Social Distortion
My business partner is an only child. On top of that, he’s an only child of older parents. His parents both worked when he was growing up, so he spent a lot of time alone. And when they did spend time with him, they tried to make up for it by lavishing attention on him.
So it was famine or feast. Not surprisingly, he learned to hate the famine and crave the feast. These days, he doesn’t do anything alone. Not if he can help it, at least.
Now, if you’re like me, you grew up with siblings, so you know the value of alone-time. It’s nice to have some peace and quiet to yourself sometimes. But my business partner never learned the value of alone-time, and he does everything he can to avoid it.
So, why am I telling you this?
Well, my company is a reasonably large operation, but it doesn’t take many full-time people to make it work. So we have a small staff in our local office: me, my partner, our marketing coordinator, and our admin assistant.
Right now, we’re in the middle of our busy season—after the first wave of hectic work, but before everything returns from production. So our marketing coordinator and admin took vacation last week. It’s about the only good time to do it during the summer.
In case you weren’t good at word problems, there were only two of us in the office last week, me and my partner. My partner… the one who can’t be alone. The one who must have someone paying attention to him. At all times. No matter what. Regardless of who it annoys (i.e., me, his unwilling victim).
For my part, I was in a writing mood last week. I had the final part of Ch14 in my head, and I simply needed to get it on paper (so to speak). It’s not an easy chapter, but the gut-wrenching part is over. Still, the last part is macro time, which always takes extra writing and editing time. I have to cram a lot of detail into a few sentences.
But, you guessed it, my business partner drove me nuts all week. I couldn’t go fifteen freakin’ minutes without him darkening my door to talk about something, anything, whether I wanted to or not.
On Monday, I heard about his weekend, in excruciating detail. Believe it or not, this isn’t all that unusual, since he’s a messed-up only child who thinks the world revolves around him. He’s not quite a textbook narcisist, but it’s not for lack of trying. He’s just self-absorbed and hates to be alone.
The rest of the week was more of the same—each morning, he told me about the previous night. But wait, it gets worse. He has a photographic memory, so he remembers an extraordinary amount of detail. He can repeat an entire conversation, complete with backstory and extraneous details.
When he wasn’t talking about his life, I heard about every stupid news item, Fail Blog pic, and goofy thing he encountered on the internet, from people we knew 20 years ago to recipes for wild boar. And I mean it when I say “heard.” Not only did he e-mail the links, he came down to my office to tell me about them!
I’m serious. I couldn’t go 15 minutes without some conversation, whether electronic or in person, often both.
Now, I like my business partner… most of the time. He takes some getting used to, but he’s a nice enough guy once you get past his initial abrasive personality. And I generally tolerate his behavior and chalk it up to “middle-aged only child with Peter Pan Syndrome and Attention Whore Complex.”
But I was in a writing mood last week! Worse, I had the time to write. At least, I thought I did. I should have. Instead, I heard about people at his favorite bar (he doesn’t like to go home, because his wife left him 6 or 7 years ago and he now lives alone… that is, when he’s not chasing completely inappropriate 19-year-old girls*). I heard about drunken tree shrews. I watched videos of stupid people doing stupid things.
And I could’ve been writing. Or not.
The minor miracle here is that I actually got some writing done last week. I think I managed nearly 3,000 words. And believe me, that’s a feat, especially with the relentless distractions.
But that’s probably enough about my business partner.
Now for the update: Ch13 has been finished for a while, and it’s been through reality checking, so it’s ready for a final pass before I send it to the editor. I’m close to the end of Ch14, although I need to add a character to a scene early in the chapter. I think I’m going to finish 14 before I sent 13 off to my editor. That’ll give me a solid one-chapter buffer.
Hey, it’s better than nothing.
On another scheduling note, I’m going to GenCon next week. So I’ll be… um… distracted for most of the week (by stuff I care about, at least). I’ll do my best to get Ch13 to the editor before then. (Mr. Editor, if you read this and I forget to send you a note, please ping me and ask where the hell Ch13 is. TIA.)
Anyway, that’s the story of my life. (Bonus points if you just understood this post’s title.)
- Nick
* I’m not kidding about the inapproriate 19-year-olds. You know my story “Straight Up“? It’s a true freakin’ story! Honest to God. My business partner is on the prowl for 18-25yo girls, and believe it or not, he’s actually managed to entrap a few in the years since I wrote that story. The girls in question are usually pretty fucked up, and have major “daddy issues,” but they somehow fall for his “be my princess in training” schtick. But they’re kids! And they act like it. He’s almost 50. What does he have in common with a teenager?!? (Remember the Peter Pan/Attention Whore combo? Um… yeah.)
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Maybe it wasn’t meant to be funny, but I got a little chuckle out of this post anyway.
Thanks for the update.
