Anyway, I had to give a training session to the new hires today (the same folks whose pictures I'd taken on Tuesday). I had prepared a tiny amount, but last night, I think I freaked out Becky by telling her that I had to read over the materials for this session at around 1:30am.

I work best under pressure, though, and I know the material inside and out, so it was just a matter of applying my style to Dan's materials (easy enough; he had examples I would have used) and making sure I didn't try to be clever or anything. I tend to get very "improvy" when I'm talking to groups of people, and I had to be more business-minded for this.

I got to the conference room, where about 10 people were listening to the rep from travel tell them about upgrades. She was running late, so I sat in the back and surfed the web while she finished up. I gave everyone a break (it sounds so official, doesn't it?) and when they came back, I delved into the depths of PowerPoint.

Now, I think PowerPoint is just about the simplest program ever built. To me, it's like Colorforms for grownups. However, I seem to be in the minority on this one, as nobody had a clue as to what I was talking about. I practically had to teach one new hire how to use a mouse.

So I started with Square One ("This is how to enter text into a text slide. No, a text slide. It comes up automatically when you select Insert - New Slide. No, Insert. On the top. Yes, in the grey rectangle up there. Good!") (I didn't make up that last parenthetical conversation. These are Ivy-League graduates, people.) and worked my way to Square Two ("If you want to put text into an AutoShape, click on the AutoShape and start typing. AutoShapes. You know, squares and circles and stuff. In the AutoShapes menu. Down there, where it says AutoShapes. No, no, it is confusing, I know.") (Also not made up. Also want to beat head against wall.)

Anyway, I introduced concepts to them, such as working with the design department at the beginning of a project, rather than running up to us with an emergency at the last second. I talked about one-on-one or group training, and evidently they all bonded over the past week, because they discussed having a training session together (they requested I run it! I rule!). I think it'll probably dawn on them that they'll be very busy as soon as they're out of training, and will be lucky to have a couple of hours for one-on-one training, but if they manage to talk their managers into letting them all meet at once, so much the better. I like doing classroom training.

At any rate, everyone thanked me for the training, and I went upstairs afterwards. An hour or so later, Shannon O'Malley, someone who we've been working with for the past month or so (she's a "new hire," but they needed her skills before the big hiring for the season) came in and said, "Patrick, I really want you to train me. You have so much patience, and I like your style."

Yeah, I'm gloating. So what? I done good.

The second thing I'll mention before the Topic of the Day is that I've been reading Suzanne's revision of a novella (or very long short story. But I think it could easily fall into novella territory) that I read a couple of years ago. She calls it the Story from Hell or somesuch, because she's had trouble getting it Just Right. As of now (I'm about 65% of the way through), I'd say she's very close to Just Right.

Just to be a pain in my writing ass, Suzanne churned out the Perfect Novel during NaNoWriMo a couple of years back. I think she doubled the required word count, and every word of it was great reading. Damn her! Damn her to HELL! (If either she or I believed in Hell, anyway.) She's a great writer, is all I'm sayin'.

Anyway, I didn't realize that I had read this story before. The title was familiar, but I thought it might be the title of something I'd read a long time ago (it was...the very same story. I need to add Aricept to my drug regimen, I think). While I read it, I kept thinking, "Did Suzanne just plagiarize Sheri S. Tepper?" (That's a compliment. Think The Gate to Women's Country, not Family Tree, if you know Ms. Tepper's work.)

It's a fascinating, engrossing story. The only trouble is something she mentions herself, which is the length. It's too long to sell as a short story, unless it's a serialized short story (which could easily be done; I can see the breaks in my head right now). I'd rather she make this into her next novel, or at least a full novella, because the characters and setting are so fascinating.

The one thing I get complimented most on, fiction-wise, is my dialogue. I guess it comes from so many years of trying to figure out how to have a conversation with someone. I've studied how people interact, so dialogue comes easy to me. I have more trouble with action, and real difficulty with settings and description. I think that's why I gravitate towards playwriting.

Suzanne, on the other hand, is a world-builder. Before she started writing, she was more involved in sculpture, and her senior thesis was an interactive art installation that simulated an archaeological expedition on a fictional planet. I had a tremendous time walking through it. I wish Industrial Light and Magic or WetaWorks (I think that's right) would discover her and let her build things straight out of her imagination.

