I look up and see I haven't done a blog post for five months! It's not like I haven't been writing - it's just that it's been in my head! Brilliant, incredible stuff that would set the world afire, but I never quite got around to writing it down. Dumb. The trip to Panama was a whirlwind, exhilarating experience (more later) but it's been go go go since December; really; more like all year; really more like two years. But let me back up:
He's waiting to die, I'm waiting to live.
That's the way it's been around here for months now. I'm working hard on my second nonfiction biz/tech book within six months, which I wasn't quite ready to do, since I am still doing little things like final edits, getting blurbs/endorsements, and scheduling speaking engagements and book signings for the first book, while my older brother, who lives across the street, has been battling and enduring cancer and worse yet, cancer treatments. He had chemo and radiation, even surgery, and it did shrink the tumor in his ass, but now it has spread to his skull. He's probably got it from head to toe now; the results of the full body scan they did will be in next week. He was having terrible headaches that even morphine didn't knock out, so they increased his dose. There are hideous lumps on top of his bald head, and he walks stiffened somewhat like Frankenstein, due to his weakened state--and the e-coli infection he had in his spine that landed him in the hospital three months which started all this over 18 months ago. Before that, he was a strong, healthy, boisterous man of 64 still working full-time.
He is just across our pedestrian street, so when I take a break from the toil that is nonfiction, or just take the garbage out, or head to the gym, that's what I'm treated to. He has no one else. His daughter and son are nowhere to be seen. His worthless girlfriend flaked out as soon as he got sick and couldn't buy her drinks. There's no escaping it. The neighbors next door are nice, but it's on me. I can't feel sorry for myself since I'm not the one who is deathly ill. In fact, in some ways, things have never been better for me, at least career-wise. I finished the first book, which will help American corporations (and others) to protect their trade secrets and maintain their competitive advantage. This next book on e-records, will hopefully be used as a text to train the next generation of records managers, archivists, and information governance professionals. There are no complete and current books on the topic, which seemed strange to me, until I started putting together this book and realizing just how huge and complex the topic has become. It's a monster. And preparing a book for a major publisher (Wiley) is no picnic -- they are exacting and uncompromising and need to be. So I've solicited 7-8 expert colleagues from around the world who are editing specific sections of the book that deal with their expertise area, which will help make the book the authoritative ever on the topic.
A couple of weeks ago a business partner in Chicago suddenly died. Before that, a business partner in Toronto retired due to failing health. He was going to work with me on this book. Death and dying everywhere around me.
It's come with a mountain of stress.I've worked so hard on the sections on e-records inventorying, retention and disposition, taxonomy development, and international standards to the point of mental exhaustion. Then I handed them off to my esteemed colleagues, shooting for the May 15 deadline I had agreed to.
In March, I'd just returned from Panama after two months, and I had to do some editing on the first book while I was gone but other than that, I didn't work much. I didn't write; I only thought long and hard about writing. And I read a comprehensive biography of Hemingway that had much more detail than anything I'd read. It tied his personal life with his professional writings so you could see how his life experiences impacted his work. I didn't realize he wrote a Broadway play, which made me feel a bit better about my play, and the effort I put into it.
I like the part where, stone drunk, Hemingway brought a Havana hooker to dinner to meet his wife. She got him back by putting it in the book. He deserved it - lots of examples of pretty boorish behavior, beyond wild, just rude.
I did write a little bit. There is that New Year's Day story that I will have to dig out and post here, which I wrote on idyllic Senidup Island in the Caribbean, just off the Panamanian coast. It was the first of what were going to be daily writings all year. That lasted a day and a half. But it sure was nice to have all that time, pure time, in Panama. I rented a little studio apartment in Bocas del Toro and had my little corner of peace and serenity. I could walk to a nearby beach, grab some cold Panama (my fav!) bottles of beer, and eat some fresh seafood or chicken. Or I'd go on a bike ride to the end of the road and back, from the Saygon area and back, sometimes going all the way to another beach and hanging out watching the surfers. Or I'd take the basketball I bought and go shoot some hoops or a pick-up game nearby. Pretty nice. No kitchen in the apartment, so I just bought a hotplate to make breakfast, but the food was cheap enough at restaurants (as little as $4 for a meal) so I ate out a lot. I lost over 15 pounds just eating fish, chicken and a lot of salad, and exercising a lot.
