Meloddities

The last week certainly hasn’t quelled my interest in the idea of a protest song. However, if I let the outside world being a huge fucking bummer dictate the content of my blog, The Process Process would fall into a dark, depressing pit from which it would never escape. And who wants that? The song I hope to eventually write may well be one of protest, but before I make that decision, I have many more genres to explore and consider. This week, we’re going to take a look at the oft abused and misunderstood outcast of the musical world: the novelty song.

While weird and funny music has existed since time immemorial, the specific term “novelty song” appears to have originated among the musicians of Tin Pan Alley. It was one of the three subcategories of popular music, with the others being ballads and dance music. Or at least, that’s what Wikipedia says. This sounds like a reasonable origin for the term, but I haven’t found any other sources to corroborate the story, so take this all with a grain of salt.

Generally speaking, novelty songs feature some kind of atypical hook or gimmick. Depending on the song, such gimmicks can include strange instrumentation, humor, bizarre subject matter, or even just funny voices. Really, a novelty song is any song that feels especially novel or unique within the context of an era’s prevailing musical styles. Such a broad definition means that songs that exist within other genres, like love ballads or political anthems, may also be novelty songs. Indeed, my intended combination of clawhammer banjo and operatic baritone will make my song, whatever else it may be, a novelty. (Or at least, it will for the month or two before Baritone Claw becomes the only thing anyone wants to listen to.)

I have to imagine that many musicians have written novelty songs by accident. Something inspires them, and they earnestly create a piece of music that they hope will elicit a pure and equally earnest emotional response. Then people hear some silly lyric about leaving a cake out in the rain and think, “That’s hilarious. I hope someone does a disco cover of this nonsense.”

On the other hand, sometimes people seem hellbent on writing novelty songs only to have audiences accept their work as part of the mainstream. You can’t tell me that Bernie Taupin wrote lines like “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids/In fact it’s cold as hell/And there’s no one there to raise them if you did,” or “And it seems to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind/never knowing who to cling to when the rain set in” to be taken seriously. These are joke lyrics for joke songs. Bernie Taupin was clearly an aspiring novelty songwriter who made the mistake of partnering with someone so talented that people accepted his insane lyrics without thinking about them. Tragic.

Some songs only become novelties after society has had time to gain perspective. For a brief moment, Shaggy was a mainstream musical act. So was Vanilla Ice. Now, we regard their songs about the denial of blatant infidelity and believing oneself to be a successful rapper as humorous relics of a simpler, dumber time.

The examples from the previous three paragraphs are all valid varieties of music, but my aim is not to follow in any of their footsteps. If I’m going to write a novelty song, I want to do so on purpose and with enough skill that people understand what I’m doing. The artists whose works fall into this category include such luminaries as Weird Al, Tenacious D, Flight of the Conchords, and Roger Miller. By and large, the novel element in these musicians’ catalogs is humor, and in Weird Al’s case, humor and the accordion.

Novelty songs featuring silly voices or dumb lyrics can be fun for a time, but they tend to have a shorter than average shelf life. The very things that make them initially popular also make them annoying in fairly short order. The beauty of comedic novelty is that it isn’t really novelty at all. Well-crafted funny lyrics are still well-crafted lyrics. Paired with good music, they become good songs that also happen to be funny. Weird Al’s “Mission Statement” is both a hilarious send up of corporate jargon and a pitch perfect homage to the musical stylings of Crosby, Stills, and Nash. It is funny AND a great song. That’s the needle I would hope to thread should I go the novelty route.

Truthfully, even if I don’t go full novelty song, I can’t imagine I’ll write something with no jokes at all. I am who I am, and I write how I write. My work should, and inevitably will, reflect that. Genre labels are messy and imperfect, often to the point of uselessness. Frequently, they exist to create arbitrary hierarchies within particular artforms, but the best things often defy clean categorization. Purposefully or not, my song will almost certainly fit the definition of “novelty song.” I’m eager to discover which other definitions it will fit. Maybe disco? Time will tell!

Banjo update: I started clawhammer class on Tuesday, and I’m really enjoying it so far. It feels entirely different from bluegrass style, which is an adjustment, but it also feels natural in my right hand. I’m super excited to keep learning.

Novel update: Last week, I killed a character, and this week, I may have brought another one back from the dead, so my net body count is down to one again. A big piece of the story just fell into place. I can’t wait to see where it goes!

Join me in two weeks as I discover and dedicate my entire being to the genre of Pirate Metal.

There are no neutrals there

Two weeks ago, I made a vague commitment to writing a song at some point in the near future. When, exactly, depends on a number of factors, including how quickly I pick up clawhammer-style banjo playing. The other big consideration is the subject matter of this future greatest-musical-composition-of-all-time. In my last entry, I declared that I couldn’t figure out what my song would be about in a single blog post, but perhaps I can do so over the course of multiple blog posts. Let’s start to find out, shall we?

Music, even banjo music, can explore all kinds of ideas and emotions. Sure, the music of hill people tends to be sad, but despite my instrument of choice and my ethnic background, I am not a hill person. In fact, I live in Illinois, the second flattest state in the Union. The nearest hill of substantial dimensions is hundreds of miles away. All we have in the immediate area are dunes at various points around Lake Michigan, and those are hardly the proper setting for plaintive ballads about Black Lung or moonshine-derived blindness. Writing something along those lines would, ultimately, feel disingenuous.

Based on my recollections of my college music history classes, a plurality of songs focus on sex and romance, which makes sense. A plurality of songwriters since the dawn of humanity became musicians in the hopes of getting laid. Franz Schubert (likely) died of syphilis at the age of 31. I’m not saying he didn’t also have artistic ambition, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to think he might have written Winterreise in an attempt to seem deep and complicated to someone he was trying to bang. An understandable motivation, to be sure, but not an especially useful one for me. I am both happily married and very handsome.

