My first short story based on a fortune cookie fortune is ready, if you’d like to read it.

DOWNLOAD – Just Another 135 Years at the Office – PDF

Or you can read it here (and after the break)

The Fortune Cookie Story Project – I write a 2- or 3-page short story based on fortune cookies. This is the first story of the project. The fortune for this story was “The best profit of future is the past”.

Just Another 135 Years at the Office
by Chris Maddera

John Bradley sat at the table in Briefing Room #7. He checked his watch. The project leader should have been there by now.

There was a buzz, and a green light on the door’s palm reader glowed. When a man in a gray Armani suit entered, John did not get up to shake his hand.

“You’re late,” John said.

“Yes, sorry about that,” said the man in the suit. “But, really, no such thing as “being late” in this business, is there? Better late than never, I suppose.” He sat in the chair across from John, then removed two bright blue folders from his briefcase before setting it on the floor.

The folders were identical. On the front of each folder were the words AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY – DESTROY AFTER USE. He slid one folder across the table to John, and placed the other one in front of himself.

“So, what do you have for me today?” John asked, more to himself than to the man in the suit.

“Something really easy,” the man said. “And really exciting.” He watched as John opened the folder, scanned the contents of the 3-page summary, and chuckled.

“Nice,” he said, scanning over the pages again. “Are you guys serious with this?”

“Absolutely. It might not seem as important as some of your other outings, but I assure you, it is. This is worth hundreds of millions — if not billions — of dollars to us.”

“So, this,” John said, holding the folder up. “is just as important as stopping John Wilkes Booth from assassinating Abraham Lincoln?”

“Yes.” The man in the suit thought for a moment, then began flipping through the pages of the folder. “Here, let’s go through some of this material.”

Seconds later, he held up a copy of what seemed to be a very old and tattered document. “This is the patent for powdered processed cheese. J. L. Kraft was awarded this in 1916. He couldn’t do much with it though. Still, he managed to sell a few million pounds of it to the government. At a huge discount, I might add. It was not a big hit.

“But then, just a couple of years before World War II, he packaged the powdered cheese with…macaroni.”

“Pure genius,” John said, dryly.

The man in the suit continued, unfazed by John’s apparent lack of interest.

“Yes. It was genius. When the war hit, and there was milk and dairy rationing, guess what suddenly started selling like crazy? Instant macaroni and cheese.” He paused, waiting for John to finally grasp how exciting this prospect was, now that he had given it the proper historical perspective.

“Okay,” John said. “There’s money to be made in mac-and-cheese.”

The man in the suit nodded slowly. Finally, he thought, he was getting through to John. He found another paper. This one showed projected earning for mac-and-cheese sales. “But look at the gap, 1916 to 1936. Twenty years this powdered shit just sat around, useless. So, you are going to go back a couple of years before Kraft gets that patent, and you’re going to get it for us instead.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. Anything else while I’m there?” John asked.

“Like what?”

“1914. I might have an opportunity to stop the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, maybe prevent War World I. Just a thought.”

“No. Absolutely not. Kraft missed out on selling his product to the government during that war. He wasted his opportunity, but we’re not going to waste ours. We like War World I — and II. They’re good for business.”

John Bradley didn’t say anything.

“Listen, John, this isn’t the Air Force. We don’t focus on a bunch of big picture stuff here. It’s not all about stopping assassinations, as much as I know you like that sort of thing. I’ll be the first to admit that the world is a better place because you saved Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, and John F. Kennedy. You’re the guy who let the world have John Lennon for another 30 years. All good things. All great things. But we need to focus on the bottom line and making our stockholders happy. It really is that simple.”

“How long am I suppose to be there?” John asked.

“That’s really up to you. Your timepiece battery will last three years. If you want to come back, three years is your deadline. If you want to stay, we’ll understand. As long as it all works out for us at this end, you know.” The man in the suit smiled, then began gathering up the sheets of papers on the table.

“Trust me, John, this is big stuff, important stuff.”

“How is this important?” John asked.

