What is your Dominating Emotion?

What is your Dominating Emotion?

What is your Dominating Emotion?

Where do you get your inspiration?

This is probably the most commonly-asked question when people are interviewing authors. It has always irritated me when someone I’m interested in is being interviewed, because I see it as a complete waste of time. My thought is, Come on! You get to ask Stephen King 5 questions, and this is the best you could come up with? I want to know how complex and huge his map and diagram system is for his world-building, and how he kept everything straight between books before computers became commonplace (Most of his books take place in the same town/region, so the different stories have a shared history/future to a degree). I want to know what motivated him to finish The Stand, which took him 10 years to complete. You know, interesting things like that!

Back in October I went to the Florida Writers Association annual conference. On Thursday I spent the whole day listening to a workshop presentation by David Morrell. Who? Yeah, I asked the same thing when I saw it on the program. David Morrell wrote a book in the early 70’s called First Blood, which later got turned into the Rambo movies. He’s also written about 40 other books since then. He’s a really interesting guy, and I learned a lot from him.

One of the things he talked about is where you get your inspiration to write. This isn’t an answer that you would give an interviewer, but it’s a concept that I found really interesting. He said that your writing is generally based on your Dominating Emotion. For him, a lot of his books are playing out various dysfunctions of his childhood. As he has grown and matured, his dominating emotion has changed, and so has his writing.

My Dominating Emotion

I’ve spent a fair amount of time getting to know myself over the last ten years, so this wasn’t too hard for me to figure out in terms of what my writing is all about. At the very core of my gut I have a fiery ball of helpless rage that surrounds a core sense of injustice. There are atmospheric layers of feelings like inadequacy, lack of confidence, need for approval, and all that stuff, but it’s all built around that sense of injustice, both on a personal and a global level.

I was conscious of this when I started planning the DimWorld series. I wanted to take my characters through an enlightening and perspective-changing series of experiences similar to my own journey of understanding myself and the world around me. What I didn’t know is that most writers do this, whether it’s conscious or unconscious.

How it shows up

It’s all in the struggle that your characters are going through. For David Morrell, he struggled as a kid with society as a whole, and with his step dad, who was the tyrannical authority figure in his life. This is represented in First Blood by Rambo’s struggle with the Vietnam War, and with the police chief. Rambo got screwed over by the world, and instead of getting support from what’s supposed to be a trusted leader, he got screwed by him, too. Morrell actually had Rambo die in the book, killed by the police chief.

In the DimWorld series, my characters discover that there are other dimensions. A company called DimCorp has developed the technology to travel between the dimensions, and they use this to go to under-developed places, enslave to people there, and force them to mine resources which are then sold to other, wealthier dimensions.

The goal of my characters is to stop this rape of the world(s) and mistreatment of people, but it’s an impossible task. It’s 4 people versus a megalith company, a giant with unlimited power and resources. The story is exciting (at least to me!) because they realize this and decide to fight anyway, and find ways to make a real difference.

This is a near-exact representation of my perception of life. Some of it stems from my childhood, some of it comes from being an INFJ personality type (we have a powerful sense of idealism and morality), and some of it comes from my conclusions about the human race.

So, what do I do with this?

I got to watch my friend and writing partner Angelique Bochnak as she had a moment of self-discovery during this workshop. We spent a few minutes during a break dissecting her book The Blood Trials and concluding that she is working out some anger issues, just like the rest of us.

I brought home the concept of a dominating emotion and talked to my wife about it. She’s a veterinarian, and her dominating emotion is much different than mine. Hers is centered around compassion, but it wasn’t really something that she had thought much about.

I think it’s a great exercise for everyone in the pursuit of self-understanding (and isn’t that a big part of being alive?). So, I challenge you to determine what your dominating emotion is. What drives you to do the things you do? What is your quest? The holidays are coming, so maybe this will give you something to talk about to all those people you love/hate/don’t know very well. The other challenge is to think about the book you’re reading right now. What can you surmise about the dominating emotions that drive the story? And what in the world happened to Stephen King that has taken him so much writing to work out?!

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Author Justin Boyd Long J. Boyd Long is an author, blogger, website developer, and the CFO of Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic. In his spare time (ha!) he likes to paint, read, canoe, and hike in the wilderness. You can subscribe to this blog in the sidebar, and future blogs will be delivered to your email. Subscribing may increase your awesomeness quotient. Please feel free to comment, and share this blog on your favorite social media page! To learn more, please visit JBoydLong.com 

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Prepping for Nanowrimo

Prepping for Nanowrimo

Prepping for Nanowrimo

In case you don’t know, November is National Novel Writing Month, or Nanowrimo for short, and Nano for even shorter. The idea is that you write a certain number of words (1,700 is a base number; I’m shooting for 2,500) every day for a month, and at the end of the month you have a book.

This year will be my second time participating. Last year I wrote my very first book during Nano, which was The Adventures of the Horse Doctor’s Husband. It’s a collection of stories based on actual things that I’ve been involved in over the last few years. I’ve learned a LOT about writing in the last year, so I have some serious revisions to do before that one is ready to be published.

Sci-fi author J. Boyd LongOver the spring and summer of this year, I wrote my second book, DimWorld: Foundation. This one is a science fiction novel, and the first book in a series that I have planned. It also needs some revisions, but I learned a lot during the process of writing it. I’ve been doing a lot of homework on the process of writing and planning for a book, which has helped me become a better author.

