Category: Writing

It’s getting late in the day, but damn it, I’m posting something.

This will be one of the worst things I have written and put up on the internet, but I promised myself that I would blog once a day for this whole week.

And I have too often made a promise to myself, and then when things got tough, or annoying, or something good was on tv, that I just gave up, and gave in to the easy way of things. The easy way out.

Not today, Satan. Not today.

I will just put up about 250 words trying to gin up my resolve to get write, something, anything, right now.

I need to make some time for my journal, and I d have a short story I want to keep working on, but as the hours are drawing to a close, I must make some choices.

And I choose this blog!

And the 35 readers that I have for it.

Yes, you.

One of the points of doing this blog was to get back to the idea that I was writing for an audience, and that I was free to try different tactics to reach that audience.

This will go up as one of the new approaches.

I feel like the guy that crawled across the finish line of a race. Wow, what a terrible showing, but he finished the race. I followed through, and I am trying to make this mean a bit more than it might.

I wanted to write about politics today, but my heart really isn’t into it. I think I am having Trump/Impeachment/Syria fatigue. Just so much bad stuff that I feel like I need a break.

Which is why I would like to complain about the weather just like a very old and bitter man.

In the North Bay today, it’s almost 90 degrees. And it’s October 21st. AND I don’t live in Texas. AND have I mentioned that I hate the heat.

There is something so deep in my core, one of the truths of being that I hold on to, which tells me that when I get to late October, I get to wear sweaters because it’s cool a outside. Not hot.

There should be no more hot weather.

Yet, here I am with a full week of 90 degrees, when just two days ago it was 68.

And this is when I know that I have flipped some sort of aging switch, or crossed some line that has placed me smack dab into middle age: I want to be comfortable all the time, and if I’m not, I’m going to complain about it until I make someone as annoyed as I feel right now.

This is where I am now; It’s hot and someone listen to me!

I guess it’s kind’a funny.

But when me and my friends get together, and we kid about getting older and changing, yes the random aches and pains make moments of shared anguish… But what really is the worst part is that I know feel my stupid entitled complaints are not subjectively personal, but now they objective truths!

Which they aren’t.

I just want to wear a sweater, and really, in the big picture of the universe, no one cares.

In five days I’ll be back to normal.

I think I was making real progress when it comes to writing, over the past month. And then this week hit, and I just ground to a halt. I am aware that the anniversary of my mother’s passing on Monday has been weighing on my mind, and I know that’s normal, and it should happen. I guess what I hoped I would do would be to channel those feelings into something creative.

Part of this process, the grieving process, is learning to forgive, and accept yourself. Grieving is individual and creates feeling of anger and guilt. I am trying to just let myself feel what this is like. Not force it into something that seems to be the reaction I should have. Somedays, I honestly feel like I should be having a deeper reaction to her passing, and other, I feel smothered in a blanket of sadness and loss.

I guess I thought I was ready to start using these emotions in my creative process, but I think I’m not there yet. I did say to myself that I wanted a year to go by before I put anything on paper, or attempted to share this publicly. Maybe this is what the start of this process feels like?

A long time ago, back when I was a sophomore in high school, I had been writing stories for about a year, and I decided that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. The day I decided this was October 14^th, 1992, and I have always used that date as the first day of my writing season. The point that I could look back and see what I accomplished.

For about 9 years, I was solidly creating written work that I could collect year by, and look back and see how I was improving, or what was still being work on. Then in 2001, I took a play writing class, and that pretty much set my on the theatre path, and the writing started to dwindle, to the point that I had many years where I didn’t write anything. I was still journaling, nut the date would come and go, and I really didn’t give it more than a glancing thought, like, “Oh, that thing I used to do.”

Last year on this day, my mother passed away. Leading up to today, I was filled with some anxiety and an all around feeling of just being unsettled. I wasn’t sure how I should feel about today. When her birthday came and went, I felt depressed. With the Holidays, it was a general feeling of sadness. But getting to today, the day she died, was filled with dread. I kept seeing it on the calendar, knowing that I would have a full day of being reminded of her passing, and thinking about what the day like today used to mean to me.

This was a day where I would reflect on what I had creatively accomplished in a year. The thoughts I had tried, or the ideas that just never worked out. It was a day for what I had created, and now, it’s a day to think about what I have lost.

These feelings are mixed together, and its melancholy. I’m not depressed, just sad. Other than that, I’m not sure how to feel.

This hasn’t been as creative of a day as would have liked. I got caught up with work, and the news seems to be dominating my few other thoughts.

But it is cool out on Norther California, and after have a week of 100 degrees what seems like last week, and it was, Fall seems to be coming around.

Halloween will soon be discussed at home as to what we will all dress up as, and then we will start to think about Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Having lived in the northeast for so long, October has felt like the start of the end of the year.

When I was living in Texas, October was still hot. Maybe not 100 or even 90 degrees, but 85 can feel hot out, especially when you very much want to put on a sweater.

These are the thought bopping around my head today, and that is what I want to share.

Why do you do this blog, I ask myself when I look at it, and I say back to myself that creativity comes in many different forms. Also, you don’t have to have a point to create, just create. And how long have you been talking to yourself? Which I have to admit that I have always done

See, even when I am writing, I will jump up from my desk, and continue the thought that I am trying to express in words, by saying it out loud as I walk down the hall. The wife has learned to live with this.