Still, being married certainly doesn’t preclude me from writing a love song. However, that’s an avenue I’ll explore in a later post. Today, events on college campuses around the country—including, sadly, my beloved University of Texas—over the last week or two have me thinking about another genre: the protest song.

For those of you who haven’t been following these events, students fed up with the United States Government’s financial and material support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza have begun organizing protests. College administrators and government officials have worked hard to depict these demonstrations as being disruptive, violent, and antisemitic, even though they have, in fact, been peaceful, Constitutionally protected, and largely organized with the help of Jewish student groups. The only real violence and disruption have occurred when the police get involved. It’s all frightening and terrible and fundamentally anti-democratic. In short, the current national mood is ideal for writing a kickass screed against the powers that be.

Within the protest song oeuvre, there are myriad styles and an equal number of potential pitfalls. Obviously, should I go this route, I want my song to be timeless and unassailable. Thus, it feels prudent to identify what said pitfalls might be. The first and most difficult of these to predict is one common to all forms of writing: understanding. While the broad strokes of societal ills are dispiritingly common across eras, the details are often time-specific. As a result, the turning of years can obscure the once-clear meaning of a particular piece. For example, when I learned “This Land is Your Land” in elementary school, my teachers presented it as yet another ode to the greatness of America. In actuality, Woodie Guthrie wrote it as a rebuttal to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” The full lyrics of the song include verses that are overtly critical of the country’s dire income inequality and even of the very concept of land ownership. If time can turn Guthrie’s pointed words about the injustices inherent to the structure of the nation into a fun little tune about what a neat place this is, I need to be careful. I don’t want to write something that future generations will misinterpret as a loving tribute to steamed vegetables or some shit.

On the flipside, too much clarity can make a song pedantic and dull. No one likes a scold. I don’t want to sing a lecture at anyone. However, in attempting to avoid such an outcome, many artists end up writing toothless garbage, like the melodic equivalent of an SNL political sketch. This is how you get songs like Green Day’s “American Idiot,” which is a lot of generic whining about US news media and the gratuitous use of a gay slur. Then again, Green Day’s whole thing is “What if punk rock was toothless and generic?” so maybe they aren’t the best example. I’d’ve used John Lennon’s “Imagine,” but I’m already expecting annoying comments from people who think student protestors deserve jail time and police brutality. I don’t need insufferable Lennon-heads piling on as well.

Essentially, I want lyrics that are clear enough to stand the test of time, poetic enough to be interesting, and specific enough to convey a strong and definitive point of view, all while fitting into a musical framework that is genuinely good. That’s a lot to consider even before trying to figure out which of the world’s countless injustices I want to use my angel-like voice to protest. I know I pointed to the overt suppression of first amendment rights on college campuses as the inspiration for this post, but the songs about that should probably come from one of the students with a boot print on their neck. The last thing anyone needs is another person who looks like me telling other people’s stories for them. Should I decide to go the protest route, I have plenty stories of my own.

Novel Update: I’ve killed off another character, and I feel no remorse. Will my spree continue? Not sure yet. This is the last planned death, but who knows where the story will lead?

Banjo Update: I haven’t killed anyone, and I feel confident declaring that this won’t change. Clawhammer class starts on Tuesday. I’m excited to begin!

Join me next week as the merest consideration of protest causes UT president Jay Hartzell to dispatch Texas state troopers to my home.

Mineshafts and Moonshine

Music and writing are the two pursuits to which I have devoted the most time and energy over the course of my life thus far. They are both essential components of who I am and how I see myself. And yet, for reasons that escape me, I have rarely combined these passions in the hopes of writing a song. I’ve written parody lyrics for comedy sketches, completed composition assignments for music theory classes back in college, and even co-wrote a substantial portion of a Spider-Man musical before Bono and the Edge rendered such an endeavor useless. But I’ve never simply sat down and created an original song from whole cloth.

I appreciate good song writing, and I can even articulate specific reasons why I think a song is good or bad. I understand it all in the abstract, but as yet, I haven’t been able to parlay that understanding into sweet-ass tunes. Perhaps my brain simply works best in prose. That’s certainly the type of writing I do most. If you look back at any entry of The Process Process, you will see how expertly I avoid rhymes, stanzas, or metered lines of any sort. That is because I am a master of prose. However, because of this clear mastery, I want to stretch and challenge myself. I want to write a goddamn song.

Now so committed, I must first decide what type of song I plan to write and what that song is going to be about. In the past, pre-existing parameters made these decisions for me. J. Jonah Jameson needs a patter song to illustrate his worldview. Done. This sketch about a singing bad news delivery service needs a snippet about an injured child set to the tune of “Eye of the Tiger.” No problem:

It’s the thumb of your daughter. It came off in the grass

When she tried to catch a lawn dart with her fingers.

Hope the doctors can fix it, but we have to act fast,

So we’re searching the yard for the thumb of your daughter.

Absent any such constraints, the endless creative options overwhelm me. How can I possibly narrow down my choices? First, let’s look at song style. While music is infinite, I, accomplished and gifted though I may be, have only ever explored a small sliver of its vastness. I am a classical singer with some experience on plucked string instruments. No disrespect to the uncountable number of white guys with guitars—many of you are very good—but that’s not the vibe I want to start with. I love my ukulele, but the late-aughts boom of Jason Mraz-types, tragically, saddled it with an air of tweeness it has yet to fully shake. Therefore, I am left with the instrument that has had a firm hold on my heart for lo these past few years: my beloved banjo.

