world as well as the personal world (and, of course, business is personal). I need to invite a few more people over for lunch or dinner.

Starting with this friend, perhaps.

Well. In my previous entry, I wrote that I’m thinking of pitching some animation ideas to Cartoon Network. That was Wednesday. I’ve spent the past two days under an almost unceasing assault from my Inner Critic, insisting that I not do that. That I’d be better off abandoning all my creative projects, in fact. That I’d enjoy myself far more if I spent every evening watching MST3K re-runs and anime. That I’m crazy for thinking that they’d actually accept my pitch, and even if they do sign me on, what then? Like I’m going to really be able to deliver a TV animation on time.

To which I have listened, and ignored.

It’s good to hear these things. It’s made me realize how much I fear success. The idea of really starting a full-scale animation studio scares me witless. It excites me, too, but it’s really scary. I’d be providing livelihoods for dozens of people. I’d promise to deliver a heck of a lot of beautiful, life-affirming animation. <gulp>

But at the same time, I’d be creating beautiful, life-affirming animation. I’ll be making something of beauty, that people will watch and think about. I’ll change people’s lives, hopefully for the better.

That’s worth listening to a whiny Inner Critic for a while.

I just got off the phone with Saalon, with whom I talked for, um, three and a half hours. We talked about anime and the nature of work for about half an hour, then I dropped a bit of a bombshell:

I think I’m going to go to Atlanta and pitch some animation ideas to Cartoon Network.

I have a startup animation company. They take pitches from people with a lot less than that. I gather that producing a short animation would be good, but I don’t need it to get in the door.

So why not just walk through the door?

So I asked Saalon to write me a treatment for an idea he’s been champing at the bit to do: a fifty-episode Gundam-like series. Giant robots. War in space. Some teenage angst. We won’t duplicate Gundam, not will we make an homage. We (or rather, he) will be taking everything that we think Gundam does well, subtract everything we think it does poorly, and adding in our own tastes and interests and feelings.

Meanwhile, I’m going to work up some treatments for some other shows I can pitch to the network. I want to pitch a ”World War II in space” show, complete with Big Band music and hot shot pilots. I want to pitch an animation variety show. I want to pitch some amazing animation aimed at girls, for a change (why does the largest gender demographic get so few good cartoons?).

Because I’m not going to wait. Well, except that I’ll wait for concept art. But after that, I won’t wait.