Stories to Tell

I have more big ideas than I can possibly deal with. I recently rearranged my life to be more able to handle them all. The changes are mostly for the best, but I'm learning a lot about myself in the process.

For instance, if there's something I should be doing, then most likely I'm going to sleep. If I were to feel a bout of insomnia coming on, all I'd need to do is decide to empty the cat litter box and give it a good scrub-down. Something like that hanging over my head would lull me to sleep for around 8 hours, no problem. 

In case you were wondering, this is not productive.

One of the main things I've wanted to do is write. I've been putzing along, trying to make progress in this book I've been writing on. I'm part of an online group (WANATribe) where we get together, chat about writing and try to hold each other accountable for our goals. Plus, I've recently joined the NaNoWriMo movement this month. Some men choose to not shave in the month of November; some of us choose to write 1666.67 words per day each day and – theoretically – we'll have a 50K word novel at the end. (NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month.) Through this challenge I have learned that I actually can write that many words fairly easily if I put my mind to it. I used to struggle trying to write 500 words at a time, but now I sail past my nightly goal without thinking about it.

Unless, I fall asleep. Knowing that I need to focus and write in the evening after work is the best sedative I can think of for myself. Remind me that this is a critical part of the new life I'm trying to build and I will become positively narcoleptic. It's a struggle, I tell you.

I have learned, though, to use reverse psychology on myself. You see, I don't always fall asleep when I want to write. Sometimes I clean. Sometimes I cook. I'll do anything but write, really, as long as I can talk myself out of doing what I'm supposed to be doing. So, this morning I told myself that I was going to clean the litterbox, then sweep and mop the bedroom. Voilá! Over 1700 words flowed out of my fingertips without me even having to try. Not only that, but I'm supposed to be cooking dinner right now, so I got this blog post in as well. I'm on a winning streak today!

Okay, I think I'm pressing my luck now. People are going to get hungry pretty soon. Better get started on dinner.

Thanks for reading. We'll get together again soon. 

Take care!

Can We All Just Get Along?!

I had said that my recent change in employment was to enable me more bandwidth for creative endeavors. I can't say that I've written a ton of words since the change began – or painted, or anything else of that nature. I can absolutely attribute most of that to the transition period. However, there is something else, that has been inhibiting my creativity: politics. I don't generally pay much attention to politics because it seems to be outside of my realm of understanding and/or control anyway. But, this year was different. This year (2016, that is) was hateful. This year I paid attention.

A lot came to the surface in the US. I think America's addiction to reality television became painfully apparent, for one thing. I've been alive for 4 decades and I haven't seen a more ridiculous election year in my life. Everybody seemed to have lost their minds. And, I have noticed resentments being displayed in and out of social media – not just bickering, but problems that have been buried in relationships for years. 

I absolutely don't want to rant about who won or who didn't. I care about America; I care about Texas and I care about my family. Kristen Lamb has warned us, as writers, to steer clear of politics in social media, unless our goal is to be political writers. But, this last year hurt my heart, and I can't help but write about that, at least. I have to write about it to get it out of my system, so that I can write about other things, like people interacting with each other... things that I enjoy writing about.

I have friends who have written on Facebook, "If you voted for Trump, please unfriend me." Now, I'm not telling anybody who they can be friends with, but I think that might not be in the best interest of their ultimate goal. It's not that I don't understand their feelings; I feel – and have felt – that way for a long time. A long, long time.

I'm going to make up a friend; we'll call him George – after the nickname that the Abominable Snowman gave to Sylvester the cat. Let's say that George is a gay man who has finally been able to marry the man he's been with for over a decade. (This really does include a lot of people I know.) George feels that, after having made all of this progress, the world is going to turn back to a time when homosexual activity was against the law and legal same-sex marriage was a fantasy. After the election, George feels so abandoned by the world that he writes on his Facebook timeline, "If you voted for Trump, please unfriend me now."

One thing I'd like to point out to my friend, George, is that for the most part, prejudice is a result of people coming into contact with something they are not familiar with. So, by distancing yourself from people who you feel abandoned you, and who you feel voted to have you thrown in jail, you are doing the worst thing possible. You are distancing yourself from people when you should be showing them that you're really an alright guy who happens to be married to a man, that being married to a man really isn't all that outrageous. And, if your rights do begin to be taken away, you should be the loving person in their lives who is hurt, so that they can witness first-hand what a terrible thing it is.

Let me try from a different perspective. Let's assume for a moment that Trump is Satan. (I do not believe that Trump is Satan, nor do I believe that he is the anti-Christ.) By saying, "If you voted for Trump, then unfriend me," you are furthering his agenda of dividing us Americans. You are letting Satan win. Do not let Satan win! 

It seems counter-intuitive, but we could compare this to Jesus meeting the woman at the well. I understand that this is a Christian story and many people feel that extremist Christians are behind a lot of this, but let's just turn their story around. Jesus met a woman at a well – a woman who had been married multiple times and was currently living with a man outside of wedlock. What's more, this woman was a Samaritan – totally beneath Jesus' station. But, he didn't chastise the woman or talk down to her; he just talked with her and then said, "Go and sin no more." Maybe, if we see somebody behaving in a way that we feel is bad, maybe compassion is more effective than hate.