In fact, my upcoming clawhammer banjo class might be exactly what I need to get the ball rolling. Bluegrass style is wonderful, but it doesn’t lend itself quite as well to the one-guy-singing-and-playing-the-banjo thing I’m envisioning for this first real songwriting go ‘round. You’ll notice the greatest and most famous practitioner of lone-voice-and-banjo, Kermit the Frog, doesn’t play Scruggs-style. He doesn’t play clawhammer either. Rainbow Connection is actually a flat-pick song. But still, you get the idea. Bluegrass is primarily an ensemble-based discipline.

Clawhammer can also be an ensemble-based discipline. In fact, in the United States, it most often goes hand in hand with the genre of old-time music, from which bluegrass derives. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, old-time is a branch of North American folk music that combines the various musical cultures of 19^th-century Appalachia, including those of Ireland, Scotland, and Central and West Africa, where the banjo was invented. Old-time music, likely due to the Scottish and Irish influence, largely consists of hauntingly beautiful songs about lonely mountain people and their dead and dying loved ones. Frequently, the lonely mountain people are responsible for said deaths. Despite this association, and even within it, clawhammer also works well as a solo practice.

As far as I know, there aren’t many compositions specifically for banjo and classical baritone. In an infinite universe, one or two probably exist, but I can’t imagine many composers have thought to explore this particular combination of voices. Still, my instruments are my instruments. If that means I need to be a pioneer, so be it. My song will be a folkish blend of operatic singing and clawhammer frailing. A new American style of Art Song, I suppose. I’ll be the People’s Aaron Copland. It’s going to sound great.

Now that I have a broad sense of my song style, I need to figure out what I’ll be singing about. As I mentioned above, banjo music is usually sad. Old-time is sad sad, and bluegrass is jaunty sad. But since I’m already breaking newish ground with the classical vocal element, I don’t feel particularly beholden to any topical traditions. I’ve never thrown my sister down a mineshaft or lost my wife to cholera. I think I can find subject matter closer to my own lived experience. Then again, I am, primarily, a fiction writer. Perhaps I could write a story song. But then, which sister goes into the mineshaft? Songwriting is hard.

Finding the subject of my New Old-Time pseudo-Appalachian Art Song may take more than a single blog post. I don’t even start clawhammer classes for another two and a half weeks, so I have some time to think about it. Maybe learning an old tune about poisoned moonshine will unlock some heretofore hidden part of my soul and inspire a lyrical masterpiece. Or maybe I’ll write a love song about pie. The sky’s the limit.

Before I close this out, I want to remind all of you, if you have a problem that needs a solution, email me at theprocessprocesshelp@gmail.com. I can help you. I maybe invented a new genre of music today; surely, I can help you figure out how to make time for your blacksmithing hobby or whatever.

Novel Update: I’m on the cusp of moving into the meat of the story. Things are really starting to move. It’s exciting!

Banjo Update: Ahead of my clawhammer class, I am continuing to work on my bluegrass skills. My confidence is growing enough that I’ve started looking at “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” We’ll see how it goes.

Join me next week as I try to convince at least one of my sisters to take a trip with me to coal country.

Pushing the Boulder

I started writing a post about yet another frustrating job hunting experience, but that’s a path down which lies only madness. First, while I didn’t move forward in the application process that I’ve decided not to write about, I am still interested in working for the organization in question and, as such, don’t want to alienate them. Second, my whole life, it seems, has become frustrating job hunting experiences. I don’t want The Process Process to become a manifesto about the eyeball papercut that searching for employment has become. No one wants to read that.

Still, why is it so hard? I’m not applying to be the head of neurosurgery at a research hospital or anything. The jobs I’m looking at all align with my qualifications. I should be generating at least some interest, but alas, all I get is silence. It’s a bunch of bullshit. But this isn’t what I’m writing about today. Not so soon after another post about this kind of thing. The Process Process is a more creative endeavor than that. I like to mix up my topics and keep things fun.

The US economy reportedly added 303,000 jobs last month. Huh. Where did it add these jobs? Clearly not anywhere I could find them. I see a lot of job postings, but as yet, not a lot of jobs. Easter was last month. Perhaps the US economy dyed these jobs fun pastel colors and hid them in bushes and tall grass and the like. But that’s neither here nor there. I’m not doing a job search post today. I’m keeping it light. Why focus on the negative?

It’s one thing if a company simply goes with a different candidate. The world is full of talented, qualified writers and editors. I can accept that. But when I don’t hear back about a job, or I receive an outright rejection, and then I see that job posting pop up again, as though the company looked at all the resumes, including mine, thought “Nah,” and started over? Infuriating. I lost out to NO ONE? Absurd. Oops. I’m doing it again, aren’t I? I’m done. I promise. No more job stuff.

Near as I can tell, my resume is solid and does a good job of highlighting my experience. I even have multiple versions, each tailored to specific types of roles. My cover letters are routinely excellent, and when an application requires them, my writing samples are above reproach. Should I be including a picture of myself when I apply for things? That way, the hiring manager will see that, on top of my undeniable talent and experience, I’m also a goddamn dreamboat. I bet a shot of me on horseback would move the needle. Shit. This keeps happening. I’m so sorry. Moving on.

Wow. Just now, I received a form rejection email for another job for which I was perfectly qualified. Unreal. I really was about to switch gears to something fun like how Dean Cain moved out of California to get away from, among other things, the state’s “horrible regulations.” But now, I’m not sure I’ll be able to. It’s just one indignity after another. Finding a job shouldn’t be…actually, wait. Does Dean Cain own a factory or something? What regulations was he bumping up against so much that he had to leave? I know conservative celebrities like to complain about California and “big government,” or whatever, but why call out regulations specifically? Does he just not like rules? He did move to Las Vegas, so maybe that’s it. Or maybe he chose such a famously temperate city to escape the “debauchery” he claims is so rampant in Hollywood. By the way, he got his start in show business as a screenwriter. Sure, the world is different now, but come on. Dean Cain got writing jobs, while I—a person who doesn’t make a public show of following Mark Wahlberg to Nevada for nonsense reasons or whine to Fox News about wokeness—cannot.

