November is almost over

Winner-2014-Square-ButtonI did not tout National Novel Writing Month this year because, frankly, I did not think I had the time to participate, and if I did, I was pretty sure I would not have the time to finish successfully. After several years of not making it, I just did not want to get my hopes up. And if I had reported out a week ago, I would be telling you that it was not looking good. I had lost almost a week of writing, which, when you have to crank out more than 1600 words a day to be successful, means a loss of almost 10,000 words. That is a huge margin to make up when you are shooting for 50,000. So I was not hopeful that my story would make the word count. But a couple of lucky breaks and a burst of imagination and I have not only passed the 50K word count to be successful, but I have still some story to write, and should be able to actually complete the story too.

So if you think you cannot write a novel, I am here to assure you that you can. And if you are still struggling to get to the end, keep pushing. It is not over, until it is over!

Enough With The False Anger Over Stores Opening On Thanksgiving

There is a current upset over stores opening on Thanksgiving here in the United States. Being born in Canada, I don't care either way - Thanksgiving is not a sacred cow. But what I find amazing is the same people that are ranting about the stores being open on Thanksgiving seem to not care that these same stores maintain almost normal hours on Memorial Day, Labor Day, even Independence Day.  Nary a whimper about this.

In an article in the BBC, an article about "Life in a no-vacation nation," it documents the, well shock, of an American now working in Australia where vacations are essentially mandatory. I have been making it my personal project to get the federal holidays repealed.  Why? Because no one, outside the federal government and a few select individuals get them. So why have a calendar full of them if you are going to have to work them anyway. I used to refer to the little four and the big five.  The big five were those sacred holidays - Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  The little four were New Years, Columbus, President, and Veterans Day. In most real, non-retail companies, the little four were either forgotten entirely, or were shuffled around to make things easier, like the Friday after Thanksgiving, or the week between Christmas and New Year.

Lately though (since the turn of the 2000), even the big five seem to be pretty much ignored, especially if you work for a global company. The holidays are dates on the calendar and mean about as much as Saturday or Sunday do, or essentially, they are just days of the week that may or may not require you to be working. So why do we bother pretending that these days are "holidays."

If we were serious, we would close everything on these days, much like what happens on Easter Sunday. Wait, what? Yes, until recently, Easter Sunday was the only day of the year when everything from retail to restaurants was closed. I mean signs on the door, we will not be open closed. And this was as recently as the middle of this century. Now things have changed and it is considerably less stringent than it used to be, but it does beg the question - if we can be closed for a non-holiday, why can we not close for such important days as the birth of the nation or Thanksgiving? Such false complaining really makes the rest of the world laugh at us more than they otherwise do. And by the way, why is the Friday also not a holiday?  Oh, that's right, because we are all too busy shopping....