I have one last thing to mention. There are a lot of members of both houses of Congress who changed their 'opinion' of Trump after he won. Not coincidentally, there is going to be another election in 2018. I think it's time that we followed the example of Hillary Clinton. I believe that it is time to work with all of our elected Senators and Representatives, regardless if they are affiliated with the same party that we are. I understand that some of them are voting to defund Planned Parenthood and repeal the Affordable Care Act without having anything to replace it. I still believe that showing up to the table for the conversation is the best approach. If people feel that Trump is a loose cannon who is about to have the codes for nuclear weapons, then it would behoove them to work together with Congress – both houses – against a common enemy. Our Constitution was based on a balance of power. 

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It hurts my heart that two of my brothers are at each other's throats on social media. It hurts my heart to see so much hate every day. It hurts my heart that one man could successfully instill such an 'Us-Against-Them' mentality in our country. Our Constitution is 230 years old. That is a brief moment in time compared to European nations. There is no guarantee that The United States of America will continue to be. We are not the United Republicans of America, nor the United Democrats of America – we have to work together. We have to. I don't want to live through the history of a second U.S. Civil War. Please, let's all be rational people.

My Own Back Yard

Writer's Block. That's something that is written about, presumably by people who can't think of anything else to write. But, it's a real thing. I'm certain that there are ways to overcome it – to write through it, or take a vacation. How effective are these things? I suppose it depends on the reason for the block on the first place.

Under the instruction of the oh-so-inspiring Kristen Lamb, I am writing in my blog more frequently. Some days I post simply a picture, but I try to keep something new going on every few days. I don't want days of pictures in a row, though, so I do want to write something worth reading at least once a week. Back when I viewed my blog as simply a place to express myself and to practice writing I could go for weeks, months or even a year without posting anything. The plus side to that was that I only posted when something moved me to write, so there is more substance in what I've written there. Now that I'm trying to write more often, I sometimes get stuck. I can't think of anything interesting or moving, or I simply don't feel like writing. (This is not very different than my simply not wanting to go into work.) 

I watched an interview with Stevie Nicks once and she was talking about writer's block and her writing style. When she wrote a song, she said, she wanted to capture the emotion of a moment in her music, even if it was something as small as the look in a little girl's eye. She said that she didn't want to try to force writing, that if she didn't have that inspiration she'd rather not write at all, even if it meant ten years without creating a new song. But then, after ten years she might remember that little girl's look and it might inspire a song.

This has kind of been my approach to writing. The biggest difference is that Stevie Nicks is a hugely successful, internationally known superstar who's written God-only-knows how many songs that she and other people have sung. I've written a few blog posts. Looking at this comparison, I'm beginning to think that there might be something else I could do. I don't know exactly what would push me over the edge of success. I could keep at it the way I'm doing, but historically that has not brought me monetary reward.

One thing I could do, though, would be to get out more. I could go out into the world and see more things and then I'd have more to write about. Aside from occasional writer's block I also struggle with my weight, so this could be beneficial in more than one way. I would be walking around my town; through its streets and parks. I would not be sitting down as much and I'd be burning more calories than I consumed. On top of that, I'd have more to fodder for stories and essays.

One of my favorite contemporary writers is Tom Cox, who lives in southern England. He writes in his blog, and his books seem to be compilations of those blog posts, with a little extra for your trouble. He goes for long walks through the English countryside and wilderness, and a lot of what he writes about is that. He has the advantage of the historic English countryside with its stone walls, its castles and old houses that were around before a European ever set foot on this part of Texas. But, that's not to say that I can't get out and see what's around me. I can get to know the history of my town. I can walk the highways and roads through Lund and Kimbro and try to see where these towns were, back when the Swedish people settled them. (New Sweden is another town lost in that area.) As far as I can tell they are now just signs on a signpost, and a modern one at that – not the really cool fingerpost that Americans are convinced direct travelers through the small lanes leading from one English village to another.

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I'm not sure why this table is planted (literally) in the back yard, but the tile that we put on it has become weathered in a very nice way.

With that in mind I was taking pictures in my back yard the other day. It's amazing what you can see if you look around you, particularly in an old house like this, on a couple of acres. Other people's ideas and projects sitting forgotten, falling apart. Flora that want to retake the land and require constant attention to keep it in check. Animals and evidence of them are everywhere. Textures, colors... an album full of photographs without having to walk off of my property. Stories of snakes in the woodpile and rodent skeletons. Perhaps our little house is more interesting than a lot of others in our neighborhood, but there are still things to see if I walk around. I believe that will be my focus.

Until later, I leave you with this.

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One of the stray cats that lives in our back yard has a toy mouse. After a recent rain I found him under an esperanza plant, looking very much like a Velveteen Mouse.