Maybe I’m looking at it wrong. If Dean Cain can find success while constantly betraying the ideals of the character that made him famous, the rest of us can do anything. No matter how much looking for a job feels like pushing a boulder up a hill, there is only one Sisyphus, and I’m not him. Right? I’m not Sisyphus. I’d know if I was Sisyphus. Wouldn’t I? Yeah. I think I would. The point is, I’ll eventually reach the top of the job hunting hill.

Novel Update: I’m officially over 10,000 words. Still a long way to go, but crossing into five-digit territory feels like a significant milestone. I haven’t been there since writing my first novel. I’m going to finish this thing, goddamnit.

Banjo Update: I have officially registered for Clawhammer Banjo 1, which will start later this month. I’m excited to get back into classes and learn a new style. If I like it, I may go all in, move to Appalachia, and become a Hill Person. Time will tell.

Join me next week as I grudgingly accept a job devising Bible-themed games for Dean Cain and Mark Wahlberg’s new joint venture: the St. Cajetan Hotel, Casino, and Baptism Center.

Recruitment Follies

Job searching is a fraught process, replete with snares and pitfalls of stunning variety. Misleading job descriptions, AI resume filters, pushy recruiters, months of silence, and even the occasional scam interview (See my now-classic post, “True Crime,” for a devastating first-hand account of this phenomenon.). This unending onslaught of bullshit creates a bizarre headspace for a person seeking employment. It is a mindset that feels like an almost even split between jaded suspicion and naïve optimism. Each potential opportunity that comes around is simultaneously a miracle and a trap.

This is where my brain was for two job possibilities last week. In both cases, I didn’t realize that I had actually sent my application materials to recruiters rather than the companies themselves. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, except for the fact that I have never had a positive experience with a recruiter. I’m sure there are many great people working as recruiters, but every single one who has ever approached me has done so with real Veruca Salt energy. They want everything to happen NOW. If you don’t reply to their emails within five minutes, they call you over and over until you answer. Mind you, this is before you’ve even spoken to them once. Somehow, you’re wasting the time of someone you’ve never met. It’s not a pleasant series of interactions.

Anyway, two separate recruiters wanted to submit my resume for jobs, one of which actually seemed interesting and the other less so. However, interesting or not, I didn’t immediately agree to either recruiter’s request. As I wrote above, commission-based intermediaries have been, historically, the goddamn worst. Neither recruiter’s initial approach did anything to change my opinion. Multiple rapid-fire emails followed by calls that wouldn’t stop until I either picked up or blocked the number. I probably should have done the latter. Rewarding this kind of harassment only encourages it to continue. At the same time, it’s not like I’m fighting off job offers. What if recruiters are my only way through to the interview phase of the process? At that point, maybe this deranged pushiness will work to my advantage. Thus, I relented and gave both men permission to submit my application materials to their clients on my behalf. To my great relief and astonishment, both recruiters soon informed me that my qualifications had enticed their clients enough that they wanted to see more. For the potentially interesting position, that meant a writing assessment. For the other one, it meant an interview.

Writing assessments and other types of “audition work,” are tricky because they are, in fact, work for which the applicant is often not paid. I once worked a whole day on a distillery production floor and didn’t see a dime. In that case, they said they’d pay me, but they never actually did, which was one of many red flags that led me to turn down unnamed distillery’s eventual job offer. A writing assessment, however, is not quite the same thing as eight hours of manual labor. Rather than filling bottles or moving boxes, I just had to write a script based on an existing outline. According to the prompt, the company expected the assignment to take between one and four hours. Easy enough. Ultimately, I finished in a little over two hours, and I had fun while doing it. I’d love to have gotten paid for my creative effort, but all things considered, I’m not too upset about the lack of compensation. It didn’t take much time, and it was enjoyable. I got to write a fun, short bit of science fiction. Upon completion, I submitted the script along with another copy of my resume. As of this writing, I haven’t heard back yet, but I feel good about my chances.

The interview for the less interesting job prospect was my first in I can’t remember how long. It’s been a while. Luckily, because I already suspected that this job was a bad fit for me, I felt pretty relaxed going into the interview. They needed me more than I needed them. That may or may not have been true, but I suspected it was. Another recruiter had previously contacted me about this position, and I’d politely declined moving forward because the job involved teaching AI to write better for an unnamed Fortune 500 tech company. The fact that someone approached me again so soon after that made it clear that they weren’t flush with candidates.

The day of the interview, I threw on a collared shirt and signed into the video call five minutes early, per the recruiter’s request. Joining me soon thereafter was a woman I’ll call Jackie. Jackie looked to be about my age, and she seemed friendly right off the bat. She told me a bit about the role and divulged—in hushed, conspiratorial tones—that the top secret Fortune 500 tech company client for whom I’d be training my electronic replacement was none other than Google. Don’t tell anyone. She made it pretty clear that this was a secret. Be cool.

(Some visually attractive content to boost web traffic.)

