Asa Jay's weblog

. . . I don’t write enough.

I’ve had this blog up for months now; somewhere around seven months I think. I guess part of the problem with just the blogging part, is that I was just changing jobs, or rather, I was switching from working with one company, to working with another. The transition took a lot of my time, and energy. Then, things got brutal at work.

My manager ended up quitting, probably because he started to see he might be fired. Our lead RF engineer left, and most recently, our Lead Software Architect left. Bummers all. I had wished to start mentoring under someone new, but it didn’t work out. Oh well.

I am again on my own, with no mentor. Not that I’m struggling; there is simply -no- leadership in our office. Partly that’s not a bad thing, as we all do our part as a team. The problem is that our Project Manager and other lead people are in an office all the way across the country. We are mushrooms.

But I digress. I think too much, I don’t write enough. I used to. In fact, I used to write more than I read. I have some stuff on line here at asajay.com. I’ve put up some of the poems I wrote long ago. I have many short stories as well. I only tried to get published once or twice. You see, I know I’m not -that- good. I used to write for my own enjoyment. It was like playing with LEGO.

With Lego, in the early days, you were presented with bricks. The imagination had to create, and using the bricks helped you bring the imagination into reality or least “play reality”. Eventually, through High School, I started writing as new way to bring my imagination to life. I would write, read, re-write, read, put on a shelf. I still have most everything I ever wrote in High School, and College. Oh, to me it was good, but again, not worth publishing. I’ve not really written in years though.

I was writing just as personal computers got started. I worked with a TRS-80 Model I, in Algebra class at first. Later, as a teachers aid, I moved up to a TRS-80 Model II which only certain teachers (and teachers aids) could use. I eventually talked my parents into buying a Tandy 1000EX. I thought using a computer would help me write.

I took a typing class as part of my senior year. I thought I would need to learn how to type, and perhaps how to type quickly, if I was ever to satisfy this urge to write. I passed second in my class at well over 40 words a minute. Today, on a good day, I can clear almost 80 words a minute. Pretty cool; not the fastest, but pretty darn good.

The fastest typist I ever knew, was one of the admins at our high school. She could type upwards of 200 words a minute. Using an IBM Selectric II, it sounded like automatic weapons fire when you passed by the office.

So I figured computers were going to allow me to type all my stories, poems and what-not. The sad reality was, the more I worked to get into computers, the less I wrote. Eventually, I forgot about writing atogether. It would only come in small spurts, like every 10 years. Not cool.

Today, I don’t seem to have the same imagination that I used to. Today, I get my imagination “fix” by watching other peoples imaginations come alive on TV. Blah. Movies, TV shows and books influenced my early writing; sparing my imagination to new ideas. Now though, it’s not the same. I feel tired, and I shouldn’t. It’s almost like I’ve lost that fire. I almost feel as if all the great stories have been told; anything new is just a re-hash of something old. The themes are the same, but the names, time, and places have changed.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve thought more about PC Game storylines, rather than books or short stories. Myst got me started. Then, I became facinated with history, and mystery. I’ve had some decent ideas for computer games, but again, I’ve never writting much down, and wouldn’t even know where to pitch.

At some point, I needed to make money, to live. Having a title published was not a big goal, but now, as I’m older, I realize that if I take time out of my life to write something, I should be paid to do it. Since I already understand I’m not good enough to publish, I know it’s not going to put food on my table. So I don’t write much. I sure think a lot though.

There was the one time I had a killer multi-million dollar idea. Oh it was good, I remember that much. I thought out so much, I thought it all through, design, manufacture, sales, everything. But I was tired, it was late, I went to bed and never wrote a stickin’ thing down. To this day, I regret it; t othis day, I still can’t remember what the idea was.

I’ve had at least three separate adventure game ideas. I wrote down a little, but that’s as far as it got. Oh, I’ve thought plenty of things through, but just haven’t written any of it down.

I lost a girlfriend once, because I think too much. I analyzed too much, I read too much into things. I just couldn’t leave things be. Too much of a “thinker”, and it lost a great woman.

I think a lot, I just don’t write things down.

I think too much.

Asa Jay