Moving on

Found this in a letter I sent to a friend in late 2019. Felt like it belonged on here as well.

What once was, can never be again

Time lost, never to return

Stop. Listen. Take a breath

Allow your heart a moment to mourn

Then move intently

One careful step at a time toward tomorrow

In your brave new world

                            - Shane 2019

I HATE FALL !

Here we are again, summer sunlight slowly fading into cooler fall days and taking with it that positive summer energy. Summer is not yet over, but it is clearly fading fast as the days get shorter and the nights cooler. The calendar flips to September tomorrow and those who have not yet will return to school early next week. Not far off are the familiar sights and sounds of fall, changing colors of the trees, apples and cider, pumpkins, and football games. I hate the fall!

“Why?” you ask. It is a valid question many before you have pondered, and it probably does deserve an answer. That will come later.

I don’t know what it is about the changing of seasons from summer to fall that triggers it, but every year without fail I find myself here. My mind drifts off to days gone by, remembering school days, friends, and social events of my youth. Some of the memories are pleasant, not all of my childhood is a bad memory, but in general I am reminded of how happy I am that those days are now behind me! There isn’t much coincidence that it was September when I began to write a novel that has many parallels to my past experiences and that of many friends when they were in high school. And there isn’t much coincidence that it was September when I finally got my courage up to face the demons I left locked in the closet when I walked out of LC and never looked back. There probably isn’t much coincidence that it was in the fall two years ago now that I finally faced the remaining demons head on and laid to rest all of that unfinished business. All of it was triggered by memories from my youth, and of time spent with friends whom I still miss today. These events have become some of the more positive outcomes of fall for me, but it is still one of my least favorite seasons!

For me, fall signals the end of many things. It is of course the end of sunshine and warm days, of bike rides and days at the beach. It is the end of freedom as children return to classrooms and staff to their jobs. The end of camping trips, vacations, and lazy walks under the star lit sky. But it’s more than that for me. It seems to be true in my family that with the fall weather, arrives another kind of end. From as far back as I can recall there are incidents, many of them life ending, that happened or at least began in the fall. From the death of a friend in a house fire decades ago to the news or progression of a terminal diagnosis far too recent to write about here, there is a definite pattern of things ending along with the summer season. Maybe they have all been unlucky coincidences occurring in the days between the end of August and the beginning of January. Maybe it is nature’s way of reminding us what fall really is, the beginning of the end for many things. Let’s face it, things die in the fall. The trees lose their leaves and look dead for months on end. The grass turns first yellow and eventually brown as it dies off. The flowers that once thrived in the summer sun wilt away, many never to return. Fall is death. So maybe it is not the time of year I dislike but rather the constant reminder that to everything, including our own human lives, there is a season. One day each of us will face the fall season of our loved ones lives, and of our own. Maybe that is the only reason why I HATE FALL!

And so … I vote we skip fall this year and move directly to Winter! Anyone else with me?

In reality, it will be a few more months yet before the snow arrives for me to play in and while I wait for it I will have to suffer with the wet cool days and nights known as fall. Spring is my least favorite season because of allergies and the inevitable slow melting of snow resulting in a muddy wet world. Fall isn’t much better. Rather than the melting of snow to create the mud, we now just get rain, and more rain, and quite often, even more rain. Dark grey clouds replace the sunny summer skies, the sun begins to hide itself from us, and it is not uncommon to have days where you never really see it at all. I will spend the next few weeks riding the motorcycle as much as is possible before it has to be parked for the winter, and we’ll try to get all those outdoor projects completed that we talked about doing back in May and June. We won’t succeed, we never do!

Meanwhile, I wait for the arrival of truly cold temperatures, those cold enough to turn the rain into snow and dump feet rather than inches to coat my world white. The snowboards are at the ready, the rack takes only minutes to attach to the car top, and our gear can easily be found and loaded for that first winter adventure. I am not yet ready for the snow, but give me two more weeks of these grey skies and chilly nights and I will soon be there!

The heck with it, skip Fall and just BRING ON WINTER! … I’m over all the reminders of death already!

Why I stopped Writing ...

I’ve heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing with them something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return.

Well I don’t know if I believe that’s true
But I know I’m who I am today
Because I knew you!

Some time back in 2009 I lost my drive to write, or more accurately my passion for writing. It happened gradually over time, first with the slowing of written posts on this blog, then eventually with the abrupt lack of any posting of any kind here. I used the excuse that I was working on a new writing project at first. Then that I was posting things on Facebook instead of keeping in contact via this blog. In reality, though I was working on a new writing project and I was posting on Facebook more and more, they were just excuses both to you and to me. So what really happened?

I finished Unconditional during the winter of 2009, all but the final formatting revisions and minor tweaks had been completed and turned over to the one person who I needed to “approve” of the changes. I was biding my time by beginning a new project, still unfinished to date, and searching for a new direction to take that project in. I’m not certain when exactly, but shortly after getting the approval to publish my changes to Unconditional my writing began to taper off significantly. First this blog suffered, then the project I was working on, and eventually even those posts on Facebook became fewer and farther between. My drive was fading fast and by the fall of 2010, it was gone all together.

As most of you know, in September of 2009 my family got word of a late stage cancer diagnosis. In light of that news, and because the project I was working on involves “The Big C”, I stopped working on it completely. With that, I stopped writing. I haven’t written much of anything since then, not even those lengthy e-mails I have become famous for among my friends and family. Sure there have been a few of them over the last year or so, but very few. It would seem that when I needed an outlet for my emotions the most, I stopped writing completely, something I have always used for that much needed release.

I’ll be honest, I never really understood why I stopped writing, just figured I wasn’t interested and would eventually find the time and pick it up again. I was wrong. Something else happened that fall, something far more significant to my mental state and previous need to use writing as a means of emotional release. Part of my writing Unconditional and the conversations it sparked between me and my friends and family were based solely on my need to work through some baggage I have carried with me since high school. Who knew that writing could become the best form of therapy for me?

The rekindling of a friendship with Jack, the common ground that was found with my own family and that of my spouses, the loss of my maternal grandfather, and the news that my mother-in-law has terminal breast cancer all slammed into my world in just two short years. It created a world wind of emotions to deal with and, for the first time in as long as I can remember, those emotions were dealt with in a positive way that did not result in me retreating from my long held beliefs and simply hiding from the world. Instead, I faced them head on, with some help of course, and worked through what needed to be worked through. The stuff that didn’t matter as much was forgotten and moved past and I learned more about myself and my friendships in a few short months than I did in the previous 20 some years combined. And I did it all without writing! No blogs, no long winded e-mails venting to a friend, not even a significant journal entry. Yes I do still keep a hand written journal. I know, how archaic of me.

Instead, I took a new outlook on life, the freedom from baggage that I didn’t even know had been weighing me down for more than a decade, and used it to help form the support system my family needed. I stood strong to anchor them during the loss of my grandfather, and in the wake of the cancer diagnosis. I held tight to my firm belief that everything in life, the good, the bad, and the seemingly insignificant all happens for a distinct reason. I am not one who believes that every little detail of life has been pre-planned by some almighty deity, but there are some elements to that theory I believe hold water. It is far too coincidental that certain people seem to come into my life at just the right moments or that I cross paths with someone for only a moment and feel like I have known them my entire life. My faith in what many call a “higher power” does not follow the rules of any single organized religion, in fact I am in general opposed to most if not all organized religions because of their great propensity to promote nothing but hypocrisy. However, I have learned over time that certain events and people I have met along my path thus far have in fact been for a reason far greater than my immediate understanding at the time. It is my job to discover what their reasons may be so that I can learn from each what I need to know and integrate it into the remainder of my journey.