Anyway, after she gave me the rundown of the day to day functions of the job, she asked if I had any questions for her. At times, I have folded under the pressure of this simple inquiry. I don’t know why. In some cases, I have come prepared with questions only for the interviewer to answer them before I have a chance to ask them. Very occasionally, nerves will cause me to forget my questions. Luckily, I had no such problem here. Without a moment’s pause, I asked what, if any, consideration the company she worked for or their secret client (Google. Shhhhh.) gave to the ethics of training AI to replace human writers? What safeguards did they have in place to prevent the further destruction of an already narrowing professional pathway? Her answer wasn’t great. She assured me that they worked to make sure that the AI didn’t engage in hate speech or try to take over the world, but she said nothing about my actual question. And in retrospect, of course she didn’t. Firstly, the whole job is about making AI sound more human. Google is absolutely trying to eliminate the need for costly human laborers. Secondly, as I found out after asking about pay and contract length, she’s only been with the company for four months. But despite her quick rise to management, she was still a W2 contractor who technically worked for the firm that recruited her, not the company I was interviewing to work for. Even promotion hadn’t earned this poor woman access to benefits.

These massive red flags led me to look deeper into what I was getting into. If I got this job—which seemed probable because Jackie told me I’d advanced to the next and final round of the interview process—I’d be working for the pushy, obnoxious recruiter. Doing unethical work for an unethical client for full-time hours with no benefits for mediocre pay. Hard pass. I emailed the recruiter and told him thanks, but no thanks. Yesterday, yet another recruiter reached out to me about this same job. That company is in trouble.

I apologize for getting so deep into the weeds about my interview experience. I do so not to disparage my interviewer, the company she represented, Google, or even the recruiters for whom I’ve had so many kind words but to share a realization. Sometimes, past experiences color our perceptions and cause us cast judgment upon people or potential opportunities before we can take the time to fully assess them. And sometimes, our immediate gut instinct is right on the fucking money. Everything is a miracle or a scam. Last week, both those things were true for me. One potential employer gave me the chance to tell a fun story and made me feel like my job search might actually come to an end sometime soon. The other potential employer tried to get me to help make human writers obsolete for as little money as they could get away with. And in both cases, my initial thoughts on recruiters proved to be absolutely correct. So I suppose the moral of the story is to trust your intuition but also keep an open mind? Or something about workers of the world uniting and seizing the means of production? I’m pretty sure it’s one or both of those. There must be some kind of moral. I’d hate to think that the job searching process is just a punishing vortex of misery with no easy solutions beyond just knowing a guy.

I know last week I toyed with the idea of posting on a day other than Friday, and here I am, posting on Friday. However, I did write this on Wednesday and Thursday, so I’m making progress.

Novel update: Slow, steady progress word count-wise, but the overall story is really starting to take shape in my head. I think this is going to be a good read when I’m done.

Banjo update: Practicing all three main banjo jobs (soloing, playing back-up, and vamping) with more or less equal intensity has gotten me to where I THINK I could play in a very slow bluegrass band. Provided we had ample rehearsal time and an understanding audience.

Join me next week as I attempt to hide from Google’s unyielding wrath.

Partial Post

With one or two possible exceptions (I think. I’ve been doing this blog for three years, and I can’t be bothered to actually check.), I have historically posted new entries of The Process Process on Fridays. I didn’t specifically plan it that way. That’s just how it worked out. However, for maybe as long as I have done this, I have also thought, “I have too many things going on on Fridays. I should write and post my blog on a different day of the week.”

And yet, here I am, still posting on Friday. Certainly, I could write my entries on, say, Monday or Tuesday and simply post them on Friday, but my deadline-motivated brain can’t seem to come up with any blog-related ideas until at least Thursday. I could go back to banking posts, so I’m always about a month ahead, but I think I’d miss the immediacy of writing and publishing on the same day. All of this to say, I may start playing around with when I write and publish new blog posts.

I’ve written a third of a post about a recent job search experience that I’d planned to share today, but currently, the sounds of a guy working to remove a bird’s nest from our dryer are proving to be an insurmountable distraction. He’ll be done soon, I imagine. Still, I don’t want to keep pushing my blog writing time later and later into the day. Thus, I will finish writing up the aforementioned job search story early next week and post it quickly thereafter (hopefully). I may even throw in some details from the whole birds-nesting-in-the-dryer situation. But for now, I’m going to go check on the removal process and continue on with my day.

Join me next week as I navigate the challenges of maintaining an eagle sanctuary in my dishwasher.

State of the Blog

Hello again, readers, fans, followers, and devotees. As I’m sure many of you are aware, last night, the President gave the annual State of the Union address. I did not watch it, nor have I watched any such speech for many years. Having worked in lots of places in my life, I know that the last person to ask about the state of something is the person in charge of it. The boss never knows what’s really going on, so why listen to an interminable speech in which he pretends to? This is not to say I am, or feel that you or anyone else should be, politically disengaged. On the contrary, real engagement starts when you recognize that management is inherently untrustworthy. But that is neither here nor there. I bring up the State of the Union not to launch into a screed about how, in a two-party system, even the “good” presidential candidate is still likely to doggedly enable war crimes but to set up the premise of this week’s blog post: my inaugural State of the Blog.

My fellow Americans (and everyone else) the state of the blog is middling.

Looking back at the stats since my last post, my readership appears to have fallen back down toward pre-new domain numbers. Between February 16 and the time of this writing, a total of 16 people have visited my blog, and I have to imagine at least one or two of those visitors were bots of some kind. This will not do. The whole point of investing tens of dollars on a domain was to get this blog in front of more eyes. I even started a Threads account to reach more people. And for at least a few weeks, it all seemed to work. Between December 11 and December 31, I had 105 distinct visitors. Then, in January, that number dropped to about 60. And in February, about 45.

Sure, there have been a few breaks throughout that time period. Holidays and travel can make post consistency hard to maintain. I have also gotten lax about including visually attractive content within my posts. At the same time, my two most recent entries were both treasure troves of wit and wisdom. Which is not to say that every entry is anything less. The point is, I should be attracting more readers than I am. Aside from the clear and fixable mistakes I pointed out earlier in this very paragraph, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I may have no choice but to change nothing about my approach and hope for the best.

