Jon Hakes. Writer. Official Online Outpost.

Sorry, I was trying to come up with a clever title, and couldn’t quite lever my brain into a farming-centric pun…

I discovered recently that Brain Harvest, purveyor of my short story, “Space Falling,” is no more.  I know that they are hoping to at least restore the archives at some point, but in the meantime, I’ve posted the story here, for all to enjoy (or whatever).

I wish the editors at BH the very best, and hope that they return soon in some fashion.  I enjoyed the other work on their site very much, and felt honored to appear among the crowd.

I was saddened this week, as I know many were, to learn of the passing of Ray Bradbury.  Ray was a tremendous influence on me as a writer (again, there are many who can say the same).  I was fortunate to see him speak at Foellinger Auditorium on the University of Illinois campus when I was an undergrad, and although I didn’t get a chance to speak to him personally, the stories about his life as a writer were just as vivid as any piece of fiction he ever wrote.

I think my favorite of Ray’s works may have been “The Illustrated Man.”  If I’m remembering the timeline correctly, I listened to an audiobook version, read by Michael Prichard, during my days as a delivery driver.  There was something gripping about both Ray’s writing and Prichard’s performance, and the tone of the work, both in the stories themselves and the interstitial pieces featuring the Illustrated Man, really resonated with me.

The news this week hit me nearly as hard as when my grandfather passed away in February.  Ray was 91, my grandfather was 95.  But the nature of reading, when you are a writer, is that every other writer is a father or a mother.  It doesn’t matter that Ray Bradbury was the same generation as my grandfather; his influence was as direct as that of my own father.  When you’re a writer, every bit of someone else’s work that you read, whether it’s something great like a Ray Bradbury story, or a hack novel that makes you think you can do much, much better, is teaching you about writing, and your intellectual parents may be in their nineties, they may be younger than you, or they may have died a hundred years before you were born.

As many have pointed out this week, we’ll always have Ray’s work.  To me, that means all of us can carry something of him with us for the rest of our lives, the same way we carry something of any family member we may have lost.

So there I was, enjoying my ramped-up productivity in February, and then the day job woke up, took a deep breath, put on its jackboots, and started stomping on my face.  I went through sixty-hour week after sixty-hour week, with a couple of eighty-hour weeks mixed in.  There were plenty of weeks where I put in some amount of time on all seven days. 

Now, keep in mind my new context, the whole being a new father thing (which long-time readers may remember happened in December).  Taking care of my son probably prevented me from devoting even more of my free time to the day job.  At the same time, working and fathering have taken their toll on my ability to achieve a quality state of sleep. 

I was taking care of some bill paying last week, and I realized just how far out of regular life my head has been.  Specifically, I realized that I haven’t been archiving bills and banking statements consistently for more than a year.  I’m usually pretty perfectionist about said archiving, and it was quite a shock to realize how big the gap had grown. 

Fortunately, things are about to change.  I’ve been off of work for the last week-plus, and when I get back next week, I only have eight weeks left.  The reason I only have eight weeks left is that we are moving to Wisconsin at the end of July.  Yes, after nine years on the Gulf Coast, we’re coming back to the Midwest.  We’re very excited.  I’m excited, in particular, because Alyssa’s going to be making enough money in her new job that we’re going to try me out as a stay-at-home dad/writer.  That’s right, instead of constantly trying to shoehorn in my writing around a day job (which frequently demands much more than forty hours), I’m going to have the chance to write in and around being a father.  My brain won’t be clouded up with the worries of the day job. 

Now, you might say, well, sure, but trying to write while being a full-time father won’t be easy.  I agree.  But for a long time, my brain has been preoccupied with the volume and intricacies of my day job, and that won’t be the case anymore.  Also, all of this time where I haven’t been able to write has been stoking my engines.  I’m already starting to put more time toward writing projects, and I know I’ll be ready to move forward at a much faster pace, probably before we even get to the move. 

Hm.  I must be entering an optimistic phase. 

And no, I haven’t finished Cryptonomicon yet.

I don’t know if this happens to other people who have babies, but once I made it through the haze of the first month after my son’s birth, everything suddenly became sharper for me.  I’m finding more of a rhythm to my day-to-day schedule, which is quite strange, given that the baby sleeps somewhat irregularly, and I sleep erratically myself (check back later for my thesis on the difference between irregular and erratic sleeping).

This morning, I was able to get up and get through the day’s writing goals before I headed off to the day job, something that has not happened much in the last year or two.  So, tonight, instead of feeling the weight of the writing hanging over my head, I’m going to take the time to do some fun, relaxing activities, like buying cat litter, changing the litter boxes, feeding the cats, putting away the clean laundry, cleaning up the bedroom, cleaning up the living room, sorting through old papers and files, cleaning the bathroom, etc.  Yup, I’m living the good life.

Seriously though, freeing my brain up to think about these other things can only be a positive.  I’m trying to do a Total Synchronization of my work habits (across all platforms), so I’ll take the reinforcement wherever I can find it.

Plus, the baby is always around, in case my brain’s edge starts to go a little dull again.