John R. Phythyon Jr.'s Blog, page 34

Embracing Destiny: How I became an Artist

Something has changed within me

Something is not the same

–Stephen Schwartz, “Defying Gravity”

Yesterday, I wrote how, by embarking on a self-publishing venture, I had started a business. As a result of that revelation, I am now approaching my writing career with a very business-like approach.

But there is something else. When I was laid off last August, I was very much a working professional. My professional goals were oriented towards advancing my employer’s brand and increasing my standard of living. I wanted to be an author, but I was very much in the hobbyist mode I described in yesterday’s blog. I was writing a novel, and I hoped to publish it, but it wasn’t my primary goal.

When I was laid off, I was focused at first on trying to find a new job. I was given two months’ notice by my employer (which was really generous of them), and I spent that time and the two months following my release doing almost nothing but looking for work.

As those initial days of unemployment turned into weeks and then months, though, there were only so many hours I could spend scouring job sites looking for opportunities. I needed something else to fill up my time, and that’s when I did the research and decided to attempt to self-publish my novel.

I began splitting my time between looking for work and working on my new business. That’s when something started to happen inside me. It was small at first; I didn’t notice it. But as my unemployment dragged on, I started becoming a different person.

I began a metamorphosis from Business Professional to Artist.

I kept looking for a new job. I didn’t stop searching the want ads and the job sites and sending in applications and occasionally getting an interview. But somewhere along the way I stopped thinking of myself as a business communication guy and started considering myself an artist.

I think this transition was helped in part by the work I could find. Career positions stubbornly refused to become available, but there were odd jobs in the arts. I taught youth theater at two different places around town. When you are helping young people develop their acting skills, you have to think like an actor.

I also volunteered at The Boy’s school, helping fifth-graders edit their persuasive essays. So I had to think like a writer.

Now, it’s been almost nine months since I got laid off, and my brain has changed. I still look for work, but I am thinking of myself as an artist. I am embracing who I want to be.

As I reflect on this change, I realize that I have spent most of my adult life fighting it. I’ve spent so much time trying to handle the business side of my career I’ve forgotten that I’ve wanted to be an artist since I was about eight years old. I keep putting off doing what I love for some commercial reason. But being unemployed and being unable to find work ironically enabled me to embrace what should have been my destiny all along.

Even that required some growth and change. I had the time to self-publish, the time to build a platform, the time to work on my authorial career. But it wasn’t until I’d spent months doing it that the real shift to dedicated artist happened in my mind. It was like I had to do it before I could really do it.

I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen next. If I get lucky and things work out the way I want, my novels will sell well enough for me to earn my living that way. If not, I’m sure the economy will eventually improve to the point where I can get another job as a business writer.

But whatever happens, I’m not going to forget that I’m an artist. The goal — long-term and short- — will always be to make art. I’m through with denying who I am. I’m done with putting off what I want to do with my life.

I am an artist. I write novels, and I teach theater to kids. I express myself creatively. That is my destiny, and it’s time to embrace it.

Too late for second-guessing

Too late to go back to sleep

It’s time to trust my instincts

Close my eyes and leap!

–Stephan Schwartz, “Defying Gravity”

Being an Indie Author is a Business

Every now and again, I’ll be breezing through life when a sudden revelation smacks me right in the face.

For months I’ve been working on two things: finding a new job and building my career as an author. I look at want ads every day. I make applications every week. Occasionally, I get an interview.

And I fill the remaining hours writing stories, blogging, tweeting, researching, and generally trying to sell my book.

This dual life was moving along at a comfortable pace until a few days ago, when I suddenly realized something. When I set out to publish State of Grace and launch a career as an author, I was starting a business.

Maybe everyone else knew this, but somehow I missed it. After all, it wasn’t like when I founded Event Horizon Productions back in 1996. I didn’t write up a set of bylaws my partners and I could agree to. I didn’t file an application with Kansas’s Secretary of State to incorporate. I didn’t do all those things one normally associates with starting a business.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t found one when I wrote the first blog entry about my decision to e-publish. The Girlfriend put it best when she corrected one of the kids: “John has a job; it’s to be an author.”

