Bios

by j a jackson

A Brief History of
My Preoccupation with the Printed Word.
I wrote this piece as an introduction for an online writing community I recent joined, but I never sent it in because I decided that the community raison d'etre was not so closely aligned with my own as I initially thought.
Hi. I'm jai. I've been writing since I was five years old. When I was in grade school, I used to publish single-copy, one page "newspapers" written in a small hand on both sides of the page, columned and collimated, with a masthead and by-line at the top. Later, throughout grade school, I had several paper routes--two of them, a daily and a weekly, at the same time. In high school, I worked for the distribution department of the local weekly newspaper that I had delivered when I was younger. In college, I self-published several novels and books of short stories. I dropped out of college after having transferred between a number of courses of study (engineering, physics, philosophy, psychology, English literature, creative writing), headed to NYC, and worked for Random House Publications for about a year, before I decided that I needed a real job. I moved back to Pittsburgh where I got a good job as a production scheduler at a commercial printing company. And then, I joined the army to avoid the draft (a dubious tactic, I later concluded). I served my years in the army as a printer, and when I was discharged, I finished college on the G.I. Bill with a degree in Psychology. Then, as it will do, my life took several unexpected turns.
Although I never stopped writing (I have voluminous journals going uninterrupted all the way back to my high school years), my focus turned toward a management career. I decided that I had to get serious about my life. Unfortunately, at the time I don't think I really knew what serious meant. I think I thought it meant making money and developing good social skills, so I set about to do both, concentrating my efforts in that direction and relegating my journal work to relieving the increasing stress, which I didn't realize was the result of pursuing the wrong profession. I put my degree in Psychology to good use in a business environment that couldn't have cared less about the science of human behavior, an environment concerned only with quality production (i.e, money). Early on, I tried to get the companies I worked for interested in the then new idea of a human resources department. But no one wanted to hear about it.
Fortunately, all of my life I've been very good at math and at knowing how to properly handle money. I made a long series of sound investments and, after four hospitalizations for a heart problem (atrial fibrillation) and several unfortunate work incidents related to my chronic stress level, I took my money and went home. I retired at the age of forty-seven [actually much later than I had hoped for, as a long-term goal, when I was younger, but you can get caught up in these lifestyle issues and forget about the ideas you originally had for your life] to devote my full time to what I feel I should have been doing all along, not only writing, but the expression of my true self, which also involves graphic and fine arts, and music. But the band I play in hardly plays any more; all my band mates are married and socially responsible adults who have little time and space in their lives for a single rogue male. I kind of had the semi-conscious illusion that we'd start up full time where we left off so many years ago. We didn't. But it hardly matters because, as it turns out, writing is, in fact, occupying all of my time. And, as that turns out, after many false starts continuing my attempts at novel writing, I realize that the thing I really want to do is what I've been doing all along, my journal work. It's only been within the last two years that I found an outlet for this material (the Internet). Previously, I had been trying to incorporate the individual journal entries into novels and stories. But that process left me drained and frustrated and generating a lot of disparate text fragments. I am not a novelist at heart. But I discover that I am a natural born online writer--born way before his time and just now coming into it. This is my time now. I have never felt more fulfilled.
I could go on and on from this point, but this supposed to be an introduction. And, anyway, a lot of this kind of thing is already documented on my Website. (In particular, see my vision.)

business cards

collected bio blurbs composed
for past events and publications

jai is a hacker and a blogger, sous médiocrité, whose remaining time is split between journal writing and watching movies. (He also happens to be a psychologist and novelist, but those pursuits are now secondary.)

jai jackson is an ex-industrial psychologist living in postmodern seclusion in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has written six novels. The most recent, LIFE STORIES, was released by Xlibris this year. Shorter works include an erotic piece to be published in the next issue of "The Exquisite Corpse."

Jack Sun has worked as a newsboy, a printer, a quality assurance manager, and a print department supervisor. He has written six novels, countless short stories, and the occasional bad poem.

to be appended