This outlook has made it easier to deal with the ups and downs of life, especially over the last three years in my immediate and extended families. It has allowed me to see that much can be learned and good can come from tragedies. Had I not lost people in my life previously, or gone through the pain of separation from close friends and family I would not be where I am physically today, nor would I be there mentally. Even through the pain of watching a loved one slowly fade away to a disease that cannot be cured and barely controlled most days, there are lessons to be learned for all. The strength it takes me to rise from bed each day is miniscule compared to that of a person who takes great effort simply in lifting their tired bones from the bed each morning. To them, seeing another day, no matter how filled with discomfort or lack of energy is a gift not a burden. They willingly rise each morning eager to take in every experience that life has left to offer them, and crawl back into bed each night wanting to repeat the process again the next day. We can all learn a bit from those who view each day, no matter what may happen to them along the way, as a gift. And I, having now witnessed this first hand through my mother-in-law’s struggle with cancer have been given a gift that no money could buy. She inspires me to wake each day and learn something new. To experience life until there is nothing left to experience. To roll with the punches and all that will be thrown my way. And to always remember that in life, everything both good and bad happens to us for a reason!

So how does this relate to my passion for writing and why I have not done much of it in the last three years? I lost my passion when I rid myself of the baggage I was carrying in my relationship with Jack. My drive to write in the past was tied to those emotions left raw and hidden from view. When I finally managed to stand up and face them, to admit that I was wrong about some things and clear up some misunderstandings between us, I no longer felt the need to express myself with written words, verbal was suddenly an option for me. It is fair to say that Unconditional was the first and last book I wrote because I needed to. I needed to write back in 2007 and what became of it was Unconditional. After finishing it I began a new project, the one dealing with “The Big C” that still remains unfinished and very much untouched since mid-year 2010. I will one day resume work on that project, but for now it has been shelved in favor of a new story, one that is being written not because I NEED to write it, but more because I WANT to.

I have once again found my passion for writing, my inspiration if you will, and it is still very much linked to my relationship with Jack. However, I now realize it is because he inspires me to do many things in life and his encouragement of my writing is just one of those.

And he’s back!

So for the past three nights running he’s been there as I close my eyes to fall asleep, again when I begin to wake, and quite often the entire time in between. The face is not always visible, but I know it’s him. Some times he speaks, sometimes he’s a mere shadow on the wall, but always I know he is present and watching. Most would find this unsettling, but for me it is a comfort to have him near. Though it does make me wonder why he has returned.

I don’t off hand recall when last he spent time with me, but I suspect it was last fall. Sometime after the leaves began to change and before the snowboarding season really kicked off. December or early January I’m guessing. In any case, it has been months since I’ve felt his presence, seen his face as I close my eyes, or had the distinct impression that he is watching over me. And without knowing it, I have come to realize I’ve missed him there in the shadows of my dreams.

His return has brought with it some gifts I did not expect but have now realized may well be linked directly to his presence. I am writing again, this entry is proof of that. I am designing again, for personal and professional projects of the digital variety. I have not yet found the time to start, but I will soon be drawing again, and a project that has been on hold for at least a year has been dusted off and slow progress is being made on it as well. I am inspired again!

His return has also brought to light just how much I miss hanging with the real life version of The Catcher and I suspect some time will be made to rectify that lapse in communication soon. My creativity has always been tied to my emotions, for better or worse, and now I am left to ponder how he fits into this as well. Is his appearance a result of increased emotions, or are those a result of his return?

In any case, welcome back Kerry!

in progress

Was doing a little blog re-organization and ran across this draft I never published ... It was originally penned back in 2008, somewhere between May and September. It is by no means a complete work, but I'll share it anyway.

Can't concentrate, can't think
Thoughts keep drifting back in time
Memories of our last encounters
Things he said, looks he gave
Advice he offered so effortlessly

Months have passed between us
Always too busy to make the time
Life goes on day by day
Each one slipping quietly into the past
Time stacking up against us
Knowing one day will be our last

Was that it, the last I will see of him
That chilly day in May
When my thoughts were somewhere else
Off in my own little world
Listening intently as he spoke
Gave of himself, sat patiently for my answers
Telling me "I'll Wait" when I would pause between them
All the while knowing
I was somewhere else

It was his birthday, but I forgot
It was the beginning, and the end
A day filled with tears, and hope
Of mixed emotions, weakness, and strength
The last day I heard my grandfather's voice
The last day I believed I was a misfit
The first day my eyes were truely open wide
The first day I could see the reason it all changed

In the emotional falout of that day
I learned, I grew, I changed
I asked the hard questions
And gave answers to them more freely
When they were asked of me
Yet some things remain the same

Our lives are forever intertwined
The distance between us
A double edged sword
A new balance i know I must find

Every once in a while we all need a wakeup call …

I know we all get busy, wrapped up in our own issues and daily lives and before long we are so entrenched in what we have going on that we forget about some of the more important things in life. We worry about having a nice house or car, maybe a new wardrobe or at least a pair of shoes, and keeping up with the latest in technology. We spend all our time making money so we can spend it, or so our spouses can spend it for us, and hoping to one day have enough saved up to retire and begin to enjoy life for a change. But what if we never get to retire? What if by the time we make it to retirement age and status all we have left is that nice house, car, and wardrobe with no one left to enjoy life with?

That’s the type of wakeup call all of us needs right here, right now. I got mine in a few stages, spread out over about a two year span. The beginning of it was back in the fall of 1997 when a face I hadn’t seen in over a decade popped up in a web search for something I thought was completely unrelated. It set off a chain of events that made me stop and think about a lot of unresolved issues from my past, things I thought were buried so deep they would never surface again, and people I had walked away from a long time ago. It also began a process of finally dealing with things I had refused to previously, aligning my memory of my history with what really happened, and writing a book I never thought I was capable of.

That process, facing my fear, reconnecting with an old friend, resolving some issues in my past, and writing that book helped me to take a closer look at what was really important in my life. I had forgotten about Jack and our friendship years before and he wasn’t the only one from my past I had walked away from, he was just the one that was most important for me to reconnect with. Rebuilding that bridge allowed me to reconnect with others, to reach out to some, and to accept others who had reached out to me. It gave me a chance to begin to put my priorities in the right order beginning with family and friends rather than the very tight circle I had been spinning in for far too long.

I also came out of this more comfortable with myself, my past, and my future than I ever thought I could be. I managed to find a place I am comfortable with in the universe, and discover ways to let go of all those things I know are out of my control in much the same way that those who are Christian claim to “turn it all over to God”. I’m not certain how much of that came from reconciling those issues, from the process of writing the book, or from simply spending time with Jack again, but it was something I would need about a year later.

The final stage of my wake up call came in the fall of 2009 when we learned that my mother-in-law has breast cancer. She is a relatively young 56 year old woman who takes care of herself and follows the recommendations of semi-annual mammograms. Sadly, you get what you pay for and in her case, a free screening meant nobody cared enough to read the films. She had been complaining of symptoms after the screening in February and eventually could no longer ignore them. In September she sought a second opinion and learned that she has stage IV invasive ductal carcinoma (breast cancer spread to the lymphatic system with lesions on the skeleton). While the entire family is angry that she was not diagnosed sooner, she simply moved forward with treatment and an attitude that she will beat it. It’s impossible for us to know how far the cancer advanced between February and September, and that is for the lawyers to argue in court one day, but we do know the diagnosis wouldn’t have changed though we could have possibly caught it while still a stage III.

