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!
Showing posts with label Unconditional. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unconditional. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, October 08, 2009
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!
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!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
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!
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!
Friday, August 21, 2009
The dreaded Author Bio
How exactly does one write their short bio to be included with all submissions of their manuscript? Obviously I could put down all the stats, birth date and place, hometown, family info, even educational and career info ... but that wold be much more like a resume than a short author bio. So I am left searching Google again for examples of what should be in one of these things and, have managed to piece together this little gem. The more I read it, the more I like it. But will it help sell my work to a publisher?
Author BIO
Shannon DuBey was born in a rural northern Michigan town and now lives in Flint, MI with her partner of nearly 15 years. She has spent most of her life writing poetry and short stories for personal use while pursuing an education and career in the computer industry. She has now developed some of those short stories into full length novels with a message. Her work is written with a primary audience of young adults in mind, but she masterfully breaks through those boundaries to produce a compelling story that will appeal to readers of all age groups and backgrounds.
Author BIO
Shannon DuBey was born in a rural northern Michigan town and now lives in Flint, MI with her partner of nearly 15 years. She has spent most of her life writing poetry and short stories for personal use while pursuing an education and career in the computer industry. She has now developed some of those short stories into full length novels with a message. Her work is written with a primary audience of young adults in mind, but she masterfully breaks through those boundaries to produce a compelling story that will appeal to readers of all age groups and backgrounds.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Well at least I still have a word processor
So I have a little time on my hands again, we’ll get to why later, and decided to update this thing for a little change. This makes twice in a week … see I am improving!
School is finally nearing the end for this year, I have a grand total of exactly 8 days left of these two pain in the a$$ classes and then I can officially begin summer vacation. The work load has been way more than I wanted to do for this session, but still manageable. Thankfully I excel at writing, even in the college paper and essay realm, and the only issues I ran into were lack of interest in the subject, Geography, and a professor who is IMPOSSIBLE to pleas in Cultural Diversity. I have yet to get full credit on one single assignment outside of weekly participation and one of my six weekly quizzes. That was pure luck since it’s a 10 question quiz with exactly 15 minutes to complete, I simply managed to beat the 25% odds on every question and guess correctly the few I didn’t honestly have an answer for. I always was good at pulling a good test score even when I hadn’t read a single word of the assignment for the week, nice to know I can still pull that off once in a while.
The tail bone is healing, slowly, but I managed a short ride on the motorcycle over the weekend. Unfortunately, the cruiser style of bike I have puts a tone of pressure on the tail bone area when you ride and, while it use to be comfortable, with a fractured tail bone it hurts just to sit on the darn thing. Add in the vibration of the engine and road surface and I was ready to get off after just a few miles in the saddle. It’s less painful today than is was over the weekend and hopefully I will be able to ride again soon. If not, I did a little research for a seat cover that will resolve this issue for me and just might have to buy an “old man seat cover” for the saddle until this heals fully. In any case, I will be riding again by May 16, though not participating in the River Ride with the crew that day; 200 miles just won’t happen that soon for my tail bone.
I still haven’t written another word on my next project, nor have I done a dang thing about getting another agent for Unconditional. I contacted someone who may act as an editor for me, but she is extremely busy and nothing has been finalized as of yet. I am tempted to just self publish the damn thing with lulu.com, buy the ISBN number, stick with on demand printing, post it on eBay and Amazon.com, and be done with it. BUT, would it really sell on Amazon.com with a listing of thousands of books on there? My gut tells me know and that I should stick to hitting the virtual pavement and dig up an agent. For the record, so do those that are in the business and have read it. They claim I just haven’t hit the right agent’s inbox yet. Well DUH! If I had hit the right inbox by now I would have a signed agent contract and they would be working on a publishing deal for me. Instead, at least I have written it and those who it was really written for have read and enjoyed it. That counts for something I suppose
It’s up, it’s down, it’s UP …. No wait, it’s down again!
That statement was heard frequently at work today as the Office Internet connection bounced from functional to offline for the better part of the day. Thankfully, our crack team of communication experts, okay I can’t even type that with out chuckling, was on hand to resolve the issue in no time flat, or uphill, or downhill, or whatever elevation change you can think to plug in here. Seriously, the internet bounced between usable and dead for a little over two hours today, spending most of that time period in the dead column, and people noticed. At the same time it was reported that our firewall locked up cold and had taken out three of the five facilities outside our corporate office that have a constant live connection to our building. Coincidence that the internet went down over the same interval? Last I knew, the connections to the facilities were restored, the firewall was still running, and our Internet connections was flaky at best … Thankfully its up frequently enough that I managed to get a little work done thins afternoon, and then it dies again and I had to start over. Got to love our dependence on technology and the Internet.