The man in the suit closed his blue folder, gathered up his briefcase, and stood up to leave. “I told you,” he said. “It’s worth hundreds of millions –“ He held up a finger for emphasis. “– if not billions — of dollars. Get some rest. You leave at noon tomorrow.”

The man in the suit placed his hand on the door’s palm reader. The door buzzed and clicked as it unlocked, and without saying another word, he left.

* * *

The man in the suit waited alone in the gate room. He checked his watch. 11:55 AM. John Bradley should have been here by now.

A moment later, the steel door opened. John was in a newly redesigned Eckels suit. To the typical person it looked like an astronaut’s space suit made of gold and silver. He was followed by two armed security guards, and three lab technicians. One was busy studying  John’s vital signs on a data pad, a second carried his helmet, and the third carried a briefcase wrapped in gold foil.

“Okay, this is it, John. Are you ready?” asked the man in the suit.

John looked over to the lab tech with the data pad, who glanced up long enough to give an affirmative nod.

“I guess so.” John said.

The main in the suit waved a tech over, and took a few steps back to allow him to help secure the Eckels suit’s helmet.

The third technician handed the gold-wrapped briefcase to the man in the suit, then left the gate room, followed by the guards and the other technicians.

“John, we are not here to change the world for the good of all mankind, okay? We just want to change it enough for ourselves. Remember, we have a responsibility to the shareholders. So, no thwarting assassination attempts on archdukes, got it?” The man in the suit smiled, and handed John the case. “Good luck,” he said.

And then he left, leaving John alone in the room.

A voice crackled over the helmet speakers. “Okay, John, we’re going to open the gate.” It was the man in the suit. He was in the observation room now, watching what was happening on monitors.

John could feel the low hum of the time machine powering up. Within seconds it sounded like jet engines. At the center of the machine, small sparks of blue light began to appear, increasing in number and intensity second by second. Then, they were gone.

Thunder shook the room, as long tentacles of blue lightning reached out into the room, heating the air.

John held the briefcase closer to his chest and tightened his grip on it.

He started up the ramp, his steps slow and deliberate against the wind created by the time displacement. The lightning seemed to be reaching out for him, attracted by the gold Eckels suit. It looked as if the gate was pulling him into itself.

Then he was gone.

The room was quiet.

* * *

In the observation room, the man in the Schutzstaffel uniform smiled.

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1. The Fortune Cookie Story Project Begins One of the first ideas I put in the daybook...

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One of the first ideas I put in the daybook was that I would spend a month or two writing 2- or 3-page stories based on…wait for it…fortune cookies. For some reason, I thought doing this would be good writing practice.

So, last weekend, when Cindy said she needed rice wraps from the Asian food market, I took it as a sign that now was the time to initiate my cunning plan, and picked up a bag of fortune cookies. $1.00, one bag of cookies. One fortune cookie, one story.

Today, I decided to break into the bag. So, here is the first assignment:

Remember, I’m shooting for a 2-3 page story based on that fortune. And, with everything else going on, I figure I’ll do one a week.

Okay, so this should be fun. Look for the story here sometime next week. (Consider yourself warned!)

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I’m trying a new experiment (partly inspired by Merlin Mann). I’ve decided to keep a daybook, which is simply a notebook that I write in…uh, daily. Some people use them strictly for a single purpose or project, but I’m using mine for everything: grocery lists, short story ideas, project ideas, screenplay ideas, short scenes that are apropos of nothing, but that I think sound good and could find a home later in a bigger project.

The daybook itself is no different that any other notebook I use, except that I think about it differently. It’s like this: I have a notebook that I carry around, and I use it to write down any story ideas that I might have. But I hardly ever write anything in it for any number of reasons: didn’t think the idea was good enough, or whatever. Doesn’t matter. The problem is that the notebook is there to support my main activity of “idea creation”. But what if I just flipped it around and said my ideas were there to support the notebook instead? In other words, the goal is not to first have ideas, and then write them in a notebook. The goal is simply to fill that fucking notebook with ideas.