As I wrapped my head around the news that someone close to me had been given a potentially terminal diagnosis, I retreated into my own world asking one question over and over. What if it were me? Hearing someone you know given a diagnosis of cancer in any form tends to do that to most of us. Luckily, I had already begun to prioritize things in my life and remove some of the non-essential things, be those material items, excess drama, or surrounding myself with negative attitudes. The cancer diagnosis was simply the catalyst to complete that phase of my life.

I shelved a writing project I was working on, hopefully I will come back to it one day but for now it sits about 1/3 of the way completed, I made a decision to eliminate the negativity and drama from my life, and I did just that. I severed all ties with the Dykes on Bikes (DOBD) Drama Queen group I had been riding with because I was tired of the high school drama that came with it and the way the group as a whole made both myself and my wife feel. I chose to walk away from their narrow view of the world and allow them to wallow in their own self pity for being single, poor, uneducated, unemployed, and lesbian. Each member of that group feels sorry for themselves for at least one of those reasons and I think it’s safe to say their attitude is that the “straight world” owes them something. I completely disagree and think they all need to grow up, shut up, and take responsibility for their own lives and the poor decisions that have landed them where they are now. But I digress!

My purging of negativity and drama extended to family encounters as well, from both my family and Jen’s. I respectfully decline invitations to go places where certain members of Jen’s family will be in attendance, as does Jen, because it simply isn’t worth dealing with their crap. Jen and I still attend family functions on both sides when possible, but I do not feel bad for missing out on things because we choose not to deal with a situation that will most definitely turn ugly. Family is not perfect, it never was nor can it ever be for either of us, but family is family. Often it’s better for all of us to not speak for a while rather than speak words that will irritate or offend the other. That’s my new approach to family on both sides and it will continue in force with the new arrival in a few weeks. The news of a 4th niece (nephew is still possible last I heard) was the last straw, the third was hard enough to stomach, and while I am certain I will love them no less than their three older sisters, they will see me just as little as the first three have. I refuse to bite my tongue any more than is absolutely required and the mandatory family gatherings are about all I can take these days.

My priorities are now in order, I go out of my way to help those I can when ever I can, and I approach every situation with a little more laid back approach. I know that every event in my life, great or small, has a purpose and I accept the challenge of figuring out what that purpose may be daily. I also except the challenge of ensuring that if my next tomorrow never comes, I have lived each moment in a way that I am content with, said all I need to say to those around me and that I care about, and never left a situation unresolved whenever possible. While I never claim to be perfect, if I can at least do my best to make sure that I leave this world with all those I care for and about knowing how important to me they are, and never parting ways angry, I can accept that as my legacy.

To quote a friend of mine "Live for the here and now, tomorrow will take care of itself!"

Lost and Found

Some days is seems like Facebook has become the worlds greatest and most useful Lost and Found on Earth. On other days, it appears to be more of an entertainment avenue providing billions of bored office workers across the globe endless hours of entertainment while they attempt to look like they are doing actual work when ever the boss walks by.

Ever since I was guilted into joining Facebook about a year ago, people from a past life in a podunk map dot of a town have been crawling out of the woodwork and inviting me to be their friend. Many have been people I was at least remotely interested in getting to know again after an almost 15 year lapse in communication and readily accepted their requests. Some have been people I always wondered what happened to after parting ways post graduation, and a few have been from people I never liked back then and would rather see a death notice for them than accept their request. Thankfully the latter of which has been very small in numbers, though Facebook keeps telling me I should send them a message or a friend request in its not so subtle way almost daily. Luckily those too can be ignored.

I have gone through the cycle of adding everyone who sends a request, except for those I have good reason to ignore, searching for people I was actually interested in reconnecting with, and recently purging my friends list of all those with whom I am no longer interested in being in contact with, or in some cases never really was interested in the first place. I now reserve my friends list for those with whom I actually know, am related to in some way, work with but still consider more than a coworker, and miscellaneous others I wish to remain in contact with via the Internet. My lost and found box is now well under 100 friends thanks to this new policy.

I have also considered abandoning my Facebook profile more than once over the last few months but instead have simply managed to log in less and ignore it most weekends. The more I use Facebook, the less I use Facebook. By that I mean daily usage. In the beginning, when it was all shiny and new with new things to explore and play with, I was on the site every day for multiple hours throughout the day. Now, I generally log in once a day, but not always, and often I can go an entire weekend without ever checking in to see what my friends are up to. I also try to update my status message at least once a day, in the beginning it was way more than that, but even that I don’t always manage to accomplish. When I was on vacation last November, I had Internet access daily, yet only logged into Facebook once or twice the whole trip. When I go home, there were more than 500 updates for me to read through, almost all of which were simple ignored or deleted rather than spending the time catching up on what I had missed while I was out of touch. Some things just aren’t that important.

But every once in a while, this little lost and found box on the Internet, the place where just about everybody with a minute or two of computer access knows to search for someone they lost along the road of life, comes in handy. I lost touch with someone I considered a good friend and probably the most intelligent person I knew my own age growing up. A well read, forward thinking boy who chose to rebel in high school by not cutting his hair for his last two years of school, a rather ingenious decision on his part I might add as it drove certain people crazy to see a boy with long hair in their little town. We had some of the same interests and worldly views and managed to spend a lot of time hanging out after school in high school in the craziest of places, the local library! We even shared the same mentor for a while, and I’m certain Jack would love to hear from him again as well. It’s not a name that has been brought up in our conversations over the last few years, but I know he too thought a lot of this kid and would be interested in hearing where he is now and what he’s been up to over the last 15 years.

So I guess since all things happen for a reason, the friend request today from my former partner in crime at the library, the one male friend I had growing up who was just as “quirky” as I was most of the time and never once judged me for being different that the herd, just might be the reason I haven’t abandoned Facebook yet. That little lost and found box has resulted in rekindling a friendship with someone I vowed never to speak to again and still can’t remember why, has helped build a stronger friendship with a few others in my current life, and now has turned up a long lost friend I was convinced I would never hear from again. It’s settled, Facebook stays, though I will probably continue to spend less and less time on there as time goes on. The shiny toy has lost a bit of its luster and become more of the tool it was originally intended to be.

Desiderata - by Max Ehrmann

A recent e-mail from a close friend inspired me to look up the origin of the quote "no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should" today. What I found was that it came from the poem Desiderata written by Max Ehrmann around 1920 and copyrighted in 1927. Though some of it's verse is a little "preechy" in my opinion, they are easily overlooked by the general tone of the piece. Read it with open eyes and I bet you too will find something truly inspirational in it's verses.


For more information on the author, it's origin, and the myths surounding this piece, CLICK HERE

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann c.1920

Thanks Jack!

It's annual visit has arrived

As if the annual color shift from green to red’s, oranges, and eventually browns wasn’t clue enough, this familiar feeling tells me it is fall again. For every year about this time going all the way back to my early teen years, it has been there. Like a comfy old sweater worn to remove the chill from the air, it arrives and reminds me it is that time of year again. Triggered by the receding sunlight hours, the familiar wet chill in the air, and the scent of apples, cider, and doughnuts its appearance is inevitable. I suppose it wouldn’t be fall without eventually allowing myself to be wrapped in its familiarity. Allowing those memories to begin streaming back and reliving some of the better times in my nightly dreams only intensifies the emotions it brings forward. Eventually, I’ll make the time needed to retire it for another year but for now I find solace in the knowledge of where it comes from, and why it arrives annually, almost on cue.

