B.I.N.M.F.

By now it should be no secret that I am at present a government-employed conservationist by day, a blogger novelist by night. Between day and night I also serve as a can opener, a fly swatter, a pooper scooper, a washing machine, sometimes I’m nothing more than a potato, but this is not my point. My day job. It really is rewarding work. Cut out the torturous bureaucracy and it is downright enjoyable when you do the math and figure out how many TONS of soil you have helped save from eroding off of valuable cropland every year. Or how many THOUSANDS of acre-feet of water you’ve kept from being pumped from the ground. But the red tape. Ugh. Sometimes, I want to roll myself in it and hop into a tree and just play like I’m a really big caterpillar cocooned, until my wings are fully grown so that I can then fly away to a warm beach off the western coast of Mexico, one that caters to butterflies that take their margaritas frozen.

I spent the majority of my day taking up the gauntlet with Outlook. When I finally threw in the towel at 4:30 pm, I still had 232 items left in my inbox. 170 in the deleted folder. 111 in the “Keepers” file. 303 Sent emails. And several sub-folders loaded with CRAP. Crap I’ll never look at again because when I do, I start feeling achy all over, like I’m coming down with flu.

Is the private sector any better? I really have no clue as I’ve been with the government since my sophomore year in college. Either way, my problem isn’t so much about how much work-related emails I get, so much as it’s how much happiness I’m deriving from them. Because, something tells me that if I had 232 messages in my inbox related to publishing/writing/marketing. Or, hell, BLOGGING for that matter, I’d be kinda siked. But I don’t. Instead, I have things that say, “IWM Maps” or “SCIMS exit procedures” or “Clipping MrSID files” in the subject line. Which is another issue altogether. THE ACRONYMS! Omigod, THE ACRONYMS. Are we THAT lazy? Sometimes the acronym is twice as cumbersome to remember than the actual phrase being acronymed… NOPHNRCSE. <-- It’s real. And once upon a time, I was a member.

Don’t get me wrong. I know I’ve got a good gig with Big Brother. Because of him, Toni was able to try out ballet for a couple of years before deciding that soccer was more her thing. And Jonah got a Spongebob bathrobe for Christmas, like he always, ALWAYS wanted. Emma has more shoes than I do. And Kyra… well, Kyra gets to eat as many servings of dad’s meatloaf as she can handle without puking. And, again, I’m doing my part to preserve our natural resources. Who could ask for anything more?

*ahem*

Me. I want more. I want to write you a story that’ll keep you from eating and sleeping and showering because it’s so friggin’ compelling you just can’t part with it for much more than the time it takes to wash your hair. I want to wake up every morning, my heart racing at the prospect of “going to work.” I want to ride in Oprah’s limo! I jumped the shark just now, didn’t I? Anyway. I’m working on it. I have GOT to try. Somebody out there wrote a screenplay entitled Ghetto Dawg PART 2. And then somebody else said, “Hey! I will PAY you for that masterpiece on paper, yo!” And it became a movie. And got better ratings than The Pacifier. I’ve never seen it, and so I’m not tryin’ to diss on the movie, Ms. Ghetto Dawg Writer. But the title. You made it out of the gate with that title!! Not only that, but as a PART 2!!

And so I’ve GOT to pursue the dream. I’m better at the dream than I am at blogging, anyway. If I tried to blog-write like I novel-write, I’d never post anything because I proof the holy hell out my novel in an ongoing effort to make it better. Always making better.

So there's this wave that has been gaining momentum inside of me. It’s going to crash any day now. And when it does, I will be working like Conchita to load it all up and take it to market. Conchita! You know, Juan Valdez’ hinny, the one that carries all those harvested coffee beans to market?

I swear I'll be working on my blogging techniques... someday.

But before I go, thanks for the sweet comments last post, guys. My kids will read them when they're all grown up and be all, “Wow, they really did love you, woman.”

By the way… the acronym at the top?? A free autographed first edition of Rosetta Stones to whoever is game enough to try figuring it out… delivered next spring, of course, when it’s scheduled to debut. Hint: the I is for IS and the N is for NOT. Another hint: The B is NOT for bureaucrat.