Then again, if my readership is going to be what it’s going to be, maybe it won’t do any good to try chasing it any further. This is my blog. I hope its contents work for the benefit of all, but it is still my creative vision. Presumably, that fact is what draws what few regulars The Process Process enjoys. Thus, the real trick might be to lean even further into the ME of it all and dive ever deeper into the esoterica of my brain. Paradoxically, true universality comes not from broadness but from specificity. Indeed, some of my most popular posts have been those in which I indulge my weird passions rather than those that seem like they should have wide appeal. The weird ones tend to be most fun to write anyway.

To that end, I pledge to you, here and now, that I will dedicate more posts to the often bizarre shit that interests me, regardless of its connection to the original premise of The Process Process. This doesn’t mean I will stop writing about novel writing or learning to play the banjo when those are the topics that move me on a particular day. It simply means that I will no longer limit the scope of The Process Process. Anything that strikes my fancy or fascinates me is fair game. Perhaps I’ll do semi-regular Cain-Watch posts in which I explore what Dean Cain has been up to. Or maybe I’ll do a retrospective series about where Dean Cain got his start and try to figure out why he is the way he is. Then again, I could do something completely different and look to the future and speculate as to where Dean Cain might be in ten or twenty years. There are no limits as to what this blog can do.

At the same time, as exciting as this new creative freedom might be, I do understand that many, if not most, of you are only able to navigate this dangerous and confusing world with the help of my insightful counsel. I promise, I have not abandoned you, and I never will. Beyond granting you unfettered access to every entry of The Process Process, I welcome—nay, implore—you to share your problems and ask me for advice at theprocessprocesshelp@gmail.com. So far, I’m two for two on solving letter writers’ issues and fixing their lives forever. Write in now, and you could be the next recipient of eternal obstacle-free happiness.

In closing, a blog is only as strong as the person who writes, edits, posts, and shares it. From a physical standpoint, this blog is doing great. I can squat—multiple reps—over a quarter ton. However, there are other kinds of strength as well. And I do work my other muscles. I don’t want to be uneven. But beyond even my chest and lats, is mental and emotional strength. Sometimes, when I feel like no one actually reads these posts, I struggle to find sufficient motivation to write them. Hopefully, my new approach will entice more people to check out The Process Process, but even if it doesn’t, allowing myself to do whatever I want in this space could provide the spark of joy I need to ignore the stats and write just for the fun of it. The current state of the blog might be middling, but its future is bright.

Thank you, and may Geoff Hohwald continue to bless The Process Process. Good night.

Novel update: Didn’t get much writing done in my recent travels, but I got back into the swing of things much faster than I would have expected upon my return. Onward!

Banjo update: As with the novel update, I lost much less ground in my banjo playing during my time away than I feared I would. Everything sounds pretty good.

Join me next week as I take a hard right turn and begin looking into the exploits of one Kevin Sorbo.

To do, or not to do

In what I hope is the beginning of a pattern, theprocessprocesshelp@gmail.com has received yet another request for help. Surely, the wise words I shared last week inspired this letter writer to reach out for more of my problem solving expertise. Perhaps this week’s sagacity will inspire you to do the same in the future. One can only hope. Onto the letter!

Anonymous emailer writes:

I have been trying to figure out a way to keep track of what I need to do. I’ve never been good with planners–I accidentally close the planner and then forget to look. I’ve tried sticky notes, but they just clutter my desk and sometimes fall on the floor. I want to try your bulletin board approach, but I’m afraid I just won’t look at it. Since I’m on my phone a lot, I started writing things down in Notes, but it just looks like a long list, and I get overwhelmed. Do you have any tips either to help make the bulletin board work for me or just general advice for someone who needs an organization system but struggles to actually use one?

My dear, anonymous emailer, I regret to inform you that, based on my hard won experience, it is, in fact, impossible to keep track of what you need to do. Many people claim to use planners and day calendars and the like, but with a little detective work, you will find that all of those people are shills for Big Organization. For honest folks like you and me, the technology necessary for maintaining any kind of usable To-Do list simply doesn’t exist. I wish I had better news for you.

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Truthfully, I have yet to find a completely foolproof task tracking system. Whether that’s on me or the various systems I’ve tried is unclear. It’s probably a bit of both. In any event, the incomplete efficacy of each individual system led me to experiment with pairing them. This still doesn’t get me to 100%, but the strengths of, say, an App complement those of a bulletin board. They help fill one another’s gaps and become more effective together than they would be apart. Still, you need to understand which single approaches kind of work for you before you can figure out which combinations can mostly work for you.

Despite my above assertion, it’s possible planners do work for some people. For me, once the novelty of trying to organize my existence wore off, the rigidity of planner life became too much. Your issue, however, is that you close the planner and forget to consult it. Understandable. What if you set an alarm to go off every two hours or so that would remind you to check your planner? That way, you’d be free to close and forget about it for sizeable chunks of time while still getting some use out of it.

The sticky note approach you describe in your letter feels very much like a decentralized bulletin board. I can see why it hasn’t really worked. The beauty of a bulletin board is that it keeps all your tasks for a designated period of time (a week, in my case) in one easy to reference spot. “Easy to reference” is key. As your letter suggests, a bulletin board only works if you actually look at it on a regular basis. That’s why I keep mine right above my desk. Even now, I need only to raise my eyeline about 30 degrees to see the multihued collection of notecards that contain my goals for the week. If you have the wall space, I highly recommend a similar setup.