Nice to hear from you dude. It’s been a while since your last update. Given the semi-cliffhanger of the last chapter I cannot wait for Ch13. I REALLY want to see what Paul does in that situation. Hopefully he does what I’ve been hoping he’d do since I started reading the series.
@stuff7373 you want him to hump Trip too? What a coincidence!
@boo yah I think you might have misread me
“What does he have in common with a teenager?!?”
He has a penis. She has a vagina. What more do you need to have a good time?
Dennis
@Dan,
Yes, I meant it to be funny. Exasperating, but still a little funny.
My partner is… the way he is. I’ve tried changing him in little ways, but he’s still a self-absorbed know-it-all who can’t resist showing off.
Now that I think of it, maybe that’s why we get along.
Go figure…
-Nick
We all have co workers like that. Have fun at GenCon I just changed jobs and can’t get the time off to go.
Thanks for the update Nick. I have worked for bosses in my long career like your partner. You sometimes just want to stuff them in a box somewhere so you can proceed normally. Thanks again for the update.
Charlie
Good to hear from you Nick… glad life is still throwing you curveballs. it keeps you on your toes.
now I have to go read Straight Up again!
stay well. and thanks for all your efforts.. they are greatly appreciated!
Hi Nick,
Thanks for the update. I can’t make it to Gen Con this year, but my credit manager is going. If you go by the Reaper booth and ask for Jeff and tell him you know Burke, I’m sure he’ll make sure you get a naked Sofie ( a succubus from Reaper comics ). Have fun at Gen Con.
> I need to add a character to a scene early in the chapter
Need a character? Can you make her a kinda-homely chick who tries to prove to herself that she’s hot by stealing committed guys through tempting them with sex, then, if the guy falls of the wagon and sleeps with her she dumps him like a hot potato, having proven her point? I went through that 3 times over the years and I’d be interested to see how Paul deals with it.
If you care, I remained true twice and (kinda) fell off the wagon once.
if he needs that much attention he must be really insecure/unhappy.
Quite sad.
@ alex
Yeah, he’s incredibly insecure. He hides it by staying in his comfort zones: same bars, same drinks, same part of town, same food (he eats meat and starchy vegetables, nothing green… not kidding), etc.
He’s a really nice guy, very loyal and generous, but his quirks drive me crazy sometimes.
- Nick
“His quirks drive me crazy sometimes.” That can probably be applied to a lot of people. By a lot of people.
be287m
sounds like your partner has “footsteps on his ceiling”……
I’m going to throw on some Social D now… thanks for the inspiration.
Nick,
I’m reading your description of your partner while watching the Olympics opening ceremonies. My wife and I vacationed in China last year, and one thing we heard about was the ascension of the “one child per family” generation. One label was the “prince and princesses,” meaning those kids are spoiled rotten by virtue of being the only available kids to dote on for very large extended families. Imagine a country run by legions of clones of your partner - the ultimate me generation coming to power?
OS.
Nick
Maybe I’ll see you at GenCon and not know it’s really you! Oh the fun that can be imagined from whacky hijinks that do not occur.
Welcome back, Nick! We missed you! Sorry to hear about the (minor?) problems with your business partner; this world would be much better if everyone were like those of us who read your stories (better, but probably boring. Come to think about it, right now a little ‘boring’ would be nice!).
Haha, now I understand a bit more about the inspiration for Ethan and Gabriel. (I had to go re-read Straight Up, too…and now I want to know what Ethan SAID! *laughs*) Glad to hear you still managed to get some writing done despite the conversational knee in your back. Good call on the one-chapter buffer, too–writing two capstone research papers taught me ALL about getting as much as one can done ahead of time. Keep on keepin’ on.
Best,
Spitfire
Happy birthday.
Happy Birthday!
How old are you?
@ MarkHR & shy nudist
Thanks. I’m officially 38. Still a kid in many ways, tho. (That’s a good thing.)
- Nick
Heh. Nick’s partner’s “so young.”
Gave me a damn good reason for re-reading “Straight Up”, and then by extension the rest of those stories… so thank you for that.
Steve.
P. S. “Officially” 38? I only know one person who has an official birthday as well as a real one, Nick, and if that’s your image on the back of my banknotes I can see why you’ve been protecting your anonymity!
Thanks for the update. I’ve been wondering how your writing was coming along.
Next time you are this happens you might consider hiring a temp admin assistant to keep your partner company.
Carl
ok…what the problem with being a meatatarian, at least that guy actually eats SOME veggies. nothin but meat, potatos (kinda veggie…but not really) noodles and rice for me and i turned out just fine….i think. leave the green stuff for the horses
“Social Distortion” as the title — ummm, could it be their biggest hit that’s inspiring your title here…
Take away, take away
Take away this ball and chain
I’m lonely and I’m tired
And I can’t take any more pain
Take away, take away
Never to return again
Take away, take away
Take away this ball and chain
Hang in there, Nick — we fellow bearers of the ball and chain appreciate all your hard work and dedication…
Mmm, I wonder what your partner will think when he reads this description of him…
Or was that your purpose for this post?