The book that I’m writing this November (DimWorld: The Cacao Insurrection) is going to be the second book in the DimWorld series. I’m going in far more knowledgeable and prepared than I was for either of my previous books. I’ve got a complete outline that I’ve revised and improved several times, I’ve got a full physical and psychological profile on each one of my important characters, I’ve got a map and diagram of the place where most of the action is taking place, and I have an accountability partner to keep me on track.

I’m really excited about this! By this time next year, I plan to have all 3 books available on Amazon, and the next book in the series outlined and ready to write. It’s going to be a busy month, and a busy year next year. Never a dull moment, right?

What about you? Are you writing a book during Nano? If you’ve been thinking about it, this is the time to take action! Don’t worry about doing it badly; that’s what editing is for. Jump in the pool and start swimming. There’s never going to be a better time.

Author Justin Boyd LongJ. Boyd Long is an author, blogger, website developer, and the CFO of Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic. In his spare time (ha!) he likes to paint, read, canoe, and hike in the wilderness. You can subscribe to this blog in the sidebar, and future blogs will be delivered to your email. Subscribing may increase your awesomeness quotient. Please feel free to comment, and share this blog on your favorite social media page! To learn more, please visit JBoydLong.com 

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Accountability Partners are Invaluable

Accountability Partners are Invaluable

Accountability Partners

I’ve had an accountability partner for almost a year now, and I wonder how I lived so long without one. I also wonder how much more I would have accomplished if I had found her ten years ago.

We met online during the 2016 Nanowrimo event. She was one of about ten people active in the Gainesville forum on Nanowrimo.org. We were writing at about the same pace, which was a lot faster than most of the others, and that prompted an email conversation about halfway through the month.

It started out as a friendly competition. We were both trying to get to 80,000 words in 30 days, so we made a friendly bet on who would have the highest word count. I was very motivated to write, but I found that there were several days when I was tired and didn’t feel like writing anymore, but I knew that she might take a big lead if I stopped, so I wrote another 1,500 words. Through email exchanges, I found out that the same thing was happening on her side.

At the end of Nano, we both acknowledged that we had accomplished a lot more due to our race than we would have without it, and the value of that was not lost on either of us. We decided to continue checking in with each other on our progress with editing what we had written.

That was probably the most important decision I have made in my writing career.

At some point in the evolution of things, we decided that we were official accountability partners. We exchanged goals and plans, and then we worked out a timeline in which we wanted to achieve these things. Through this process, we determined that we had a lot of the same goals, and that we could help each other out by combining efforts and resources, such as research on various topics, helpful books, network of contacts, etc. Did I mention that we had never met in person?

We set up a system to keep ourselves on track. For each month, we have a goals list of what we want to accomplish. We email progress reports throughout the week, and every Sunday we do a weekly goals check-in and list what we have done, and what we have not. We have expanded this system to include all of the things we have going on in our lives, not just writing and editing. We both have careers that we are committed to outside of writing, we have side businesses that we operate to fund the process of getting our writing careers off the ground, and we have families. Team-working everything helps us both maintain the tricky balance of prioritizing and focusing our attention appropriately.

This system works because we are both 100% committed to accomplishing our goals. We are both highly motivated self-starters, and neither of us are willing to settle for anything less than the best that we are capable of. The fact that our goals and our challenges are very similar is also important, as we can relate to each other without a lot of explanation. We did eventually meet in person to attend a workshop, and we’ve had some in-person strategy sessions since then, as we are forming our own independent publishing company. By combining our efforts, skills, and resources, we are both accomplishing more than we could have alone, and a lot faster. She has skills that I don’t have, and vice versa.

Becoming accountability partners has made all the difference for both of us.

Are you trying to achieve something? It doesn’t matter what it is; an accountability partner can help! If you can find someone else who is trying to do something similar, you will likely find the motivation of becoming accountability partners helps you achieve more. Accountability partners bring out the best in each other, and set new standards of achievement. Here are some things to look for in a potential AP, and what they should be looking for in you:

  • Motivation level
  • Commitment to the project
  • Dependability
  • Similarity of goals and timelines
  • Similarity of challenges (if you’re working 3 jobs and raising 2 kids, you have different challenges than someone living in their parent’s basement with nothing but time on their hands)

The internet makes finding accountability partners much easier than ever before in history. You don’t need to be in the same geographic region to make it work. Use Facebook groups, or MeetUp, or Craigslist, or any number of other online resources to find people who do what you do. If you want to accomplish more in life, this is a tool that will help. Find out your true potential, and start living up to it!

Author Justin Boyd Long J. Boyd Long is an author, blogger, website developer, and the CFO of Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic. In his spare time (ha!) he likes to paint, read, canoe, and hike in the wilderness. You can subscribe to this blog in the sidebar, and future blogs will be delivered to your email. Subscribing may increase your awesomeness quotient. Please feel free to comment, and share this blog on your favorite social media page! To learn more, please visit JBoydLong.com 

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What Gives You Value?

What Gives You Value?

As I’m preparing the outline for the next book in the DimWorld series, I’m working out the philosophical explorations that my characters are embarking on. This is one of my favorite parts about writing this series. My characters get to work on a concept and draw their conclusions over the course of their adventure, just as I have done in my life.

I have challenged my characters to explore the dark side of humanity and society, and find a way to solve some of those issues, at least for a group of people. Some of these things are issues that I’ve been examining for years and already have my conclusions. Others I’m trying to work out in real time as the books are being written.