Rather than use the much-loved (and more expensive) Moleskine-type notebook, I opted for something less “serious”. Last year, I read Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones [affiliate link], and I remember her saying she sometimes chooses a notebook with kittens, or a cartoon character, or something silly on it as a way to keep from taking herself too seriously. I loved that idea. It’s a great reminder that I should be having fun. Not everything that goes into the notebook needs to be “deep” or “meaningful” or “worthy”. If something comes to mind that I like, I just write it down. It’s the catch-all notebook.

I’ve also started using the daybook to develop a habit of acting on my ideas sooner rather than later. It’s easy to keep putting things off (especially after you have those things written on a to-do list somewhere), so if I have an idea, and the opportunity presents itself to work on that idea, I make more of an effort to take advantage of that. I haven’t decided if this is a good idea or not (because I come up with some pretty stupid shit, let me tell ya), but the important thing is that I allow myself to look past the fears, doubts, and self-judgments, and just do something without talking myself out of it.

I’m sure you’ll be seeing the results of some of the notebooks’ content soon enough. Good and bad. Bwahahahaha!

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For the last few years, Cindy and I have been trying to buy fewer things, but better things. This idea was a reaction to finding ourselves moving into increasingly smaller accommodations about every 3-4 years. Each time we moved, we just wouldn’t have room for everything we owned. Actually, we don’t have room for everything we have now. We’ve been renting a small storage unit for the past year. It’s the smallest one they have, and it will hold a shit-ton of your stuff. This isn’t necessarily a good thing.

We went through some of it last month, sorting out what to keep, what to trash, and what to donate. Shedding some of our processions, whittling it all down, felt good. It meant fewer things we had to physically and mentally keep track of. In another month or two, we’ll move about 20% of what’s there now into a friend’s attic, and stop renting the storage unit, which costs us $45.00 a month.

But physical clutter wasn’t our only problem. Last month, the big TV in the living room blew up, and that gave us the perfect excuse to ditch cable. We still watch TV (the small one in the office), but only about 10% of what we used to. We don’t channel surf looking for something to watch any more. And we don’t miss it that much.

For us, we just thought cutting back on some material processions and services like cable would save us some money (and it does). But it has had a nice side effect: we find ourselves saying yes to more experiences, more travel. Sure, it’s just small trips now, but we’re not spending hours each day watching other people on TV do stuff. We’re doing stuff. Before, we might have planned a trip as an exercise in wishful thinking. Now, when we talk about a trip, we see it as a real possibility. This isn’t a big deal for a lot of people, but it is for us. Normally, I would have blown off the possibility of going to Star Wars Celebration V because it’s not being held anywhere near where I live, and it would only be for one day anyway. This year, however, I said yes after thinking about it for about 5 minutes, because that one day could be awesome, right? I have a place to stay, tickets were easy to get, and I have months to buy a plane ticket. Why would I talk myself out of that?

Looking at our piles of stuff, and asking ourselves, “Okay, what do we really want? What do we really need? What is essential?” has definitely spilled over into travel. Instead of thinking about all the things we need (or think we need) for a trip or getaway, we consider all the things we don’t need to make it happen.

Sounds simple enough, right? But how many of us overpack for most of our trips, lugging around suitcases full of stuff we thought we might need, but didn’t? We pack all that stuff into suitcases for the same reason we rent storage units: it gives us peace of mind, security. It turns out that being able to justify keeping a storage unit full of seldom-used items is no different than being able to justify packing everything but the kitchen sink when we travel (although Cindy and I have never been quite that bad). It’s what you want to take versus what you need in order to go. It’s the different between packing like the Griswolds and Bruce Banner. We plan for the exception, as many just-in-case moments as we can think of, instead of planning for the rule. And all we wind up doing is weighing ourselves down with stuff.

We all have attachments to stuff, or ideas or attitudes that serve no real purpose other than to make us feel safe and secure. The question I have to ask myself is, How many of these attachments are keeping me from doing so many things I’d probably enjoy, if I could just let go of them?

And, the funny thing is, for the last couple of weeks, we’ve been on the hunt for a good carry-on bag for Cindy’s trip to New York this August. She doesn’t want to lug the big red suitcase around, or spent 30-45 minutes waiting in baggage claim; she just wants to grab her stuff and go. It couldn’t have hit us in a more obvious way that the kind of experience we want to have in life depends largely on our willingness to get moving, and the amount of baggage we’re carrying.