You know after reading that post i had a major revelation: Nick Scipio is most likely not your real name. Too bad it’s a really cool sounding one….
Thanks for the good work!
Nick I totaly sympathize with you. My partner was and still is the same way. Oh and have a ton of fun for me at Gencon. Going to that is still a long time fantasy for me.
Nick,
You’re gonna be 20 minutes from my house! Wow! Wanna make a Scipio, IN run? You’ve got my e-mail.
Al
For the Social D reference, I would have to say it’s ‘Story of My Life’.
@Cochese
Yep. You and a few others got it.
I’m truly obscure sometimes, but I usually make sense in the end.
- Nick
All things must end.
Tomorrow, I enter into a bit of a Hospital issue. and hopefully I will see the further developments of Paul as a business man and architect. However, If I do not, I will still see the development of a young man of the 1980s who I wish I could have been, if I had not been a child of the 1960s.
Good Luck, Nick
and Good Night
Good luck in the hospital jjmcdonald and we all hope to see you back here soon.
I learned a new word today: unselfconsciously. This is wrong. These stories are not suppose to be educational. NOOOOOO! It hearkens back to the days when Stan Lee used “big” words in comic books to promote children to look up their meanings in dictionary’s to teach them while being entertained.
Hey Nick,
GREAT Chapter, I’ve just read it on SOL and really enjoyed it. AS I said in the message that I hope you got (the SOL message system seemed on the fritz) I liked it in part because Paul made ethical decisions I would have made with about the same degree of angst over it.
I’ve had to make similir decisions in the past and I did what Paul did….said No, felt good about it, but the little head regretted it
You have a real knack for terrible timing. The last 2 chapters were both posted when I had to be leaving for class very soon and resulted in me almost being late. Damn you and your amazing writing!
The palm tree is off-center.
if that’s a hard spot, then i must be in loonie-land. all-the-same, look forward to more of the suave nick/paul style.
If you’re going to take several months off from updating the story the least you could do is update your blog more often…
Anon: Shut the F**k up. do you send nick an email every time you take a week off or get stuck working on a project and can’t check in on the picture of the day for a few days? All that happens when whiners like you who cant keep their small minds otherwise ocupied while waiting for him to let us in on his personal museings is that he gets pissed and spends time smacking you nimrods down like the pests that you are, or spends time away from his computer do to the frustration. tell you what why don’t you find a creative and productive hobby share it with the world absolutely free of cost to them and then if some one actually values it enough tyo nag you for more output then maybe you can give them daily progress reports. untill then please leaver a link to your blog or great litterary contributions so we can all see all your thoughts and comment apropriately.
I’m not so sure my post was all that inappropriate, but if you’d like to have yourself a brain aneurysm over it by all means do so. I won’t miss you.
It’s not about being inappropriate or otherwise, it’s about the tone of the message. You were passive aggresive, one of Nick’s pet hates.
If you’d said “Hey Nick, just wondered how life was treating you since you’ve not really posted much on the message board recently, hope it’s all good…” it would have said pretty much the same but in a more informal manner and you would have been less likely to get chewed up.
But hey, if you want to go round in life pissing people off and acting all entitled then no-one here is gonna stop you.
Re. the POD on 10/7 — I felt this ended up like a “Where’s Waldo…”
There are 3 guys who are likely gay — the dweeb texting, the guy above her right cheek/arm who has his back to her, and the guy in the upper right who is looking upward. Possibility he could be checking out a vid display, but who knows? There are also two ladies on the right, one who is looking right at the photog.
hey nick. i am actually visually impaired and the only porn i get is throught the net on my talking comp. just want to say, i’m really glad i found your story of paul, i may not be seeing it physically but im sure seeing it mentally which is probably better, keep up the good work and cant wait till next chapter, i love when paul is at college
hey nick,
is everything alright? i know you might not want to go the ‘full disclosure’ route on the blog or anything, but just maybe give a sign that you’re intact?
Joe,
Nick will probably answer, but you can tell that he’s still alive and “intact” because he’s updating the Picture of the Day, etc. on his website every day.
http://nickscipio.com/pod/today.html
And he posts somewhat regularly on the Yahoo forum:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Scipio_Forum/
The pattern we’ve seen in the past is that Nick will post a new blog entry a week or two before a new chapter is coming out. Since there has been no new blog post, it’s pretty clear that we will continue to wait for the foreseeable future.
Just be patient and eventually I’m sure Nick will come through. He always does.
Nick - I really tried not to be PA. So please don’t take offense.