That made me feel good, but it still took until this past weekend for the thought to really sink in. I want this to be my career. Even if the money from it doesn’t allow me to stop looking for other work, this is what I want my primary job to be.

And if I want that it means this is a business.

Late last year I wrote a business plan. I’ve strayed from it. Oh, I’m still trying to accomplish everything on the list, but I am way behind on my timeline. The schedule was ambitious, to be sure, but I shouldn’t be this far behind. I’ve been a little lazy.

That ends today. Today, I am the CEO of John R. Phythyon, Jr., Author, and this boss expects his workers to get something done while they’re on the clock. Since I’m also the main flunkie around here, I’ve got to get my butt in gear.

My business is suffering because I’m not working hard enough. I need to put more into my promotional efforts and ramp up the speed of my production.

All of that is details, though. The real issue is my approach to things. I’ve been enjoying being an author, and I’ve been taking it seriously. But I haven’t been thinking about it as a business.

I believe that is one of the most important keys to success as an indie author. Yes, you have to have a good book, with a great cover, and some sharp marketing, and a little (a lot?) luck. But you also need the attitude that this is your business. This is what you do for a living, even if you are working a 9-to-5 to pay the bills and drum up some investment capital for your writing venture.

Because if you’re not writing for business, you’re treating it as a hobby. That’s just fine if being an author isn’t your ultimate goal. You can be a hobbyist, and some people might even find and read your work.

But I am in this to be an author. I am convinced it is my destiny, my raison d’etre. That makes me a businessman. Time to act like it.

KDP Select and Me

I am considering going over to the Dark Side.

I’m thinking about turning my back on two decades of business philosophy and experimenting with a ruthless approach to selling.

Yes. I am considering enrolling in KDP Select.

If you’re not familiar with this program, it’s offered by Amazon.com’s Kindle Direct Publishing arm. It allows participating authors to have their books become part of Amazon’s Kindle Owner’s Lending Library (KOLL), wherein Amazon Prime members can check out an eBook into their Kindle once a month. By participating, authors earn a percentage of the royalty fund Amazon allocates to the KOLL. Right now that’s $600,000 a month. Amazon projects it will pay $6M to KDP Select participants this calendar year.

Moreover, having your book in the KOLL gets it greater visibility on Amazon.com, and more visibility can lead to more sales.

And, as if that isn’t enough, KDP Select authors can offer their books for free for up to five days in a 90-day period. Amazon promotes those free giveaways to help drive traffic.

In short, it’s a huge opportunity to get State of Grace or any other piece I publish in front of a wider audience. It’s a chance to increase my sales.

But there’s a catch. Like any for-profit business, Amazon is not motivated by simple good will. There’s a profit angle in it, and it is this: to enroll in KDP Select, you have to offer participating books exclusively through Amazon for a minimum of 90 days.

My liberal sensibilities as well as my business acumen rebel against exclusive distribution arrangements. They’re anti-competitive, and they generally do more harm than good to the market.

On a micro level — looking just at my own situation — I’d have to make some hard decisions. Would I continue to offer State of Grace through Barnes & Noble and Smashwords and its distribution partners? That would rob it of the benefits of KDP Select, and it’s the foundational book of the Wolf Dasher series and, in a larger sense, my entire authorial career at the moment. But to get it in KDP Select, I’d have to unpublish it from BN and Smashwords. I have two very nice reviews on BN.com, and Smashwords has actually paid me royalties.

On the other hand, BN has sold exactly two copies of State of Grace. Smashwords has sold six. Amazon owns 85-90% of the online book market, despite BN’s aggressive advertising campaign for the Nook and Smashwords distributing to Sony and Apple’s iBook store. Every author I’ve read or chatted with on the subject has said both that BN and Smashwords accounted for only a tiny percentage of their sales and that enrolling in KDP Select boosted their sales incredibly.

