I cast my ballot yesterday in early voting here in Texas, and it reminded me of how lucky and blessed I am to stand in line with no question or coercion and participate in representative democracy.  I don’t want to get preachy, but go vote.  We get to decide who our leaders are, and we should not take that for granted.

May the best man win.

I’ve been updating (finally!) a short story I wrote a couple of years ago to submit to a fiction contest.  It’s reinvigorated me to keep churning away at my novel because I’ve been paralyzed by my inner editor. Editing is my favorite part of the writing process, but I can’t edit a novel that hasn’t even been written yet! The first draft of this current short story was utter crap, and now that I’m on the sixth draft of it, it is finally being honed into something I’m proud of.  I won’t post it here until I hear back from the contest, and even then I might still submit it to other publications for consideration.  The original draft was some 15,000 words.  I’ve sliced it down to 8,500, making for a leaner and more concise yarn.  Here’s hoping.

This weekend I head to Abilene, Texas for my five year college reunion.  I can’t believe it’s already been that long.  It’ll be a great time to rekindle relationships with the friends I haven’t really spoken too in a while other than the occasional blurb on Facebook or via e-mail.  Plus, I get to show of my new daughter to them!  She’s learned how to smile, and she’s beginning to understand that she’s the one making all those cute noises. It’ll be great!

One final note: My wife is a beautiful woman whom I adore for her love and support and everything she does!  Just wanted to get that out there.  I love you, baby!

Dear Local Businesses,

I have noticed some practices you currently employ under the guise of “urban marketing” or “guerilla advertising” that have forced me to come to the conclusion that I will no longer be giving you my business. I dare not speak on behalf of all of your customers, but your current methods worry me. Seeing your poor sap standing on the corner holding an arrow-shaped sign above his head swaying back and forth fighting the urge to slip into unconsciousness has at no time in my impulse-buying-consumer adulthood caused me to think to myself: Hey, wait a minute, I DO need a house from the low $499’s! Man, if that lady with the conical hat on her head hadn’t been standing there drenched in sweat I’d’ve totally missed this once in a lifetime real estate opportunity!

Or: Wow, can you believe it? Milkshakes at Chick-Fil-A! I’m so glad cow costume man standing there in 105-degree-heat-index-82%-humidity let me know with his sign that says ‘Drink More Milkshakez, Pleez don’t eatz beefz.’

Now, I know your initial reaction will be to say, “Hey, but we’re giving this person a job!” Maybe, but I’ll go ahead and say that (1) nothing will compensate this person for the wasted hours let alone the future medical cost incurred due to the high probability of melanoma onset in later life or instant onset of heat stroke, and (2) I cannot imagine the death of an employee will be worth the three or four more impressions you will get from the cars that speed by. You might have a two-fold second reaction (also the most likely): You are an idiot, Mr. Grubbs, we don’t need your business anyway, and this gives our low-level employees time to perfect their pop-and-lock dance skillz. Touche.

But the CPMs are so cheap, Jonathan; a sign and dude holding it at $5.75 an hour! Can’t be beat!

Yes, but I’ll posit a sign post stuck in the ground will give you the same number of impressions for your ad with far less overhead! (Not to mention the legal entanglement that accompanies the death of an employee during work hours!) Of course I know what you’re thinking. There’s no way people will notice a sign stuck to a post! It doesn’t wave the arrow, welcoming people to our store! Indeed, but it does do more than the unconscious teenager slumped into the grass by the roadside.

Basically, I asking you to pull your workers in from the intense heat. Save this ad scheme for the fall or spring; not winter, however, because then you’ll have the converse problem: death by lack of hot chocolate or tongues freezing to ad signs via the triple dog dare.

Until I see that you have followed my guidelines, you will no longer have my dollars.

Sincerely,
Jonathan Grubbs

Among the several joys we have discovered upon moving back to Texas—closeness to family, lower overhead in most life activities, rain!—I have discovered another something I love about the place in which we live. Stars. The Texas sky over our heads is like a giant sieve for heavenly glory. It’s almost as if God placed the stars, and made the universe so unfathomably vast simply in order to remind us of how small we are. But not that said smallness is a bad thing.