Opening up the Notes app and seeing your every obligation spelled out in cruel black and white sounds like a fucking nightmare. The only way to get through life is to selectively ignore the endless series of chores we must complete until we die. Lists make that difficult. As you point out, they overwhelm us and make us forget what we’re actually capable of. Because of this, it’s nice to include within whatever tracking system you end up choosing a visual representation of what you’ve already accomplished. For example, the blank space that grows little by little as I remove notecards from the bulletin board throughout the week reminds me that I’m actually doing the things I’ve set out to do. It’s a nice shot of dopamine.

There are multiple apps that purport to help keep track of tasks and boost productivity. I’ve written previously about the cartoon bird app I’ve used with mixed results for the last year or so. Depending on your tolerance for twee avian neediness, you might have better luck with it than I have. As yet, I don’t have any recommendations for alternatives. However, with my bird app subscription expiring in just two days, I will be exploring other options imminently. Barring a deluge of help requests in the theprocessprocesshelp@gmail.com inbox, I expect to share my findings within the next few weeks.

Letter writer, I’d love to tell you that there is an ideal means of tracking everything you need to do with a guarantee of total success. Alas, I cannot. When you boil it all down, every system involves writing things down and periodically consulting what you’ve written down. Each approach has unique aspects here and there that make them more or less suited to you and your specific brain, but even the best system for you will fall short of perfection. My therapist once told me that if you’re consistently getting to about 80% of your To-Do list, you’re doing great. Keep that in mind as you experiment. Cut yourself plenty of slack, and hope that the tasks in the 20% you don’t get to are the ones capitalistic powers are trying to coerce you into completing. The first mean of production you must seize is your own autonomy! Workers of the world unite!!

Novel update: I finished a chapter and started a new one this week. Carving out specific time for novel writing continues to be immensely helpful. I hope to continue this approach for as long as possible.

Banjo update: Despite some busier than normal afternoons this week, I’ve gotten some good practice in. Yesterday, in particular, felt more like playing than practicing. It was really great.

Join me next week, as I send Samantha the electronic cartoon bird to a farm upstate where she can run around and be free.

Shared Wisdom

Exciting news, readers! After many weeks of pleading, I have received a request for help at theprocessprocesshelp@gmail.com, which, as I may have mentioned before, is my dedicated inbox for exactly this type of request. Perhaps, after seeing the care and expertise with which I provide solutions to this letter writer, some of you will feel inspired to follow suit and allow me to assist you. Keep reading, and we can find out together.

Our anonymous emailer writes:

I am someone who has always prided myself on my efficiency and organization in my use of time. Got a half hour? I can check several things off my list Need to get a major chunk of a project done? Two hours, and it’s finished. It has served me well in my career as well as my personal life. However, during the pandemic, time lost all meaning for me, as it did for many of us. Now that things are “back to normal” (or at least we’re expected to pretend they are), I find that I have a much harder time staying focused and taking advantage of blocks of time. In my job, it is now rare to have a mostly unscheduled day, and even though I get so excited to only see one half-hour call on my calendar, I’m finding that I am much less able to take advantage of these rare, blessedly unscheduled blocks of time. You’ve shared a lot of suggestions for how to manage and organize time on your blog, but I’m wondering which of your many excellent tips and tools would you recommend to help me rediscover my motivation and productivity mojo?

Letter writer, thank you for reaching out. You’ve come to the right place. In regard to time and the meaning thereof, it is always Pandemic Lockdown Era in my brain, so I can very much relate to your specific problem. But then, you didn’t ask about how I use or experience my time. You want to regain your ability to take full advantage of yours.

To start, there is no guarantee that your relationship to time, motivation, or productivity will ever be what it was before the Pandemic. Lockdown, in particular, changed people. Those of us who were able to stay home during that time got a glimpse of what a less work-focused life could be like, and many who weren’t able to stay home saw how little their bosses cared about their wellbeing. People can’t simply forget these revelations because someone in a position of authority said it was time to return to how things were. This is not to say that lockdown robbed you of your motivation. It changed what motivates you. So the trick isn’t to try to be the person you were five years ago. Instead, you need to meet yourself where you are.

In your letter, you mention being excited when you see an unscheduled block of time on your calendar and then being unable to capitalize on that excitement when said unscheduled time actually arrives. In the abstract, it can be a lot easier to imagine being motivated than truly be motivated in practice. I suspect this is, more or less, a case of your motivational eyes being bigger than your motivational stomach. Motivation is a limited resource, but beyond that, it is capricious. It wants to preserve itself for important, fulfilling activities like learning to sculpt or taking a quiz to determine which character from Succession is your ideal charades partner (somehow, it’s Carl.), and even that bit of motivation is just whatever is left over from the various calls and meetings and fire extinguishments that fill up the scheduled time occupying most of your day.

All of this to say, your dip in motivation when you get goddamn second to yourself, is understandable. Unfortunately, you still need to get done what you need to get done, which is why you’re here. Fortunately, I think I can help.

When you find yourself at the beginning of a longer block of unscheduled work time, how do you feel? Is it a general sense of ennui toward work? Does the number of tasks for the amount of time you have overwhelm you? Do you feel as though you want to complete the work in front of you but can’t make yourself do it? At a given moment, I imagine it could be any, all, or none of these feelings. Still, taking stock of this at the outset can help you better direct your efforts.

If you feel ennui or are unable to make yourself get started, think back to your efficiency glory days and try to pinpoint what motivated you then. Perhaps placing yourself back into that mindset will jumpstart your internal drive and allow you to recapture some of your old work self. I suspect, however, if that was going to work, it already would have. Instead, try building some kind of excitement or urgency into the task completion. My classic standby, the pomodoro timer, is a great way to give yourself an imminent deadline, but if you need something more to get the juices flowing, make up a cinematic life or death scenario and place your work task into that context. “If I don’t complete this spreadsheet in the next twenty minutes, Ontario Premier Doug Ford will use his death ray to melt St. Paul!” or something like that. It’s silly, but it can make work feel more like a game.