So, over the next few months, I’m going to

• Continue to shed more things than I accumulate
• Plan a trip for next year that requires me to use my passport, dammit
• Commit to traveling with one carry-on, and one backpack

Where would you go?

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I re-kindled my love of camping in 1993. I was in the Oklahoma Army National Guard, and we were doing our annual two-week training/summer camp. That year, instead of setting up the usual big-ass tent that could house my entire platoon with our cots and all of our gear, we bivouacked, which is basically forced camping. One evening, I was sitting on the ground outside of my pup tent and reading a book, and thought that some coffee would be good. I looked through some MRE packets and found packets of instant coffee, sugar, and cocoa mix. Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE) packets are widely despised except by me and 3 other people in the world. When some of my army friends walked by my tent, and asked what the hell I was doing, I would tell them. They were all skeptical of the idea of an MRE mocha, but after one sip, they were hooked. By the time the sun had gone down, there were 4 or 5 people sitting around my canteen stove, drinking coffee and talking about whatever. It was great.

A couple of friends and I liked it so much, we went camping a few weeks later, and that was it. No army uniforms, roomier tents, and a huge crackling fire. No phones, no work, no noise. (To this day, whenever I claim a campsite for the weekend, I feel like a big weight has been taken off my shoulders. Cindy feels it, too.)

Anyway, we would go on small hikes during these camping weekends, and we started thinking about doing longer ones. When you start thinking about stuff like that, sooner or later you hear about the Appalachian Trail, a 2,200-mile footpath from Georgia to Maine. The AT is like Route 66 for hikers. It would take lots of time and money to hike the AT, and if I ever had plenty of one, I had none of the other. So, I put it off.

It’s been 15 years since I first started talking about hiking the Appalachian Trail. I still haven’t done it, but I still talk about it a dozen times a year. A few years ago, I read A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson, and I really wanted to hit the AT…which is crazy because, if you’ve read the book, any sane person would have the exactly opposite notion.

Case in point: A couple of months ago, Cindy and I were sitting on the couch, and she was reading Bryson’s book, and after reading a section about bear attacks and missing hikers, she looked up and said, “And you want to do this?!” and proceeds to read aloud the section about bear attacks and missing hikers. “Are you crazy?”

“Well, I don’t want to do that part,” I said.

I still don’t have the time or money to thru-hike the AT, but that’s okay. I don’t really have the body for it anymore for it either. I think I would be satisfied with just spending 4 to 7 days on the trail, a section of it that’s not too harsh. I want to enjoy the experience, after all.

It’s on the list for 2010.

So, I have already taken steps toward making that a reality this year. I’ll keep you updated when everything starts coming together. I can’t say much right now because I have two friends that are going and it all requires some co-ordination.

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Okay, this is not everything I plan to work on, or towards, or do, or whatever, but it’s a fairly big chunk of mostly-little things that I would like to do this year.