I don’t want to write a cliche, but it’s true: Having a baby changes everything. Every day I am astounded at how wonderful it is to have been a small part of bringing such a beautiful girl into the world. My baby girl is growing quickly, and I’m constantly amazed at how she sees the world. Her eyes are taking it all in, and it’s fantastic to watch her make new discoveries with her movements. “Hey I have a tongue, and I can make it go in and out!” “Ouch, when I make this hand hit my face, that hurts.” “Wow, look at that fan!”

She is a wonderful salve for my seemingly neverending cynicism. They prayed a blessing over her at our church. It began with the following sentence:

With each new child comes the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

That phrase gives me hope, even amongst the smallness I feel among the backdrop of the wide open sky full of stars.

Actually the Men’s Swimming Relay was pretty hard to beat.  

1. Whereas it used to be just a routine bodily function, pooping is now a stellar occurrence, worthy of praise and delight.
2. I have two cats, and for a few days after I brought my clean newborn into the house, they seemed to me to be the most revulsive and disgusting things in the world.  How dare they live in the same house!
3. Sleep is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful gift. Relish every second of it you can get!
4. I really need a new computer to edit videos for friends and family.
5. I couldn’t wait for her to get here, and now that she is, I feel the press of time more than I ever have in my life.  Will there be enough time to give to her all I want to?  To teach her all the things I think she should know? To make sure she knows how loved she is?
6. The first 48 hours included exactly 3-5 hours of sleep, and that added up to more love than I thought possible.
7. Girls are great!  I am blessed by ALL the women in my life; this emotion has never been stronger.
8. My grandmother was so right: “You cannot be dignified and be a parent.”  I have acted more like a three year old than I thought I could have.  It’s wonderful!  We should all try it because I think the world would probably be a better place if we did.
9. I am more conscious of my stinking breath. I can’t be blowing that stuff into her sweet little face.
10. No matter how my life turns out, no matter my failings or my disappointments, I can take comfort in the fact that my wife and I gave the world a beautiful soul.  I can’t wait to see how she grows!

Thank heaven indeed. Welcome to the world Miss Dylann Grace Grubbs! Here she is! My favorite pics so far:

More pictures here.

Hey everyone, I got a job! I’m working as a motion graphics designer for a great company. I make 30 second commercials using After Effects and Photoshop.  I’m teaching myself a few other programs to round out my resume too.  The people are great and laid back. We have a Nintento Wii in the breakroom.  Sweet. We’re only a month or so away from having our daughter in our arms, so getting ready for that has pretty much swamped all of our free time. We are so excited! I was able to squeeze out some time to design a t-shirt.  If you like the show “Lost” you will enjoy this shirt. If you love it, please buy one at my online store.  I get a commission of every shirt sold: 

Benjamin Linus For President 

The missus and I and the pea-in-the-pod have been in Austin for about three and a half months now, and even today we have fully divested ourselves of California by getting our Texas driver’s licenses.

Until…I got an AT&T bill for our old Los Angeles phone service.

Even though I paid the final bill two months ago, and squared up the closing balance, AT&T felt it was necessary to kill trees, waste printer ink, and pay the postage to send me a bill for a whopping….are you ready? SEVENTEEN CENTS.

Here’s the proof with the important information redacted:

I’m not a business man. Nor do I have a single entrepreneurial bone in my body. However, I do know that it will cost AT&T more to bill me for $0.17 than any gain in revenue they get from the bit and a half I owe them. Best part is, they didn’t even include a return billing envelope to send it back to them.  I guess this is just to put me on notice.

Tomorrow, I will place a dime, a nickel, and two pennies in an envelope and mail it.