Things were simple there. Here, I've got this nice, new 3-story beach house overlooking the Pacific that I can barely keep up with while I work. Thankfully, a maid came yesterday and cleaned. Hell, every inch of the place is tile, since it's near the ocean and carpet would just mildew and rot, so sweeping and mopping that all is a big chore. I've been here two years and never tackled it.
So, back to the deadline: I was shooting for May 15 to try to get the book published by September 15, in time for a trade show in Chicago that I'm speaking at. Looks like I'm not going to make it, but if I can get it done by the end of the month, there's still a chance.
Nope.
I have to remind myself that I'm trying to accomplish a task that no one else in the world - no professional in my field - has ever done. First, no one has ever written a book this complete on the topic of e-records - there are only 2-3 books out there and they are incomplete and out-of-date. The one that is being used as a text all over the world is an embarrassment, it's so dated. And I'm trying to write the best one ever in 60 days? 75? 90? While I'm finishing up the first? That's another thing: few of the top experts in the world have ever written a book. They're too busy, or they can't write well (although most can), or they can't tackle something like that mentally. And I'm doing TWO within six months? Planning for THREE in a year? No wonder I've been stressed out.
It will be just great when the books are all done. A stream of royalties, paid speeches and high-level consulting work around the world. I hope.
In a week or so, I'll have this next book shaped up pretty well, and I'm hoping that in three weeks I can wrap it up. I'm sure it'll drag out like the last one, but not to that degree - I learned some lessons on exactly how the publisher wants things and I'm getting it right the first time, this time. Not re-writing the damn thing three freakin' times.
Back to my brother's situation: I get to talk about things like where he wants his ashes thrown, what he wants done with his car and furniture, and things like that. Not so much fun.
This is the second brother I've watched die slowly. I won't have any more left. Bill, who I grew up with, died in 1994 after a long illness. He lived it up for a while but in the end, he was scared - he was only 37. I tried to reassure him and he turned to me and said, "That's easy for you to say, you're on the other side of things." I couldn't argue. I had my life ahead of me. But he did hold out hope that he would see our beloved, ever-loving Grandmother Smallwood (the sweetest woman ever on this earth), and our father, in the afterlife. I held his hand at night as he slept that last week, until one night I just didn't feel right, I had the bizarre fear that he might awake suddenly and have a seizure and stab me with his pick line needle, so I slept on the couch near his bed. In the morning his blank green eyes were fixed on the ceiling and he was dead.
I remember the ambulance coming and them zipping him up in a body bag, the crown of his head flopping to the side as they zipped it shut, and then carried his carcass out and drove off.
He's waiting to die, I'm waiting to live.
That's the way it's been around here for months now. I'm working hard on my second nonfiction biz/tech book within six months, which I wasn't quite ready to do, since I am still doing little things like final edits, getting blurbs/endorsements, and scheduling speaking engagements and book signings for the first book, while my older brother, who lives across the street, has been battling and enduring cancer and worse yet, cancer treatments. He had chemo and radiation, even surgery, and it did shrink the tumor in his ass, but now it has spread to his skull. He's probably got it from head to toe now; the results of the full body scan they did will be in next week. He was having terrible headaches that even morphine didn't knock out, so they increased his dose. There are hideous lumps on top of his bald head, and he walks stiffened somewhat like Frankenstein, due to his weakened state--and the e-coli infection he had in his spine that landed him in the hospital three months which started all this over 18 months ago. Before that, he was a strong, healthy, boisterous man of 64 still working full-time.
He is just across our pedestrian street, so when I take a break from the toil that is nonfiction, or just take the garbage out, or head to the gym, that's what I'm treated to. He has no one else. His daughter and son are nowhere to be seen. His worthless girlfriend flaked out as soon as he got sick and couldn't buy her drinks. There's no escaping it. The neighbors next door are nice, but it's on me. I can't feel sorry for myself since I'm not the one who is deathly ill. In fact, in some ways, things have never been better for me, at least career-wise. I finished the first book, which will help American corporations (and others) to protect their trade secrets and maintain their competitive advantage. This next book on e-records, will hopefully be used as a text to train the next generation of records managers, archivists, and information governance professionals. There are no complete and current books on the topic, which seemed strange to me, until I started putting together this book and realizing just how huge and complex the topic has become. It's a monster. And preparing a book for a major publisher (Wiley) is no picnic -- they are exacting and uncompromising and need to be. So I've solicited 7-8 expert colleagues from around the world who are editing specific sections of the book that deal with their expertise area, which will help make the book the authoritative ever on the topic.
A couple of weeks ago a business partner in Chicago suddenly died. Before that, a business partner in Toronto retired due to failing health. He was going to work with me on this book. Death and dying everywhere around me.