On the other hand, if you feel like you have too much to do, or you don’t know where to begin, start with the easiest, fastest thing first. Even if it’s just clicking no on an invitation to a timeshare presentation, give yourself an easy win out of the gate. Then, once all you have left are bigger projects, break things into manageable chunks and try to reorient your thinking toward processes rather than outcomes. This is another instance in which the pomodoro timer comes in handy. Instead of telling yourself, I have an hour to finish putting this timeshare presentation (not the one you previously declined) together, tell yourself, I’ll work on this until the timer goes off, take a break, and proceed from there. By focusing on process, you’re accomplishing your goal just by working on something, which feels much more motivating than falling short of your goal of finishing something. And, joy of joys, if you do this enough, you’ll eventually have the satisfaction of achieving both the process goal and the completion goal at the same time.

Changes in motivation are frustrating and often mysterious. Sometimes there is a clear, addressable reason for them, and sometimes there’s not. If you can’t find one, or at least until you do find one, I hope my advice helps. Considering that you had the presence of mind to seek guidance from me, an expert and international treasure, you seem to have a good head on your shoulders. I think you’re going to be OK. Please let me know how it goes.

Do you see that, other readers? Anonymous letter writer is likely on their way to a Nobel Prize thanks to me and my wisdom. You, too, could share in this intellectual bounty. You need only ask. Specifically at theprocessprocesshelp@gmail.com. You can use your name or write in anonymously or anything in between. Whatever you feel comfortable with.

Novel update: Still going strong with my dedicated morning novel writing time. Focusing on process has been immensely helpful.

Banjo update: I’m working on being as firm with my practice time as I am with novel writing time. I’m not there yet, but I will be.

Join me next week as I advise an anonymous Canadian Politician to consider using their words and NOT laser cannons to solve disputes.

Throwback

Routines, as I’ve explored ad nauseum here at The Process Process, provide structure in the infinite formless void of space and time. They give us something to hold onto. However, for someone with little to no intrinsic affinity for time management or organization, routines—self-imposed ones, in particular—are easy to neglect. Back in the halcyon days of this blog, when I believed my difficulties with things like focus and internal motivation stemmed from a lack of practice rather than neurological physiology, I took to the habit of writing every morning at around 8:30. For a good while, this habit stuck. It was my first bit of real structure after a long spell without any. The resulting productivity was intoxicating. It made me feel like a writer again.

As I continued this morning routine, my confidence grew. And from that confidence—and greater writing output—came more writing opportunities. None of them were very lucrative, but they gave me more to do. Then exercise, tutoring, banjo, and other pursuits started to fill my days. I was covered up in routines and structures. So much so, that individual pieces of them started to feel less important. I didn’t consciously abandon anything, I simply got more flexible about when I did things.

For the most part, this was a good move. I work on things when I’m ready to work on them, not when my schedule says I should. It’s an efficient-ish system. But, if everything is flexible, my default means of prioritization becomes, “What’s due next?” Somehow, divorcing my routine from the clock made time my biggest consideration in choosing what to work on. And that, in turn, magically diminished the amount of time I have to work on anything throughout a given week.

When you feel like you don’t have time for anything, you focus on what you must get done. The more open-ended things you want to work on but which lack temporal or financial urgency start to fall by the wayside. At first, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. It happens gradually. You think, “Oh, this was just a weird week. That doctor’s appointment or riverboat gambling bender or whatever just threw things off. I’ll work on my novel or practice banjo more next week.” But then, every week is weird or busy, so you’re lucky if you work on your novel or practice banjo at all. Then your callouses go away, leaving your fingers too soft and weak to ever navigate a fretboard again. Your ability to devise stories and develop characters disappears. Even your grasp of words and written language ;nlkasdf’jwfe]u9W9UFASDI’JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ

Well, wanting to prevent this bleak yet bracingly realistic scenario, I decided to revisit my old writing routine. Both yesterday and today, after finishing breakfast, I sat down at my desk and worked on my novel for about half an hour. I had other, more pressing tasks I could have addressed. In fact, this post probably would have gone up a few hours ago had I done so, but I didn’t. The first writing session of the day, I have decided, belongs to my oft neglected novel manuscript.

So far, returning to this ritual hasn’t yielded pages and pages of material. But I have more than I did on Wednesday. And more than that, something about this approach took some pressure off the idea of creation. As long as I value this writing time and stick to it, no individual session has to result in a breakthrough or even be particularly productive. They will all culminate in progress. And thinking about it that way opened me up to the feeling of discovery. I don’t need to force the story or characters in any one direction. If I keep writing, I’ll discover where it all wants to go. It’s very freeing. I know the book is in my head. I just need to let it out.

Still, despite everything I just wrote, this renewed habit probably won’t last forever. It’ll last for a while, but experience tells me that something will upset this applecart eventually, and that could well be before I have a completed manuscript. So, my longer-term solution will still be to find a writing group. If you have any suggestions on that front, please send them to theprocessprocesshelp@gmail.com along with any problems you need help solving. Please. You have problems. I have solutions and pages to fill. One hand washes the other.

Also, if you haven’t yet, go listen to Slackers vs. Robots and subscribe to Headfone through my show page. It’s a fun show! You’ll like it! I promise!

Novel update: See above. That’s what this one’s all about.

Banjo update: Similar to what I have done with novel writing time, I want to create a sacrosanct banjo practice time for somewhere in the afternoon. I need to clear the rust before I start the Bluegrass Ensemble class in March.

Join me next week as I discover that this small reintroduction of structure has cured me of all executive dysfunction forever.