And I need a sales boost. Seven months after its release, State of Grace has embarrassingly low numbers. I’m not worried about that in the long term, because I knew this was going to be a long, uphill battle. But I do have to do something to give the book a shot in the arm. To build my career and achieve my goals, I’ve got to investigate using all the methods available to me.

And that includes enrolling in KDP Select.

It may make me cringe to enter an exclusive distribution arrangement. It may fly in the face of how I like to do business. I might alienate non-Kindle users (including, sadly, my brother). But if it can jumpstart my career, I have to at least think about it.

I haven’t made any decisions yet. There is a lot to think about, and I can certainly approach this in a tiered manner. First, you don’t have to offer a book through KDP Select indefinitely. It’s only 90 days at a time. So I could offer books for three months exclusively through Amazon, then publish them to BN and Smashwords as well.

Second, KDP Select is only for eBooks. You can offer the print edition non-exclusively even while the eBook is only available through Amazon. Thus, if I published the print and e-versions simultaneously, readers without a Kindle or Kindle app could still get the book when it’s new.

And, of course, even if I unpublish State of Grace from BN and Smashwords, I can always republish it through them after 90 days.

So I have options. There are ways to do this that will not tie me exclusively to Amazon forever.

But I’m pretty sure I’m going to experiment with KDP Select in some fashion. I can’t ignore the advice of other writers and the data the’ve presented.

The truth is, this is about limiting sales. It might seem limiting to refuse to sell through certain distributors, but, in this case, the opposite may, in fact, be true. I’ve got to look at that.

And if that means I’m joining the Dark Side, well, hopefully I’ll get one of those cool, red lightsabres.

Remembering not to Forget: My Big Gaffe on KDP

Sometimes, I’m just an idiot.

It’s always embarrassing when you discover you’ve forgotten something. It’s worse when it is something really important.

I published State of Grace through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing on 22 November 2011. On 22 May 2012, I discovered I had done nothing with my Amazon author profile.

KDP sent out its regular newsletter, and, of course, it encouraged readers to develop their author pages on Amazon. There was a link. I clicked on it and realized mine was so undeveloped it was like coming upon a previously undiscovered planet in deep space. There was no bio, no photo, no anything.

Somehow, I thought I’d done this. I knew in the back of my mind (because I’d read it on several self-publishing blogs) that you have to develop this page yourself. Yet, for some reason, I thought I’d done some of it when I set up my KDP account.

As my father says, “That’s what you get for thinking when you’re not used to it.”

I feel stupid, but the truth is there is so much for an indie author to know. You have to be on Goodreads, tweet regularly, follow blogs, set up a blog tour, solicit reviews, and someone where in there you should write another book too. I feel dumb for having let this slip through the cracks, but is it really that surprising?

This morning I uploaded my bio and photo to my Amazon author page. I linked my Twitter feed and my blog. I need to spend some more time with it seeing what else I can do and then do those things too.

If you’re an author, indie or otherwise, make sure you’ve got your Amazon author page developed. They claim it helps with sales. I couldn’t say one way or the other yet, but how can it possibly hurt?

There’s a lot to remember if you’re an indie author. Try to be better than me and remember them all.

Educational Losses: What “Market Day” Didn’t Teach

It is a rallying cry of The Old to wonder, “What are they teaching these kids these days?” I hate to do anything that makes me seem old.

But I am feeling compelled after witnessing Third Grade Market Day at Hillcrest Elementary School yesterday.

The principle was fairly simple: the third-graders made crafts and treats with a partner and then set up a booth to sell them. Parents were invited and given play money to shop with. The children set their prices and made signs. Then they waited to see how successful they might be at their commercial enterprises.

I’m not sure why the school thinks it’s necessary to educate third graders on the basic rules of free enterprise, but my problem wasn’t so much the curriculum as the lesson taught.

The Girl and her partner made cupcakes, brownies, lemonade, t-shirt scarves, and throw pillows. They charged the outrageous price of six dollars for the cupcakes and five dollars for the brownies. The crafts items were less.