This blog is about one of those issues that I haven’t worked out yet:

What gives a person value?

This is a question that is much more at the center of societal rifts than I ever realized. A lot of our biases and judgements are built around very vague notions of what it is that makes a person worth something.

For example: what is your opinion of someone who has been unemployed for several years? For most people, they have a very low opinion, especially if it’s a man. What is your opinion of someone who has worked somewhere for 30 years, and never missed a single day? That’s something that impresses us, right? Why?

Here’s a cliché description of someone that we feel obligated to respect: A single mom, working 3 jobs to raise her kids, and never took a dime of charity.

Is it the job that gives someone value, or is it their ability to support their family? Maybe it’s the commitment that we appreciate. Do we think more of someone who works 60 hours a week for low wages than we do of someone who works 20 hours a week for high wages?

Here’s an interesting contradiction: We look down on rich people who don’t give money to the poor, but we look down on anyone who accepts ‘handouts’ from someone else. What is it that we want to see happen? Is our real Utopia a place where everyone makes it, but just barely?

As a society, our historical purpose has been to be a workforce. As time and technology advance, far fewer people are needed to produce things. We are now at a point where the purpose of the masses is to consume, as consumption and demand are what drive the machine. However, we haven’t updated our biases and judgements to reflect that.

What are we going to do when we get to the point where machines do everything? Will we all sit around and condemn one another for not working 60 hours a week like we used to do? We are creating that world at a frantic pace. Our ideas about what makes us important must start changing. We can’t continue to measure ourselves against a standard that is no longer relevant.

In the evolution of a society, things happen in a certain order. Production starts with food, then goes to exporting resources like mining and logging. After that comes the production of textiles, then mid-range goods. Next is high-technology items like electronics and machinery. The next level is the production of information.

This is where we are. As we have moved through this evolution, our workforce demands which started out very high have gradually decreased. This is problematic, because our population started out very low, and has increased inversely over that same period of time. We now have more people than ever before, we need fewer workers than ever before (per capita), and we are still placing our worth on our employment status.

What gives you value? Maybe it’s time to give that some thought.

 

Author Justin Boyd LongJ. Boyd Long is an author, blogger, website developer, and the CFO of Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic. In his spare time (ha!) he likes to paint, read, canoe, and hike in the wilderness. You can subscribe to this blog in the sidebar, and future blogs will be delivered to your email. Subscribing may increase your awesomeness quotient. Please feel free to comment, and share this blog on your favorite social media page! To learn more, please visit JBoydLong.com 

 

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Tribalism

Tribalism

 

Tribalism

 

is an interesting part of the human psyche. It’s one of those things that’s so subtly ingrained that most people don’t even recognize it until it’s pointed out. In my ever-continuing study of people, I’m starting to realize that tribalism is one of the core reasons that we all can’t just get along. It’s also one of the topics that I’m exploring in my dystopian fantasy book DimWorld: Foundation and the series of books that will follow it.

J. Boyd LongOn the surface, there’s nothing wrong with tribalism, or the desire to surround yourself with like-minded people. I’m very inclined to do that, myself. I’m naturally drawn, through my tribal tendencies, to people who are musicians, or writers, or artists, or environmentalists, or intellectuals, or scientists (generally of the astronomy persuasion, although I’ll listen in on a biology discussion any day as well). These are all things that I’m very interested in, so it makes sense that I would be drawn to others who are also interested in these things.

 

The problem with tribalism

comes when people get so attached to their tribe, or the group of people that they relate to and have bonded with, that they start rejecting everyone who is not in their tribe. Here are a few major tribes that people identify with:

  • Race
  • Religion
  • Place of Origin
  • Political affiliation
  • Sexual Orientation
  • Income Level

Most of the problems in the world can be attributed to people rejecting (sometimes violently) others who are in different subcategories of these items than they are. Interestingly, people can often have multiple tribal similarities, but will still reject each other over one difference. For example, two people could have the exact same answer on the first five items on that list, but if one makes $32K a year and the other makes $120K a year, there is a good chance that they will not be great friends. Or, maybe they make the same amount of money, but one is an atheist. Or gay. Or from Iran.

In addition to these major tribalism categories, people find a wide variety of lessor things to be divisive over. How many people do you know who have the same answer to all six major things, but manage to fight over what brand of truck they drive, or sports teams? Zoom in even further: motorcyclists, people who enjoy the exact same leisure activity: the guy on the Harley looks down on the guy on the Honda. Equestrians (that’s horse people, in case you don’t know): people reject each other based on what breed of horse they have, or what sport they participate in. Academics: what school did you go to? It extends to every corner of society: clothing brands, which store you shop at, where you get your jewelry, how often you go to church.

How important is it really?

 

Why is it that we feel the need to fight over these things? Why do we need to kill each other over these things? Why do we sow hate and discord over these things? Perhaps one of the major factors is that we tend to assign too much importance to our own interests, and we don’t save any for the interests of other people. Another major factor might be that we tend to run on autopilot instead of thinking about what we’re doing, and why.

As a way to promote self-awareness and acceptance, here’s what I propose:

The next time that you catch yourself thinking negatively about someone else, check your reasoning. Is this person acting in a way that violates your moral standard, or are they just in a different tribe? If they’re just in a different tribe, maybe you can let it go, and let them do their thing without condemning them for it. After all, that’s what you want them to do regarding you, right?

