For those of you who don't know, I spent this summer preparing for the Patent Bar Exam, an insidious six hour test explicitly designed to keep people from becoming patent agents. Wonderful questions abound like: "Which of the following is not untrue?" and others which recite a counterintuitive and obscure line in the MPEP (the 3,000 page manual on which the entire exam is based) which contradicts everything else you've learned to be true. And while the test is open book, the number of questions seems to have been scientifically calculated to ensure finding an answer on lookup will waste more precious test time than the question is worth.
Over the course of the summer, preparing for the exam slowly transitioned from a difficult task I was determined to get through, to pretty much the hardest thing I've ever tried to do. I lost my mind exactly three times along the way (I am sure Kim could start her own blog with some of the stories). As the difficulty ramped up, all of the other things in my life were pushed off, one by one, into a holding pattern. Preparing for the exam took over as the constantly running background task in my mind. I spent every free moment I could get studying or taking practice exams. I worked patent jargon into every conversation I could, much to the delight of my family and friends. But mostly I worried every single moment of every day--in an exponentially increasing rate of panic--how in the hell I was going to pass the damn thing.
Which brings me, in perhaps a roundabout way, to why it's been about three months since my last post. I stopped trying to update the blog--and eventually stop trying to write in general--early in the summer. Which is ironic, really, because the main reason I was taking this exam was to take a major step forward in my writing career. For many reasons--which I will refrain from rehashing here--the life of a patent agent is several orders of magnitude more conducive to the career of an aspiring fantasy writer than that of an engineer. Of course the fact that I'm much happier writing patents for a living than debugging circuit boards while struggling to elbow my way into a cool design project is a nice added bonus.
Perhaps because of this original goal, as my prospects for passing the exam grew suddenly darker (sometime about mid-July, if I recall, right about the time I lost my mind for the second time), I couldn't help but feel my entire writing career was on the line. Somewhere about that time, the exam became more than just a difficult qualification test and took on much higher stakes. It seemed the collective mass of all my hopes and dreams were on the line. Pass the test, and I could leave my old life behind and start down a new path toward writing greatness. Fail, and it would be time to head down to the new Super Wal*Mart to see if they need a new carriage boy--I was pretty good at that once upon a time.
Perhaps, in reality, things weren't quite that dramatic, but from that point on the test became about fighting for a chance to get back to my writing. All the novels I have planned, all the stories I want to tell seemed held prisoner by this beast of a test, taunting me at every practice question I couldn’t answer with a whip-crack of his swishy tail. I grew to hate the test, and in the last weeks leading up to my exam day I lost nearly all hope.
Finally, about two weeks ago, I drove up to Worcester to take the exam. Six grueling, emotional, and painfully desperate hours later I walked out with a rather plain--though for some unexplained reason notarized--printout which read:
"Preliminary results seem to indicate that you have obtained a passing grade on the exam."
And just like that, the beast was dead. Well, not just like that, I guess. I sat in my car for about ten minutes reading that line over and over and over, sure I was missing a "not" or an "unfortunately" somewhere. I didn’t find it. It seemed it was really over--er, based on preliminary results, of course.
I drove straight from the testing site to the liquor store in town and bought the most expensive bottle of Scotch they had--well, the most expensive bottle they had within reason. I'm not exactly pulling in a patent agent's salary yet. Then I went home, blasted Colin Hay out of the stereo, and collapsed into a chair with a glass of the Glenlivet Archive. I just sat there alone for about an hour (a second glass came into play) enjoying the moment. After all, how many true victories like that to you get to enjoy in life?
And so for the past two weeks, I've been going back to restart all the projects and other tasks I've abandoned over the summer. It's amazing how much was pushed aside. This weekend I think I've finally caught up on everything, and I should get back to a regular posting schedule again--about once a week, new posts usually by Monday morning.
Thanks to everyone for hanging in there. I've notice quite a few of you faithfully checking in regularly over the summer. Thanks for your patience. I hope to make it up to you over the next few months.
And hey, New York publishing world, I'm back!
