It’s a brand new day

The title was a quick tribute to Dr. Horrible. If you don’t know who that is, check out his Sing-Along Blog!

My name is James Hope. I live in the Charlotte area of North Carolina. My reasons for starting a blog are numerous, but I’ll go over a few of the biggest ones. It generally started with being unhappy in my work. Not my work exactly. I am a Certified Public Accountant, and I’ve emphasized my practice as an auditor.

I love the work, honestly. What I don’t like is the structure of the job, or basically any job anywhere. Over the years, I never understood why, but after two to three years of doing this or that, I’ve always come to the same place. I should have done more in less time. Whether I was an accountant, credit analyst, or floor maintenance, the story was always the same. The supervisor didn’t approve of my productivity and I didn’t exactly enjoy hearing about their disapproval. It didn’t matter that I busted my butt at all hours of the day (and sometimes night) to get the work done. If I said I expected to spend four hours on something and I started at 8 am, I was expected to be finished by noon.

It wasn’t until recently that I understood why, and the revelation snowballed. For those of you familiar with the Myers-Briggs Personality Typing system, it turns out I am firmly an INTP-A.

For those of you not familiar with the terms, I will cover it more in depth in a later blog if anybody shows interest, but the short, over-simplified version is that I am introverted, dreamy, logical, and prefer to plan loosely. When you hear about people getting lost in their own little world, that’s me, and corporate America has a hard time accommodating us. We are often late (more often than not, even), easily distracted, go off on tangents that have little to nothing to do with the task at hand, and are addicted to practicing creativity.

In the case of the latter, my creativity inevitably takes the form of writing. I am a novelist in the making, and when I am in that creative mode, I love it. In a sense, it is as being a god in your own fantastic world. You are life, death, and everything in between to the characters of your story. That creativity and freedom were the elements I live for but never could find in any of my careers.

It is said to be very difficult to earn a living as a novelist, particularly when first starting out, but my dream is independence. I did some research and found that people who are freelance writers work hard, but they control their own schedules. They have the opportunity to decide what they write, when they write, and who they write it for.

I also have a passion for politics and psychology. Not in the sense that I want to run for office. On the contrary, I would be famously terrible at campaigning. I seek ways to enhance the freedom, equality, and well-being of all human-kind. I also take joy is squishing the spreading of false information, clearing up misunderstanding, and pointing out occasions where someone is being intentionally misleading.

An earthly utopia may be but a dream, but it is my dream, and this blog will focus on that vision. My views can change, and I celebrate information that transforms my thinking.

Please join me on my journey as we pursue a more perfect union, and maybe, just maybe, a better world… and maybe, just maybe, a few good stories along the way.