J. Boyd Long is an author, blogger, website developer, and the CFO of Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic. In his spare time (ha!) he likes to paint, read, canoe, and hike in the wilderness. You can subscribe to this blog in the big blue block, and future blogs will be delivered to your email. Warning: Subscribing may increase your awesomeness quotient. Please feel free to comment, and share this blog on your favorite social media page! To learn more, please visit JBoydLong.com 

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It’s All About Adversity

It’s All About Adversity

Facebook reminded me today that last year at this time, my wife and I went to the Grand Canyon, and then up to Zion National Park. That prompted me to pull up the pictures and videos from the trip, and we spent a half hour laughing about various memories from the trip. Somewhere in there it occurred to me that my memories of the trip aren’t about all the things that went right, or smooth, or without unexpected challenges. My memories are in all the things that were bizarre, or tough, or painful, and things like that. I remember the adversity, and how we got through it.

For example, I don’t really remember much about the hotel rooms we stayed in that were nice, normal, clean, well-regulated-temperature rooms. I do remember the two, in one of which I almost froze to death in hypothermia-induced shock, and the other was just a disaster that you would only expect Clark Griswold to find in a National Lampoon movie from the 80’s. However, the normal hotel rooms did not give me anything to tell stories about, or reminisce about.

For you to understand the room I almost died in, I have to tell you about the entire day leading up to our arrival in the room. That was the day we hiked to the Kolob Arch up in the north end of Zion. If you don’t know anything about Zion National Park in Utah, I recommend that you do some research on it, as it is one of the most incredible places in the United States. The north end is for serious hikers only, and gets far fewer visitors than the south end, where anyone can ride the tram up to the various points of interest without walking more than ten feet. Naturally, as physically active introverts, we found the peoplelessness of the north end to be quite appealing. But I’m rambling.

The trail to the Kolob Arch is rated as Strenuous, and is about 14 miles round trip. Once you leave the parking lot, there’s no bathrooms, no water, no power, no cell phone signal, no people. It’s as remote as it can be. We were parked before the sun came up, as we knew we would probably need the entire day to make the hike. 14 miles is a serious walk on flat ground, and this was anything but flat. The La Verkin Creek Trail starts off with a 1,000 foot drop down into the Kolob Canyons portion of Zion, which means that when you come back after a really long day of walking, it ends with a 1,000 foot climb back up. The scenery is just unbelievable, and I won’t even attempt to describe it other than to say that everything is overwhelmingly big and just absolutely stunning. Total sensory input overload. Also, there is a stretch of bottoms that smells like the best cup of tea you ever smelled; as if you were an ant walking through a potpourri dish. Amazing.

Anyway, we made the hike out, ate our peanut butter and honey sandwiches, noted that the honey had spilled all over the inside of Erica’s backpack, took a thousand pictures, had an amazing time, and made the hike back. It rained several times that afternoon, but we were hot from the exertion of the hike (remember this: when a trail is rated as Strenuous, it fucking means it) so we didn’t bother putting on our raincoats. We got back to the rental car just before dark, and we were soaked, exhausted to our very cores, starving, exhausted, soaked, and exhausted. Also, I was worn out, in case I didn’t express that clearly.

We drove about thirty minutes south to the hotel we had picked out the day before. We dragged ourselves and our backpacks to the desk, checked in, and got our room keys. A brief glance around the lobby turned us right back to the clerk, asking for directions to the elevator, as our rooms were on the 2nd floor, and we had just hiked 2,000 miles or so. NO ELEVATOR!! No elevator? What hotel (and this was a modern day hotel, not a holdover from another era) doesn’t have an elevator? I didn’t even know you could build a hotel with no elevator these days! We climbed the stairs under the extreme protest of our bodies, as the thought of trying to find another hotel was too much to consider. We still hadn’t had supper, and I’m the kind of guy that has to eat on time or I get hangry.

We staggered to our room, opened the door, and walked into Antarctica. It may have been colder than Antarctica, but I couldn’t think clearly enough to make a proper comparison. Our soaking wet clothes froze solid instantly. I stared dumbly at the controls on the ac unit, but my brain locked down to the point that I could not function. I’m pretty sure that if Erica hadn’t been there to rescue me, I probably would have died while standing in front of the ac. She managed to find the power button and turn it off, and got us pointed at the bathroom. We were both shivering violently as we undressed, and climbed into a warm shower. I don’t remember a whole lot, other than my fear at my inability to think. I was in dangerous territory there for a few minutes.

We finally warmed up enough that hunger started surpassing the other ailments. Before we left to find food, I determined that the thermostat was turned down to its lowest possible setting, and the fan was on high. We set it to something more reasonable, and went out to eat. We stayed in that hotel for two nights, as we wanted to explore the area more the next day. The second night, when we returned to the hotel, (dry and much less exhausted this time) we found that it was again the coldest place on the planet. I know, I was stunned, too! What in the hell is that about? We determined that the housekeeper is either trying to murder people, or trying to punish the hotel with really high electricity bills for some transgression. I’m pretty sure it was the latter, and we were victims in their feud.

