Day: February 23, 2021

For me being a writer still means doing anything else first. Like this blog for example. It is 9 in the morning and I woke up three hours ago. I am only now approaching the page. I won’t get there for another ten minutes because I am here with you, dear reader. Presently you are my excuse to suck. I have several. Before this I was looking for a few cords and a stand to further develop my lab (what kind of lab still remains unclear, though I suspect I will try to write there at some point and even hang a monitor, because of course I would). Before that I was playing Madden and enjoying the team I raised from a 73 to now 84 overall in a few short years (hear that, NYG? Listen up!). Before that was coffee with the partner and before that a walk and before that I was in bed. Now if I want to move writing to the top of my life then I have to move writing to the top of my list. Let that be a lesson to you, writers. You gotta want to put writing higher on the list than the other things that are easier and often more fun in the moment. Once you do you will fall into a (not always comfortable) rhythm and get the words out and get better at the words and, in time, do this enough that you produce a thing that is worthwhile.

I may be talking to myself here. I need to learn it as much as other writers.

Some Thoughts:

1. I always want to write ‘Writier’ like courtier. Sounds cooler.
2. Still in search of the perfect desk setup, which is code for: I am still seeking excuses not to write.
3. Well, I am out of excuses not to write… and out of time here…

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just … come out the other side.”
? Stephen King, The Stand

I’m starting to recognize that statement as true. Each of us have a growth path and each of us go through it in the way we are meant to and through the trials we are meant to face. Perhaps this is merely the professor in me trying to connect reality to Campbell’s hero’s journey, but it fits. It fits nicely.

I’m listening to the Stand for the first time since I was a kid peering out an 8th story window on 135th and trying to imagine how different the world out there was from the world on the pages of the book. Not too much, really. Even now the world that King’s characters leave behind feels like our own in part. There is a timelessness to America that feels like shuffling the same deck of cards over and again and expecting a new suit.

But this is about growth.

I’ve grown and stumbled and grown again only to realize that I too am the deck of cards shuffled and reshuffled, but also to realize that you can make a lot out of those cards. You can live a thousand different kinds of lives and never find the right one, or you can get it right the first time and know you are living your perfect life. For me I see glimpses of that life every day. Moments peak through and I think, If I could just hold on to that part of it and this other. If life lines up right then the parts I’ve held on to will matter and I’ll really have something. My life is a game of poker. 5 card draw. I’m not too sure about the wilds.

Some Thoughts:

1. Lately I’ve been thinking I need a new coffee. I cannot quite say what I should be using, but the brew has become too much of the same thing and I am ready to explore a different taste.
2. Tomorrow I will be writing and grading and putting up post its and tearing them down all in an attempt to convey how much work I’ve been and need to be doing.