School is finally nearing the end for this year, I have a grand total of exactly 8 days left of these two pain in the a$$ classes and then I can officially begin summer vacation. The work load has been way more than I wanted to do for this session, but still manageable. Thankfully I excel at writing, even in the college paper and essay realm, and the only issues I ran into were lack of interest in the subject, Geography, and a professor who is IMPOSSIBLE to pleas in Cultural Diversity. I have yet to get full credit on one single assignment outside of weekly participation and one of my six weekly quizzes. That was pure luck since it’s a 10 question quiz with exactly 15 minutes to complete, I simply managed to beat the 25% odds on every question and guess correctly the few I didn’t honestly have an answer for. I always was good at pulling a good test score even when I hadn’t read a single word of the assignment for the week, nice to know I can still pull that off once in a while.
The tail bone is healing, slowly, but I managed a short ride on the motorcycle over the weekend. Unfortunately, the cruiser style of bike I have puts a tone of pressure on the tail bone area when you ride and, while it use to be comfortable, with a fractured tail bone it hurts just to sit on the darn thing. Add in the vibration of the engine and road surface and I was ready to get off after just a few miles in the saddle. It’s less painful today than is was over the weekend and hopefully I will be able to ride again soon. If not, I did a little research for a seat cover that will resolve this issue for me and just might have to buy an “old man seat cover” for the saddle until this heals fully. In any case, I will be riding again by May 16, though not participating in the River Ride with the crew that day; 200 miles just won’t happen that soon for my tail bone.
I still haven’t written another word on my next project, nor have I done a dang thing about getting another agent for Unconditional. I contacted someone who may act as an editor for me, but she is extremely busy and nothing has been finalized as of yet. I am tempted to just self publish the damn thing with lulu.com, buy the ISBN number, stick with on demand printing, post it on eBay and Amazon.com, and be done with it. BUT, would it really sell on Amazon.com with a listing of thousands of books on there? My gut tells me know and that I should stick to hitting the virtual pavement and dig up an agent. For the record, so do those that are in the business and have read it. They claim I just haven’t hit the right agent’s inbox yet. Well DUH! If I had hit the right inbox by now I would have a signed agent contract and they would be working on a publishing deal for me. Instead, at least I have written it and those who it was really written for have read and enjoyed it. That counts for something I suppose
It’s up, it’s down, it’s UP …. No wait, it’s down again!
That statement was heard frequently at work today as the Office Internet connection bounced from functional to offline for the better part of the day. Thankfully, our crack team of communication experts, okay I can’t even type that with out chuckling, was on hand to resolve the issue in no time flat, or uphill, or downhill, or whatever elevation change you can think to plug in here. Seriously, the internet bounced between usable and dead for a little over two hours today, spending most of that time period in the dead column, and people noticed. At the same time it was reported that our firewall locked up cold and had taken out three of the five facilities outside our corporate office that have a constant live connection to our building. Coincidence that the internet went down over the same interval? Last I knew, the connections to the facilities were restored, the firewall was still running, and our Internet connections was flaky at best … Thankfully its up frequently enough that I managed to get a little work done thins afternoon, and then it dies again and I had to start over. Got to love our dependence on technology and the Internet.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Catching Up ...
The “newness” of Facebook has worn off after roughly a month of using it almost daily. Yet, I still log in almost daily and either play a game or two or at the very least change my status message. I’m not on it three and four times a day like I was in the beginning, but it has remained a part of my daily routine, and this blog has suffered for it. I once used this blog to keep my friends informed about happenings in my daily life, and occasionally to vent frustrations. Over the last month that I have been an active Facebook member, I think I have updated the blog three times, but that may be over estimating it. I suppose it’s time to break that cycle and get back to journaling on here again.
School is, well going. I am 4 painful weeks into my final six weeks of classes before a much needed summer break. May 14 I will once again be free to spend free time writing things I care about and want to see completed rather than one essay after another form my painful Cultural Diversity class. The class title alone evokes instant headache pains, and did long before I knew what I was in for. I am an open minded culturally aware person, the exact opposite of who this class was designed for eons ago. I was not looking forward to taking it and decided to just get it out of the way now and be done with it, mistake number one. I am also taking a World Geography class, figured it would go well with a cultural class, mistake number two. These two classes combined mean that I am writing one to two essay papers a day, every day. All of them have a minimum word count in the 200-300 range and some come with a maximum word count of 500. Failure to keep it in the word count range means point reductions in Geography and 0 points in Cultural Diversity. As much as I hated my C++ and Java programming classes, I would gladly take them again if it meant I wouldn’t have had to endure this semester with these two classes. The saddest part is that I have yet to learn something I didn’t already know in EITHER class. I have been reminded of things I learned in high school, but nothing I didn’t already know about. There are still two weeks left, maybe I can get something out of these two classes other than a mediocre grade yet, but I won’t hold my breath.