Without fail, those fall dreary weather blues return annually, and always they seem to dredge up my old friend. Also without fail, weeks go by with it building inside before I recognize what is happening, why my temper is short and my irritation at the world is high. Eventually light dawns on marble head, generally by a subconscious accidental click on a photo, e-mail, or saved copy of an old letter. Instantly, as the emotions flood my psyche the pieces fall into place. This year, that happened a week ago while I was surfing around on my computer trying to make myself so tired I could instantly fall asleep when my head hit the pillow. It was after a failed attempt to sleep resulted in me stumbling to the office in the dark and messing around on Facebook for a while. Hours later, still wide awake after harvesting and plowing enough fields to level up again, I eventually decided to just write whatever was swimming around in my head. I went in search of a piece I knew I had started but not yet made much progress on. It was then, after a miscalculated double click event, that it all made sense.

Rather than opening the document I was looking for, I clicked one line too low and opened a scanned copy of a letter I was given almost 15 years ago. The emotions ebbed as I read the opening sentence and suddenly it all made perfect sense. The rising tension in my life, the temper quick to snap, the restless nights of sleep kept awake by daunting visions and strangely familiar dreams, and the all too familiar feeling I couldn’t put my finger on. All of it instantly made perfect sense as I was reminded of my annual trip into what can only be categorized as withdrawls.

It’s been almost a year since I hung with him last, heard that familiar voice, saw that contagious smile. Sometime last October, when I delivered the revised edition of Unconditional in time for him to read, re-read, review, and deliver an opinion of before heading south for a few months. This year has been extremely busy for him and we haven’t managed to even pass many e-mails back and forth let alone arrange a weekend where we would both be in town. It is at least partly my fault, I did pass up a couple of chances both last spring and this fall already. As Jack has reminded me more than once, sometimes priorities have to be adjusted. Last spring it was to get projects around the house, like the hardwood floor and door wall replacement completed when Dad could be around to help. This fall it has been to attend peewee football games for the nephew, and the side effect of both practicing my sports photography and enjoying a decent game of football in the cooling fall temperatures.
My home improvement projects are still not completed, and in fact have been added to recently, but that’s another blog post all together, and his weekends are still not completely free. I will be in town next weekend, for Heather’s birthday, and hope he might be available for a few hours. Time will tell. In time this feeling will fade, it always does even when I can’t make it go away by seeing him, but I do hope we can somehow find the time before he heads south again. I miss him!

The catcher has returned, a coincidence I’m sure

His reappearance comes while I am once again reading through Unconditional, making a few corrections and modifications to improve on the writing in certain areas, not to mention ensuring that my memory of the story is correct and all the details match with the summary I have now provided my agent. It has been almost a year since I last read through it, and apparently long enough that I had forgotten just how much of myself and my relationship with Jack really ended up in that book. The story is still pure fiction, the chain of events never happened in any form, but some things, the friendship between Kerry and Shane and a select few events from the timeline, are completely based in reality.

I spent a long time wishing I could feel comfortable telling Jack what was really going on in my life back in the day. Wishing first that I could find the right words to explain what I was trying to wrap my head around, and why I was so seriously contemplating the end. When I managed to figure out what was wrong, I simply wished for someone to talk to who would understand and not walk away. Given the environment I was living in, my rural conservative town not my family who was rather liberal even back then, I was convinced that such a person could not exist, not even Jack. Just more proof oh how little I really knew about the man who was both my mentor and best friend through much of adolescence.

As I reread Shane’s coming out story and the bond she formed with Kerry, it’s almost like taking a walk down Memory Lane. It makes me remember why I looked up to Jack, how safe I felt tucked under his wing all those years, and a little nostalgic for the good times. Yes, even for a messed up adolescent who balanced precariously on the edge of sanity while she battled her inner demons with the help of her support system, there were still good times. Most of those times involve simply hanging out with Jack after school, something I miss very much.

Life gets busy for everybody and far too often we let moments slip through our fingertips without realizing it. I am certainly guilty of that from time to time but as I read through Unconditional again, all those simple moments that were the foundation of my relationship with Jack come flooding back. Sometimes so rapidly that I find myself drifting off into daydreams and recreating the story to fit reality rather than my fictional version of our history. But isn’t that the mark of a truly great story, it’s ability to allow the reader to place themselves in one of the main roles and step into an alternate reality?

I wonder which character Jack puts himself in place of.

Actually, I don’t. I know the answer to that already and it depends greatly on the mood he is in when he picks it up off the table. We’ve talked about it a lot since his first read of it in 2007 and he is aware that much of it was intentionally written to explain my side of our relationship, something I never was very good with until recently. It was also a way to ensure that long after Jack isn’t around to hang out with, I will have something tangible to remember him with, and a way to share his legacy with a new generation who may never get to meet him let alone get to know him very well.

I suppose it’s for this reason that reading Unconditional again has brought back The Catcher and reminded me that it’s time to make time to spend with Jack before he heads south this December. One visit a year is hardly enough, but better than nothing!

A little uninspired ...

I’ve not been writing lately, have no drafts as promised for the new project. I’ve not been doing much of anything except work, school, and of course Facebook these days. Last night Jen and I put on the new roller blades and went for a slow roll around the block. It has been YEARS since either of us has been on a pair of skates, far more for her than I, yet we both made it safely from start to finish with not a single fall. Tonight perhaps we can do two laps, or maybe climb on the bike and go for a leisurely ride instead. That may help to clear my head, inspire me to write again, perhaps to get him out of it for a bit. Funny how that seems to help.

In the winter, I board, keeps me level headed, calm, and peaceful; except when it frustrates the hell out of me because I can’t managed to turn the right way and fall on my butt over and over on a run. In the Summer I use to sail and hope to resume that recreational activity once again very soon. Last year I found a new means of maintaining my sanity, riding my motorcycle. Something about the freedom, the wind in my face, the uninhibited connection with my surroundings rolling along the pavement on two wheels has the same effect on me as boarding, sailing, and hanging with Jack for any length of time.

Is it possible that spending time with someone can produce the same type of effects on your psyche as other “substances” and eventually lead to withdrawals when they are not around?

He’s there when I close my eyes again, across the room in his favorite chair staring out the window at the waves. Occasionally I hear a question, in his voice not my own, and I wonder if I should answer. The more time I spend away from him, the more frequently he wanders through my thoughts. The more I look for a reason to make time to spend with him, as if I really need one. I know exactly what will happen the moment I set foot out of the car, and that simply wanting to spend a little time hanging out is reason enough. Yet I can’t come up with what to say in an e-mail other than to ask if his weekend schedule has cleared any since I heard from him last in the first week of March. And so the withdrawals continue until I eventually get inspired enough to contact him again and request a little of his weekend time once again. In the mean time, the bikes, motor and peddle variety, will have to fill that growing void I feel inside.

A little reflection ... Amazing what you find when cleaning house!

I was doing a little thumb-drive-cleaning in preparation for both the new school quarter and the new writing project I am slowly beginning to piece together and ran across a blog post I started last fall. The time frame was end of October beginning of November 2008 and it appears it began as sort of a reaction to my last meeting with Jack. It was rough, a little random, and a tad disorganized but worth the effort to polish and post it. Read On!


