Tag Archives: writing

1827 days

Posted on by

Download MP3

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.


In a few hours I will have completed thirty-five trips around the sun. This isn’t a tremendous accomplishment, for the most part I was just along for the ride and hanging on for dear life; and based on the average maximum age of the men on both sides of my family, I’ve got about ninety years in me, so I’m still a decade away from half way there.

Still, a friend of mine pointed out a few days ago that thirty-five is “the age when even the elderly don’t think you’re young anymore.” That kind of hit me.

Birthdays Past and a list for the future…

Saying something now…

Posted on by

…because I won’t feel like saying anything later.

For once, I’m trying to be realistic about what comes next. In under 24 hours (more like 17) Sarah will walk back down a jetway and board a flight back to her mother. I always try to convince myself that “I’ll be fine” and it won’t really affect me, the practical part of me knows that tomorrow I won’t feel like blogging. At all.

So, I’ve decided to ask my blog-friends for help. When you read this tomorrow (as I assume most of you will), would you please remind me to write more. Write something. Write anything. I always feel better when I do…and I’m gonna need all the kicks in the pants I can get to push me across the chasm between writing nothing and writing something.

I’ve got the genesis of a music-based post largely inspired by finding that picture of my 1974 Van, as well as the next few “What I’m Looking For” lines in various states of done (and by done I mean partial drafts and/or fragments) so I should be able to wrap myself around something.

Or I can just go off on my opinion about substituting “Young Earth Creationism” for science in school curriculum. I’ve got a good sized blog post about that built up after a week with Sarah and “I don’t need to learn that because GodDidIt” being a good enough excuse for a nine-year-old lacking a fundamental understanding of things like heliocentrism, what stars are, the minimal basics of biology, or the fact that atomic particles aren’t imaginary and just made up by scientists who refuse to believe in GodDidIt.

Anyway, I could (and just might) go off on that for quite the spiel but now isn’t the time.

Now is the time to ask for help. Tomorrow will suck, and I need people to remind me to do the things that help me get past the suck that I never remember to do when things suck.

So…please…start reminding me tomorrow. I will deeply appreciate it.

Slight Navigation Fixes

Posted on by

GREETINGS!!!

See, not dead! (and I know some of you suspected different.)

Ok, so this isn’t a post per se, just a quick note. I’ve watched several people visit this blog recently from my GoodReads profile and They tend to start with my navigation section on the left, hitting my Author’s Note, the Preface and Prolog, and then they start in on some recent posts. They usually find one of the last “What I’m Looking For” posts and then peter out. Mostly I blame the ridiculous length of my average posts, but I also realized (ok, someone emailed me and told me) that navigating within the larger sections is pretty much impossible.

So, I’ve added a top page for the “What I’m Looking For” series and stuck it in the Navigation Pane, and also put some line by line links in the posts. I’ll try to keep up with that as I add more.

Which brings us to the next point, i.e. adding more.

I’ll be honest, I’m struggling with this right now. Not because I don’t know what to say, or I have a hard time writing the next few lines…it’s because I don’t like what the next few things say about me. So far the sequence has largely followed events from my youth and teen years, and while I’ve really learned something from writing some of them, for the most part they don’t make a statement about who I am now. Mistakes or victories that happen when you’re a teenager (or younger) are meaningful, but they’re not necessarily indicative of who a person is as an adult.

I just finished reading an autobiography, and I was reminded of a quote a college professor once passed on: “Autobiography is when we tell the story of our life the way we want to remember it. Biography is when someone tells it like it really was.”

So far I’ve tried to be relatively true to my personal history, even when I don’t look particularly “cool” or “suave” or “with it.” Not being “with it” isn’t something that is particularly bad, or even particularly unusual; especially for teenagers and young adults. But what comes next is largely bad. And ugly. And I don’t get to hide behind the “I was just an awkward teen” defense anymore.

I once started to draft a post about all of this titled “The Lesser Angles of My Nature” that never got past paragraph one because I’m terribly disappointed in myself when I read back through it. But, I’ve started to recount my past, and what makes me “me,” and that means being true to the history, even when it’s not the Autobiography I wish I could write.

Bare with me, the next few lines are coming. Perhaps slowly, and with stops and starts, but they are coming.

[Word Count: 466]

The Most Boring Thing You Will Ever Read

Posted on by

The other day I was reading a blog linked from another blog that I read regularly, and a light went off.  I instantly understood why I don’t post as much on Bad Pants as I did on Dead Charming.  I think of my writing as articles and essays, not as posts.  It’s hard to write essays and articles when you’re busy with your “day job” for twelve-plus hours a day.

Which reminded me that I’m now allowed to talk about my day job in my blog.  The company that bought the company that I work for has a “uniform policy for personal internet communication, social media, and online networking” (and I deeply love the fact that they used the serial comma) which was distributed as both a .pdf and a printed brochure (which, frankly seemed redundant) during our onboarding process.  Now that the rules about talking about my job are more clearly defined than “pull a Dooce and we fire your ass,” I’ll regale all (six) of you with a description of what I’m sure you will agree is the single most boring job description in the world.  The job itself is FAR from boring, but describing it is like watching paint dry.

If you’re still awake, I CHALLENGE you to withstand…my job description!!! *dun dun dun*…

Blood of a Lazarus Heart

Posted on by

Alright, I’ve started writing this post three times, so this one MUST be the charm.

I haven’t felt like this in a long time and I guess I wasn’t expecting the depression to hit quite so hard.  Sarah, my eight-year-old daughter, has gotten on a plane and flown back to her mother.  She was here for her spring break, and I was lucky that it coincided with my birthday on the 14th.

We took her to the airport Friday and she completely and utterly didn’t want to go back.  I understand, we have chickens and goats and horses and 20 acres of woods to explore and a giant house to ramble about in; but, never the less, we took her up to PDX and I sat in the gate as she walked to the plane and then waved once more through her tears before climbing the stairway and disappearing for another long span of months.

Now, I find myself in that dangerous place, the place where I have trouble balancing the world “as it is” with the world “as I wish it could be.”  Right now, it would be very easy for the dragon to grab me by the throat again and squeeze me for all I’m worth once more.

Which brings me full circle back to writing and blogging and whatever.  There was a time when I wrote things that I was proud of having written.  I have not felt that way about something I’ve blogged in a long time.  At one point I felt that anonymity was the key; that by being behind a veil of self-defense, I had the freedom to say things in a way that wasn’t filtered and ultimately made for better writing.  Now, I think that’s just crap.  I think that for the last year or so I’ve just been too damn cautious in my writing, and that it has suffered for it (when and if I even bothered to post it).  It wasn’t the anonymity that made it better, it was the confidence to just write and let the chips fall where they may.  I used to be the kind of person who “did” first and “worried” later (if ever).  Now, I calculate everything.  I analyze, and measure, and contingency – until I don’t act at all.

More self-reflection PLUS music and lyrics…