BlakeAtwood.com

Where’s My Horse?

Blake — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 05:07:59 +0000

There are seasons in my life where I’ve privately journaled about my life experiences. Most of it is so wretchedly written that a drunken monkey wouldn’t want to read it; however, that’s not exactly the point. For me the point is to simply record the event so I can remember a comedic circumstance, an inaudible word from above, or a lesson I should have learned by now.

(As a side note, my journaling tool of choice is Google Docs, but I read this article earlier today – OhLife: A Personal Journal You Might Actually Keep Updating – about a site built for the sole purpose of private journaling).

Today I’ll share a quick comedic moment that happened almost a year ago to the day. I’d taken a trip with my Uncle to northern California so we (well, mostly he) could attend the Healdsburg Guitar Festival. Here’s my summary of an informal jam session that happened one night:

We went to a McKnight owners jam held at the hotel, but I didn’t stay there very long either. The one humorous moment came when I was talking to some guy about wanting to play out more in Austin. He asked, “What kind of music do you play?” I hemmed and hawed. “You don’t look like the rock type. Country?”

Well, crap, was all I could think.

Since I’ve moved…

Blake — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:26:47 +0000

photo credit: austrini

Since I’ve moved to DFW, this is what I’ve been doing:

Applying for job after job after job after job. By now I’ve applied to almost 70 places.
Learning that Tom Petty was right.
Being the runner-up for a position in early July.
Watching 24.
Enjoying living closer to my nieces and nephew and, yes, even their parents.
Spending time with old friends and bizarro friends.
Living vicariously through John Marston and being wooed to the dark side.
Getting invited to the cast and crew screening of Paradise Recovered held at the Alamo Drafthouse. They were even so kind as to give me a film credit.
Seeing Mr. Daniel Whittington rip up Opening Bell Coffeehouse.
Watching my nieces get baptized during a very inspiring baptism service.
Attending a small church called The Village.
Seldom updating my website or twittering because it feels like there is so little occurring.

Since I’ve moved to DFW, this is what I’ve been thinking:

that I honestly wouldn’t have gone this long without landing a proper job. It’s a foolhardy thought given the economy, but I now have a healthy appreciation for the difficulties of those that have faced much worse in regards to unemployment.
that I’m living in interstitial space, somewhere between who I used to be and who I want to be, and unsure of who I am now. I once had a vague idea of my future, but now it’s an unseen vista just over the horizon.
that the hamster in the wheel of my mind needs to ease up on the caffeinated beverages.
that I’m entirely too ungrateful. Despite the things I rail against God for, I take far too many things and people for granted.
that no matter how long the night, dawn still breaks like grace, a shimmering surprise to a worn-out sinner.

Need a Website? Brochure? Newsletter? Article?

Blake — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:00:09 +0000

I tweeted this yesterday:

Because the day before I felt like this:

While there are thousands of people much worse off than myself, part of my self-pitying ice cream coma arrived as a result of finally learning the answer to a specific job application process that’s lasted for the last three months. (The answer was no in case the picture didn’t clue you in). I drowned my sorrows in a PB&C shake from Cold Stone Creamery. It helped. A little.

But today, like every day, is a new day. Motivation has returned. Self-confidence, ever wavering though it may be, came back to roost. I have ideas for better utilizing my time. (I’ve watched the entire first season of 24 in about a week – thank you Netflix streaming - and tore apart my defunct PS3, among other things). I’d like to help you, or your friends.

This is where you come in.

Do you need a simple website?
Maybe a brochure or newsletter or heck, even a magazine?
An article written and pitched?

I can write. I can design. I can do layout. Yes, I will ask for a fee in return for these services, but it will be a mutually beneficial venture: inexpensive for you, experience for me. Pricing will be discussed up front, before any work is done, and will be on a case-by-case basis based on your needs.

So if you or someone you know is in need of a small website (I can host it as well), graphic design work, or copywriting, use the contact tab on the left side of this website to contact me.

I promise not to spill chocolate shake on your website.

[P.S. I am still looking for a full-time job in the DFW area, but plan to continue freelance work when a new gig is obtained... as long as the new gig is OK with it.]

God Screams With Us: Relevant Magazine Online

Blake — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:25:02 +0000

[Adapted and expanded from this post: The Primal Scream]

In the wake of the death of my marriage, I began a search for answers to questions that I knew had no answers, but the desire to know, unequivocally, what had gone so horribly wrong was too great. I had to know the answer to “Why?” More than just “Why did this happen to me?” I had to know “Why does this happen to anyone?” even “Why does this happen to everyone, in some form?” Which, really, boils down to the first question, plus a pointed noun, “Why, God?” Yet even in asking that question, in thinking long enough about it, one might even question the necessity of the comma, the necessity of the God, and simply, honestly, ask “Why God?”

