I’ve been writing for years. It hasn’t always been my primary hobby. In fact, I took a break for a couple years to build a house become a parent, explore some hobbies, make sure my career was in solid enough shape to ensure things like retirement and food. What I haven’t been doing much is interacting with other writers. Sure, I started this blog to start doing that and also to share my various and sundry problems with writing and any solutions I may have cooked up to deal with those. What I haven’t done is any sort of face to face interactions. 

You might be asking why, if I consider myself a writer, I haven’t been active in the local community of writers or at the very least been a part of a critique group. Well, the truth is that I watched my wife (you know who she is. She’s a wonderful writer in her own right, if she doesn’t believe it herself), before she was my wife go through a creative writing class. It is rude, heartless, and just plain mean to say, but I’m going to say it anyhow. Most of the utter crap she brought home to read along with her own descriptions of pompous, self-righteous artist wannabes put me off the writing crowd. To further bolster this really unfair and mostly incorrect opinion, I joined an online science fiction and fantasy writer’s workshop. It was actually not horrible. The only jerk I ran across was me. The problem was that it relied upon writers providing criticism to one another. This is how it’s done, but since it’s an online environment, it’s not a super solid strategy. Many of the writers on that site/group/whatever were looking for validation more than advice or were as inexperienced as anyone else joining and couldn’t provide any more technical writing advice than a potato. It was your classic case of the blind leading the blind. The only thing I learned is that it’s not okay to actually hit someone for telling you to show not tell. Most of the advice was unhelpful at best and probably only somewhat understood by those providing critiques. Truthfully, the critiques were honest and generally contained a seed of ‘you have a problem you need to fix’ within them. Unfortunately, as a very new writer, most of the suggestions were less helpful than simply saying, this bit of writing is rubbish, go take a class. So, I gave up and decided to work on my own for a while. I suppose that went okayish, but not really. I spent more time on world building, home building, dealing with starting a family, and career than actual writing, but I didn’t really learn anything new about the craft. At least until I got online again and start trying to get connected with other writers – I did start to learn some things then.

Yesterday, for the first time ever, and in spite of years of spluttering on about it, I went to a writer’s conference. This was one of the best writing decisions I think I’ve ever made. In no way can I say that this conference will be the key to getting published or selling enough copies of a book to quit my day job and write full time, but it taught me something that I wish I’d learned years ago. There are places, groups, and organizations who genuinely want to help writers and will supply experienced advisors to help you get there. Social media is indeed one place as is (in retrospect) the online writer’s workshop I did, but there are other places. This conference though put experienced, indeed award winning, writers in front of a room to explain what works, what doesn’t, and share real world experiences. 

I’m such a jaded person, in general, that inspirational quotes do very little for me. I’d even go so far as to say they generally piss me off. In spite of that, I found myself not only inspired, but motivated. I came away with new tools, new perspective and a couple of new contacts. Here are a few of the most basic things I came away with.

1.) Go to writer’s conferences

2.) Bring business cards (Really? Yes – writing is a business too, it’s how business people connect why not writers?)

3.) Look over the agenda and pick your sessions, prepare questions

4.) Don’t eat 3 pieces of pizza

There was a whole lot more, a lot, but I can’t fit those things into bullet points, I’m sure I’ll write more blogs on this as I think about the new information and advice and try to put it into practice.

Like any writer, I’ve got a day-job*. It may not be as a writer, but it pays the bills in the nearly satisfying manner writing usually doesn’t. This weekend concludes a week off that day job to do a bit of parenting, spending money I haven’t got, and a little bit of recreation. It also happens to mark the 1 year anniversary of working the current job.

How was the first year?

Not great. It hasn’t been all bad, of course. I’ve learned a tremendous amount. I’ve got 2 more query languages under my belt, figured out how to use a tool called Eclipse BIRT, and have managed to become moderately proficient in reporting from a Cerner EHR database. Not to mention I picked up Tableau and aggressively honed my Java programming skills.

On Friday. The last Friday of a week of badly needed time off and the 1-year anniversary of my first full day at the current position, I got a call from work. Nobody likes a call on a day off. Especially when that person happens to be standing chest-deep in the broken floor of their father-in-law’s arctic entry way. This particular call wasn’t a pleasant, hey could you tell me where that file is? sort of call. No. This was a “I was just told someone personally complained to the CEO that you haven’t done your job and I want to know why the hell not.” sort of call.

Getting this news on it’s own isn’t really what I’d describe as world-ending. After all, I’m pretty sure folks don’t usually get fired while on vacation, so that’s a start. To rub just a little salt into that wound though, I was angling for a promotion. It was a wee-bit of a long shot, but I’ve got relevant experience and thought I had a solid work-record. After all, I have managed to do a lot over the course of just a hand-full of months with absolutely no knowledge of health-care databases or reporting. At this point, any hope of promotion is dead. What’s more, this calls into question longevity. Careers aren’t built on reports to the head-honcho that you haven’t done enough, and possibly that you haven’t done anything at all.

What’s interesting about this is that I do have a bit of management experience and have been on the other side of the table. The very same side saying, “you’re not really getting your work done here.” With that on my shoulders, the phrase “not a fit” is starting to come to mind.

I’ve only worked a hand-full of jobs. Some of those I’ve felt really out of place, only one made me really unhappy, but I’ve always left on my own terms and I’ve never been what I would call “not a fit.” In my experience with state government, not a fit, is not usually grounds for termination. It’s not at all clear that’s the case here. As the one in the household that serves as primary income earner, which I don’t particularly cherish, I can’t be in a position to be excused – so that sucks too. Aside from that, the truly hard thing to digest as being “not a fit.” is that it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m not working my ass off or producing. Because I am. It means I’m not getting it and I don’t completely understand what it is I’m not getting. To be clear: I’m doing a bad job and have no idea how to fix the problem.

So, no. This year hasn’t gone well and I don’t see it getting better. My team never really accepted me, save perhaps one person who seems more interested in shoveling off less desirable tasks and making sure that I don’t screw things up too badly. In any case, I’ve given up trying. They don’t like me or my project and I don’t see a way to fix that. I’ve got users who aren’t satisfied and don’t even feel comfortable coming to me about it first. To top it off, my supervisor is in the process of making absolutely sure that blame is laid where it belongs and that I’m spending so much time in meetings to correct the problem, I won’t actually have time to solve it. In short, nobody has my back or seems to have an interest in helping me get to wherever the hell it is I’m supposed to be.

I know my position is funded through the calendar year, and I can probably squeeze into the end of next fiscal year, based solely on staffing levels. With this hanging over my head, though, I don’t see a particular push to ensure my position is funded going forward -something the promotion would have helped. So, the only way forward at this point is to spend a lot more time focused on the company I’m trying to help build up and seeing that into financial stability as quickly as possible, perhaps in the next couple of months. Other than that, my vacation started well. Too bad it couldn’t have stayed that way through the end.

*Day-job is being used in a broad-sense here.