Easy Like Sunday Morning?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about a lot of things. Comics is one of them. One of these days I intend to do a blog post about comics and narrative via illustration, and all that stuff. Not today though. Today I was thinking about choices, and the directions they end up taking us. I mean, even basic choices, like where to get a job. I've been thinking about this because my last job, at Chapters bookshop, was completely uninspiring. There I was, surrounded by amazing stories all day long, and never did I have a chance to even browse the shelves, let alone read the books or come up with my own story ideas. Welcome to the corporate book chain, where the employees are so distracted by the massive queue at the check-out and the rude customers that they don't even look at the titles coming through. Don't even ask me what people were buying - I honestly have no idea. Walking Dead maybe? The latest Heather's Pick? Someone asked me once if I could recommend a happy book for her to read; I had to tell her I hadn't read a happy book since about 1989, when I was still reading books from the young readers section. (All right, fine - I didn't actually say that.) Does anyone even write 'happy' books anymore? What does that even mean?

Anyway, the job. The point is that I chose to work there, and it wasn't at all what I expected it to be. Then I chose to leave there, and I got this random job at the RCMP Depot Division, working at a store that sells soap and toothpaste and gun cleaning supplies and handcuffs. Also, swimming goggles. It's so weird. And it's such a different environment from the Chapters. I'm not actually sure that it could be more different. There are no books, and lots of cadets, and no one who writes (at Chapters, everyone was a writer, but no one had time to write anything), and I can do my homework while sitting down as I am working and getting paid, because sometimes an entire hour will go by and there will be no customers. And this employment change was an impulsive choice. I work with a film student now, and a visual artist, and they are interested in the things that I do, and vice versa, and we have time to talk about our projects and fine tune and seek advice from each other. This morning, Sunday morning, I made a pot of coffee, sat down with a notebook, and asked my co-worker how his latest sculpture was going and what he might know about instances in which time might possibly stop. (Because a story where time stops? Why is it that the only thing I can think of right now are slow-motion montages from Michael Bay movies?) And seriously, who would have thought that I would be finding insight in the middle of cadet training drills and scenario enactments?

The point of this is that as I'm writing I have to make choices all the time. And it's important to remember, I think, that if I make a choice while I'm writing that takes me to a place I don't expect, I have options: either stick with it and make it work for me, or go somewhere else. Even if I don't know where that somewhere else is going to take me. In life, I have a tendency to make impulsive choices - and I think that's why I don't know what I'm going to write about until the very last minute.

I'm getting there. Maybe. Soon I will understand all of my madness. Oh, and also my method.