I’ve written two stories in the past six months, and everything about them is different.

The first followed my typical writing process, albeit shortened to meet a crucial workshop deadline. It’s emotionally honest (something I ranted about the other day on Twitter), about a subject with which I have personal ties. It’s longish for a short story, probably with too much character nuance and plot-contrivance to make it salable. The character arc came first, and the worldbuilding details were shrinkwrapped around it. Somewhere along the way, with a good bunch of help from my workshop cohort, I reverse-engineered a three-act structure out of it.

The time has come to retire my bullet journal.

I moved to a paper-based task management system after getting frustrated with the fragmented, inflexible world of task management/note-taking apps. Bullet journaling offered flexibility, simplicity, and cross-pollination. That last one appealed to my creative side, especially when it comes to brainstorming and lateral thinking.

After eight months, I’ve decided to move back into the digital realm. In no particular order, here are the reasons why:

I’ve been fighting a bad case of pneumonia for the past couple weeks. I caught it sometime in New Orleans during General Assembly, probably due to travel stress. I missed a week and a half of work because of it.

So I’ve had to prioritize. For a week I didn’t have the energy to sit up in an office chair. Yesterday, a church service left me winded and pale. The most I’ve been able to cook on the stove has been eggs and turkey sausage. If you ever doubt Spoon Theory, just remember the last time you came down with the flu or any other medium-term illness.

I’ve had to prioritize my writing as well.

This year, it seems as though I’ve written nothing but short stories. I write monthly articles for The Daily WTF, of course. This weekend I wrote a short piece for a contest, and earlier this year I wrote and workshopped a story called “Juicers,” which I’m finishing up this month. Also, I recently sold a short story to an anthology (more details at a later date, I promise!). Frequently, I’ve been revisiting “brain dump” files for potential story ideas.

Image: Yes, this manga really exists.

(This is the third in the series “Erik can’t decide what the hell he believes in.” See earlier posts here and here.)

I wish I had read Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Naht Hanh years earlier. It had been on my reading list for ages, but I didn’t pick it up until a few months ago. Hanh describes, with a poetry that only a Zen master like himself can produce, how the teachings of Gautama Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth parallel each other.

I say this because I still flounder on this question: am I a Unitarian Christian who also follows the Buddha, or am I a Zen-leaning Buddhist who also loves Jesus of Nazareth? (The correct answer is actually that I’m a Unitarian Universalist; more on that below.)

I’ve explored my proto-Christian side for months now, and while it’s been fruitful, I still keep returning to the rituals and worldview of Buddhism. There are many complicated reasons why, but I’ll outline a few below.

Earlier this month, I was elected to my church’s Board of Trustees….

…A week later, I was invited to a new critique group….

…Recently, I was given incredible leeway in refactoring a major project at work….

People keep giving me opportunities. And that feeling that it’s all undeserved? Still it remains.

Image: The Alamo church.

“Remember the Alamo” has two primary connotations, depending on the audience. It’s either a jingoistic rallying cry, a justification for the incursion of white settlers into Spanish-held territory. Or, if you’re a certain kind of Texan, it’s a reminder of the nobility of sacrifice, when things are worth fighting for.

Not being Texan myself, nor a believer in the peculiarly American kind of Manifest Destiny, I fall into the former category.

I miss Scruffy. Our family dog, she was 18 when we had her put down last Sunday, Easter of all days. She was quirky in ways I could appreciate, affectionate, and gentle.

(CW: depression)

This has not been the only personal tragedy lately I’ve dealt with recently, alas. I have to be honest: I’ve been in the suck lately. (I can also swear again, as it’s long past the end of Lent.) But I’ve still had work to do, both literal and metaphorical. Next week I’m doing absolutely nothing, apart from the day job.

Much of the week was concerned with some uncomfortable personal introspection (sorry, no details). And then this Sunday, on Easter of all days, the family dog had to be put down.

I wish I had something pithy to say.

Until next week, folks.

Recent events have been on my mind. Here’s what I posted to Facebook on Friday, when I heard news of Trump’s airstrike on a Syrian base:

Folks, I have some serious misgivings re: the airstrike on a Syrian airbase last night. My own feelings regarding war have become rather complicated in the past couple years. I was, until a couple years ago, a strict pacifist. After a great deal of thought, I adopted a philosophy of “just war theory,” where war is permissible only under certain circumstances, which include self-defense and proportional response to acts of evil (emphasis on “proportional”). Our country has a serious problem with proportional response. Al-Qaeda operatives bombed US targets, killing thousands, on 9/11. In response, we wage war in Afghanistan for almost sixteen years, even after we effectively decapitated Al Qaeda. Then, we invade Iraq on the flimsiest of pretexts – doctored photos of WMDs – that leads to a costly and ongoing engagement. So many civilians and US soldiers have died because we had to super-size our response to real and perceived threats. Last night, in response to the use of chemical weapons, violating international law, by the Assad regime (which has the support of the Russian government), President Trump ordered an airstrike on a military base in Syria. A naive interpretation of this would say that it was a justified, proportional response. But here are the complicating factors:

I took my first work trip this week, flying to Atlanta to visit our company’s office there. It was a productive and exhausting time, but it had one serious drawback:

Atlanta traffic descended into chaos when a portion of I-85 collapsed due to a fire.

The bridge collapsed on Thursday night. Friday was my departure day. Unfortunately, the office is on one end of the city, and the airport is on the other. With some preparation, and an obscene amount of time stuck in traffic, I made it to my gate in time.