My Journey to Become a Writer

I have decided to pursue a part time career in writing and editing. I will chronicle my journey on this blog. 

Today I reached my first milestone in becoming a professional writer. Rejection.

I sent in a sample of a short 600+ word article to a website that is looking for writers. They replied that they think I need more experience. I think that is probably a nice way of saying that they think I suck. This hurts even more since the position was a volunteer one.

Rejection is part of being a writer, so I guess I got my cherry popped.

Resolutions - Day 287 - Week 41

Various issues prevent me from getting my weight for the last few weeks.

This week I am at 210 pounds. Starting to gain back what I lost. Need to focus again.

Date Night

Saturday the Wife and I had date night. We try to go out once a month, get away from the kids and have an adult conversation.

We were planning to see the movie Fun Size, as the Wife had won some advanced screening passes, but there was a mix up on the time so we missed it. It would have been interesting to see a movie before it is released, but I probably would not have enjoyed it as much as what we did see.

Instead, we went to the West Edmonton Mall and saw the movie Looper. It is a typical action drama with a bit of time travel. Both of us enjoyed it. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys these types of movies and it was a good date night movie, as it was light on the time travel confusion, and more focused on the action/story. Any fans of time travel will note the flaws, and I found it funny that the director seemed to not want you to think about the flaws too much, as he has Bruce Willis say to Levitt when he asks about the paradox of time travel, "Don't worry about it, it's not important."

Before the movie, we had dinner at the Delux Burger Bar in the Mall. I was disappointed. This restaurant is focused on burgers, and while my burger was more fancy than one you would get at Five Guys, the quality was not there. My burger was dry and not juicy. If you are going to be a burger restaurant, you should get the meat right. The place was busy, but not so much that I thought the quality of the meal should suffer. Even the bacon on my burger was burnt on the ends, and I mean black burnt. 

Five Guys was much, much better.

Biggest Internet Troll Exposed

This article by Adrien Chen from Gawker exposes the notorious Reddit mod/troll Violentacrez.
peach
This is not a topic I usually write about on this blog, but one that I find very interesting. I bit of background, Violentacrez is/was a moderator on Reddit and was responsible for some of its most noxious content, which you will have to follow the links to find out how noxious. The writer of the above article discovered his real identity and outed him in the above article.

I am not sure how I feel about this. If you were not aware, I use an alias on this blog. I try to be as truthful as possible about everything I write, with the exception of my name. I think this anonymity allows me to be more truthful. Using my real name might cause me to censor myself. There are things you think that you might not want your friends and family to know.

However, some of the stuff this guy posted was very vile. As a strong believer in free speech, I appreciate that there needs to be a forum where anything can be said, but the person who starts/moderates subforums  titled "rapebait", "incest" and "chokeabitch", well that is not someone I would want to associate with. 

As for outing Violentacrez, he is free to say what he wishes and to try to do it anonymously, while journalists are free to try and find out what his real name is. I don't think his real identity is important to the issue of what he says. Putting out your real identity tends to lend more credibility to what you say, but the identity of a person who speaks the truth is not essential to the truth of their speech. The same point is not more true because someone else says it.

Update: That was quick. Violentacrez Fired.

Resolutions - Day 266 - Week 38

No weight this week.

This was a chaotic week. J is still in the hospital and the rest of us spent the week in a hotel, as they were fixing our kitchen floor, which was damaged a few months ago due to water leaking from a broken dishwasher.

Hopefully things will be getting back to normal.

Resolutions- Day 259 - Week 37

Still at 205 pounds. No change.

J went into the hospital this week, so I cheating quite a bit. Any change in my routine of this type makes it hard to keep to the diet. When J is in the hospital I spend a significant portion of the day driving around and visiting her. I should be happy to maintain.