This turned out to be a shrewd plan. They had an excellent location near the entrance to the market, making them one of the first booths seen by visitors, and they recognized that sweet things amongst third graders and parents (who don’t need more crafty crap coming home) were more likely to be in-demand items. They sold through most of their inventory and made a killing. There were other booths selling cupcakes and brownies, but they were charging less and it was not significantly altering their sales.

All this seemed like a good lesson to me until things started winding down. Then the teachers gave the parents a ton of extra cash and bade them to wander through the market again and buy the kids out of stock, so they wouldn’t feel bad.

Instead of having a discussion in class about who made the most money and why, they made sure everyone got to feel good about their efforts. They invited the children to participate in free market enterprise, then taught them that everyone will be successful, no matter how good or poor their business plan, merchandise, or location.

Again, I question the need to teach third graders about commerce, but this was worse. This was an opportunity to learn to budget your resources to maximize what you could do that was torpedoed by worrying about everyone’s emotions.

This is the culture in which we live. We don’t want anyone to feel bad. We think it is a bad thing to teach children sometimes they won’t be good enough and there are consequences for our decisions.

Now, everyone gets a medal at a gymnastics meet for participating, because just showing up makes you special. We play sports but don’t keep score, so the losers won’t feel bad about the other team being better.

And so our third graders clad in participation medals and clutching mountains of unearned play cash, grow into adults demanding to be Employee of the Week on a regular basis and get daily pats on the back just for coming to work.

We are a culture of mediocrity coming to believe we are owed a living.

The Girl was very pleased with her business success, but she doesn’t know why she exceeded her competitors’ returns, nor does she understand the risk she took in pricing her goods far above what everyone else was asking. The school failed her.

But it failed the other students even more.

Routine Wreckage

Alright, I admit it — I’m routine-oriented. As much as I enjoy exciting adventures, I like having a routine. One might even say, I depend on routines. By doing the same things more or less the same way just about every day, I get a lot more accomplished.

This is no more important than in the morning. I get up. I feed the animals. I make the coffee. I start reading the newspaper.

Then, and only then, do I start waking others up.

Not only does the peaceful quiet of a house undisturbed by three other people trying to get ready for work or school make it easier for me to wake up in a good mood sufficient enough to combat the crabbiness of those who don’t want to go to work or school, I like the 20 minutes at the beginning of the day when I don’t have to worry about taking care of anyone else (except the animals, who leave me alone for a simple bribe of dry kibble).

But today, everything went wrong. I had just let The Dog out and fed The Cat, when I heard a door open. The Boy (whom I usually have to shake repeatedly to wake up at 7:15) emerged at 6:47 and ready to talk.

Talking is not on my schedule until around 7:45 when the first child wanders into the kitchen in search of breakfast.

I figured I could distract him with the Sports section of the paper, so I could read. But there was no newspaper at the end of our driveway. So I called the circulation desk twice getting only a voicemail.

My OCD mind was already starting to fray at the prospect of things not being the same way they always are, when The Girl emerged from her room at 6:57 — 33 minutes before I would normally start gently presenting her with the concept of waking up. (Shaking her awake would be hazardous to my health.) Now there were no paper, two children, The GF was still in bed because she was working from home today, and the coffee hadn’t finished brewing yet.

I suggested The Boy go shower. He declined. After all, he didn’t usually get into the shower until 7:20, and he didn’t want to be off his routine.

I finally got ahold of the circulation desk, and they promised to send a paper. Really, though, they were too late.

The Girl ate breakfast early as a result of getting up early. The Girlfriend was in the kitchen talking to me. Everything was abnormal.

Eventually, having started their respective days half an hour early each, the children ran out of things to do. Thus, the only amusement left was to pick fights with each other. No subject was so insignificant as to not serve as a trigger for squabbling.

There was not enough coffee in me. I hadn’t finished reading the newspaper, since it was the only thing to hit the routine late today. How could I possibly be expected to deal with all this? Jesus Christ himself wouldn’t have the patience, especially if he hadn’t had his coffee and paper.

