Graham Sedam Writes

The Office Introductory Post I’ve talked about writing this post for what feels like months. It has likely only been about two months at the most. I am not writing this post as an explanation to justify my choice to rent an office—which is really just a room in an office building—or to portray myself in a way that doesn't reflect reality, or in order to gain favor with whatever your feelings are towards me. I write this post to share my thoughts about going into such an endeavor and to hint at what that general endeavor is. I write this, in part, because that is what this feature to my blog is about, and I’m excited about this change within my life. I’m hoping it’s a big step in the direction I want to go. When it comes down to it, I am renting an office to have a place outside of my house to work in peace and quiet. I tried the library once, and it wasn’t as quiet or peaceful as I thought it would be. I don’t have any interest in hanging out at a coffee shop, as I don’t thi

Ready Player One For those of you familiar with my Notes, which I’ll get to in the next section, you’ll know that in the somewhat distant past, my family and I watched a movie called Ready Player One . We all, except The Toddler, really liked this flick. The Toddler had plenty of moments where he stared at the TV like the rest of us, but he can be a pain once he’s determined that he wants to watch something else. From start to finish, it took us three nights spread out over a week. That is NOT my ideal way of watching a movie, but hey, family life. If you don’t already know, this film takes place in a fictional dystopian-like future where escapism into a virtual reality-style video game is the norm. Here, people would rather spend most of their lives as an avatar than to live their lives in the flesh. Things happen, bad people need to be stopped, and the good guys win. Escapism comes in many forms in our world, and this film does a good job touching upon its benefits and its dow

I would like to get something out of the way here at the top of the post that pertains to the last Workshop post that I wrote—my morning writing routine. It started out going pretty well, but it didn’t last. I know I kept it going for at least a month, but it was difficult to write in the morning on days I had off from The Place That Pays Me and writing for 15-20 minutes in the morning before going to The Place That Pays Me wasn’t enough to sustain the forward progress I needed to make. If I were picked up by a giant claw from the sky and placed into a completely different life situation, it could work. This is by no means a complaint about my life, but a mere mature and responsible look at what works and what doesn’t and why. We survive, thrive, and succeed by being cognizant of reality and our abilities within it. It’s the only way to figure out how to move forward intelligently. Where has this left me? While I did try to make this morning writing routine work, I didn’t want to pu

I feel like I had a pretty good 2018. I set goals. I experimented with them. I accomplished much. Now that it’s the beginning of 2019, I feel as though I have a clean slate. I have the opportunity to build, maintain, and reframe what’s important to me and where I see the gaps in my ambitions are. Of course, every day is an uphill battle. I am not wealthy nor without the need to work a “day job.” I have a wife and kids, and they have their own needs and desires, which often conflict with my own. Every day requires effort. That’s not to say that some days don’t happen to work out and go smoothly. For the most part, there is no natural smoothness. It takes energy, effort, and a clear understanding of objectives and priorities. Even though I feel I have a clean slate, I still want to carry over goals or aspects of goals to 2019. I’ll surely re-evaluate as I go, but I need a direction to start in. I learned plenty from last year, some of which I go into in the wrap-up post for my 2018

I’ve been thinking about this post off and on throughout the year, and considering how late in the year it is, I figured that I should get to writing one if it was going to happen at all. Of course, I'm talking about an official revisit to my 2018 goals, the ones I discussed at the beginning of the year in the post, “ Got Resolve? 2018 Goals Dissected .” I’m glad that I waited to write up a draft. Looking at the notes I made throughout the year is great, and some may sneak their way into this post, but many of them feel incomplete. Now that I've gone almost a full year working to achieve these goals, I feel like I have a much better handle on what I've gained, what they taught me, and how I can build upon that next year. Did I achieve my goals? Yes—absolutely. Although, there needs to be an asterisk added to that “yes” for the aid of a footnote. I was doing really well tackling my goals as of June, and I had gotten into a great routine to foster that momentum. However,

Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betel… Almost a month ago, last night if you take into consideration when I wrote this particular section of 'The Dump,' my family and I watched the movie, Beetlejuice . It was one of the Halloween gifts we gave to our kids, and being only a few days after Halloween, we felt it was appropriate to watch sooner as opposed to later. I had seen the movie many years ago when I was a kid, but it had been so long that I was basically watching it for the first time. It was so fresh to me that I'm still debating whether I actually had seen it before or not. My first thought after finishing the movie was that I had remembered the character, Beetlejuice, being in more of the movie. The beginning of the movie was completely foreign. It's amazing how much we forget. I thought the idea of the Maitlands having to stay in the house for 125 years was odd. Why 125 years? It seemed meaningless; maybe I missed something. I also ended up having a lot of question