The other hotel that I will likely never forget is the Grand Canyon Motel in Fredonia, Arizona. (Look it up, it’s worth a gander!) We actually stayed at this one before the first one I told you about, so things are a little out of order here. Anyway, back to the Grand Canyon Motel: It’s rated 2.6 stars on Google for a reason. It’s very visually appealing to the adventurous ten-year-old boy inside me, as it’s a series of tiny log and stone cabins rather than a traditional motel, and it was probably built in the 50’s or 60’s. It’s the only game in town, and if you are on the North Rim side of the Grand Canyon, there aren’t a lot of choices. Again, this is the remote side of things, and that comes with a price. We walked into the office, and it was stacked to the ceiling in junk, like an antique store that collects a lot more crap than it sells. The junk was the second thing we noticed though; the first being the overpowering smell of ammonia and cat shit. We should have seen that coming, in retrospect, as they had a colony of cats outside that was impressively large, and obviously lacking in any sort of spay and neuter program. Even Erica, who is a crazy cat lady, was horrified.

We attempted to take small sips of air through our mouths and smile politely as we filled out the paperwork as fast as possible (no computers here, everything is the exact same way it was in 1960). We got our key and fled to the parking lot, eyes burning and stomach churning. It was only about $40 for the night, which seemed great initially, but I was starting to worry about the level of mistake I had made in this decision before we ever even got to the room. As we carried our backpacks inside, I could tell that the group of people drinking canned beer in lawn chairs in the common area were permanent residents, and some of them had probably been there for decades. Yeah, that kind of place.

It turned out that the cabins were in far better shape than the office, at least in terms of the smell. The cats didn’t go inside the cabins, so we had that going for us. I actually found it rather appealing, in my odd way of appreciating things like this. The furniture was a hodgepodge collection of mismatched things from decades gone by. The recliner was so stained up you couldn’t tell what color it was, and it sagged badly. The armrests on it were worn shiny, as only happens with thirty years or more of hard use. The small table had a wooden straight-back chair on one side, and a dirty, white, plastic patio chair on the other side. The mattress was probably bad when it was brand new back in the 80’s, and it was only a full-size. Erica and I are used to sleeping on a king size bed, and having our own space to sprawl, so that was interesting. I didn’t sleep more than ten minutes at a time before waking up with either a lump in the mattress poking me in the kidney, Erica’s knee in my back, or her trying escape my knee in her back. Good times!

We left about 4 am, which is 7 am Florida time, and cruised down to the North Rim Lodge of the Grand Canyon to watch the sun rise. It was absolutely incredible. It was also freezing! The sign on the side of the road told us we were over 9,000 feet in elevation (our house in Florida is about 70 feet, by comparison) and the rental car told us it was 31 degrees (it was 88 when we left Florida). The funny thing is that I really have to stop and think about that sunrise to remember it well, or look at the pictures. The same thing goes for the unbelievably beautiful trails we hiked for a week. In contrast, I remember both of those motels like I stayed there last night, instead of a year ago. I remember all of the challenges we had on that trip; Erica’s fear of walking on trails on the side of the cliff with a 1,000 foot drop only inches away, and how we managed to get her through those moments, me underestimating how much food I needed to consume in a day to not have a meltdown, how awesome it was that Erica and I rose to every one of those adversities and made the best of them, rather than making it a bad experience. I remember all of those hard moments with great clarity, and with great fondness. Those tension-moments that turned into triumph-moments that made the trip more exciting, and made us tighter as a team, knowing that we can rely on each other when the going gets tough.

When I apply this concept to my other trips, the same thing rings true. I don’t remember the amazing views, the great rooms, the flawless execution of a well-laid plan (oh yes, I am a planner!). I remember all the stuff that went awry, and how we handled it, and how we look back on those moments with joy, rather than exasperation. For me, life happens smoothly most of the time, and that’s the way I like it, but the memories are in the adversity. What’s the lesson here? To always make adversity into a positive thing when at all possible, because that’s what I’ll be reflecting back upon. I need to look at adversity as an opportunity to make my future self proud, to seize the moment and be the hero that I try to be for my wife (and the ten year old kid inside!). Embrace the challenge!

J. Boyd Long is an author, blogger, website developer, and the CFO of Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic. In his spare time (ha!) he likes to paint, read, canoe, and hike in the wilderness. You can subscribe to this blog in the big blue block, and future blogs will be delivered to your email. Warning: Subscribing may increase your awesomeness quotient. Please feel free to comment, and share this blog on your favorite social media page! To learn more, please visit JBoydLong.com 

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Hurricane Irma and the Power Outage

Hurricane Irma and the Power Outage

Oh my goodness, what a week this has been! Hurricane Irma wiped out the power grid here in Florida, and while most of the state is getting back to normal, my house is on Day 8 without electricity. Don’t feel too sorry for me; we do have a generator!

It has been a very interesting experience, both from the perspective of being without power ourselves, and watching others deal with it in various ways. To be fair, I’m separating the people who simply lost power, like us, from the ones who actually sustained damage to their homes from wind, flooding, falling trees, etc. That’s a whole different thing altogether.

After Hurricane Matthew came through last year and left us without power for 3 days, we decided to invest in a whole-house generator, one of the big ones that gets installed out back and comes on automatically when the power goes out. We live out in the country, with a lot of trees along our dirt road that have a habit of falling on the power lines during big storms, so we knew we were likely to lose power again in the future. It wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that we have six horses and two donkeys, and they require about 100 gallons of water every day. If you had to haul that much water every day from somewhere else, how would you go about that? It isn’t easy, I promise!