And the really unfair part was I got a great night’s sleep without an animal deciding to mess with it by noisily screwing around half an hour before the alarm went off for the first time in a week. It was supposed to be a really good morning!

Finally, they left. I inquired as to whether we could just leave them at the school, but, apparently, you do have to pick them up every day. The school won’t keep them.

No one is allowed to get up early again. If I am expected to be nice and cheery and tolerant, I need my coffee and paper and quiet. I need my routine.

Woe betide he or she who messes with it.

Cliches and CreateSpace

Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.

I know, that’s cliched. How about, sometimes you can’t see the beach for the sand?

Regardless of how cliched it is, the statement is true, as I discovered in the proofing process of the print edition of State of Grace.

Formatting the manuscript for e-publishing wasn’t hard. It was an involved process, but, for the most part, it seemed pretty straightforward, and I didn’t have any issues getting it done accurately.

Not so with the print edition. Despite following step-by-step instructions from Michael Jasper’s excellent “Making Digital Books” series (just as I had done for the eBook versions of the novel), I could not get CreateSpace to play nicely with me. Errors kept popping up in both the manuscript and the cover.

I went online and read articles that alleged to have solutions. They didn’t work. I asked friends and technical experts I know for advice. Their solutions didn’t work. I pored over CreateSpace’s FAQ. Their answers didn’t work.

This was doubly frustrating, because this isn’t my first go-around in layout and publishing. I’ve spent the better part of 15 years working on and off in one publishing capacity for another. I’m not ignorant about the technical side of getting a manuscript into print.

But, in the past, there’s always been a tech to walk me through SNAFU’s, letting me know what I needed to do to resolve the issue. I’ve worked with people on the printing end to make a quality product. CreateSpace is a do-it-yourself operation. There was no one to talk to.

And when you are fighting to get something to work, that’s when you start only seeing the trees, er, grains of sand. You focus on getting them to lie nicely together instead of seeing the beach they are supposed to be making.

I eventually got things to work out. In some cases, I am not entirely sure how I fixed the issues, but I did get everything to work right. I ordered my proof from CreateSpace and prayed it would look right when I got it.

When it arrived, I was elated. The cover looked beautiful. The interior was laid out correctly.

But as I read through it, proofing the layout, I discovered something I hadn’t seen when I was trying to get it formatted — it didn’t look like a book.

I used Times New Roman for the font. I am partial to serif fonts, and I think Times New Roman looks pretty clean, even if it is used a lot.

That was just fine for the body of the novel, but the only difference between the chapter titles and the main text was the former was bolded. The point-size was the same, and so was the font.

And that meant my novel looked like a Word document someone had printed out and bound. It didn’t look like a book. All I had was a bunch of sand; I didn’t have a beach.

So after I fixed all the formatting issues and corrected some typos, I set about trying to make it look like a novel. I changed the chapter titles to Algerian, the same font I use on the cover. I put drop caps in at the beginning of each chapter, also in Algerian. I got everything lined up correctly, and then, fearing more trouble like I’d had the first time from CreateSpace, I held my breath and uploaded it.

To my infinite relief, CreateSpace accepted the new font and didn’t appear to have monkeyed with the layout. I’ve ordered another proof. I’ll be crossing my fingers until it arrives.

But it just goes to show you — you have to keep your eye on the big picture. (I am just full of cliches today, aren’t I?) When you get so focused on the details, you forget they are supposed to add up to something. You have to step back periodically and look at the whole, not just the parts.

Otherwise, you miss the forest or the beach or whatever non-cliched metaphor you like.

The 99-cents Dilemma

Independent author Derek Blass (whom I thank in the acknowledgements of State of Grace and whose Enemy is Blue is worth your time to read) retweeted today a blog he wrote back in December regarding eBook pricing for indie authors. It got me thinking again about the issue of pricing for my own books and the tricky nature of trying to find that sweet spot of the right asking price.

I’ll call this the 99-cents Dilemma. Simply put, should I price State of Grace (and other novels I write) at 99 cents?