I did it! For the first time in my life I managed to tell Jack exactly what was running through my head, explain a few things I felt he deserved to know, and be open about my feelings with little hesitation. It’s a conversation I first asked for way back in May, after another event in my life made me realize how quickly life can slip away from us, and later backed out of at least once. Our schedules didn’t mesh most of the summer and the few times I was in town he was not, or not available, so last weekend was my first chance to see him in almost five months. Our short hour and a half conversation covered more ground than I think the one last fall did when I hadn’t seen him in a little over 12 years. Both of us spent some time asking and answering questions and I walked away feeling a whole lot closer to where I want to be with our relationship. I’m still the quiet one, some things may never change, but at least I’m quiet now because I don’t have anything to say, not because I’m afraid to.

I learned a bit more about him, a little more insight into the way he works and why he values some things over others. I answered at least one of his unspoken questions, possibly more, but I know of one for certain. For the first time in almost twenty years, I sparked that connection with him again and this time I’m wise enough not to walk away from it.

You know, it’s funny how something that we think may be a deal breaker, or give another person the opportunity to think less of us, winds up being nothing at all. I spent the better part of the last year wondering how to tell Jack why I left without a word. I pondered the best moment, the right words to convey my thoughts both then and now, and tried to figure out exactly how much I needed to say without saying too much. I’m still not certain what I was afraid of, maybe bursting his bubble, maybe offending the guy, maybe just showing how much of an idiot I had been. In any case, it took months to get up the courage and collect those random thoughts and feelings into coherent sentences. Last weekend, I finally managed to do just that and was pleasantly surprised both at how easily the conversation happened, and Jack’s response to my news.

I spent almost ten years hating Jack, yes I did say hating, doing my best to erase him from my past, convinced that he thought less of me for something I cannot change, something that is as much an innate part of who I am as my eye color. I walked out on our friendship a long time ago believing that he was a bigot and a coward, something that was completely opposite of everything I knew of him previously. I took the word of someone I thought I loved, who had never even met him, over my own instincts. I listened to what he had to say through biased ears, was angry and hurt, and walked out of his life without so much as a “good bye” one cold January day. Years were spent forgetting him, not mentioning his name, and changing the subject when others who knew him would try to tell me they ran into or heard something about him. As far as I was concerned he may as well have been dead, I was already morning his loss and had been since shortly before graduating high school.

I know I did the right thing by leaving; I needed to go for my own sanity and, of course education. I had to get as far away from that town as quickly as possible before I lost it, and make no mistake about it, that is exactly where I was headed. Had I not been on my way to college in the fall after graduation, I doubt I would have even made it that far. It’s safe to say that I was closer to the edge my senior year of high school than I ever had been, and I was suffocating in that fishbowl of a town. Not even Jack could have stopped me from leaping off that cliff because nobody, especially Jack, knew I was standing with my toes over the edge contemplating the jump so seriously. I hid behind the smile, learned to act like nothing was bothering me, and evaded eye contact with the one person who might see through the facade if I let him get too close or ask too many questions. That was most of high school for me and by the time my world completely collapsed senior year, I had them all, my friends, my family, my support system, and the high school administration convinced that I was okay. Unlike my dark days in junior high, I didn’t want their help; that was the scariest part of all. I clung to my ticket out, my acceptance to Oakland University and the belief that life in the city had to be the answer to everything that was wrong in my life. I isolated myself from everyone who cared, even managed to push away those I never thought I could, and I buried my head deep under the lies and mind games of my girlfriend. That was why I stopped writing to Stacey and left Jack behind without a word.

After much contemplation and self reflection it dawned on me in the fall of 2007 that I had been running from Jack and his memory ever since. I was tired of hiding, changing the subject, or simply walking out of the room when his name or face came up, but I didn’t know how to fix it. I knew I had been wrong, to be honest I think I always knew I was wrong even at the time; I just didn’t want to face it. I had tried to get in touch with him a few times since leaving town over a decade ago, some short lived communication came of it once but eventually the e-mail stopped getting returned. I always figured I wasn’t important enough to make time for, which probably added to my anger and eventually I stopped trying all together. Now, twelve years after that fatal mistake of listening to my now ex-girlfriend rather than my own instincts, I knew it was all or nothing and somehow managed to pen a lengthy letter that got his attention at a point in his life when he too was willing to take a risk. His initial e-mail reply to that letter got me thinking, and I went digging through some old journals and letters that had not seen the light of day in at least six years. What I discovered was exactly what I had been searching for all along. In those written words, some from me, some from Jack, and some from others I considered important enough to write to, and about, was why Jack’s memory had never faded like the others from my past. And, it brought back the one question I had never been able to answer no matter how many times or how hard I tried. How do you explain to someone why they are important to you, or how much they have impacted you, your life’s direction, and your vision of the world as a whole? My answer, Unconditional!

Last fall when I began to remember why it was that I was mad at Jack to begin with, I quickly realized what an idiot I had been. I made the effort to find him again, right where I had left him so long ago, and through half a dozen e-mails and one lengthy initial letter, I managed to make a connection with him again. During the process, I began to work on Unconditional and somewhere in the middle of writing the second draft, it dawned on me that I was writing our story, our history and relationship. Unsure of how he would feel about that, I made a conscious effort to remove as many traces of Jack from the story as I could but still keep true to my view of our relationship. The initial version was decent enough, the writing was good and the story prompted enough questions that I began to take a second look at it in early 2008. That’s when it dawned on me that removing Jack from the character in the book was partly why the character came across as both larger than life and a little flat. I had a few new conversations with Jack, got his feedback on a slightly updated version of the story, asked the right questions, and began to edit with a new goal. I began the story from a position of retelling my connection to Jack and Stacey in the first place and knew very early on that it would be the perfect way to let both of them in on what was running through my head all those years ago and how I viewed our relationship. While working on the re-write it became clear that, while no less important to me in my youth, the story was less about my relationship with Stacey and far more about that unique connection I have with Jack. When I agreed to let that show through in the pages of the book, and got his permission though I didn’t really need it, it rapidly became less of a coming out story and more of a story about unconditional friendship. Make no mistake about it, Stacey is still there in the mentor character, her patience, her tenderness, her unwavering support, but the dynamic of the friendship between the two characters in Unconditional reflects more of Jack and that connection I could never explain any other way.

Jack has now read all but the final version of the story and I left that copy with him when I left last weekend. I was nervous to get his feedback on the first copy he read and even more nervous to hear it after the initial re-write where I put back in all the character traits I had taken out of the original version. I made it clear that one of the goals I had in writing the story was to shed a little light on where I was coming from and how I viewed him growing up. The final version pretty much lays it all out there and yet I am totally comfortable in sharing this knowledge with him now. I’m not certain what I was so afraid of last year and why I felt I couldn’t, or shouldn’t tell him why I left the way I did. I knew it would be impossible to live with if I left it unsaid for too long and missed my chance to at least explain. Jack always figured I left because I didn’t need him anymore, I knew that even back then, but I felt I owed him the truth and spent most of the summer wrestling with the words. When his fall schedule cleared I knew it was now or never, he heads south in December for a few months and I won’t see him again until probably March. I put it a little more eloquently but somehow I managed to tell Jack that I didn’t leave because I didn’t need him anymore, I left because I was an idiot.

I’ve always been a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, well maybe not always but certainly for the last decade of my life. I knew long ago that I had to get out of that stuffy little town and that in order to do that I would be leaving Jack behind. That may be part of why I heard his words the way I did, maybe I heard what I wanted to hear to make the separation a little easier on me. I had no idea what happened in his life for the next 13 years, and for the most part he still has no idea what really went on in my life during those years, but he knows the important things. He knows I survived them, have made a life for myself with a partner who loves me, and somehow arrived at the decision to contact him again. I filled in some of the blank areas, mostly by answering his questions and discovered that connection I always felt with him is still alive and strong as ever. I know that I’m taking a risk in resuming contact with him. I know that eventually I will once again lose him and that pain will be intense, just as it was in the past. I can only hope that something good will come of that loss, some lesson will be learned, or some new connection will be made that makes it all worth while. I know that had I not experienced it the first time around, I may never have fully appreciated his influence or fully understood all the areas of my life he impacted. And, it’s a safe bet that Unconditional would never have been written.

