day job – Welcome to Bridgetown

Year End: Moving

December 8, 2025December 7, 2025 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

On any given day at work, I’ll walk at least two miles during my shift. Some days I’ll even walk closer to five if it’s busy. You’d think I don’t do much walking considering the hours I spend at the front end registers, but I do a lot more than just checking some days. I might be shopping for online customers. I might have to head to the receiving dock (in which I need to walk to the rear of the store, down a very long hallway, around a corner and past several shelves of backstock) for one thing or another. Or I may just be the lucky courtesy clerk that needs to head outside and round up the carts. Even on the days when I’m a bookkeeper, I certainly get my steps in. And I’ve been doing a LOT of walking at work.

If anything, I’m glad I’m nowhere near as sedentary as I was with the Former Day Job. Sitting on my duff for eight hours certainly gave me poor sitting posture and lazy-itis, that’s for sure. Here, I can expect to get at least some passive exercise in during an eight-hour shift. It makes up for the lack of time we used to have when we’d go for walks around the neighborhood after logging off for the day. Not that we don’t do that anymore, just that our walking tends to be on the weekends these days. Added to that, we let our YMCA membership lapse sometime ago.

I’ve been thinking, though, that I still need to get in better shape. I might be moving around, but I’m also a victim of lazy-itis on my days off. I’m not eating nearly as much junk food as I used to (though this triple whammy holiday season is certainly causing me to snack more!), but I’m not exactly burning enough calories, either. I’m getting older, so I’m not as flexible or as spry as I used to be, and certain parts are beginning to ache.

So what does this have to do with a writing blog? The obvious answer is that yes, I will definitely make it a point to move around more in 2026. Whether it’s a walk around the neighborhood or to our plot at the community garden, or making sure I do my daily stretches to keep me limber, I need to make time for it alongside my writing sessions. I don’t mind not exercising on a particularly busy work day where I’m going to be getting those steps in, but I should at least make stretching a daily priority, even if it is just for a few minutes a day.

Besides, a day where I’m moving physically is always a good day, because it usually gets my mind moving as well.

Still here, just feeling loopy

November 21, 2025November 20, 2025 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I’ve been doing 5:30am opens all week while the head bookkeeper is out, and I’m so not used to it. Thankfully I’ve been very particular about balancing my energy levels and sleep patterns, so I’m not so much exhausted as just using my brain just a bit too much. Who knew that Q4 retail could use up so many mental spoons? Heh.

Still, I’m managing to slowly slog through the parts of Theadia that I’m working on. It’s taking forever, but I’m bound and determined to get this dang thing out one way or another!

Let the holidays commence

November 17, 2025November 17, 2025 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

Image from *The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity*

It’s halfway through November (already??), which means that Q4 and the Holiday Season is pretty much in full swing. The managers have already started putting up the decorations and set up endcaps for holiday cooking and baking. The flow of customers is slowly starting to rise after the doldrums of late Q3. The turkeys are taking up space in the coolers, and specialty items are showing up all over. The only thing missing is the Christmas music, but that’ll come soon enough.

Our decorations are still stored away for the most part, although we did finally purchase some new ones for our new home the other day. Due to overly curious cats we no longer have a Christmas tree, and instead have various decorations we can hang or set up on top of the dvd shelves. I’ll need to start my Christmas shopping pretty soon. And I’ve already bought tickets for SF Ballet’s Nutcracker — a show we’ve gone to nearly every year we’ve lived here — and I do expect to download at least one or two holiday albums when they drop.

Will this mean more of the usual year-end contemplation showing up here? Of course! Heh.

Meanwhile, this also means that I’ll be trying to squeeze in as much writing time as I can during it all. Somehow I always manage to pull it off, and that’s all I can ask for.

In that middle ground again

October 31, 2025October 30, 2025 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

It’s been a rough couple of weeks here at the New Digs. There’s been a bit of drama at the Day Job that I’ve been juggling, not to mention the rise in customer volume considering it’s Q4 and the start of the holiday retail season. I’ve also been doing a hell of a lot of thinking about how I’m going to finish Theadia, and what project(s) I’ll start after that one’s completed. Then there’s the cold/allergies that laid me out for a few days a while back.

Right now I’m feeling very much like I’m somewhere in between where I was and where I need to be, and that can be tense when I can only do so much to keep it moving in the right direction. Sometimes I’m fine with that — the journey’s part of the learning process, as they say — but other times the journey feels like one frustration after another that has to be handled in a certain way in order for the remainder of the trip to be smoother. [Come to find out, this is an ongoing theme in Theadia.] All I can do is just keep going despite the impatience, the anxiety, and the annoyance.

Still, there is a bright side. I’ve gone through this many times before, and if I play this bit of 5D chess the right way like I’ve done before, the end results will definitely be worth it.

That time of year again

September 8, 2025September 7, 2025 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

It’s been a bit over three months since we moved into our New Digs, and things are finally settling and falling back into place. I might still have to remind myself that those month-end payments aren’t for rent anymore but mortgage, but other than that I’m happy that we’re here. We might be slightly further away from the shopping corridors but we’re two blocks from our community garden plot, a block away from a major bus route as well as a very large public park, and the neighborhood is thankfully much more peaceful. (Yes, even during recess for the kidlets at the school across the way.)

