Chapter Outline

Well, it has been a busy week.  Acclimating to my new job has been a wearing experience, but worth it.  I feel like I really put in a days’ worth of effort now.

We have a big convention coming up next week, not that it will affect me greatly, given my very entry-level position. But perhaps it will pose an opportunity or two.

Meanwhile, this week my other goals have been somewhat neglected, household management and budgeting have gone by the wayside almost entirely, I have done NO work whatsoever on either book manuscript or the other new blog.

I have come to the conclusion, however, I will be unable to maintain my former job on a part-time basis.  There are far to many other things for which I must save my time.

I need to figure out how to get some college courses. Also, I am considering trying to get my CDL for work.  Both of these seem necessary for my long-term career goals.

So, short term goal list:

get CDL

get a few college classes started, probably online

get shop space!

get book 1 rough draft completed

get book 2 outline done

build other blog

learn the basics of Auto CAD

get my household running in a healthy,  smooth and efficient manner

Maybe I can get these things done, or at least started, in three months? Yeah, right.

Balancing the Equation

This time, I’ll start with the analogy. It might not make it in, if I wait.

It seems to me, Life is like an equation, with the ethereal, misty world of goals and dreams on one side, and the hard, earthy, scientifically definable world of facts and experience on the other.  Every once in a while, to move on down to the next step in solving the equation,  some element from one side crosses over, and affects things.  A dream becomes so real, so seemingly attainable, that it starts to solidify into a concrete reality you can touch.

Other times, the facts of a situation affect how dreams are formed, causing them to morph into something else, some shadowy portrait of an alternate future.

There can be positives and negatives on both sides, too, whose force can be multiplied, perhaps a hundred fold, depending on the symbols used.

When something comes to fruition from a dream, the dream can get canceled out, but the effect is present on the factual side.   Facts can cross each other out, and change the dreams you once had into other dreams, different dreams that fit the person you are now, rather than the person you were.

Time affects both sides, and is an operation performed only with positive numbers.  There is no zero in time, and no negatives. It is only applied, there is no taking it out.

Sometimes you have far more variables and constants present to one side or the other of the equals sign, and must do a great deal of figuring in order to reduce them to a manageable amount.

One thing is true, however. You have to decide at some point which variable for which you are going to solve.  It doesn’t mean you won’t solve for the others at a later time, but you must start with at least one.  With that solved, you can plug it in, and then solve the others.

Sometimes you realize there has been a mistake. Sometimes you have to start the problem over.

Eventually, you get the answer.  Eventually you find out how it all adds up.

At the bottom of the page, after you have applied your facts and dreams one to the other,  applied the forces of mathematical operators to both sides, you get an answer. It may not be the answer you hoped for at the top of the page. It may not seem to make sense. You may have forgotten or never known the reason the problem was set up in the first place.

But it's there, it has been reached. The variable of your life has been defined.

I wonder what the answer will be?