Pros: First, the book isn’t rocketing up Amazon’s bestseller list at the moment. Asking less for it might help convince people to take a chance.

Second, I am an indie author. I’m not especially well known, although in the last couple months I have been able to raise my visibility through some author interviews and attention-gathering tweets. But those haven’t translated into huge sales, so, going back to the first point, maybe this indie author needs to lower the price to get people to take a chance.

Now for the cons — the things that make this such a dilemma:

Perceived Value: There’s a twofold argument here. The fiscal theory is that, the less you charge for something, the less it is worth. If you devalue your merchandise by charging very little for it, you send the message it isn’t worth buying.

I’m less concerned about that, since numerous indie authors have priced at 99 cents and been successful. Blass notes that pricing Enemy in Blue at 99 cents increased his number of sales considerably. Shannon Mayer’s excellent Sundered is priced at 99 cents, while she has the next book in the series at $2.99. Her strategy is pretty simple to see — let you in on the series cheaply, then charge more once you’re hooked.

So I think the 99-cent pricing strategy works for independent authors without devaluing their books.

But the other aspect of the perceived-value argument is how much you’re getting for your money. I have a short story available on Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords — “The Coronation of King Charles III” — for 99 cents. There’s a lot less content (words) for “Coronation” than for State of Grace. It therefore doesn’t seem right to charge the same price for both. The logical thing to do would be to lower the price of the short story, but Amazon and B&N don’t let you charge less than 99 cents.

(I discovered this when I published a free Wolf Dasher short story, “The Darkline Protocol.” My intent was to use it as a loss-leader for State of Grace, and Smashwords allowed me to publish it for free. But, when I published it on Amazon and B&N to increase its profile, I discovered I could not publish for less than 99 cents. Amazon allegedly price matches, but, to date, they have not discovered it is cheaper somewhere else and adjusted the price to $0.00.)

So what is there to be done? Do I risk charging the same price for a novel as for a short story and thereby angering consumers? Would they understand? It’s hard to know.

Been There; Done That: Another consideration in the 99-cents Dilemma is that I’ve tried it unsuccessfully. A few months back, I lowered the price of State of Grace to 99 cents in an effort to raise sales. It had zero effect. My sales didn’t change at all. I therefore raised it back to $2.99 when I published “Coronation” for the reasons I stated above.

However, my profile wasn’t as broad then. I’ve got access to a broader platform now (more Twitter followers, Facebook groups, interviews), so maybe it would make a difference.

Maybe. But is three bucks really too much to ask for people to pay for a debut novel by a new author? I mean, I’m poor and I could afford that. Is $2.99 a barrier to entry? Perhaps it is.

On the Horns: I haven’t made any decisions one way or the other, but this pricing dilemma illustrates pretty clearly that we are still on the frontier of this Brave New World of indie e-publishing. I will continue to contemplate the horns of this dilemma, and, when I come up with a solution, I’ll post it here.

In the meantime, I’m interested in your thoughts, particularly if you’re an independent author. Leave a comment discussing your pricing strategy and how you think it’s working.

About Time

By now you’ve surely heard the news: President Obama endorsed gay marriage yesterday. There were major reactions on every side of the debate. GBLT groups hailed it as a landmark achievement for a sitting president to make such an endorsement. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney reaffirmed his one-man-one-woman stance held by most conservatives, while self-named pro-family groups decried Mr. Obama’s position. The blogosphere exploded in a way it hasn’t for some time. This is bigger than the Secret Service sex scandal and maybe even the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Allow me to offer a different perspective — that of a straight man with no religious affiliation and no particular dog in this fight. I am not the parent of a gay child; I am not a pastor in a church; I am not a minority. I’m just a divorced, straight, white guy living in Kansas, who has a daughter and a girlfriend with two children and an ex-spouse of her own.

My thought is this: it’s about time.