But she's going to hit it big with the writing. Most likely before me; and I'm okay with that. We work in totally different genres, and even if she did the kind of suburban angst stories that I write, I don't think I could bring myself to feel jealous, because you can't be jealous of talent. Envious, yes, but not jealous. Plus, she's more disciplined than I am at this point. I'm writing a lot, but I haven't put in the hard-core effort to finish one particular thing. I have the discipline, but lack direction right now. I need to get some projects cleared off my plate so that I have the time to simply sit down and write. Deadlines for plays loom in the near future, and while I have one completed work ("Yes. No. Love. Stop."), I haven't had it read or critiqued yet, so it may be a steaming pile of garbage. In fact, that's precisely why I haven't had it read or critiqued yet. I've been trying to channel David Ives, and I think I have something that transcends the "acting class exercise" format of the play, but I'm unsure. One more day of tweaking, and I'll send it to whoever wants to read it (that I know...if I don't know you at all, I may not share, just because I'm paranoid about my ideas). I think Tuesday, I'll find a conference room (or the nap room!) in the Consulting Company building to hole up in and just spend my time editing that one piece. I think I need to get away from the comfy chair for my writing, because it's too easy to get distracted here. I need somewhere with no distractions. The nap room may be just the place.

I still have a novel and a half to read (one to critique, one for fun) from friends, but Suzanne takes priority, because she's always been a cheerleader for my work. And she writes what I read: fantasy-tinged science fiction. I like to get lost in her worlds.

Really, that's all a reader can ask for.

1,400 words in, and I haven't even gotten to my topic. I'm a bit wordy.

Yes, Becky, it's a door.

Anyway, onto it:

Obviously, not a vanity shot. This is a picture of me tonight. I weighed myself today at the gym, and I'm still holding steady at 202 lbs. This is what I look like at that weight. I think there's more of a "redistribution" going on than a "loss," because my face isn't as full as it usually is at this weight.

Just to prove I'm not doing this out of any hopes of a compliment, here's me in my "comfy clothes" (read: rag-bag pile, if they weren't so damned comfortable). You can't see it, but the sweatpants are covered in paint (I use them when I paint a set for a show), and the baseball shirt was a hand-me-down from Sean, who doesn't like to wear logos that aren't cool. I guess Nokia isn't cool enough for him. I have no illusions of cool.

Oh, and check out the medic alert necklace! Sexy! I'll have to beat them away with a stick in Cancun, wearing that sassy little item (the back says "latex allergy," just to get you further into the mood) on the beach.

Anyway. 202 lbs., and I really don't think I look fat. A bit of a big guy, but I'm just over 6' tall, so I can carry it off. I'm more comfortable around 180, but Mom and Laurie think I look too thin at that weight. Most likely, with the triathlon training, I'll get closer to that weight, but if I stay at this weight and continue to find my pants a little loose, I'll be just as happy.

Anyway anyway, when I was a freshman in college, as with many a college student, I got mono. Given my lifestyle at the time, I'm really lucky that mono is the worst of the illnesses I ever contracted, but it was pretty traumatic for me nonetheless, mostly because I didn't realize I had mono. I just thought that I was very tired.

Towards the end of the semester, I just started sleeping a lot. I would wake up to the alarm, go to my morning French class, then go home, drink some water and fall asleep until my creative writing class. I would attempt to eat some lunch, find myself disinterested, and go back to bed. In the evenings, I had an astronomy class, for which I would haul myself over to a building across campus, and then slug out in the campus center doing my homework and then over to the grad research tower for chatting until I couldn't stay awake for another minute (this after about 16 hours of sleep through the day and night), and go home, only to sleep until the next morning, when I had my COBOL class.

After all that, I went home on a break to see Mom. A friend from high school drove back home with her dad, and they set up a makeshift bed in the back of their station wagon, and I slept the whole way home. When I got there, Mom gasped and made me go to the emergency room right away, where they diagnosed me with mono.

The reason she knew I was sick? I had dropped down to 140 lbs.

140.

Look at the pictures above again. That's 62 pounds heavier than I was at that time.

Obviously, I wasn't a pretty sight.

The thing that struck me most, however, was the fact that my grades were the best I ever had in college, save for my last semester when I went back at 25, moved into the dorms, and did nothing but study (and sleep with an absolutely beautiful but absolutely bugshit Native American guy). I think my GPA for my freshman year was a 3.7 or something. (I got an A- and a B, which bugged me to no end).

At the end of the semester, after I'd had time to rest, everybody congratulated me on the "motivation" I showed in finishing out my first semester. They told me they would have dropped out, but I, lonely and homesick and sick-sick and sleeping with anything under the sun, managed not only to get by, but to pass with flying colors.

The big secret, though, was that I didn't really have any motivation at all.

Back when I was in the depths of despair, I got an e-mail from some wingnut reader who told me I couldn't be depressed because I "[did] too much". According to her, only well-adjusted people were able to do anything of value, and if I were truly depressed, just getting out of bed would be too much for me.

I guess that Emily Dickenson was just a barrel of laughs, according to that theory. Someone should have told Kurt Cobain that he was really pretty well-adjusted before he reached for the shotgun. "Depressed people don't have the motivation you do," this whackjob told me.