Read the rest at RelevantMagazine.com…

Searching for a Job on Twitter

Blake — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:59:04 +0000

While I’ve had the fortune to not have had to look for many jobs in my years of being an adult, I’ve always heard it was about who you know; in other words, it’s networking. This notion always scared me because I thought I’d have to know a lot of people, and I thought I’d have to know them pretty well for them to be interested in helping me find a job. Thankfully I live in a time where networking floats in the air I breathe, in the digital bits of the tweets and status updates of social networks. Now that I’m embarking on a new adventure, I sat down at my computer last night and wound up spending two hours “networking.”

It began with this article: HOW TO: Find a Job on Twitter, from Mashable.com. At the end of the post, the article lists multiple twitter accounts to follow if you need to find a job. I clicked the ones of interest to me, and as I was about to start clicking “follow,” I thought…Wait a minute… If this new account decides to follow me back, or if any other traffic should arrive as a result of starting to follow these accounts, do I really want my lame Twitter page to be their first impression?

So I googled “Twitter background templates” and found this free downloadable Twitter background PSD file from @chadengle of fuelyourcreativity.com. I edited it and wound up with the background currently seen on my twitter page. It’s still fairly simple, but it’s direct and looks better than before.

Finally, I felt confident to start following new accounts (listed here for your amusement). Then things got really fun. I’d begun using Hootsuite online recently at my current job and knew it would be a useful tool for this new endeavor. I didn’t realize how powerful the tool they’ve created is until I saw how it could help me in a job search. I created a list on which I could place only twitter accounts related to my job search in Dallas and Fort Worth. I created a column that only tracks the hashtag #tweetmyjobs. I created other columns that deliver real-time results for “Dallas jobs” and “Forth Worth jobs.” In perusing the results, I found @writerjobsdal, an account aimed directly at the type of job I’m looking for. I started to find interesting jobs almost immediately, but my eyelids could bear their burden no longer. I left the search until today, but knowing that I’d set in place useful tools for my search allowed me to sleep soundly.

Feel free to make recommendations of Twitter accounts, or share your own story if and how using online tools helped you get a job. Or, you know, offer me a job in DFW.

Starting the Job Hunt: Princeton Review Career Quiz

Blake — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 01:36:51 +0000

I picked up the perennial bestseller (10,00,000 copies!) of What Color Is Your Parachute? 2010: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers on Sunday. The top line of the cover lists this version as the “Hard Times” Edition. Seeing that made me wonder, again, why in the world am I doing this, when so many people have been out of work for so long? It’s a question I dismiss quickly. Despite the inherent fears in jumping into the great abyss of an unknown future (well, it’s all unknown), I know this to be the right thing to do at this point in my life. So, in hopes of a good conclusion to this journey, I’ll document some of this process.

In What Color is Your Parachute, author Richard Bolles lists a few sites for career quizzes. While I’m fairly knowledgeable about who I am, what I can do, and the type of job I’m looking for, I thought I’d give a few of them a try. The very first test, all of twenty-four, very easy to answer questions, pegged me. If you’re looking to be told what a good career path might be for you, try the Princeton Review’s Career Quiz. Here are my results, if you’re interested:

Your Interest Color is BLUE
People with blue Interests like job responsibilities and occupations that involve creative, humanistic, thoughtful, and quiet types of activities. Blue Interests include abstracting, theorizing, designing, writing, reflecting, and originating, which often lead to work in editing, teaching, composing, inventing, mediating, clergy, and writing.

Your usual style is YELLOW
People with yellow styles perform their job responsibilities in a manner that is orderly and planned to meet a known schedule. They prefer to work where things get done with a minimum of interpretation and unexpected change. People with a yellow style tend to be orderly, cautious, structured, loyal, systematic, solitary, methodical, and organized, and usually thrive in a research-oriented, predictable, established, controlled, measurable, orderly environment. You will want to choose a work environment or career path in which your style is welcomed and produces results.

Careers from The Princeton Review Guide To
Your Career linked to “Blue” interest:

Clergy–Priest, Rabbi, Minister, Imam

College Administrator

Human Resources Manager

Management Consultant

Occupational Therapist

Public Health Administrator

Book Publishing Professional

Substance Abuse Counselor

Can You Help Me Find a Job?

