Hello, dear readers. It’s time yet again for me, Gideon U. Eklund to descend from the diamond-studded staircase spiraling its way around my golden pedestal, to bring you the sweet, sweet nectar of verbiage that is my blog. As always, you’re welcome. Today, I’m going to get a little personal, a dash introspective, and a little ramble-y. I have a subject on the forefront of my mind, and as I’m sure you’ve guessed from the subtle nuances of this post’s title, that subject is pressure. (And, to a lesser extent, stress.)
Have you ever had pressure in your life? …HAVE YOU? …WELL!? …ANSWER ME!!
Of course you have. If you’re a human being on this planet who pays attention to the world around them for even a fraction of a second, you have had pressure in your life at some point or another. Personally, I try to be a fairly stress-free guy. That’s not to say I don’t have to vent (frequently) when I’m frustrated, but I try not to let the big things eat away at me; especially if there’s nothing I can do about those things. However, the flip side of that means whenever something tiny and fixable crosses my path, it aggrivates me to no end, because someone has to do something about it, and it’s probably going to be me.
It’s frustrating to the people who know me well. I could have my apartment burn to the ground, or total a car, and be like, “Womp-womp. Nothing to do about it but move on, I guess,” but someone leaves a few seconds on the microwave timer, or I need to reset my modem, and someone may as well have declared war on everything I hold dear, and I foam at the mouth in frustrated anger. (Fun Fact: I once punched out a particularly frustrating ATM during a balance inquiry/money withdrawal fiasco.)
Author’s Note: Do not use the phrase “ATM Machine.” It’s redundant. The “M” already stands for “Machine.” It’s like calling the DMV “The Department of Motor Vehicles Department.”
For me, though, pressure has managed to permeate a fairly prominent portion of my life right now. To give you a little background: At the start of 2018, I moved with my girlfriend to a new town, in a completely new state. (Viva Las Vegas, baby!) I came here from Seattle, where I’ve lived for almost my entire life. (Viva Las… Rain, baby?) I’ve never really traveled outside of Seattle much, but the hometown was getting depressing. You can only have grey skies and perpetual rain loom overhead for so long before it starts wearing down the sweet white enamel of your soul.
I want to do something with my life. Being the delightful narcissist that I am, I’m always burdened with this nagging, persistent feeling—bordering on erroneous assumption—that I am destined for greatness. Sitting around Seattle, staring at the grey skies and rain (while genuinely wondering if I had the willpower to get out of bed each morning,) was not a good use of my potential. Yes, I had friends, a life, and a twenty dollar an hour job; but I was feeling very unfulfilled, regardless. My family had split off and moved to other states over the years, and I never went anywhere or did much of anything. My son and his mom live in Canada; there was really nothing tying me to the Evergreen State besides my beloved friends.
Author’s Note: As of this writing, my beloved friends haven’t visited me once since I left. It’s almost like their lives didn’t revolve around me—but that’s obviously crazy talk. I mean… I’m ME. Clearly they’re just very busy trying to fill the crushing, despair-laden void of my absence.
Once I got here, that’s when the dreaded Pressure Beast reared its ugly head. Finding work took longer here than it does in Seattle. Once we had it, it was all very minimum-wage stuff, with no benefits. Trying to get work with better benefits meant moving between three different jobs (each) in the first year alone. Then new things would pop up; my lovely lady lost her job, I injured my shoulder and cannot get it checked or taken care of properly, and things just escalated from there.
But now, things have settled down, so I’m trying to re-focus my attention on the things I want to be doing with my life. (Again, being a published author is the goal, everything else is to pay the bills.) But the most important part of all of this remains:
…I want to be better. Bigger. More than I currently am.
It’s hard for me to admit this, because in admitting that I want to be more, I’m also admitting that right now, I’m not enough. That’s not a lack of self-confidence speaking, (I have self-confidence in excess,) but it’s simply a truth I need to overcome.
It’s no secret that I’m trying to build up my Web Presence (yes, I’m still capitalizing it,) in order to increase my fan base, and give any publishers who want to look me up something they can actually find. This is why I started the blog in the first place. I also have my Twitter and Facebook accounts to pimp my blog on, (and whatever musings I can think of that would belong there,) and it’s been suggested to me from multiple fronts that I start a podcast on top of that.
Yeah, I know—I can’t tell if I’m going the right route, or if I’m deliberately turning myself into a walking cliché: an unpublished writer with a Twitter, a Facebook, a blog, and now, apparently, a soon-to-be Podcast, about… something?
When I told my girlfriend that I didn’t want it to just be a re-hash of the blog, and asked what she thought it should be about, and what it should cover, she said, “Why stick to a theme at all? You already have the ability to pull a random subject out of a hat, and talk about that for as long as you want, anyway. Just do that.”
Author’s Note: There are, I’m told, people out there who would actually like to hear the insane, humorous ramblings of a sarcastic, narcissistic writer-to-be. Go figure.
So, with that in mind, I’ve downloaded a free audio-editing program, (because everything I do is on the budget of a rusty nickel fished out of a sweaty pocket,) I’ve figured out how to use a gaming headset as a recording tool, and I have the very rough beginnings of getting my voice out there in yet another way. So, now that I’ve burdened myself with even more glorious purpose than before, I need to:
-Continue to write/revise my manuscripts. I’m inventing new manuscript ideas pretty much every day.
-Resume querying and pitching after I’ve built up a little more Web Presence.
-Work on my networking, and get to some writer’s conferences some time soon, if possible.
-Lay out a schedule for myself that is realistic, without sacrificing too much personal life.
-Try to maintain a steady workload with regular blog posts, and put together a podcast. (I’m thinking each one could alternate as bi-weekly, but the podcast is still in early stages of planning, so I can’t really say.)
-Put more out there on the Twitter/Facebook accounts than just “New Blog Post!” I say a lot on my personal Facebook; there’s no reason I can’t put most of that on the author’s stuff too; it’s the stuff most people would like to see from me, anyway, right?
-Make lists like this for myself more often. Look at this list! It’s so neat and professional-looking! Being good at everything I do is equal parts curse and blessing. You’re welcome, America.
When I put it in a list format like that, it doesn’t seem like a lot, but am I stretching myself too thin in the planning stage? Biting off more than I can chew? I honestly have no idea. Part of me says, “Yeah, maybe you’re trying to do too much at once, Gideon.” The other part of me says, “Ha! Please. Unrealistic goals? Sure—you’re good at those. More than I can chew? Nah. This is us we’re talking about here. If it’s too much, we’ll just cut out the crap we don’t need.”
I figure, once I get things rolling smoothly, I can simply have alternating weeks between writing, and doing podcast work. That doesn’t sound insane, but trying to fit it all in around my full-time job and wonderful girlfriend definitely seems a little like a challenge.
Fortunately for me, one of my super powers is that I function on very little sleep as it is. I guess we’ll see how it goes. If any of you out there have any tips or advice, let me know.
It’s the terror of knowing what the world is about, watching some good friends screaming, “Let me out!”