Living Dangerously: Living Dangerously Weekly - The End of Summer and the Start of Labor

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Weston Ochse is a former intelligence officer and special operations soldier who has engaged enemy combatants, terrorists, narco smugglers, and human traffickers. His personal war stories include performing humanitarian operations over Bangladesh, being deployed to Afghanistan, and a near miss being cannibalized in Papua New Guinea. His fiction and non-fiction has been praised by USA Today, The Atlantic, The New York Post, The Financial Times of London, and Publishers Weekly. The American Library Association labeled him one of the Major Horror Authors of the 21st Century. His work has also won the Bram Stoker Award, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and won multiple New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. A writer of more than 26 books in multiple genres, his military supernatural series SEAL Team 666 has been optioned to be a movie starring Dwayne Johnson. His military sci fi series, which starts with Grunt Life, has been praised for its PTSD-positive depiction of soldiers at peace and at war. Weston likes to be called a chaotic good paladin and challenges anyone to disagree. After all, no one can really stand a goody two-shoes lawful good character. They can be so annoying. It's so much more fun to be chaotic, even when you're striving to save the world. You can argue with him about this and other things online at Living Dangerously or on Facebook at Badasswriter. All content of this blog is copywrited by Weston Ochse.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Living Dangerously Weekly - The End of Summer and the Start of Labor

Me at 6 and Excited for School

Labor Day used to mark the end of summer and the start of school. As August creeped by, I remember both dreading and loving the coming of Labor Day. It was the end of the summer magic, but it was also a new beginning. Classes would start. School would open. What new girl would I meet? What new friends would I have? To balance all that excitement in my head, I'm lucky my brain didn't explode.

Now I'm older. No more school. Even if there was school, it starts in many places long before Labor Day. Here in Arizona it started the first week of August. Kind of takes the oompf out of Labor Day. Makes it like any other three day weekend.

Labor Day is kind of special if you think about it. It's the only holiday dedicated to the American worker. It's a reward and remembrance for hard work. It's the acknowledgment that hundreds of years of people have helped make this country great. Most often we celebrate Labor Day by drinking and BBQing. That's all good, but isn't the message sometimes lost? How many of your kids, or you for that matter, know that Labor Day was designed to celebrate work and the work ethic?

I'm going to have a dinner on Labor Day for sure. Probably make lamb shanks and Yvonne will make a huge Greek salad. But the rest of the weekend is going to be filled with work. In honor of Labor Day and all of those workers who came before me and built the America I live in, I am going to work. I'm going to sacrifice my free time on the altar of the sweat of the American brow.

I have to finish Blood Ocean by midnight on Friday. That's my deadline. I have 50 pages left. I have to get it done. Then I have to give it a read through over the weekend before I pass it to Yvonne for editing.

I also have to start Seal Team 666. St. Martin's Press has given me105 days to write it.All I have now is an outline and some character sketches. So I plan on starting to write that on Saturday morning.

It's been a tough summer with fires and monsoons at the Ochse Casa. On the other hand, it's been a good summer for writing opportunities. I'm not going to fritter them away. On Labor Day weekend I will be involved in the labor of writing, the labor that I love, and I will glorify it.