1. Complete 365 Days Project on Flickr
2. Try 52 new fruits
3. Write one novel
4. Keep my blog updated
5. Write one short story a month
6. Lose 50 lbs.
7. Get a tattoo
8. Write one screenplay
9. Float the Illinois River
10. Hike part of the Appalachian Trail
11. Start a weekly podcast
12. Participate in the 5K Alien Fun Run in Roswell, New Mexico
13. Make mozzarella
14. Make bread
15. Make beer
16. Make chocolate-covered bacon
17. Visit Kansas City, MO
18. Visit St. Louis, MO
19. Set aside time to write daily
20. Join or start a writing group
21. Go camping at least 6 times
22. Make time to read
23. Try a new wine every week
24. Make a great costume for Halloween
25. Stop using so many damn plastic eating utensils
26. Do a better job of getting Christmas stuff together
27. Make a living will
28. Make pizza from scratch
29. Learn a second language
30. Make a pound cake
31. Be more positive
32. Nest at work/Create a positive working environment for myself
33. Take Cindy to an elephant sanctuary
34. Visit my cousin in Durant, OK
35. Refinish a piece of furniture
36. Go to a crawfish festival, preferably one in LA
37. Save for a pick-up truck
38. Take more naps
39. Get more sleep/Go to bed at a reasonable time
40. Create a small side business
41. Hack a Magic 8 Ball
42. Make a Millennium Falcon birdhouse
43. Participate in Script Frenzy
44. Participate in Nanowrimo
45. Put quality before quantity/Fewer things, but better things
46. Carry a notebook everywhere I go, and remember to use it
47. Start an Emergency Fund
48. Start saving more
49. Contribute regularly to our Edward Jones accounts
50. Do 30 minutes of cardio each day
51. Complete the P90 workout program
52. Do crossword and logic puzzles
53. Give to charity each month
54. Plant a small garden
55. Start a compost bin
56. Save stuff that I use at work that can be recycled and recycle it
57. Visit Tiffany, Tom, and Allison in Lake Charles, LA
58. Get the watch my dad didn’t wear for 30 years fixed
59. Organize my finances
60. Rebuild my Ghostbusters proton pack
61. Ride my scooter in the Ghouls Gone Wild parade, or spend Halloween in New Orleans, LA
62. Make soap
63. Update my resume
64. Get rid of a lot of stuff I don’t really love, use, or need
65. Organize our storage unit
66. Have a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving dinner with friends
67. Get a membership to Art Museum
68. Renew our Zoo Friends membership
69. Buy our Flaming Lips Freakout tickets early
70. See some roller girls in action
71. Put a sports rack on the car
72. Put a trailer hitch on the car
73. Have turducken
74. Create a vegetarian version of Thai soup
75. Make som tum tacos and hot dogs
76. Cook blue crab
77. Make a crawfish bowl and have king cake for Mardi Gras
78. Go bowling
79. Increase readership of my blog
80. Do something with each domain that I own
81. Visit the Ruckers
82. Have movie nights and dinner
83. Do two charity walks
84. Cheer on marathon runners with Misti
85. Get a group together to cheer on the Gay Pride parade
86. Keep track of the books I read this year
87. Get everyone’s contact information updated and into my address book and cellphone
88. Fix that hole that Hooper tried to squeeze through
89. Ride with one of the local scooter clubs on a day trip
90. Visit that thrift store in Enid that we keep talking about
91. Get an eBook reader – either a Kindle or Nook
92. Dress better
93. Make something artsy-crafty and sell it
94. Always carry a book to read
95. Always have music or audiobook to listen to
96. Learn the metric system
97. Fly a kite
98. Spend a day at the horse races
99. Learn 3 ways to make fire
100. See 4 stage productions
101. Contact friends I haven’t seen in a while
102. Drink more water, and avoid bottled water
103. Start a vehicle repair fund
104. Set-up wifi at Cindy’s parents’ house
105. Learn how to fillet a fish
106. Learn to play chess (and then strip chess)
107. Avoid the Rapture and stop it from happening again this year
108. Make some beef jerky
109. Stop complaining and stop making excuses
110. Actually go somewhere for our anniversary

This is not the full list. Sure, there are some big things here, but most of the items are small, easy-to-do things that I’ve thought about doing, and put off year after after because they are small, easy-to-do things. I keep thinking I’ll do them later. Then, one day, you realize you’ve been meaning to “make beef jerky” for the past 15 years.

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As many of you know, I have a bazillion projects that I never quite get around to…but this is changing.

My new site, Deeper Motive will be the place where you can track my progress on whatever project — creative or otherwise — I’m working on. I see it as a place to explore my own creative process, share my thoughts about engaging in creative work, and talk about whatever goal-setting, self-improvement thing I’m struggling with. I know I could post this stuff here on my personal blog, but I also know I’m not the only one that struggles with trying to make time, and find the courage, to work on creative projects. Not everyone wants to know what I did over the weekend in Tulsa, or where Cindy and I ate last night. So, I thought it would be better to have a separate place that focused on being creative and productive.

In keeping with the Kaizen philosophy, I’ll be adding pages, pictures, posts, podcasts, and design elements to the site over the next couple of weeks.

I’ll post the first entry on July 1, 2009.

