So What's Happenin' Sven?

Shoveling our driveway by hand after Blizzard Jonas.  Suffice it to say that a career in
actuarial science does not well prepare one for this kind of manual labor...
I couldn't feel my arms the next morning.

The last several posts have been more pie in the sky, talking ideas and very little in terms of Sven news.  So I thought that it might be cool to let you into the world of Sven for a little bit and see how the transition to unjobbing is going.

OK, so first thing is that I still have no income outside of being an actuary.  I guess that isn’t a surprise as that will probably be the last thing that will happen.  Once I start getting a decent enough income, we will complete the transition.  But right now nothing else is coming in.

But that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening!  I am really excited about fully embracing unjobbing and living simply! 

As you can see by the illustrations in the blog posts, I have taken up drawing.  A long time ago, I loved to draw.  I think that it was until I was in eighth grade that paper and pencil were my favorite companions.  I would draw in class all the time because, let’s face it, school sucked.  I was really into soccer at the time, so that was most of what I drew.

But then in eighth grade I transferred schools and I stopped drawing.  I was shy of the new people and trying to fit in, and I knew that drawing was not what people did.  At least not normal people.  My new school was more rigorous academically, so I had to work that little bit harder in class to stay above “C” level.  So from then on, drawing was reduced to doodling in the margins and in books, but nothing really deliberate.

Fast forward twenty years to today.  Wow – that was twenty years ago.  Now I am taking up drawing in a deliberate way again and it feels great!  Not only that, but with some work, it doesn’t look half bad.  So, that is the kind of cool new thing that is happening.  And I am using this new art form to spruce up the blog.

How does an actuary find a date?  He shows off his W-2!

Musically, I am finishing up an album of Christian metal.  It will be released sometime in March and will be free.  Good job there Sven about making money!  Yeah, it wouldn’t be money in the door, but it will give me more exposure and more practice on the post production side of things.  Maybe something shakes out because of this that could produce income.  Besides, do you know how lucrative Christian Metal is?  Moving on…

With my writing, I finished a first draft of my second novel earlier this year.  Now I am working through a second draft of my first novel.  My first novel was a NaNoWriMo novel and was done with little initial finesse so it is looking like a hard slog ahead of me.  But I think the story has good bones.  My goal is to have a good enough copy by the end of the year to either get a book agent to take it on or self-publish.  We’ll see.  That could be money in the door.

I have a slew of projects in the wings that I want to get working on.  I actually have two kids’ books written (which need to be re-conjiggered a bit) that just need illustrations.  I have some other Christian music and recordings that I want to do.  I also want to do a follow up to a music album I released a few years ago that was based on fractals.  Blog post ideas keep coming too.  Once we get the income situation resolved, better watch out, world!

I want to say a special thanks to my wife for being behind this transition and being a wonderful support.  She does a lot of the editing and the maintaining of the blog as well as most of the photography needed for the music side of the house.  So thank you Svetlana!

Until next time – God bless,

Sven