Yesterday I was thinking a lot about what comes next after South Korea. I've always had half a mind to accomplish more and then I got to thinking about what more can I accomplish? I'm a marginally successful writer, which is good enough. I mean, making my living from writing would be ....great?  I'd get to write all day, yeah! I'd have to write all day, hmmm. It's kind of like the time I decided to go back to collage and major in art. I took art classes for three days and realized that drawing that much gave me a headache. 

Anyway, my point is, I was thinking I need to be more successful, but my life here in Korea is strange but awesome. I'm a teacher by day, a writer/publisher by night, a baker/ candy maker when the mood strikes and on Sundays I fell into volunteering  at the riding stables in Sangju as a horse trainer which has meant simplifying the encyclopedia of horses in my brain ESL essential elements-- simplifying is good.

The work I do isn't exactly prestigious but not long after I got the feeling that I need to do more, I realized that's a wrong way of thinking. Going back to the States and settling, would actually be a simplification. The question is, what do I really want. I'm thirty-five and I still don't know. It feels like I should and yet...

Have you ever been at a public event or participating in a conversation only to have it high jacked? Of course you have. The event, which could have been very informative, is derailed by somebody who doesn't know when to shut up.

Well, I'm that person. It's not intentional. I just have a lot to say about everything. My solution to this problem is to zip my lips and throw away the key.

It will thus come as no surprise that I struggle with dialogue in my writing as well. My characters start chatting in my head and, if I'm not careful, their conversations takeover the story.

Now, Meat Head was written before I had learned to zip my lips and put my chatty fingers under lock and key. I've been fight to control the dialogue which is funny and finally it occurred to me that I needed to rip it out. I've spent countless hours trying to work it in. One of the slowest ways to "fix" a flaw is to fall in love again with things on the page that is great on the sentence level, and even scene by scene, but detracts from the larger story.

I've spent the last two days ripping out dialogue. On Saturday, Meat Head was sitting at 60,000 words. Now it's 45,000 words...

I happen to love the Odd Thomas series by Dean Koontz. I love it, but sometimes the dialogues get out of control. I'm listing to Stephen King's Tommy Knockers on audio book as well. There's a seen where one of the character's gets drunk and goes on a rant. It's quite long and drawn out, and at times boring. This has been Meat Head's problem. And sure, I can go ahead with these flaws, and probably be fine.

Whatever I have come July, will be what I have. Imperfect. I'm trying to do the best I can with Meat Head but it will never be as good as something I might write now. But even that isn't fair. A story has it's time. I couldn't not write a manuscript like this now. What I didn't know about writing three years ago, contributed greatly to the magic, flawed as it is, of Meat Head.

This theory is at the core of why I think it's wrong to spend too many years writing the same story. There is magic in mistakes that ten years of trying to do better will screw up as surely the typos in my posts.

If you can believe it, I've never done pot or any mind altering substances stronger than caffeine. Perhaps it's because I have an overactive imagination.
I know nothing about mind altering drugs but I have worked in a rehab. The job lasted about six months and it  the hardest job I've ever had.  I learned a lot of things, one of them is that marijuana is not always benign.

But even for those people who did become so addicted that it affected their ability to function, you could still draw a distinct line between a pot-head than even an alcoholic.

The first line is in the number of pot-heads. The facility I worked was a 28 day program, accommodated about 30 adults and 15  adolescents. Even though the clients didn't all come on the same day, in the six months you can estimate that I worked with 180 adults and 90 youth. In that time I only worked with two tried and true pot-heads. There were plenty of addicts that did drugs. In fact most had started with pot and moved on to the harder stuff.

This is why marijuana is often called a gateway drug. Pot is benign, give people a feel of confidence about using drugs. I think drugs are like sex for kids. Parents and society teach kids sex is bad to try to keep them for doing it. And it works until it doesn't.

But with drugs, kids are left wondering if their parents weren't wrong about the other drugs too. This is at my core belief why I think pot should be legal. Not only does pot give young adults a misconception of the dangers of doing drugs, getting it puts them in direct contact with the people who can get them the harder stuff.

Still, I've been under the misconception that all marijuana is mind altering. As it turns out in this article about a father who gives his son marijuana, that's not true.