Dennis
Or since we all know he is rather conservitive it could be that he is just mourning his candidates horrible performance in the last few debates. not to mention the state by state polls. lets cut the republican some slack he has enough problems with out people nagging him.
@ Nitzoplax
“My” candidate is actually Obama.
And I’m not really a Conservative. I’m a Libertarian, for the most part. If you want a Left-vs-Right definition, I’m a moderate centrist. I may be a /financial/ conservative, but I’m a social liberal straight out of the Religious Right’s worst nightmares. Seriously.
Where you probably think I’m Conservative is my support for the military, as well as my continuing support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Aside from that, I’m more liberal than I think you realize (with a lower-case L, of course).
- Nick
Hey Nick,
I’m curious: if your readers took up a collection and generated a significant amount of money, would that allow you to increase the pace with which new chapters are posted?
As I’m sure you know, it’s extremely frustrating for a lot of us that things have turned out the way they are: months between postings with no indication of progress really cuts one’s enthusiasm for the story and the pleasure with which one reads chapters when they do finally appear. I totally get that it’s your prerogative to post when you feel like it and can, and I also get the huge amount of work that goes into each chapter, but it’s never been clear to me that you understand that some of us who genuinely loved your work for years are so totally turned off by the current state of affairs that we’re losing interest in the story that you’ve worked so hard to craft. (My evidence to this effect, of course, is anecdotal: maybe you have site-access statistics that say otherwise…)
Obviously, if we don’t like it, we can stop reading it…but that seems like a shame for everyone involved. Presumably you’re writing because you want people to read, and a lot of the people who’re bitching wouldn’t be if you hadn’t succeeded so totally in drawing them into the story and making them care about the characters.
So, I’d be really curious to know if movement on the financial side of things would generate movement on the creative side. If it’s really solely an inspirational “art takes as long as it takes!” thing, then we’re all clearly stuck and we’ll all just have to live with it. It always *seems*, though, to be more of a “I have all this shit I have to do for work, so I haven’t had time to write” thing, in which case…well, what if you didn’t?
I’d certainly kick in some dough.
-JT
I think the ideal woman POD is interesting. The ‘women’s ideal’ looks a little anorexic to me; but if you look at the magazines a lot of women read, then you can see where that comes from.
A couple questions: who determined this, and how did they do it?
Now I wonder what the ideal man would look like.
Just to continue the off-topic shadow forum…
As a counter to JT, as long as Nick keeps interacting with us I have no concern about the story. But it is a hobby, not an entitlement. Payment implies obligation, and I know that I would not want to turn my hobbies into obligations. In fact, I have had that happen, and then just quit entirely. If it takes five years to finish then I will re-read the story again in 2013. Meanwhile, there is plenty of entertainment out there, and still plenty here.
Thanks Nick
JT–one problem is, the money we’d have to kick in would be substantial. You’re basically talking about replacing his day job for a while, and then replacing the future lost income as well (i.e., how much do you lose in future raises, etc. because you were ‘out of the workforce’ for a while).
Nick once said that he writes 10-20 hours a week when he’s on a roll. At the time, we were getting a new chapter about every 3-4 weeks. That bounds his time at 30-80 hours per chapter. For B4, which the complicated plot and the high percentage of macro time, we’re probably on the high end (Nick says it’s harder for him to write). So let’s assume that it’s 80 hours per chapter. Nick’s said there are about 30 chapters in B4, so that gives us ~17 to go. 17*80=34 40 hour work weeks, or 9 months full time. And that’s assuming the creative process let him work full time.
Now, financial advisors tell you to save 3-6 months salary in case of unemployment. Let’s assume that’s how long it would take Nick to get back in the workforce after dropping out to write. Given the current economy, let’s take the high side. That’s 15 months of salary replacement.
Furthermore, there’s the loss of future raises. Nick’s 38, so he’s got another 29 years to retirement. Even if we assume a modest 1-2% annual salary raise, that compounds a bit if he misses a year. There’s also the loss of benefits (he’s gotta cover health insurance somehow) and social security contributions.
And remember that Nick is in Software as a senior manager. His salary is not going to be small.
So I think we’re easily in six figures if we’re going to pay him to write full time, though probably not more than $200K. I think it’s gonna be a bit tricky coming up with that type of money even if Nick were willing to take it.
@be287m
Well thought. Just goes to show you can’t just throw money at a problem to solve it…
shynudist-
I don’t think the “women’s ideal” looks anorexic. I would say she’s “average,” but we know she’s not. A size 8 is considered borderline “plus-size” for the modelling industry, although I know plenty of women who are 6-8s as their normal size…you can tell because even though they’re “thin,” they still have some flab, or a little bit of a belly…As for the men’s ideal, I can’t offer any *real* numbers or anything, but in my own personal experience, I have had MUCH more attention from men now that I’m hovering around the “men’s ideal” and “national average” than I ever did when I was a size 8.