Again, with that word.

This morning, when I came into work, lugging two backpacks (one for the work laptop and one for the personal laptop, which never got out of its case) and my gym bag, Terry said to me, "What are you doing, moving in?"

"No," I said, "I just have a lot to do today, if it isn't too busy. I have to do the training thing, so I have to get in some running during my break, and I have Chris' website to finish, and a play to edit, and a short story to read. Plus I might fit in some work at some point." I was trying to make a joke out of it, but she took me seriously.

"If I had one-tenths the motivation you do," she said, not finishing the thought.

But I don't! I screamed at her in the back of my head. This isn't "motivation", it's just what I do!

For some reason, the concept of "motivation" bugs me. It's almost as big a fallacy as "willpower." Both terms, to me, are kind of a copout. I've found myself saying the same thing about other people: "If I just had her/his kind of motivation, I'd be rich by now." Or "I just don't have the willpower to get into shape right now."

Motivation and Willpower are, to me, just ways of keeping from holding myself accountable for things. "I don't have the motivation to write today" is much easier to say than, "I'm making a conscious decision not to write anything today." It sounds better, as if "motivation" were some sort of commodity that could be cashed in for a successful life.

To quote a very wise Muppet: "There is no try; there is only do." It doesn't matter one bit whether I'm "motivated" to run or to write or to go to class without having eaten a bite of food in a week and a half. If I do those things, I end up with the same result with or without motivation playing a part.

It's hard to articulate, but it's sort of like my theory on people I supervise. I don't give a rat's ass if they have a positive attitude towards work. John and Jessica, the husband-and-wife team in our department, are constantly being chastized for their "attitudes", but they do some of the best work in the department. Sure, when I hand over a document to John, it might make me feel a little better to hear, "Thanks, Patrick!" than, "Oh, great" in the most sarcastic tone of voice ever uttered, but that doesn't mean the work will turn out any differently. Laurie has a sarcastic, dry wit that was misinterpreted as a "bad attitude" until people realized she was kidding (which took folks about a year), and then she suddenly got bumped up from "someone who does good work, but doesn't care about her job" to "the greatest employee the design department has ever had." She didn't change her work skills or her attitude, it was just the perception of her attitude by others that had changed.

Same goes for me. I'm not any more motivated now than I was six months ago; I've just learned that it's just as easy to go do something as it is to sit on my ass and watch another episode of The Real World / Road Rules Battle of the Sexes II while feeling depressed about my life passing me by.

Motivation isn't currency. You can't cash it in for success; the only thing that leads to success is action (or marrying rich). Attitude doesn't matter, doing is what gets things done. More days than not, I wake up thinking, "I don't want to go to work. I think I'll just call in sick and watch TV in bed all day long." I used to do just that when the urge was strong enough, and all it got me was another day filled with nothing special at all, and one less PTO day to spend on something fun (because I hadn't planned anything for those "mental health days" I valued so much).

It's almost the end of the first quarter at the Consulting Company, and I haven't used one PTO day for anything. When something has come up, I've switched my schedule around so that I could attend. I'm working this coming Thursday night so that I can attend a "play reading party" (basically a marathon of reading and critiquing plays for a Boston theater company) on Sunday. The week after that, I'm doing the same thing so I can take off Easter Sunday, because the company doesn't recognize it as a holiday, and I want to use my time off for something fun and interesting, rather than sitting around the house feeling kind of smug that I'm not at work.

Yes, the drugs and the therapy have helped me get to this point, and I certainly don't think any less of anyone who takes time off because they enjoy doing so. This is just what is working for me right now. When I get an idea for work, I immediately act on it and turn it in for feedback. The worst that can happen is that nobody will pay attention to my idea, or disagree with it. (Or make fun of me for working from home, which I'm getting pretty damned tired of, truth be told.) At best, it shows that I'm interested in the work and engaged in what I do for money.

I asked Dan to write me a letter of recommendation for grad school, and he let me see what he had written (he actually told me to add in whatever I wanted, which I found funny). I got one of the best recommendation letters I've ever gotten for anything, be it for school or for a job, and I think that has everything to do with the fact that I'm not sitting around waiting for motivation to strike me, like a bolt out of the blue.

"Feel the fear, but do it anyway." "A stitch in time saves nine." "Shit or get off the pot." There are a million different cliches for what I'm just coming to realize. I just need to do, rather than wait.

So far, it has been working. I don't know if it will continue to do so, but I have the sneaking suspicion it will, if I keep up this habit.

Then again, I may just be full of Tony Robbins-esque, New-age, self-help-section-of-the-bookstore crap.

And now, I feel motivated to go to bed and get some sleep.