While we do have the capacity to just let the generator run and have power like things are normal, it costs a lot in terms of propane to do that. Also, we would burn through our 200 gallons of propane in about four days, with no guarantee of getting more right away. So, we have devised a schedule around our needs.

When I wake up in the morning, usually around 5:00, I go downstairs and fire up the generator. We let it run for about three hours while we work out, bring the horses in from the pasture to their stalls and feed them, eat breakfast, and shower. That gives the fridge and freezers time to run through their cycle a few times and recover from being off all night. We turn it on again at noon for an hour, 5:00 pm for about two hours so we can cook, and at nine for an hour before bed. This lets us do most of what we need to do (excluding laundry), while stretching our fuel capacity to about three weeks.

Here are some habits I’ve observed that I have, and can’t seem to break:

  1. Turning on the light switch when I walk into a dark room.
  2. Turning on the tap to get a glass of water, rather than reach for the pitcher
  3. Laying in bed at night wishing the ceiling fan was on
  4. Looking at the alarm clock when I wake up to see what time it is
  5. Assuming that the shower will be hot, even if I forgot to turn on the water heater earlier
  6. Expecting the laptop/phone to be connected to the internet at all times
  7. Believing that my phone will charge while I’m asleep

Here are some behaviors that I have managed to change:

  1. Stop opening the fridge to find something to snack on
  2. Stop using the bathroom (as opposed to going outside, as we do live in the woods…)
  3. Using the computer with 1 screen instead of 2
  4. Drive the diesel truck so I don’t have to wait in line for an hour at the gas station
  5. Get everything I need out of the fridge in 1 shot, instead of opening it 3 times.
  6. Turn shower off while I soap up to conserve hot water

Judging from Facebook posts I have seen, I’m not the only one going through this process! Facebook has been useful, in that we’ve been able to learn tips and tricks from one another on how to improve the quality of our powerlessness. Menu ideas have been especially insightful for me, as I am not very handy in the kitchen. Keeping a rotation of frozen milk jugs filled with water going back and forth from the fridge to the freezer will help maintain the fridge temperature when the generator is off, and that’s a really big deal.

Anyway, I’ve decided that I will probably break all of my old habits the day the power comes back on, and then I will have to relearn them all. That’s okay; I’m ready to give it a go! I miss the air conditioner at night, and I’m looking forward to not having to walk to the other end of the barn to start the generator every morning before I can make the coffee!

J. Boyd Long is an author, blogger, website developer, and the CFO of Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic. In his spare time (ha!) he likes to paint, read, canoe, and hike in the wilderness. You can subscribe to this blog in the big blue block, and future blogs will be delivered to your email. Warning: Subscribing may increase your awesomeness quotient. Please feel free to comment, and share this blog on your favorite social media page! To learn more, please visit JBoydLong.com 

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Self-Doubt: The Taboo Topic

Self-Doubt: The Taboo Topic

Self-Doubt: The Taboo Topic (and how to beat it!)

There is so much societal pressure on being perfect, or appearing to be perfect, that we all become alienated from the reality of being human. If you don’t have a strong figure to teach you about these things early in life, then you end up coming to the same conclusions that I came to: something is wrong with me.

As a man, I am expected to never talk about my feelings, with two exceptions. The first exception is anger, which can be displayed openly, and the second exception is an occasional admission of love for my wife, and once a year for my mom on Mother’s Day, both of which are done in private. Other than that, stoic is the word.

My dad was a rock, as were most of the adult men in my life when I was a kid. I had no idea that he ever felt anything other than rage, because that’s the only emotion I ever saw him display. So, I grew up with the understanding that a man doesn’t experience doubt, or self-esteem problems, or fear, or social anxiety, or the black hole of negativity, or any of that stuff. The problem was that I experienced all of those things. I compared my insides to my dad’s outsides, and there was only one possible conclusion, since we never talked about this stuff: something is wrong with me.

Today I want to talk about feelings

I want to take this opportunity to tell someone out there who feels the same way I used to feel (and sometimes still do), that it’s okay to feel different on the inside than other people look on the outside. It doesn’t matter if you are male or female, young or old. You’re not perfect, but neither is anyone else. If someone looks perfect, it’s because you don’t know them very well. Even confident, successful people are less together inside than you think they are. They might not be a mess, but they have their issues.

The big difference between successful people and everyone else is that successful people don’t let their emotional hang-ups keep them down. People who run big companies have just as many doubts about whether they are good enough to handle the responsibility as anyone else. They know, however, that they don’t have to be perfect. They know what their weak areas are, and they build a team of people who are good at different things to compensate for those weak areas.

How does that help someone who doesn’t have a team, you ask?

Immensely! The key part of their success isn’t in building a great team, it’s in knowing what their weaknesses are, and working on the ones they can fix. Self-awareness is the most important thing that there is. Self-awareness is the most common trait among great people, and the least common among the masses.

If you perform an honest self-evaluation, and answer the following questions, then you can grow into whoever it is that you want to become:

  1. What are my 10 best qualities? (Character traits, not skills)
  2. What are my 10 worst character flaws?
  3. What emotional instability is at the core of each of my flaws?
  4. What specific action am I going to take each day to turn my flaws into qualities?
  5. What are things about me that I can’t change, but that I need to always be conscious of in my decisions and activities?

Here are some of my answers to these things, just to give you some insight into how I approach this.

Flaw:

I get angry when people criticize my work or ideas, or suggest other ideas rather than accepting mine.

