Some links may be affiliate links. I may earn money if you buy something or take an action after clicking one of these links on this site.

Rob Knowlan is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

A Saturday For Gratitude

Wednesday was my birthday and I’m deeply grateful for all the positive vibes and kind thoughts everyone sent my way.

Love And Friendship

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. ~Lao Tzu

A birthday comes but once a year but it certainly shows those who hold you dear.

I genuinely appreciate all the relatives, friends, coworkers past and present, people I’ve only ever known online and friends of friends who are kind enough to say Happy 🎂 Birthday on a thread for a person they’ve never interacted with.

That sort of kindness and basic goodwill warms me in every possible way.

But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Season 3 Ends With A Bang

THE BOYS Season 3 Episode 8 Breakdown, Ending Explained & Season 5 Theories!

I’ve been keeping up with a couple of shows lately. I’ve enjoyed Ms Marvel, the new episodes of The Orville and The Boys.

There are quite a few others I’d like to catch up on such as The Expanse. There are plenty I’m looking forward to like She-Hulk, The Rings of Power and the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.

Problem is, i have to squeeze it all in the periphery of a very busy work schedule. I take an hour or so before or after work to catch up on these stories because I find them enjoyable and they help feed my imagination so I can get back to the writing.

Hopefully, that will be something I can squeeze into my busy schedule again.

I’ve been funneling my creativity into improving my toolset at work so that I can do things quickly and more efficiently. I’m looking to make these improvements so that they could become more user-friendly for my colleagues to use on those projects in which they kindly take the data conversion work on themselves.

I work with a tremendous team of incredibly smart people. Not just book smart, although they definitely are that, but they’ve got emotional smarts. They are masters of the business processes that our software facilitates and they do a phenomenal job of teaching best practices to our new clients and helping them make optimal use of the tools we provide.

So, it’s a privilege for me to be able to support these very talented individuals in their efforts. It’s very interesting work, albeit quite exhausting.

Fortunately, once something is done it’s done. When I make an improvement, I can literally tick the box and move on to the next thing. That is such a blessing to me. Granted, things can get hectic when it all hits at once, but I’ve been given a lot of leeway to work at my own pace in order to get things done for our clients and my colleagues.

Disparate Elements

To change your phrase somewhat, I know that I like an art where disparate elements form an entity. ~James Schuyler

Like software, crafting a story can really be an exhausting endeavor.

Trying to draw disparate elements into a story to make it more believable is similar to the various disciplines needed to create a useful piece of software.

Unfortunately, the majority of my waking life is currently geared toward the software.

I’m barely keeping up with my monthly schedule on Christmas All The Time. I had hoped to be done with the Feb-Oct collection of articles so I could have more breathing room than usual for the upcoming Holiday Season Serial Romance.

I’ve only had fleeting seconds now and again to devote to the The Sentinels series. I periodically replay what I’ve got written so far as a way to put myself to sleep.

That’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s not that the story is boring. It isn’t (I hope). It’s the monotone text-to-speech voice reading it to me that helps soothe me to sleep, as well as reloading the story in progress into my subconscious for some overnight plot development.

That’s all I’ve got right now.

Plenty of ideas to improve my software toolset and the vaguest notions of what to do next in my stories.