Checking in 44: 11.11.21

Hello!

I’m a couple days late this week, but I’ve been a little busy.

New Steps

NaNoWriMo Update: I am pleased to report that I am closing in on the 25K (50%) mark a whole 3 days ahead of schedule. I’ve hit my goal every day and even logged around 1000 words on a planned day off. I was in the mood and just went with it. I have conclusively proven to myself that I do NOT need to wait for inspiration or to be in the mood to write. The key is getting my butt in the chair. If I can do that, the words come.

The Breakdown

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

This book is a multi-layered story. The foundation story is about a family who moved into a house which they discover is larger on the inside than on the outside, and a documentary that was made about it. The next level is about Zampanò, a man who is writing a book about the documentary. Then there is Johnny, who has stumbled upon Zampanò’s papers containing research and the partially finished manuscript full of footnotes (some finished, some not) which were left behind after his death. Johnny in turn adds his own footnotes to the manuscript, sometimes footnotes about the footnotes, which take on the form of stories about his life. Finally, Danielewski acts as an editor of the piece, adding his own footnotes to the layers.

The book itself is an over 700 page tome of oddly formatted pieces of text. Sometimes they are related, sometimes they are not. If you read all the words on the page, front to back, it can be really confusing. Each ‘writer’s’ words are written in their own font, so you could follow a single line of thought all the way through, and then another, so on and so forth, but I don’t think it would help with the general confusion that can overtake you. On a technical note, I imagine this book was hell to format. Several different font styles, sizes, and colors. Sometimes it’s even in a mirror image. Footnotes upon footnotes. Text blocks which are only part of the page, be it a two inch square in the center of the page with other text around it at a diagonal, or a strip down one side.

This book… what can I say about this book. This book is… a project to read. It is one of those wonderfully, sometimes frustratingly, weird Mt. Everest type books. This is the third time I’m attempting it. Patience and concentration are the key. I’m about 200 pages in, and I try to chop away a few dozen most nights. Wish me luck.

Living Life

I am rocking the new job.

I spent most of the first week getting to know people, reading through their SOP manual, and revamping their filing system. (On a side note, I’ve had three people thank me and tell me it is so much easier to find stuff now, go me.) I was biding time for my live, virtual corporate training for their software. It was scheduled for week 2. Needless to say, I had a lot of downtime the first week.

Week 2 (Monday 11.08) rolled around, and I was ready to rock and roll my training. Twenty minutes before it was scheduled to start, I got an email from my trainer, who is in Raleigh. She was in the middle of doing a multi-day mass integration and “didn’t feel she could devote adequate time” to my training. Her solution? Cancel it. Because, of course, the logical thing to do is just not train me at all. So, I asked her if there were any materials I could read in the interim so I could hopefully start being some help to these guys. She directed me to a series of videos on the training. It was a recording of a training session she did for ten people less than a month ago. So, I started watching them. Eight hours of videos later watched over a couple days, she rescheduled my training. I had already started taking on some of the work, and showing some of the guys in the office how to do stuff. I told them to cancel it, and if I had any questions, I would reach out to her.

The funny part to me is my bosses and fellow co-workers split up the aspects of my job back in September and have handling it… kind of. According to them, they have no clue how to do half this stuff correctly. They could have watched these videos and been all set.

Moral of the story—USE YOUR RESOURCES!!!

That’s it from me this week folks.

As always, thanks for checking out the site, and I hope everyone is doing well.