After all the coming and going recently, what with the brand-engagement day at work and the leak in my east-facing wall, with the death of my cat and my own neck injuries, with work piling up like a snow-drift in 1968 Ontario, I just have not done much of anything with my NaNoWriMo project.
Quel dommage.
How sad.
I've promised my godson that I'll write all week and finish something. I've promised to send it to him.
I can hardly sit still these days, so that was quite the rash promise. But, I'm thinking novella and I think I can do that. I'll just get neurotic and go like stink. The end result will probably be a bit ripe, but there will be a story there.
I could just keep a journal, but my life, in truth, has such a broad story arch that people would be bored before they got to the critical bits.
Besides, I want to try something more interesting than chewing over my own wretched existence. I want a story in which the hero achieves some sort of resolution.
Speaking of which, I had an idea for one of those reality competitions that are so popular: short story writing. But Martha said it wouldn't translate well. So, maybe short plays. Each week, contestants write a short play, present it, and get marked on their skills. The judges would talk about the story structure and so on. I'd watch.

By the end of a day of work, I'm beat. This is the period of details. I sit there with two documents filled with details and then I try to compare them to a partially completely simulation of the product. I'm mostly down to the details that show up in the product but not in any description (that I can find) of the product. So, what does that option mean? That one, third from the left, second row down..
Whoever wrote the option label knew EXACTLY what the option was intended to do. They wrote the best label they could given the circumstances.
It's a bit like trying to figure what is inside the egg by reading a description of the DNA.
Sometimes, magically, I get it and I'm right. More often, I wander through the company directory looking for someone I know to help me figure out who is the right person to ask. Occasionally, the person I know is also the person I need to talk to which makes everything so much easier.
I'm finding it impossible to think about murders in Ontario or complex politics on a fantastic province.
So, instead of writing, I'm listening to Laurie Anderson and I'm doing jigsaw puzzles (I tried Sudoku but my brain couldn't wrap itself around that).
Tomorrow, I go off to judge technical manuals for a competition.
I'm really looking forward to the 4 days off at the American Thanksgiving. A relief.

I have a crappy neck. Push comes to shove, I'll blame it on my mother.
Yesterday I undid some very expensive work that I've had done on my neck. Oh no! Oh yes!
I drive to work (bad me, bad me, I live 3 miles from work... I used a very helpful website that crunched numbers, ostensibly to show me that commuting with others would be better... the only way cheaper than my 20 year old car is my 4 year old bike... that I can't ride until my neck is better). Where was I?
Oh, yeah, I drive to work in my 20 year old car. Yesterday, I puttered along the highway and at the junction where I pull into the left turn lane, my car stalled. Really stalled. Would not start stalled.
I stand here before you and say, this is the first time I've been in this situation. I want you to know that, thanks to countless hours of television and my driving instructor, Tom, I was able to leap into action. I called AAA for a tow, I called my wife for the phone number of the garage, I phoned the garage and told them to expect my car. That took 15 minutes. Then I sat in the suicide lane for another half hour waving at people to go around my useless hunk of metal. A very sweet cop pulled up behind me with his lights flashing (only the second time that's happened, I'm a very boring driver). We chatted and he used his cruiser to push my car out of the middle of the highway over to a bus stop. Well, first I locked my steering wheel and almost banged into a light pole. He was very sweet to me. I'm sure I looked borderline mad, as in insane, and totally freaked. I didn't know how to be pushed, I didn't know I had to have my key in the ignition to make my steering wheel turn. And, with my crapped out neck, cranking that steering wheel (once I got the thing about the key figured out) sent me back into traction (well, metaphorically).
So, what does all this have to do with the question about life using metaphors?
This: At a number of key junctures in my life, vignettes play out and reveal to me the choices I have ahead of me.
Most times they're very clear...
Is this one?
Does life really grab your shirt collar and give it a shake when you're steering off course?
If it does, what did this all mean?
A reluctance to participate in the collective hypnosis of a large group of adults. I can't steer my own course. I must allow authority to assist and direct me.
Nah, that's too weird, but it would make a great short story... I can see it now.
Oh, great, something to add to my NaNo word count.

While I pound the keys writing about products so users can use them, while I review statistics and processes and design improvements, while I determine what the brand day means to me, I am starting a new novel. I haven't finished last year's novel (though it is shaping up).
I couldn't stay up and wait for midnight, so I spent some time this morning updating my blog about work, updating my blog about branding, and writing a few hundred (552) words in my new story.
My keyboard is growing tiresome; it's not keeping up with my fingers. More and more often, the key strokes simply don't register. Maybe I should take it apart and clean it. But NOT NOW!!