Look, I have nothing to gain from homosexuals being allowed to marry. No member of my family would finally be able to fulfill his or her dream if the Defense of Marriage Act were to be repealed or found unconstitutional. If Kansas were forced to strike down its constitutional amendment guaranteeing marital rights only to traditional, heterosexual couples, no one in my family would benefit.

Likewise, I have nothing to lose if gays can get hitched. It will do no harm to me if two men or two women get married, get taxed the same as I do, and can get rights of visitation and medical power of attorney for each other.

And just like it will do no harm to me, it will do no harm to you. Or to President Obama and Governor Romney. Or to the members of the Southern Baptist Convention and the thousands of pastors and priests who oppose gay marriage on religious grounds. Or to the other people in my neighborhood and the people in North Carolina who just voted for a constitutional amendment similar to the one we have here in Kansas.

In fact, it will do harm to no one. No one.

But it will benefit everyone in the United States. Yes, everyone, and here’s why: no one will have to fear discrimination. We will affirm that it doesn’t matter how or why you are different from “the rest of us,” you have the same constitutional protections and obligations as everyone else.

I recognize that there is religious belief bound up in this issue. There are those who believe the Bible has a direct prohibition of homosexuality. It is therefore logical for those who believe that to adhere to its tenets.

But this is not a religious issue; it is a civil one. Married couples have rights that are different from single people. It is therefore unconstitutional to forbid any two consenting adults from marrying. Separate but equal doesn’t work, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a bigot.

I am a divorced, straight, white man with a daughter, and I support gay marriage. There is a very simple reason for that: I am an American, and in America we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It doesn’t matter if a person is straight or gay. They are owed equal rights under the law. Yesterday, a sitting U.S. president finally acknowledged that.

It’s about time.

Becoming my Parents

My parents are laughing at me. I can hear the echoes of their amusement all the way from Kennebunk ME to Lawrence KS.

This morning, I made good on the threat I made to the children several days ago. If they didn’t stop leaving their things around the living room, I was going to take them and force them to buy them back with labor. A conversation that began with, “Has anyone seen my backpack?” ended with a lot of anger and indignation.

My mother and father no doubt found great amusement in this. I used to leave things around the house when I was growing up. My parents used to yell at me to pick them up. It was an ongoing battle, and my mother naturally said, “I hope you have some children just like you.”

So they are cackling now at The Mother’s Curse coming true. I have to deal with children leaving things around the house just like they did when I was those children’s age.

But that’s not the insidious part about this sick joke. The humor isn’t really found in the fact that the son must now do what the parents did and keep after children to tidy up.

No, the real joke is that I’ve become my parents.

It’s not just that I am doing what they did — teaching children a lesson about picking up after themselves. I actuallycareabout this stuff! I want the house to be tidy!

When I was the children’s age, I was unconcerned about how cleanly things were. I carelessly left my things everywhere. I would happily leave my bed unmade in the morning. Is there a more pointless chore? You’re just going to have to unmake it when you get into it tonight!

But now, I make my bed every morning, and I feel bad if I don’t. Moreover, I make the children do the same thing. To make sure it happens, they can’t have breakfast until it’s done. That’s right. I withhold nutrition from growing children in a bald-faced exercise in blackmail to have them make their beds.

Somehow, my parents made me care about picking things up and making my bed and having everything look nice. Somehow I came to not just care about this stuff but to desire it.

And that horrible transition pits me against the children. I endure being called mean and unfair so that I can get them to clean. When they refuse to do what I want them to, I do what my father did and engage in creative consequences.

Leave your stuff lying around? It gets taken and you have to buy it back. Want to eat breakfast? Make your bed. Want to do anything fun on Saturday? Clean your room first.

Who am I? When did my father move in and impersonate me?

I am disgusted. I have become what I battled for so long. I have betrayed my younger self and become his oppressor. I am a sellout.

And my only solace, my only glimmer of joy, is that I will do the same thing to these children. They will grow up and one day be just like me — chasing after their kids to pick up after themselves.

Sorry, guys. It seems this cycle of oppression is inevitable. You can blame my parents if you like, but they’ll just laugh at you.

Just like they’re laughing at me.