Work, it’s work. Same stuff, different day and week. Disaster Recovery testing went, and as it typical not all of it worked as planned, but within 24 hours of the building being totally destroyed we know we can have the core business back online and process orders again. Whether we could write checks, or look up sales data historically is another story, but we could process payroll so long as you have direct deposit, which most of us do, so I’m okay with that. NooB is improving, or my tolerance for his mistakes is growing. One of the two, you make the call which it is. The bottom line about work, I still have a job. That is something more than many of my friends and Jen effective last Friday.
That’s right, Jen lost her job Friday. Thank you President Obama for extending those UE benefits out to 79 weeks, and for the State of Michigan who increased the UE benefit maximum. Our checking account will appreciate it I’m sure. Now if only I could add her to my insurance so we didn’t’ have to pay the COBRA on hers … that would make this just about perfect timing. We knew it was coming, just didn’t expect it so soon, nor did we expect it to happen the way it did. I’m actually happy she’s not working there any more, she was miserable. I would rather have to foot the full bill for her insurance than see her so miserable Sunday through Friday and occasionally on Saturday too. She has been looking to get out of there for a while and has a couple of leads on a new job, but if nothing else, 79 weeks of UE will allow her to spend some time with Mom and get us back into the trading game with the little bit of capitol we have managed to save over the last year.
That covers the major stuff, nothing has happened with Unconditional, I haven’t done much work on the new project yet, and I’ve slacked off on searching for an agent to represent Unconditional. School got in the way. I have my motorcycle from Mom and Dad’s, but with a busted tail bone I can’t ride it. Maybe by this weekend I can stand a short ride with Jen. I reconnected with some old friends, thanks to Facebook, and haven’t found the time to even send Jack an e-mail let alone hang out with him. Vermont vacation has been canceled for this summer and instead we are taking a long weekend to Tennessee over Memorial Day weekend and a 7 night camping trip to the U.P. in August. So far we think Tahquemenon Falls State Park … but no reservations have been made yet.
School is, well going. I am 4 painful weeks into my final six weeks of classes before a much needed summer break. May 14 I will once again be free to spend free time writing things I care about and want to see completed rather than one essay after another form my painful Cultural Diversity class. The class title alone evokes instant headache pains, and did long before I knew what I was in for. I am an open minded culturally aware person, the exact opposite of who this class was designed for eons ago. I was not looking forward to taking it and decided to just get it out of the way now and be done with it, mistake number one. I am also taking a World Geography class, figured it would go well with a cultural class, mistake number two. These two classes combined mean that I am writing one to two essay papers a day, every day. All of them have a minimum word count in the 200-300 range and some come with a maximum word count of 500. Failure to keep it in the word count range means point reductions in Geography and 0 points in Cultural Diversity. As much as I hated my C++ and Java programming classes, I would gladly take them again if it meant I wouldn’t have had to endure this semester with these two classes. The saddest part is that I have yet to learn something I didn’t already know in EITHER class. I have been reminded of things I learned in high school, but nothing I didn’t already know about. There are still two weeks left, maybe I can get something out of these two classes other than a mediocre grade yet, but I won’t hold my breath.
Work, it’s work. Same stuff, different day and week. Disaster Recovery testing went, and as it typical not all of it worked as planned, but within 24 hours of the building being totally destroyed we know we can have the core business back online and process orders again. Whether we could write checks, or look up sales data historically is another story, but we could process payroll so long as you have direct deposit, which most of us do, so I’m okay with that. NooB is improving, or my tolerance for his mistakes is growing. One of the two, you make the call which it is. The bottom line about work, I still have a job. That is something more than many of my friends and Jen effective last Friday.
That’s right, Jen lost her job Friday. Thank you President Obama for extending those UE benefits out to 79 weeks, and for the State of Michigan who increased the UE benefit maximum. Our checking account will appreciate it I’m sure. Now if only I could add her to my insurance so we didn’t’ have to pay the COBRA on hers … that would make this just about perfect timing. We knew it was coming, just didn’t expect it so soon, nor did we expect it to happen the way it did. I’m actually happy she’s not working there any more, she was miserable. I would rather have to foot the full bill for her insurance than see her so miserable Sunday through Friday and occasionally on Saturday too. She has been looking to get out of there for a while and has a couple of leads on a new job, but if nothing else, 79 weeks of UE will allow her to spend some time with Mom and get us back into the trading game with the little bit of capitol we have managed to save over the last year.