What does the word family mean to you?

Most people define family as those in their biological and/or legal family unit, but I disagree. Obviously the traditional definition of family fits me from an outsider’s perspective. I have two parents who are both my biological and legal mother and father. I have two siblings with no half or steps thrown in. Simple. Unfortunately, though they make up my legal and biological family, I have always felt out of place with them, like maybe I was, or should have been adopted. Other than biology I have almost nothing in common with most of them and when people who know me meet them, they ask if I’m sure I wasn’t adopted. Not fitting into my traditional family was a source of much frustration and a few episodes of depression in my youth but eventually I began to discover that family has little to do with biology or laws.

I remember many days and nights as a kid spent wishing I had a different family, one in which I at least felt a part of. Outside of biology I don’t’ have much in common with most of my family members and as a result longed for that missing connection our families are suppose to provide us. Sure I knew they loved me, that was never a question, but I wasn’t certain they liked me and I knew that had we not been forced to be related most of them wouldn’t have chosen to speak to me at all let alone live in the same house. It sounds harsh I understand, but it is a fact. My eldest sibling and mother are two of a kind in more ways than they would either care to admit. The middle child was always the peace-keeper who got along with just about anyone. And then there was me, the quiet reflective one in the corner who watched their dysfunctional way of living in utter amazement and longed for that missing connection.

To most people I know, their family is their refuge, their support, and the one group of people they know they can count on to be there no matter what. Knowing the group of people I was living with as a child met few if any of those qualifications, without even realizing it I began to search for my own version of family. Over the years I adopted friends’ families for short periods of time and managed to make friendships with others whose view of the world was much closer to my own. By the time I hit high school I had created my own support structure, my own refuge of people who I knew would always be there for me no matter what, my own family. To this day, those select two or three people I considered family in high school are still around and still members of what I define as my family. I’ve added to the list after meeting my partner Jen and having such an active role in raising her nephew Tristan. I suspect in time I will also add Tristan’s new brother Scott to that list, but for now he remains in that special category of “extended family” along side the rest of Jen’s relatives.

I guess I’m lucky in that I have my original family, those I am legally and biologically related to, and I have the family I have chosen, all who love and support me in their own way. There are those who have no family, no parents or siblings to call their own, no one there to stand up for them or catch them when they fall. I wonder if they were wise enough to expand their definition of family if they couldn’t find a family of their own, much like I did.

I didn't know how important his approval was . . . until now.

You know, it’s absolutely amazing to me how much time we spend trying to make others proud of us in our lives without even realizing it. As children we seek our parents’ approval almost daily in the early years, a little less throughout adolescence, and again more frequently as we enter post high school life and begin to make our own way in the world. For some, we realize how important our parents’ approval is to us, but for most it’s something we give little thought to when making life changing decisions. We think we are making decisions based on what we want to do, or what we think is best for us. But in reality, whether we know it or not, most of us are actually making decisions that we hope will make our parents proud. Their approval means more than we care to admit most of the time and for some of us, it means more than we ever thought was possible.

For me, it was not so much my parents I was trying to make proud of my actions and decisions in junior high and high school, and I’ve only recently discovered that while I thought I had outgrown that stage of my life, I have been seeking his approval ever since. When I was 12 I met someone who would become my mentor and eventually one of my best friends growing up. He was a teacher named Jack who had an uncommon talent at reading moods in adolescent youths and determining which of them required his assistance with ‘outside issues.’ As a somewhat troubled adolescent who went through many periods of depression and managed to somehow make it through each of them, Jack was my lifeline more than once. I clung to his hope for a better tomorrow, his encouraging words, and his smile on my darkest days. On the better ones, I simply enjoyed being in his presence, listening to whatever he wanted to talk about, and occasionally sharing a laugh or two. I knew back then that I was making decisions that I thought would make him proud, it was part of what got me through those turbulent times, but I never realized that it was something that would stick with me for the remainder of my life.

Last fall I began a journey, a new writing project based on an idea I had many years ago and a story I use to tell myself at night to help me fall asleep. It took place in my home town and was about a girl who felt lost, alone, and when she thought she had nowhere left to go for safety, she managed to end up on the doorstep of a friends house who gladly gave her a place to stay for a while. That lost girl was me, and the friend was, of course, my mentor Jack, most of the time anyway as a few other adults in my life did fill that role on occasion. It was partly based on my real fear that coming out to my parents would result in them kicking me out of their house, but it quickly became a simple metaphor for the way I was feeling most of my life in that little town; lost, alone, a misfit who belonged nowhere and simply longed for someplace to fit in and feel safe, and being in the presence of Jack always made me feel safe.

As I began typing the story and developing it into what has now become my first almost published book (deal in the works, book release to be determined), I thought I was simply retelling that story and developing it into a full length novel. However, as I continued to refine the story and characters in it, I began to notice a trend forming in those pages of text. Eventually, it dawned on me that what I was really doing was creating an open letter to Jack explaining to him things I had been keeping locked inside my own head since my junior high and high school days. The fictional characters in the book began to take on personality traits of both myself, as the scared girl, and Jack, as her mentor and friend. By the time I was finished with the third draft I had trouble separating the characters in the book from their real life inspirations and, once I accepted that it was something I needed to keep in tact to make the story more powerful, I began to openly use the chapters in the book as a means of conveying my true thoughts and feelings about my past life in that small town and my relationship with Jack, both past and present. It became a means to show Jack how I viewed our friendship both then and now and how important he was to me growing up. It was something I always wished I could put into words and make him understand, yet every time I tried I failed. Through the pages of this book, I found my words and finally managed to convey that message loud and clear.

Tonight, while performing my routine evening check of e-mail, I learned just how proud of me Jack is, and always has been. Tonight I realized that my goal of showing him my view of the world through my writing was a success, and I was unprepared for the flood of emotions that came with reading that e-mail. Before I made it to the end I was in tears, yet I was not sad. I am still at a loss for words to describe the feeling; maybe it falls into that rare category of things that just can’t be captured with words no matter how hard we try. I realized tonight that one of my goals in life as a whole has been to make my parents proud, which I know I have done many times over, but also to make Jack, my mentor and friend proud of me. And tonight, in reading his response to the finished version of this story, I know that I have done exactly that. Project Complete!

I still have a little work to do on this project before I can put it to bed completely, but I now know that it has served its purpose in my life. It has allowed me to heal some old wounds, realize fully what an impact Jack had on me, and muster the courage to walk back into his life. For me, though the success of the book in the mass market is yet to be seen, it has been a success. It is my first completed novel, it is a gift to those who made it possible, and it is a glimpse at the world through my eyes both growing up and present day.

The Catcher exits Stage Left!

You know that place between dreams and reality, the one we all slip through when drifting off to sleep or waking slowly in the morning? It's the place where you can still remember your dreams yet hear the world around you and begin to comprehend that morning has come. That place you visit each night where dreams begin and the days events end.

That is where I can always go to spend time with him. To see his face in vivid detail. To hear each enunciated syllable of his words. To be in his presence once again.

