![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Cookie Making May Never End
Dec. 13th, 2018 08:30 am Tonight, Shawn will be having a friend over to make gingerbread cookies.
I'm going to go ahead and put this out there: I don't think, at this point, we NEED more cookies.
But, in all honesty, this get-together is about doing a thing with a friend. Shawn doesn't really _like_ gingerbread cookies that much, so I think her plan is to make them in order to bring them to work to give away. I, however, have been tasked to go look for decorations for gingerbread. I made a glance around Kowalski's when I was there earlier, but there wasn't much, surprisingly. I think I will try Michael's cake decoration section later today, on my way to pick up Mason. (It's at least in that general direction, so why not?)
Speaking of cookies.... when I was at the post office yesterday sending off the care package to my cousin, I ran into my old friend Harry LeBlanc. We chatted a bit and he invited me to join him on his lunch break at a nearby Chinese buffet. So we did! Harry was my first writer friend. I met him in the 1990s in a science fiction writing class we were both taking at the Loft. Together, he and I formed Wyrdsmiths, an in-person writers' group that's still meeting regularly to critique writing.
Harry has mostly moved away from writing science fiction, though he just got his PhD in music therapy or some such recently. His dissertation was a rock opera. So, he's still doing high creative work. He's been working with convicted child sex offenders, as a therapist, and I'm impressed as hell that he's stayed at it because that's got to be draining, to say the least.
Anyway, it was really lovely to catch up with such an old friend.
I used to see Harry regularly when I worked at the Immigration History Research Center and he was an IT consultant who could make his own hours. We would get together at the Egg & I and talk for hours, and that's not really much of an exaggeration. I was supposed to only have an half hour for lunch, but I would often be gone for an hour and a half EASILY. (It is well known that you never want to hire me for a traditional 9 to 5 job. My work ethic is very "you don't pay me enough to care.") Those were fun days, though. Harry and i could argue about the craft of writing until we were blue in the face. I'm sure that's partly why we haven't seen much of each other since he left to do his art therapy thing and let the writing dream merge into a different creative venture.
I have a couple of friends who made the conscious choice to walk away from trying to sell their writing and picked another, stronger, artistic call. Harry went to his music and my friend Sean to his photography. I both feel the loss of their writing and completely sympathize with and support their choices, you know?
I mean, look at where I am. A dozen or so books published and not much to show for it any more. It's not like I can say to someone: "Hey, writing is a GREAT CAREER! So fulfilling!" I mean, it _is_, but it's also deeply flawed as a thing to do for the rest of your life. You kind of always have to have some other way to make money, a fall back. That's really a tough way to try to do... anything, really. It's such a shame that art and artists are not more supported in our culture.
*sigh*
Anyway, I hope you all are well and are out there doing your art.
I'm going to go ahead and put this out there: I don't think, at this point, we NEED more cookies.
But, in all honesty, this get-together is about doing a thing with a friend. Shawn doesn't really _like_ gingerbread cookies that much, so I think her plan is to make them in order to bring them to work to give away. I, however, have been tasked to go look for decorations for gingerbread. I made a glance around Kowalski's when I was there earlier, but there wasn't much, surprisingly. I think I will try Michael's cake decoration section later today, on my way to pick up Mason. (It's at least in that general direction, so why not?)
Speaking of cookies.... when I was at the post office yesterday sending off the care package to my cousin, I ran into my old friend Harry LeBlanc. We chatted a bit and he invited me to join him on his lunch break at a nearby Chinese buffet. So we did! Harry was my first writer friend. I met him in the 1990s in a science fiction writing class we were both taking at the Loft. Together, he and I formed Wyrdsmiths, an in-person writers' group that's still meeting regularly to critique writing.
Harry has mostly moved away from writing science fiction, though he just got his PhD in music therapy or some such recently. His dissertation was a rock opera. So, he's still doing high creative work. He's been working with convicted child sex offenders, as a therapist, and I'm impressed as hell that he's stayed at it because that's got to be draining, to say the least.
Anyway, it was really lovely to catch up with such an old friend.
I used to see Harry regularly when I worked at the Immigration History Research Center and he was an IT consultant who could make his own hours. We would get together at the Egg & I and talk for hours, and that's not really much of an exaggeration. I was supposed to only have an half hour for lunch, but I would often be gone for an hour and a half EASILY. (It is well known that you never want to hire me for a traditional 9 to 5 job. My work ethic is very "you don't pay me enough to care.") Those were fun days, though. Harry and i could argue about the craft of writing until we were blue in the face. I'm sure that's partly why we haven't seen much of each other since he left to do his art therapy thing and let the writing dream merge into a different creative venture.
I have a couple of friends who made the conscious choice to walk away from trying to sell their writing and picked another, stronger, artistic call. Harry went to his music and my friend Sean to his photography. I both feel the loss of their writing and completely sympathize with and support their choices, you know?
I mean, look at where I am. A dozen or so books published and not much to show for it any more. It's not like I can say to someone: "Hey, writing is a GREAT CAREER! So fulfilling!" I mean, it _is_, but it's also deeply flawed as a thing to do for the rest of your life. You kind of always have to have some other way to make money, a fall back. That's really a tough way to try to do... anything, really. It's such a shame that art and artists are not more supported in our culture.
*sigh*
Anyway, I hope you all are well and are out there doing your art.
