Use Time Wisely

This will be the year I make progress with Half Italian, or stop, including this blog. All depends on my Travelers’ Tales submissions and anything that may come up before I learn their outcome.

Last week, one of the principals from Half Italian, my uncle, spent a few days in the hospital. A post-publication whimsy for me is to introduce some of my Italian family from the book to an interested reader or two. For now, my uncle is fine and staying with Carlin but his hospital stay is a reminder that time is always limited.

I think of a beloved Monsignor, the only Catholic priest I ever met with a combination of true class, practical sensibilities, business and people skills. He’s retired, but probably saying Mass as I write this. My only contact with the troubled Roman Catholic church is limited to this fine man, who used to say, “Use time wisely.” He left the rest to us.

Of this I remind myself, as 2012 begins. Use time wisely.

- PJ

Music paid, will writing?

I’m an employed accountant, many years in the profession. I have two Bachelor's degrees, one in accounting and one in music. At one time I used both degrees; I was a church organist in addition to my weekday accounting job. That second income was nice, added entirely to savings. The pastor of the Roman Catholic Church where I played, however, was not so nice, and I eventually left, as did those before and after me, for the same reason.

Writing Half Italian was the easy part. The query process of someone who’s unpublished is the hard part -- hard and long. With the organ job I made regular money; this book project, so far, has only cost me. Minor expenses, yes, but the query process does add up. And then there’s the time I spend that could be used to do something more financially productive, like, I suppose, looking for another church job. The shift from music to writing took my second income from one side of the number line to the other, with zero determining which side is which.

I’ve decided to wait until February for the last four responses. The optimist in me considers the possibility that one or more of these agents are following this blog, checking to see how this currently unknown and unpublished individual writes on a regular basis. Meanwhile, I make efforts to defeat the defeatist in me, who keeps knocking.

- PJ