This is good timing, as it’s that time of year where I feel the need to change things up. And you know how I am in autumn: excited about the new music releases and contemplative about where I am and where I want to be. I’ve already made a lot of positive changes over the last few months — with room for improvement, of course — so it’s really just a matter of doing it at this point. Or not doing, depending on the situation. Some habits I find I just do not need nor want anymore. Some habits I’d like to revisit once more.

And what about writing? Well, the remaster of A Division of Souls is out and away, and I’m thinking of starting in on the remaster of The Persistence of Memories pretty soon. I’m also focusing on Theadia and it’s still looking good and on schedule for release sometime next year. But I can’t help but think: I’ve got a journal and a notebook gathering dust in my satchel right now, and my 750Words sign-in remains woefully ignored. I mean, I’ve worked on multiple stories at that same time before, so this is nothing new. I can certainly play around with writing extremely rough drafts of new ideas while spending most of my creative energies on the two main projects. And in the process, probably disconnect from a few IRL things that I don’t need to hyperfocus on.

And what better time to do it than during the season that works best for me?

Fly-by: brb, kinda busy

March 7, 2025March 6, 2025 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

WHOOF. It’s been a busy couple of weeks despite the slowdown at the Day Job. I’ve been working multiple midshifts while still managing to squeeze in writing sessions, blog entries and cat distractions, so I’m feeling a bit tired and sleepy. I’m still getting a lot done, but every now and again something needs to temporarily fall by the wayside so I can remain caught up.

I should be back on Monday, thanks for your patience!

‘Tis the Season

December 23, 2024December 19, 2024 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I’m rather glad that this year’s Q4 hasn’t been all that stressful. Exhausting, sure, but very low stress despite the fact I work in retail. And yet I’m trying to squeeze blog posting, daily words and work on Theadia these days, but that’s only because I actually have a lot going on! We’ve been busy for the past couple of weekends, and even though I’ve been working mostly days, there’s still some hour variance that leaves me with ample time some days and not enough elsewhere.

And yet I still soldier on somehow. Enjoying the sounds and the moods of the season, chatting with our regular customers, sharing jokes with coworkers, and generally clocking out in a good mood. That’s just fine for me.

Hope everyone has a lovely holiday!

Distraction, or just too busy?

November 15, 2024November 14, 2024 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I seem to be running out of time to write lately, and it’s bothersome.

To be honest, it’s not as if I’m overly distracted or simply just procrastinating these days. I’ll still deal with the Don’t Wannas every now and again, but for the most part I’ve been doing good. Just…not giving myself enough time.

Part of it lately is that I’ve been working a few odd hours at the Day Job that get me out around 4pm instead of 2pm, which leaves me with a few hours to hang with A and the cats until after dinner, by which time I end up scrunching multiple things into about an hour and a half of time. And to be honest, that ain’t working.

One thing I should probably do is prep multiple blog entries on the same day like I used to — that can easily be done if I give myself time to think about what I want to write about. And though I truly enjoy using the 750Words site, I think I’m at a point where I don’t need to work there right now. At this point writing there is more about getting those words done than using it for various projects. I’m not abandoning it, of course…I’m merely putting it aside.

The other thing I need to do is lay some ground rules, specifically one: what project(s) needs the most focus right now? In this case, I have two I want to focus on: finishing Theadia and starting the remaster of A Division of Souls. I already have schedule plans for each, so that shouldn’t be a problem. And when I’m done with Theadia then I can finally shift the bulk of my focus on writing MU4.

So yeah, I don’t think it’s distraction, at least not right now. Just needing to rethink my schedule a bit.

In the end it’s just love

October 21, 2024October 20, 2024 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I might not be doing nearly as much writing and revising as I should these last couple of weeks, but fear not, I am not avoiding it. Merely just waylaid by Day Jobbery and trying to sort through the plots of two major projects in my head at the same time. And I’m trying not to make it all complicated.

The ending of Theadia might feature several characters doing several different things all at the same time to achieve one singular goal, but the important thing for me to remember is to take it one step at a time. There’s a lot to juggle but if I already know where all the pieces fit into the larger pattern, all I need to do is carefully and patiently put them all together. I learned that with the Bridgetown Trilogy.

And speaking of which, I’m also prepping myself to start (restart?) MU4 which, like the trilogy, has a lot of moving parts and patterns. I’ve worked and reworked them in my head for probably far too long, so I think it’s time to just start writing it. Put pen to paper and move. And to remind myself that despite the darker moments of this particular new project, there must also be moments of incredible light. That’s always been the theme of the Mendaihu Universe: the yin-yang balances of the world around us.

Every now and again I still need to remind myself of that. Not just in my writing projects, but in life as well. The Day Job might be stressful lately, but it also remains a place I’m proud of working at (and that in itself is something I very rarely admit to).