I hope you come over and check it out.

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I was reading Seth Godin’s blog last week and he had posted this video:

Here’s what he said about it:

My favorite part happens just before the first minute mark. That’s when guy #3 joins the group. Before him, it was just a crazy dancing guy and then maybe one other crazy guy. But it’s guy #3 who made it a movement.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been taking one hour a night and devoting that hour to working on a project. I have about a dozen projects, and, all totaled, I believe they can be completed within a year.

Many of these projects are creative ones. Doing something creative, and putting it out there for the world to see can be scary. After watching the video, I found myself thinking about what it was like being on stage at USAO.

Our drama department put on some pretty damn good shows. They didn’t start out being damn good shows. Usually, they started out as awkwardly-delivered lines and half-understood scenes. But we would stop, re-read the lines, pick apart the scene, the words, we would try saying the lines a different way maybe, we would try out different blocking to see what worked best. We devoted ourselves to understanding the story, and the characters. And, by the time opening night rolled around, we knew what the hell we were doing. We knew how to make the audience laugh, and we knew how to make them cry.

And the reason the performances were good was because a group of people agreed to look foolish together, and to say that it’s okay to look foolish. This permission to look, and act, and be foolish is why members of an acting troupe can be so close to each other. Only by being willing to suffer through looking foolish can we develop our skills.

If you want to learn how to roller-blade, you have to be willing to look foolish. You’re going to scream, flail your arms about wildly, and fall flat on your ass. Somebody will laugh. You might be tempted to give up, but you shouldn’t.

Give yourself permission to look foolish, and over time, you’ll scream less, you’ll perform fewer gravity-induced gyrations, and your bruised ass will heal.

Now, that first guy in the video? He’s brave and/or crazy. The second guy? He’s also brave and/or crazy. But that third guy, the one Godin says turned crazy dancing into a movement? He’s the tipping point, the one that gave everybody permission to look foolish, to do the thing they wanted to do when they saw Guy #1 and #2, but couldn’t because they were too afraid. He’s the one that gave them permission to express themselves, and have fun.

But it all started because Guy #1 didn’t quit, and we need to remember that. So, if you have your own creative project, you and I, we’ll be Guy #1. Our friends? They’ll be Guy #2.

And let’s keep going until Guy #3 shows up, okay?

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I took the idea of the grape soda Ellie Badge (if you’ve seen Up, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen Up, go see it…take tissue) and changed it to better suit me and Cindy. I think Moxie is more fitting for us. Not only is it one of our favorite drinks of all-time, but it’s a quality we strive to bolster within ourselves.

And we’re going to need a lot of it to get us through the next couple of years :)

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Last month, Todd and I ran across this article (via Consumerist) about how Charlie Munger, the Vice-Chairman of Warren Buffett’s investment company Berkshire Hathaway, used to set aside one hour each day to work on personal side-projects for himself. I like this idea for a couple of reasons:

1. One hour is about all the time I can spend on a project right now.
2. It’s such a small amount of time that the pressure of producing something “epic” is kept at bay.

Over time, these little actions will yield big results. It’s not a new idea, I know. But it’s easy for me to get caught up in a mental gumption trap, believing that I shouldn’t or can’t start something right now because I don’t have the time to give it the attention I feel it deserves or needs. Of course, that is complete and utter bullshit.

Over the past week, I’ve been trying to keep this in mind, working on various side projects I’ve intended to get around to someday. Not surprisingly, at the end of each hour, it’s satisfying to have been able to work on something that’s been sitting around in my head for weeks, months, and years.

After doing this for just one week, a couple of things become obvious:

• I still watch too much television.
• I don’t get enough sleep.

And these two things greatly influence how well I do other things throughout the day. I need to fix that.

As the article asks

“…if you aren’t satisfied with your current situation, why not work for yourself an hour each day? Instead of just idle dreaming, set aside specific time for action. Perhaps the key is small chunks of time, but at regular intervals.”

How very Kaizen. How very Bird by Bird.

At the end of the month, I’ll have a better idea of which projects I’m actually enjoying spending time on, and which ones I’m better off ditching.

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