It's come with a mountain of stress.I've worked so hard on the sections on e-records inventorying, retention and disposition, taxonomy development, and international standards to the point of mental exhaustion. Then I handed them off to my esteemed colleagues, shooting for the May 15 deadline I had agreed to.
In March, I'd just returned from Panama after two months, and I had to do some editing on the first book while I was gone but other than that, I didn't work much. I didn't write; I only thought long and hard about writing. And I read a comprehensive biography of Hemingway that had much more detail than anything I'd read. It tied his personal life with his professional writings so you could see how his life experiences impacted his work. I didn't realize he wrote a Broadway play, which made me feel a bit better about my play, and the effort I put into it.
I like the part where, stone drunk, Hemingway brought a Havana hooker to dinner to meet his wife. She got him back by putting it in the book. He deserved it - lots of examples of pretty boorish behavior, beyond wild, just rude.
I did write a little bit. There is that New Year's Day story that I will have to dig out and post here, which I wrote on idyllic Senidup Island in the Caribbean, just off the Panamanian coast. It was the first of what were going to be daily writings all year. That lasted a day and a half. But it sure was nice to have all that time, pure time, in Panama. I rented a little studio apartment in Bocas del Toro and had my little corner of peace and serenity. I could walk to a nearby beach, grab some cold Panama (my fav!) bottles of beer, and eat some fresh seafood or chicken. Or I'd go on a bike ride to the end of the road and back, from the Saygon area and back, sometimes going all the way to another beach and hanging out watching the surfers. Or I'd take the basketball I bought and go shoot some hoops or a pick-up game nearby. Pretty nice. No kitchen in the apartment, so I just bought a hotplate to make breakfast, but the food was cheap enough at restaurants (as little as $4 for a meal) so I ate out a lot. I lost over 15 pounds just eating fish, chicken and a lot of salad, and exercising a lot.
Things were simple there. Here, I've got this nice, new 3-story beach house overlooking the Pacific that I can barely keep up with while I work. Thankfully, a maid came yesterday and cleaned. Hell, every inch of the place is tile, since it's near the ocean and carpet would just mildew and rot, so sweeping and mopping that all is a big chore. I've been here two years and never tackled it.
So, back to the deadline: I was shooting for May 15 to try to get the book published by September 15, in time for a trade show in Chicago that I'm speaking at. Looks like I'm not going to make it, but if I can get it done by the end of the month, there's still a chance.
Nope.
I have to remind myself that I'm trying to accomplish a task that no one else in the world - no professional in my field - has ever done. First, no one has ever written a book this complete on the topic of e-records - there are only 2-3 books out there and they are incomplete and out-of-date. The one that is being used as a text all over the world is an embarrassment, it's so dated. And I'm trying to write the best one ever in 60 days? 75? 90? While I'm finishing up the first? That's another thing: few of the top experts in the world have ever written a book. They're too busy, or they can't write well (although most can), or they can't tackle something like that mentally. And I'm doing TWO within six months? Planning for THREE in a year? No wonder I've been stressed out.
It will be just great when the books are all done. A stream of royalties, paid speeches and high-level consulting work around the world. I hope.
In a week or so, I'll have this next book shaped up pretty well, and I'm hoping that in three weeks I can wrap it up. I'm sure it'll drag out like the last one, but not to that degree - I learned some lessons on exactly how the publisher wants things and I'm getting it right the first time, this time. Not re-writing the damn thing three freakin' times.
Back to my brother's situation: I get to talk about things like where he wants his ashes thrown, what he wants done with his car and furniture, and things like that. Not so much fun.
This is the second brother I've watched die slowly. I won't have any more left. Bill, who I grew up with, died in 1994 after a long illness. He lived it up for a while but in the end, he was scared - he was only 37. I tried to reassure him and he turned to me and said, "That's easy for you to say, you're on the other side of things." I couldn't argue. I had my life ahead of me. But he did hold out hope that he would see our beloved, ever-loving Grandmother Smallwood (the sweetest woman ever on this earth), and our father, in the afterlife. I held his hand at night as he slept that last week, until one night I just didn't feel right, I had the bizarre fear that he might awake suddenly and have a seizure and stab me with his pick line needle, so I slept on the couch near his bed. In the morning his blank green eyes were fixed on the ceiling and he was dead.
I remember the ambulance coming and them zipping him up in a body bag, the crown of his head flopping to the side as they zipped it shut, and then carried his carcass out and drove off.
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