Emotional Instability:

Low self-esteem. When someone criticizes my work, I take it as a criticism of me, as if they are saying I’m not good enough, and I get hostile and defensive. This is because sometimes I secretly believe that I’m not good enough, and when something seems to confirm that, it really hurts, and so I attack back.

Action:

I want to turn this flaw into an openness to other ideas, so that I can grow and become better. So, when someone criticizes something, I will acknowledge that the hurt and anger I feel is a false reaction to the situation. Then I will listen to the reasoning, and give it a fair shot. I will remind myself that no one is attacking me, as many times as is necessary during the conversation. I will also remind myself that other people have good ideas too, and that it’s in my best interest to be accepting when they are willing to share them with me. I will remember that the contributions of others helps me become better at what I do.

Something that I can’t change about myself that’s important to know:

I am an empath. I pick up on the emotions of people around me, and they get magnified in my head, which can be overwhelming. This means that in a conflict, or serious argument, I am going to be extremely uncomfortable, and I’m likely to go off the deep end if I get involved. Even if I am not involved, and just happen to be near others who are arguing, I get very uncomfortable, and feel the urge to leave immediately.

This is the self-awareness that I have now that helps me find success. Before I knew these things about myself, I lived my life reacting to things blindly (and badly!). Now I know how to coach myself through things so I can respond appropriately, and I also know what environments are going to be bad for me. For example, a high-stress workplace where people yell at each other is not a place that I will be successful. I also know that being in a crowd of emotionally-charged people is a bad place for me, even if they are excited and happy, because the emotional surge will drown me. That doesn’t mean something’s wrong with me, it just means I have to be smart about where I go.

You might have more than ten flaws on your list to work on, and that’s okay. I had twenty-eight on my list when I started! By the time I worked my way through the emotional aspect of all of them, I realized that most of them were based on my insecurity issue, which was a huge relief. That meant I really just had to work on improving my sense of self, and that would fix a lot of my flaws.

I’m far from finished with that problem, but I would rate my self-confidence at a 3 out of 10 when I started this process eight years ago, and now I would give myself a 6.5, and that’s a huge improvement! I hope that this will help you understand two things:

1) that’s it’s okay to have flaws, even big ones
2) that you can do something about them, and be successful in life at whatever it is that you want to do

I know, because I did it, and if I can do it, so can you!

J. Boyd Long is an author, blogger, website developer, and the CFO of Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic. In his spare time (ha!) he likes to paint, read, canoe, and hike in the wilderness. You can subscribe to this blog in the big blue block, and future blogs will be delivered to your email. Warning: Subscribing may increase your awesomeness quotient. Please feel free to comment, and share this blog on your favorite social media page! To learn more, please visit JBoydLong.com 

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How To Be Successful In 999 Easy Steps!

How To Be Successful In 999 Easy Steps!

So one of the many, many, many lessons that life has taught me is that everything that I want to do is going to be harder than I think it’s going to be. I think I started off with the idea that people were just naturally good at different things, like sports, or playing an instrument, or making decisions. This was disappointing for me, because I was not naturally good at anything. As with all things, you don’t know what you don’t know, so I was fairly unprepared for the reality of life, which is that:

if you want to be good at something, you have to work your ass off for it.

 

One of my first eye-openers that I can do something that I don’t currently know how to do was when I started playing music with other people. Up until I was about 32, I plunked a few chords on my guitar and butchered a couple of songs on occasion, and mostly believed that I just didn’t have what it took to be a musician. Once I decided that’s what I wanted to do more than anything else, and met the right people who taught me what I needed to know, everything changed. That’s me on the left side of the picture, playing with my band at a farmer’s market and having a blast!

So, what did it take for me to go from a “no-talent” guy with a lack of confidence to playing at the farmer’s market with a band? Practice. Determination. Lots and lots of both. When we formed the band, we practiced 2 hours a day, 3 days a week, for a year. That’s about 300 hours of practice to get ready to play in front of other people. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

My first painting, Feb 2012

The same thing has proven true for my writing. I’ve written an awful lot of short stories, and a lot of them were awful! The more I wrote, however, the better I got at it. I’m not anywhere near where I want to be with it at this point, but I am way better than I was when I first started. Last November I wrote Adventures of the Horse Doctor’s Husband. I sat down each day in November and wrote a 2,000 – 4,000 word story about one of the many interesting things that I’ve been involved with over the last few years. My writing skills improved on a daily basis during that experience, and when it was done, I had the confidence in myself to try a full-length fiction novel. It took me 6 months to write, but I just finished DimWorld: Foundation which is the first book in a dystopian fantasy series! Whether or not I become wildly successful as a writer is outside my control. Whether or not I am successful at writing books, however, is totally within my control!

Painting #48, Oct 2016

When we look at people who are doing things that we admire, or aspire to, I think it’s easy to convince ourselves that we don’t have what it takes. When that happens, we end up sitting around not doing anything with our lives. I had that mindset throughout my twenties and into my early thirties, and I wasted a lot of my life believing that I couldn’t, that I wasn’t good enough. When I met a mentor who taught me that I can, and that it just takes work and commitment and determination, I found out that I can do all sorts of things. I learned how to write music, and I recorded my own album in my living room. I learned how to paint, and I covered my walls with paintings. I learned how to write, and I’m about to start on my third book. I learned how to be a decent human being, and I married an amazing woman.