That covers the major stuff, nothing has happened with Unconditional, I haven’t done much work on the new project yet, and I’ve slacked off on searching for an agent to represent Unconditional. School got in the way. I have my motorcycle from Mom and Dad’s, but with a busted tail bone I can’t ride it. Maybe by this weekend I can stand a short ride with Jen. I reconnected with some old friends, thanks to Facebook, and haven’t found the time to even send Jack an e-mail let alone hang out with him. Vermont vacation has been canceled for this summer and instead we are taking a long weekend to Tennessee over Memorial Day weekend and a 7 night camping trip to the U.P. in August. So far we think Tahquemenon Falls State Park … but no reservations have been made yet.
Friday, January 09, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, December 08, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, December 05, 2008
The Editors Review is In!
So I've found a publisher (an actual publisher not a vanity press) for Unconditional ... below is a piece of the review from their senior editor. I know many of you have read it's various versions and all have told me it's good, some numerous times, but I figured I would share the reaction I got from a professional publishing editor.
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THE OPENING PARAGRAPH:
Very powerful and chilling opening. Opening with a pistol in the protagonist's hand says so much. The reflection of the moon on the gun is vivid. Good opening!
THE TITLE:
Concise and thought provoking. It says so much in one word. Great title!
CONCLUSION:
This is a very poignant and powerful story. Your voice is clear and direct and the pace is excellent. You are particularly powerful when you are describing the abuse at the hands of bullies. The interaction between Shane and Mr. Webber is very engaging and at the end of the story, as you begin telling your son the story, that relationship brings everything full circle. Very nice ending. The notes from the author are good and ending with the poetry is very effective. I recommend a final edit to address the minor issues mentioned here. This book will resound deeply with many people who have felt the pain of being different, have watched a loved one go through it, or have been in a similar position as Mr. Webber. Very moving story!
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To those who have provided it, thanks for all the feedback you've given me on the many versions you've read. It looks like it will be in print and available for purchase by the masses within the next 4-6 months!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE OPENING PARAGRAPH:
Very powerful and chilling opening. Opening with a pistol in the protagonist's hand says so much. The reflection of the moon on the gun is vivid. Good opening!
THE TITLE:
Concise and thought provoking. It says so much in one word. Great title!
CONCLUSION:
This is a very poignant and powerful story. Your voice is clear and direct and the pace is excellent. You are particularly powerful when you are describing the abuse at the hands of bullies. The interaction between Shane and Mr. Webber is very engaging and at the end of the story, as you begin telling your son the story, that relationship brings everything full circle. Very nice ending. The notes from the author are good and ending with the poetry is very effective. I recommend a final edit to address the minor issues mentioned here. This book will resound deeply with many people who have felt the pain of being different, have watched a loved one go through it, or have been in a similar position as Mr. Webber. Very moving story!
--------------------------------------------------------
To those who have provided it, thanks for all the feedback you've given me on the many versions you've read. It looks like it will be in print and available for purchase by the masses within the next 4-6 months!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, October 20, 2008
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
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
Monday, September 29, 2008
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?
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?
Thursday, August 21, 2008
I KNOW, I KNOW ... I'll get back into it eventually!
So I haven't written much here in a few weeks, minus the photo blog that magically appeared while I was off hiding in the woods of Northern Michigan and Wisconsin for a week. It's been a bit of an adjustment trying to get back into the daily grind and let's face it, this isn't my top priority folks. I promise to get better and for those who have sent e-mails asking if everything is okay ... I appreciate the concern but you have nothing to fear. I am alive and well and have been busy editing some additions to Unconditional that are now complete and on their way for a 2nd and 3rd opinion. With that out of the way I can now begin drafting up the recap of vacation and spend a little time posting on here for a welcomed change.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Change of plans, could be a good thing ...
It wouldn't be life if everything went according to initial plans. For timing and financial reasons, mostly timing I might add, we have adjusted our upcoming vacation plans to eliminate the trip to Munising and PRNLS. The accommodations have been canceled and plans for the remaining two days of our vacation are underway, they will most certainly involve the 6th night of camping and quite possibly add a 7th to the mix.