He has been there every morning and night for the past few weeks without fail. But today, today was different. Today he said goodbye as I awoke to the morning alarm. I heard it in my head as if he were standing right there in front of me. Today as I slammed my hand down upon the snooze button for the umpteenth time and closed my eyes for another 6 minuted of sleep, he told me "good-bye" first in a whisper, then aloud to be sure I had heard. And tonight, when I rested my head on the pillow and prepared to drift off to sleep, he was not there. The beach, the bench, the living room, the boat, all empty except for me. Where has he gone? Will he return? I once thought it a burden to see him there but I miss my friend. Is it a sign of something to come?

------------------------------
Standing on the cliff
Wind rustling the leaves over my head
Teetering on the edge
Only darkness looms at my feet
No one there to hold me
No one there to keep me from falling
Where has the catcher gone today?
Who'll keep the children from falling off the edge?

so much to do, so little time to think

School has been keeping me busy lately, with the first Java class winding down to it's final week soon and projects to complete in order to make the grade. Work has been busier than I have been use to with little time to work on much of anything personal except at lunch and my evenings have been spent finishing homework that normally would be done at work. The newB is learning, and has figured out how to stay out of my office for most of the day, unless he has a question which is understandable ... has resulted in much lower stress levels for me during the day.

The weekend was spent north ... it went ... it was loud ... Genna was a blast most of the weekend and even Maddalynn had her moments. Poor Margurite is cutting teeth and has a double ear infection so not much sleep was to be had Saturday night though she was content most of the day time hours and is just about old enough to actually play with. She's just under 8 months old so though she can sit up on her own she tends to lean over in one direction or another and winds up falling down. By Thanksgiving she should be ready.

The bike is parked for the winter, except taking care of the fuel tank since I was an idiot and left the ignition key at home and couldn't run the lines dry or open the gas cap. The seat is off, it's parked out of the way, and the gear is packed away for the most part. Even my boots went north to spend the winter with my jacket and helmet, don't have much call for them around here with nothing to ride.

The highlight of the weekend ... about an hour and a half Monday morning spent with Jack. I'm still digesting that conversation and will talk about it eventually ... for now I am just content knowing I managed to talk to him openly for the first time in my life. It took most of the summer to get to the point where I could speak what has been running through my head, but I did it and I think we both have a little better understanding of where we're each coming from. And, for the first time in my life, if I never got the chance to talk to him again, I could be at peace with that.

It's late, I need sleep, I'm off to bed before today turns into tomorrow.

A little proof that I am still breathing

All right, it’s been over a week and it’s time to start writing again. The economy is still tanking on a week-by-week basis and my investment account is shrinking almost daily. The election ads are still running though the McCain camp wants the world to believe they have abandoned Michigan as a lost cause. Seems like yet another political chess move that backfired on the republicans because for every “red” ad there is a “blue” one that both precedes and follows it in all forms of media with most of them funded by non-partisan groups like the UAW.


Work is, well, work. We have finally hired a new PC Technician to fill in the huge gaps created close to three years ago when our company made major staffing reductions. Woo hoo! Finally, somebody else can start answering the “I forgot my password” calls while I concentrate on larger projects that have been collecting dust for the past three years. Unfortunately, this also means that we have to train the newB, he’s right out of college and has little to no “real world” experience so this will take a while. I remember being young and green, though I began working in the field while still in college, and I’m trying to give the kid the same kind of chance I had when I was in his shoes. I was fortunate enough to have a boss that trusted me, was patient with me, and encouraged me to step outside of my shell and do things I was totally uncomfortable with almost daily. He challenged me to do phone support within weeks of joining the company and against my better judgment, I agreed to give it a shot. Anyone who knew me right out of high school knows how shy I was back then but somehow the security of not being face to face with the person allowed me to excel at my new duties and eventually I moved into a role of face-to-face support. Almost fifteen years later and I now find myself in the position to groom a new generation of tech support and will gladly hand over the reigns of day-to-day user support as soon as the newB is ready to take them.

The book, well it’s finished and awaiting a decision on who should publish it for the masses. I have three offers on the table from three different subsidy publishers at the moment. I am not certain subsidy is the way to go, so they sit there while I consider other options. I like the idea of 50% royalties on every sale, but that will only help recoup the initial out of pocket expense of $500-$600 if the book actually sells. As an unknown author, there are no guarantees and I would be relying heavily on the publisher’s marketing machine to get it out there for me. Since I can’t seem to find much on either of the companies out there, good or bad, I am taking my time in making this decision. In the mean time, I have updated the version available through the lulu.com storefront with the new chapters, tweaks to existing ones, and the current cover. I hope to see Jack next weekend and drop of his copy, Stacey is next on my list, and by Christmas it should be in the hands of all those I have promised final versions to.

Speaking of next weekend, the bike, sadly, has gone north for the winter and I will be pulling it out of the trailer and parking it in the back of the barn at Mom and Dad’s next weekend. I am hopeful that the weather will hold out for me at least one day and I can take a final ride, burn a little more gas out of the half-full tank, and clean the remainder of thousands of dead insects from the chrome before parking it for the next five months. It will signal my official end of summer and may induce a state of depression for a few days, but have no fear, I’ll just write to make it all go away instead of climbing on my bike and letting my sadness blow in the wind. I have a new story to tell, one that will require my attention in the coming months while I wait for spring to arrive and can once again use my motorcycle as therapy. Maybe by then I’ll have a sailboat to use instead and the motorcycle will just be a fun form of transportation with excellent gas mileage.

It is slightly past mid-October, the holidays are looming in the near future, and the leaves are finally falling from the trees everywhere I look. School is puttering along nicely and except for this weeks assignments has come and gone without much real head scratching on my part. Given a little time at home over the next two days I should manage this weeks assignment as well and can concentrate on finishing up this final project once and for all. Then it’s on to the next six weeks of Java where we will complete the book and I may need to spend more time writing code than I currently do. I have a backup plan, Eric has taken Java and should be able to assist if I get in a bind. I haven’t had to call yet, but he’s been warned. Provided Jen cooks dinner he says he’s willing to do a little java tutoring if need be.

And now you are up to speed


Three strikes and we’re on to try number four in a few weeks

I'm outgoing?

Since the economy and politics are the talk of the office these days, and to be honest I am just as guilty as the next person in my vocal disdain about both subjects, much time is spent discussing personal things in a work environment lately. Since its work I try to stay out of the political discussions, it leads down a dangerous path where people may ask me why I am not voting for McCain. Somehow, I think that my answer of “Because Palin scares the shit out of me” seems like it may open up the discussion to subjects that are better left alone in a work environment. Anyway, a few days ago, it was an economy discussion in the halls of Customer Service and while I was waiting for a piece of software to install, I joined in on the discussion. As my loyal readers already know I have been making light of the situation on here with some occasional photos and short blurbs about how “well” the economy is doing and in that conversation I described my latest blog posting. One of the people wanted to see the photo and I e-mailed the link to the post when I returned to my desk. This was the first time anyone from the office had seen my blog, which links to my MySpace.com profile, and in true Internet Surfer style, she followed the link. I later received an e-mail that said, “I found your site very interesting … a few things I didn’t know about you.” Obviously, that prompted a quick e-mail discussion and an eventual face-to-face conversation.

First, I am out at work and most people, including this co-worker are not only aware that my partner’s name is Jen but also have no problem with it. I knew my sexuality had nothing to do with what she “learned” about me on my blog and myspace.com profile, but I had no idea what it was that she did learn. When we finally managed to get a few minutes without lots of ears listening, I asked and was surprised by her answer. She was shocked that I battled depression or was ever suicidal at all in my life. She told me “You’re so outgoing. I just never would have thought that you had depression issues, ever.”