All of these things are the result of a lot of hard work, and this is the message I would give myself if I could go back in time:

Dear Justin,

You are capable of doing incredible, amazing things! You don’t think you are, for a variety of reasons, but I’m telling you it’s true. Someday you’re going to learn how to do all kinds of cool stuff. You can start now; you don’t have to wait until you’re 35 to get going on it. Work hard. When you struggle, work harder. Surround yourself with amazing people who inspire you to be better. Every time you do something, you get better at it. Be patient. Trust the process. Work harder. Never beat yourself up for failing, it’s all part of learning. Some of the things you do are going to suck, but that’s okay! That doesn’t mean that you suck, it just means that something didn’t work out, that’s all. Don’t compare yourself to others, because they aren’t trying to do what you are trying to do. Don’t listen to people who speak negatively of your efforts. Love yourself no matter what. You are going to be okay, I promise! Just keep moving forward, one step at a time. You’ll get there.

Sincerely,

Me

P.S. Share this insight with others; they might not know. It applies to everyone.

J. Boyd Long is an author, blogger, website developer, and the CFO of Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic. In his spare time (ha!) he likes to paint, read, canoe, and hike in the wilderness. You can subscribe to this blog in the big blue block, and future blogs will be delivered to your email. Warning: Subscribing may increase your awesomeness quotient. Please feel free to comment, and share this blog on your favorite social media page! To learn more, please visit JBoydLong.com 

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Shroom Life

Shroom Life

One of the many things in the world that interests me is the mushroom. This is a fairly new interest, and it has developed over the last few years of walking past piles of horse poop on the farm and noticing the mushrooms growing there. First it was the colors that caught my attention. Some of them are white, some are orange, some are even brown. One day I decided to take a picture, and when I saw it larger than life on my computer, I was like, Wow! These things are pretty cool! So, I started paying more attention to them, and taking more pictures. Something magic happens when you get the camera right up close to them.

Last spring we went to Cloudland Canyon State Park up in northwest Georgia. It was fantastic as usual (our 3rd time going, and we still haven’t seen the entire thing!). I found a huge variety of mushrooms growing beside the trails as we hiked. Some of them are exotic, some are lone rangers, and some are like little villages. I was absolutely fascinated with the little tiny orange ones growing in the moss. If ever there was a natural setting for a story about some tiny creature in the forest, this was it!

I can’t help but imagine that a mushroom is like a tiny little beach umbrella, and the ants, or grasshoppers, and maybe even a roly poly or two are hanging out there, doing whatever it is that they do on an ordinary day. Perhaps they gather for lunch and shoot the shit, discussing such things as Jack, the maddening cricket that keeps everyone up at night, or Frank, who got stepped on while trying to cross the trail during the day despite being told not to. Maybe they even have community action forums, where they try to come up with ways to keep people from littering along the trails. That might explain why spiders build webs across the trails every night; they’re trying to discourage people from going any further. I’ll admit that every time I pick up a piece of trash that someone else dropped in the forest, I consider how much better it would be if people just weren’t allowed to go in there.

Mainly, I am just entranced by the tiny little microcosms that exist all around me; the life that goes through it’s cycles, oblivious to me and the rest of the crazy human drama in the world. A large part of me really appreciates the simplicity of it. It’s not a world without problems, of course; I’m not that naive. I know that I cause chaos and destruction when I run over these things with the mower, and that the affected little micro world suffers a 9/11 event and has to start over. Even a horse picking that spot to pee is probably a life-altering event for the inhabitants of that little spot. These things happen all the time, and yet, life goes on. It’s easy to be an optimist from a distance, right? Speaking of distance, do you see the grasshopper sitting on the poop in that picture with the white mushrooms?

Fungus is an interesting life form. I recently learned that the vast majority of a fungus lives underground; the mushroom part we see is just the tip of the iceberg. It plays a big role in delivering nutrients to other things in the soil. There is even a fungus that connects tree roots together in some places, and when one tree is suffering, other trees can send it what it needs through the fungus. How incredible is that?

At this point, I am merely a visual enthusiast. I haven’t tried to learn what different kinds of mushroom there are, or any of that. I’m a little bit OCD, so I know that if I learn one, then I’m going to want to learn them all, and I just can’t commit the time or the limited gray matter to that right now! I’m content to just enjoy them, and let my imagination wander around them.

I’m considering painting one of the photos. I don’t know if a massive mushroom on a 4′ canvas is something that anyone else would get excited about, but my thoughts keep returning to the idea. The grass and other greenery around the mushrooms is a big concern for me though, and the main reason that I haven’t already tried my hand at it. That stuff is critical to the picture, because it creates the contrast, but it is so tedious to paint that I cringe at the thought!

So, at this point in the blog, I’m just trying to put words in here to fill in the space beside the pictures. I didn’t intend for this to become a book; I mainly just wanted to share some of the pictures I’ve been taking! So, you can feel free to stop reading, and just look at the pictures. I promise I won’t be mad at you 😉 

J. Boyd Long is an author, blogger, website developer, and the CFO of Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic. In his spare time (ha!) he likes to paint, read, canoe, and hike in the wilderness. You can subscribe to this blog in the big blue block, and future blogs will be delivered to your email. Warning: Subscribing may increase your awesomeness quotient. Please feel free to comment, and share this blog on your favorite social media page! To learn more, please visit JBoydLong.com 

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