The great thing about moving to Austin is the people I’ve met so far. I’ve done more creative editing work here in three months than I ever did in the four years I was in Los Angeles. Plus, a lot of my new friends are creative types who actually care about making quality films and not just dreary workaday LA film people who are just going to another job. This mixture of passion and talent excites me here, and I hope I can parlay this into some sort of actual work. Since arriving in February I’ve been able to work on cutting down a short film and help a woman cut a show reel for a documentary she’s working on. She’s trying to secure some finishing funding, so there might be some extended work there. While I still haven’t found a steady job yet, I’ve had some great opportunities I’ve been a part of that I hope are training me for some good things. (more…)

I have discovered something I never expected. Actually more to the point, something I had forgotten. The hills West of Austin are beautiful. I have been freelance editing this past week, and the drive into the city from where I live unfolds like a green blanket laid over a rolling bed-top of limestone. Spring now is burgeoning and the various verdant hues are popping from leaf buds like they are squeezing out from within the tree branches like Play-Doh. Hints of wildflowers are looming, and it feels like every patch of grass around here is about to burst with vibrant color.

I’ve also found a secluded park (in Austin called a “Greenbelt”) near the house with a creek dividing it in two. Covered in primitive, but well kept trails, this greenbelt is a wonderful place to hike or just sit by a babbling stream. Yesterday I went there with a notebook and just sat for an hour by this great little brook and wrote some poetry. I think, after all is said and done, that this place will do wonders for my writing. Nothing in the environment in Los Angeles inspired me. The mountains were nice, but there was nothing striking or beautiful about them to me. Near the stream is a hollow that felt like the thumbprint of God. A small depression in the dirt that is filled with budding Bluebonnet sprigs. I’m definitely going to be checking back to see them unfold. I’ll also be taking some photos next time.

There was also a mystery in this greenbelt that is definitely worth investigating. It might become an article I might pitch to a magazine, or at the very least become a source of inspiration for a fiction story. We’ll see.

I’m still searching for a steady job, though I admit the freelance thing is nice. But it is simultaneously worrisome, only because I have to be on the lookout for the next gig. I’m almost done with the freelance work I’m doing now, and I’m hoping it will pan out into future projects. I’ll simply enjoy my nature walks and the afternoon rambles with my wife. Most especially though, I’m loving the soft thumps of my daughter’s hand pressing against the inside of my wife’s growing belly.

I’ll have some new poems up soon.

There are a few moments in your life when everything changes, and the world careens around an unexpected corner. Sometimes the mystery around the road’s view is a gaping chasm of fear or pain or perhaps both. If you’re lucky, like I was this week, the mystery around the corner is an incredible gift. A moment when everything I’d been thinking or believed was tossed to the wind, but what was left before me was wholly new and wonderful. A moment when my life snapped into a different focus than I thought, but one I believe will be more clear than any vague future fog I had mapped out in my mind’s wanderings. (more…)

Two weeks in and I’m already loving it. Austin is a great city. The vibe here is wonderful, and I’m really enjoying spending time with my wife and slowly, ever so slowly, unpacking and placing things about the house. We are taking it slowly because, well, we feel like it. We rushed to get here, and now that we have finished the journey, we keep telling ourselves that we’ll get to it when we get to it. Of course, we’ll have to have the house in order before the baby gets here, but for the last two weeks it has been nice to relax.

I’ve had a couple of interviews that went well. A few production companies here in town seem to respond positively to my talents and want to bring me on as a freelance editor. So, for now, I’m still meeting with people and building a go-to base of colleagues for work.

I have two favorite things so far about our area of town. People seem to be happier; they smile more. The other thing is Lake Travis. While I’m sure in the high summer months it is filled with a cacophony of skiers and boating noise, right now in the early spring there’s only the occasional sailboat and kayaker in the early morning or dusk as we walk along its shores. Another park we’ve discovered has a creek running through it and several short waterfalls that I know I will be attempting to photograph shortly. I’ll post the pictures here when I get around to it.

For now, until workaday employment calls me to a routine, I’ll be enjoying my time off, comforted in the contentment that work will come in its time. My writing continues, as I try to form the story in my head into a novel that has some semblance of order.

Also, I’ve posted another poem in the poetry section, I wrote it in my office back in Los Angeles. You may have seen it on my old poetry website. Click here to read it.