After I managed to wipe the shock of my face and get the brain spinning again, I explained that I grew up in a small town, as in population less than 1,000, and stuck out like a sore thumb starting in junior high. I didn’t want to go into all the other issues but she seemed to understand why growing up gay in that type of environment might lead someone down the depression highway. Again, we were at work and there were ears listening and mouths ready to spew gossip to others around the office so the subject was kept general and not much detail was given.

It’s been two days since our conversation and I’m just now beginning to understand how much I have changed since high school. When I left that little hole-in-the-map town I was hurt and angry. I had spent the past seven years not fitting in, hiding who I was, trying to fly under the radar, and thinking of ways to end my life. I hated waking up every morning to realize I was still faced with an existence I felt I couldn’t control and another day spent keeping my mouth shut to avoid confrontation. I had few friends and was distancing myself from the ones I knew I would have a hard time leaving behind when I skipped town after graduation never looking back. I was quiet but stood my ground when challenged. I was outspoken when I felt I needed to stand up for my rights, and myself but for the most part I simply sat on the sidelines of life and waited for the day when I could escape into the real world.

It’s been a little over thirteen years since I moved out of Small-town-America and eleven of that has been spent working in Corporate America supporting technology. I have worked with people from all walks of life, backgrounds, political views, religions, and even nationalities. I am probably the most tolerant and easygoing person when it comes to others flaws, and I blend into the group well no matter who it consists of. It’s a gift I suppose, but it has a lot to do with my past life spent blending into the background whenever possible and not making waves unless it was important. Don’t get me wrong, I am not now nor was I ever a push over. Challenge something I believe strongly in and you will run into a brick wall. Thankfully, this is not something I deal with much in my working environment. Part of the reason I have gone this far in my career in a male dominated industry, is my ability to both stand my ground, and to pick my battles well. I learned to let certain things slide, move on with the job, and tackle the major issues with force. I learned to be outspoken when it was required, and to be calm under pressure. However, my largest asset is the ability to talk to just about anyone, about almost anything, get the point across in a non threatening way (unless that is required), and walk away with the issue resolved and in most cases the user not feeling like they just got raked over the coals for messing something up. I guess in some people’s view, that makes me outgoing, and maybe they’re right.

I’ve spent a little time thinking about it over the last few days and can see a pattern of events, things I have done recently that I never would have had the guts to do thirteen years ago. I am still shy, still keep things to myself upon a first meeting, but I’ve learned to let that guard down more than I ever have in the past. I have used writing to tell people things I never thought I could and in at least one case am ready to say some of it face-to-face. That’s not going to be easy, in fact, it will be a first if I can make it through the conversation and actually tell him everything that has been bouncing around in my head for the last year, but I am ready. He’s the one person I have never felt comfortable opening up to; I always made him drag it out of me, and in some respects that hasn’t changed between us yet. I’m hoping it will after our conversation because there will be nothing left unsaid, no secrets to hide, no tap dancing around subjects with him.

While I was shocked to hear it come from someone else, I have NEVER thought of myself as outgoing, with a little reflection on the direction my life has taken and how I landed here, I guess I would have to agree, somewhat. Does this mean I’m forever cured?

Life update ...

Okay enough about the economy already, it’s all doom and gloom anyway. Classes have resumed and those who told me suffering through two sessions of C++ would one day benefit me, well they were right. I guess there’s a first for everything. I’m taking Java I currently and so far I have to say that it’s pretty simple. I stress the SO FAR part of that statement mind you because I see what is around the corner and cannot guarantee it will remain simple for long. The prof is easy to work with and so far has not docked me any points, yes that means as of the end of week one I currently have a 4.0 in a programming class, but there is still two assignments he hasn’t graded yet so it may not hold up past Monday. The assignments have been easy so far because the concepts are the same in Java as they were in Visual Basic and C++, just a little different syntax. Quite honestly I would have to also agree that Java is easier to learn because the methods, classes, and operators (sorry had to get technical for a sec) are named logically and simply by looking at the command System.out.println(“Hello”); I can figure out that the result should be the word Hello printed to the screen, C++ is no where near that obvious.

Okay done with the technical stuff … on to other things in life

Summer has faded into Fall and wish as I might it looks like Winter will be here sooner than I am prepared for. I have permission from Mom and Dad to store the bike in the barn for the winter and I will be taking it up there the end of October … but I have to ride it up there. It just might be my first ride with long underwear and snow pants! Jen and I are suppose to go on a ride with Dykes on Bikes on Oct 11 but if it’s cold I think we may just skip that little party, or show up in the heated Mazda. I’m not ready to be cold and miserable for six months yet damn it. Summer was cold and rainy most of the time, fall just took another 20 degrees of the temps and in a very short time, I will be looking at leafless trees and mud everywhere. If the snow would just come and stay till March I would be okay, it’s just that brown grass, brown trees, brown mud part of winter that I can’t stand.

No word from Jack yet, he’s either not back yet, on another Eagle Village trip, or having more difficulty with is e-mail application. Some people just aren’t cut out for technology I suppose.

Day 1, Try 3

One down ...

So the first week’s assignments are completed and turned in for grading … now we wait to see if the Prof is going to be picky or simply give credit for completing them on time and getting correct output of the program. I have had both types of Profs over the last two years and to be honest, I really prefer the ones who give credit for making the application work though it may not be perfect or done the same way they would have coded it. The ones who are so stuck in their own way of writing code should be doing just that, writing code not teaching others how to do it.

My weekend came … and went … and so did summer. It is now gloomy, cold, and rainy outside and will be for the remainder of the week. It looks like we may see the sun again next Friday but only for part of the day and with an anticipated high in the 60’s. It looks like it may be time to pack up the gear and park the bike for the winter. I think Jen and I are headed to Mom and Dad’s the weekend of 10/25 and since we’ll be going up on a Saturday rather than Friday night it will be the perfect time to ride the bike up and park it for the winter, right after I ask if I can store it there for a few months. Not certain Mom will be okay with it but since the mess in the garage and barn is Dad’s, I’ll ask him instead. If nothing else, there is a mostly empty garage in Kalkaska that it could be stored in provided we know where all the keys are and I can get up there to check on it occasionally over the winter. It may delay getting it out of storage in the spring since it sits on a sand road that often is a mess during the summer and is horrific in the spring, but since I’ll be riding it home rather than putting it on a trailer (at least that is the plan at this point) I might be waiting ‘till May to get it out of storage anyway. The road is usually passable by late April, unless it rains heavy for a few days.

I suspect Jack is home from Main by now though I haven’t heard back from my last e-mail … so in true Shane style I’ll be sending him another one today just to see. I’m hoping that my next trip north will also include a little time with him, and the opportunity to deliver the last copy of Unconditional, unless some publisher does decide to print it for the masses at least. It has been tweaked, added to, modified, and tweaked again over the last few months and I am finally happy with it. The latest round of changes finally sealed the deal and made me decide to keep the chapters that fill in the missing info a few readers have asked about, and the ending was modified slightly to make it fit the additions. I like it for a change, I actually think it’s a good book and coming from me that says a lot. I even like the close parallels between Kerry and Jack now, thought I tried so hard to make them go away when initially writing the story it just seems to work better when I modified the character of Kerry to make it more real life. Inevitably, it ended up being Jack with a little touch of Stacey in there once in a while.

On to the next project I suppose … but should it be developing the new story that will be based on The Dream, or should I start to work with Hide-and-go-Seek?