July 13th is Embrace Your Geekness Day. According to HolidayInsights.com, this holiday was created and copyrighted by Wellcat Holidays, who proclaimed that “You’re a geek,…
Geeking Out with Jeffrey Harlan
Category: Life
Best friends are a staple of fiction, because they are an integral part of the human experience.
A Year of Disasters The year was dominated by a global pandemic, but that was not the only disaster that faced us. The year opened…
Happy book birthday to my novel, Donner und Blitzkrieg! It’s available at nearly a dozen retailers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, and Smashwords! For a full list, check out the book’s store page.
I won NaNoWriMo. I didn’t write 50 thousand words, but as far as I’m concerned, I won.
I wrote 42 thousand words, and finished the first half of my novel. While working a grueling schedule that frequently saw me pulling 50-60 hours at work each week. Plus finding time to spend with my wife. And I still managed to crank out 42 thousand words. That’s a win in my book.
As a security officer for a grocery distribution warehouse, I’m an essential employee. I’m also a writer, and a chronicler of Star Trek minutiae. As one might imagine, that keeps me fairly busy, even during the current, ongoing lockdown.
World News
The year started on a high note, with the unveiling of the first bionic hand capable of a sense of touch outside of a laboratory environment in Rome on January 3rd. Just ten days later, however, a false alarm sent out to cellular phones over the emergency alert network about an incoming missile attack in Hawaii caused widespread panic. A month later, a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, left seventeen dead, but inspired several of the surviving students to become national leaders in their fight to prevent such tragedies from recurring. Also in February, the U.S. Olympic team brought home twenty-three medals.
At the end of October, I had to make an incredibly difficult decision. I had to quit my job. It was, unfortunately, not the best fit for me, and I was beginning to feel the negative impact from that throughout my life. My work performance was suffering, I was falling behind in my classes, and I was spending such long hours at work and in school that I hardly spent any time at all at home with my wife. When I left the job, I was assured that I would be given a different position, one in which I had done well for more than ten years before switching to my last job.
It’s been nearly six weeks. None of that came to pass. For the first time since before I enlisted in the military nearly twenty years ago, I find myself unemployed. I’ve been searching for a new job with little success. I spend most of my waking hours each day scouring employment web sites and forums. Numerous leads have looked promising, only to fail to pan out.
My transition from military to civilian life was difficult, and even after more than eight years, it still seems to be a work in progress. I was fortunate to have a job lined up and waiting for me when I separated from the Air Force; an old friend from my pre-enlistment college days was working as a teacher, and knowing that I was going to need a job while I went back to college, helped me to secure a position as an instructional assistant for special education.