Author: Matthew Groff

  • Dance of the Parked Cars

    We have a car in the City. It is something that I thought we would never really do, but here we are. To be honest, it’s been great having the car. It has been our release valve with the pandemic, just allowing us to get out of the City, regardless if we actually get out of the car, and just drive around. It has helped in running errands, and we have even helped friends out when they needed a quick ride.

    But as with all good things, the is always a downside.

    And that would be parking on the street.

    I just dread having to park the car. Not only am I a horrible parallel parker, but it is a level of Lord of the Flies out there for a spot.

    But the bane, demon curse of my life is Alternative Side Parking! Here are the current NYC Rules, and I fear when things go back to normal. Currently, I have to go out once a week and move the car, and the dilemma I am in is whether to sit in the car, and wait for the street sweeper to come, move the car out of the way, and then back into my spot. That sounds simple, but it could mean that I have to sit in our car for an hour and a half. Or, I can leave my spot and see if I can find one where the sweeper has already gone through, which is a risk, as that could take five minutes, or one time took me an hour and a half to find a spot.  

    What is really interesting, and I should take a pic of it, are the people who line up their cars on the opposite side of the street, waiting for the sweeper to go by. There are guys smoking in their cars, or reading the paper, neighbors talking to each other, sharing coffee. It appears to be such a feeling of community and neighborliness fraternity on those blocks, that it does make me envious for their parking reality.

  • Writing That Nevers Sees the Light of Day

    Everyone is an artist, or at least has the potential to be an artist. I think the unifying idea is creation to express emotion. In that sense, just about anything can be an artist endeavor. Thus, the world of self-expression.

    Sharing art with others for monetary compensation is a whole other ball game. Making art that sells is a tough trick, and not everything created is meant to be consumed.

    If we are to go down a cliché route, such as dance as if no one is watching; write as if no one will read it, right? What was it that Stephen King said, write the books you want to read.

    I know that I have stated that one of my goals is to be a paid write that can earn enough to replace this computer that I am writing on. The other goal is to just complete a project. I started something, followed it through, and finished it. With the world the way it is, I think I just need a personal win.

    That leads me to believe that what I complete will be something that is awful, and will never see the light of day. And that’s okay. I remember that John Lennon said you have to write a lot of bad songs before you can start writing some good songs.

    I also remember what I tell my kid everyday, you got to practice if you want to get good at something. I might get lucky, but I might also just might be getting my practice in.

  • New Writing Schedule, and Some Inspiration

    Well, the good news is that I think we are finally coming to an understanding of what our daily schedule will be with the wife working at home, the kid remote schooling, and me floating around all of it, while writing when I get a chance.

    I can write this, a blog, when the kid is “in class” and my involvement is at a minimum. Writing in the journal is still during park time, which gives me a solid thirty minutes. Working on fiction is happening during the kid’s hour of TV time in the later afternoon. In the end, I get about two hours of writing during the week. Clearly, I would like more time, but this, right now, is keeping the balancing act working. With this tentative schedule in place, I am feeling a bit more relaxed, and have a reasonable expectation of what I can accomplish in a given week.

    The bonus effect of establishing this “schedule” is that I am now finding that I am inspired to go back to old ideas, and flesh them out more. Notes and sketches that I tucked away months and even years ago, have sprung to a new life, and are interesting to me again. I found myself working on an old story that I had shelved about a year ago, because I thought the idea had run out of steam.

    This isn’t really surprising, nor a revelation, but I had lost inspiration and drive of late. Small changes can make a difference. I have to remind myself that this is a marathon, and will take more time than even I expect.

  • Fictional Real Life Fiction

    I go back on forth on what I should fictionalize when it comes to events that happened in my life. I remember a writing professor stressing to all of us students to never write about themselves. “You are more boring than you think you are,” is what he would say when any of us challenged him on that.

    The reason I bring all of this up is that I had an idea of a story about this time that I tried to record a song off the radio back on the mid 90’s. At one time or another, most of us Gen Xer’s tried to do this. The reason that this seemingly common exercise in music acquisition still sticks with me is that in 1997 I had every Led Zeppelin song on tape except for one; “Hey, Hey, What Can I do.” It was the B-side of the “Immigrant Song” single from 1970, and “Hey, Hey,” never appeared on an album, and wasn’t widely available until the Led Zeppelin box set came out in the early 90’s. At this time in my life, I was rather poor, and didn’t have the money to spend on a box set to just get one song. So late one night, I called my classic rock station to request that they play the song, but also requested that the DJ not speak over the song, which caused the DJ to joke/threaten that he was going to talk over the opening, or ending of the song. I had to stay up close to another hour till the DJ played the song, and he held his word, allowing me to record it clean, and complete my collection. It was a victory, and I held on to those tapes well past the times when I stopped listening to cassettes and CDs.

    It’s a funny, nostalgic anecdote, but it’s isn’t a life changing story. Yet, I have this feeling that if I take the “me” out of the story and drop another “character” in, then I think this story would have legs, and might shed insight on a character, and help with their development.

    So, maybe I’m not that boring after all…

  • Taking A Walk, Clearing My Head

    We had a pretty decent weekend. We weren’t too ambitious, like coming up with home improvement projects, or deciding that we had to go on a road trip. We just stayed at home and ran errands.

    One of the errands that I took care of was going grocery shopping. I got a crazy idea, which was that I going to do the shopping out of our neighborhood, but I was going to walk there. (I have put on some Covid weight. A nice solid ten pounds.) It was a good 40-minute walk to get to the 93rd street Trader Joe’s.

    It had been a while since that I had left our neighborhood, and it was a nice Fall day to take a walk. It was cool, but I found not cool enough to wear a light jacket. There were more people out than I expected. With the exception of masks, it almost looked normal out. I know we are still a long way from getting back “to normal,” but I have to keep hope alive.

    The other thing was that this was the first time, in a very long time, that I did something by myself. And had a good amount of time to myself. Time to think about ideas, and stories, and current events, and odd song lyrics. I even thought about that guy skateboarding while listening to “Dreams.”

    It was a simple act of self-care. Just a walk, listening to music, and thinking about things. It did give me a lift, and made me feel better about where I am in my process, which is still very much in the beginning phases. And being at the beginning is a good place.