Blake — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:48:14 +0000

If you know me, I know what you’re thinking.

Doesn’t he already have a job? Yes.
Does he like his job? Again, yes.
Does he like the people he works with? For sure.
Do they like him? I think so.
So why is he asking for my help?

In approximately two months I’ll be moving to the Dallas/Fort Worth area. As to the reason why, let’s just say my last few years suffered from a blue-screen-of-death and I need to CTRL-ALT-DEL my life. (I don’t think it’s coincidental that I also became a Mac convert during this time). And, fortunately, none of that was as a result of my current job. While I leave this church with a sad heart, I leave on good terms.

I currently do not have a job lined up. This is equally exciting and terrifying. This is also the reason for my request. While I plan to do my due diligence in finding a new position, I’m also humbly requesting your help. Ideally, I’m looking for a position working with words – proofing, editing, or writing – but if you know me at all you also know I have experience with graphic design and layout, videography, and some web work.

Feel free, at any time, to send me contacts you may have in the DFW area, or companies you know of that may be a good fit for someone like me. Use the contact tab on the left side of the page to email me. Alternatively, connect with me on LinkedIn or Facebook.

Finally, if this is the first you’ve read about this upcoming change, I apologize for not having told you sooner. Don’t take it personally. If you need to talk some sense in to me, you’re always welcome to buy lunch for me.

Breaking Bad, Breaking Sin: Relevant Magazine Online

Blake — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:00:51 +0000

In watching the first season of Breaking Bad two years ago, I sat transfixed by this small, strange, intoxicating universe of characters and experiences I knew nothing about. Even though they inhabited a vastly different world, their motivations to do some absolutely heinous things seemed all too familiar.

Breaking Bad follows Walter White, high-school chem teacher, cancer patient, and part-time meth manufacturer.

Read the rest at RelevantMagazine.com…

Feigning Fearlessness

Blake — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 05:12:10 +0000

Allow me to quote a quote of a quote:

“He was a frail, sickly child, afraid of many things. So he stayed inside his house a lot and read books, mainly adventure stories. One day he was reading a novel by the English author Frederick Marryat. In his autobiography, Roosevelt records what happened:

‘In this passage the captain of some small British man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to acquire the quality of fearlessness. He says that at the outset almost every man is frightened when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he was not frightened. After this is kept up long enough, it changes from pretense to reality, and the man does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel it.’”

In context (The Art of War for Writers, to be precise), author J.S. Bell is talking about feigning fearlessness in the face of the daunting tasks of living a writing life, to act as if you are one until you become one. Author Steven Pressfield would call this manning your station, day-in, day-out, so that the Muse will find you hard at work and reward you as such.

And while this is helpful and true and beneficial advice, I read more into it.

The warring parts of my soul (some might even say the Jacob hovering above my right shoulder and the Lockeness Smoke Monster hovering over my left) answer the conundrum of feigning fearlessness differently.

Smokey answers: Your bad habits? The things you despise about yourself? The things you always want to change but you never seem to be able to shake them? You’ve been feigning godliness for a long time. Your pretense is not your reality. I know what’s real. You should just give up.

Jacob answers: I know what’s real. I can see behind the facade of your charades. I know your heart, your will. You have, actually, been feigning godliness for a long time, but that makes you just like all the others. And to see that you still try, despite the short hand you’ve been dealt? That you keep pressing on and pressing in and pressing forward impresses me. Don’t forget that. But don’t let it go to your head either.

And I answer: I used to be afraid, and because I was afraid I became numb. When the world changed and I was shocked back into feeling reality, I barely held on. I almost lost my grip, but I kept feigning fearlessness, and now that fearlessness… it’s almost real.

Tech Tuesday: The iPad

Blake — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:00:11 +0000

The iPad releases into the wild this Friday. I don’t have one… yet. I’ll most likely cave and get one in the not-so-distant future, even though I have a difficult time justifying the expense. However, Kindles and Nooks continue to intrigue me because of their size and portability, even though there’s nothing like the texture, smell, and look of a physical book. I’ve (surprisingly) staved off buying an ebook reader since they’ve become commercially available, and I’m glad I waited, because the iPad, for a comparable price given its extensive capabilities, does things like this:

So the selling point for me is the iBookstore, and magazines like Wired that are going to make full use of the iPad’s capabilities.

And, just so you know, my birthday’s in a few months.
A milestone one at that.
Just saying.