When Jen brought up the possibility of nixing the Munising leg of the trip last night, I pondered it carefully and wondered why it was that I wanted to go so bad in the first place. We planned to do the boat trip with her Mom and Tristan, something both would enjoy, but also to spend an entire day hiking about on the rocks along the lakeshore from Chapel rock to the Mosquito Beach area. We knew that hike would give us the best views of the shoreline, allow Tristan the chance to climb out on some of the formations like Indian Head, Grand Portal Point, Chapel rock, and Battleship row and would also allow me the chance to spend a portion of the afternoon off in my own little world. I planned to find a quiet spot high atop either Indian Head or Grand Portal Point and spend a while staring out into the waves below pondering whatever came to mind. That was what I was seeking from the trip to Munising, the solitude; but why?
I’ve been looking forward to sitting high atop the cliffs staring out into the water below me for months without really understanding why I wanted to go there. What was it about PRNLS that was drawing me in? I’ve been there many times in my life, seen the rocks change over time, watched the sun set across Munising Bay, and wondered if it truly was where the world ended once or twice. I love that shoreline, it is my most favorite place to be in the state of Michigan, and I could probably spend an entire day sitting out on the rocks doing not much of anything. Was that why I wanted to go so bad, just because I love to watch the light dance across the waves and change the colors of the rocks with each passing hour? Why do I feel like I have to go there this summer? It's a question that I've asked myself more than once since we began planning the trip but chose not to answer honestly. Last night while I wondered if the short day and a half adventure was really worth the money it would be costing us, I knew I needed to find the honest answer to that question.
When I asked myself that questions again last night, immediately two things came to mind, Unconditional and the recent passing of my grandfather. For those that haven't read it yet, Unconditional takes place in a fictional town where the main character has a secret spot tucked back in the trees along the high shores of the lake the town is built around. The main character uses this spot to be alone with her thoughts and as a safe place to work out solutions to whatever might be bothering her. In many ways, that's what I was seeking; a place to be alone with my thoughts, to work through some residual feelings about things I have remembered, and to spend a little time in a peaceful place talking to my friend Kerry. I need to find a little space along the shore of a lake and allow myself to grieve the loss of my grandfather, something I have been both too busy and afraid to do. I need to clear my head of all these residual memories of Jack, finally close the door to my past life in Small Town America and fully embrace the new friendship we have. Finding someplace that resembles the secret spot I created for the character in Unconditional will help with all of these things, provided I can get some time alone there.
I know that traveling with an almost 8 year old and Jen's mom isn't the right mix to allow me the time I would like to spend just sitting along the rocks in Munising. Tristan will want to hike and climb, not sit quietly waiting for me to be ready to leave. I also know that part of this will involve tears, something Tristan won't understand and will ask repeatedly what is wrong. My answer of "nothing" or "just remembering someone" won't explain it well enough for him and he will be sad that I'm upset. We have that in common, getting sad because others are upset no matter what their reason is. And so, no trip to Munising for this vacation. Instead I will do my best to find a quite spot along the shore of the Menominee River, First Lake (from the State Park we will be camping at), or one of the other hundreds of lakes in that area of Michigan and Wisconsin. If all else fails, there will be plenty of time to sit and ponder life and all that is swarming inside my head high atop Silver Mountain after reaching its summit, or each night as I stare off into the flickering flames of the campfire. There, I will be remembering good times spent at Timbers, those staff members I was once close to and now feel so far apart from, and how great of an impact that place had on my life.
So, off into the woods we go for 6 nights of camping in Bewabic State Park with no trip to the northern shore at the end. By the end of the trip I should be sane enough to handle returning to work again, and hopefully will have found some time to let go of a few things along the shore of a lake somewhere.
When Jen brought up the possibility of nixing the Munising leg of the trip last night, I pondered it carefully and wondered why it was that I wanted to go so bad in the first place. We planned to do the boat trip with her Mom and Tristan, something both would enjoy, but also to spend an entire day hiking about on the rocks along the lakeshore from Chapel rock to the Mosquito Beach area. We knew that hike would give us the best views of the shoreline, allow Tristan the chance to climb out on some of the formations like Indian Head, Grand Portal Point, Chapel rock, and Battleship row and would also allow me the chance to spend a portion of the afternoon off in my own little world. I planned to find a quiet spot high atop either Indian Head or Grand Portal Point and spend a while staring out into the waves below pondering whatever came to mind. That was what I was seeking from the trip to Munising, the solitude; but why?
I’ve been looking forward to sitting high atop the cliffs staring out into the water below me for months without really understanding why I wanted to go there. What was it about PRNLS that was drawing me in? I’ve been there many times in my life, seen the rocks change over time, watched the sun set across Munising Bay, and wondered if it truly was where the world ended once or twice. I love that shoreline, it is my most favorite place to be in the state of Michigan, and I could probably spend an entire day sitting out on the rocks doing not much of anything. Was that why I wanted to go so bad, just because I love to watch the light dance across the waves and change the colors of the rocks with each passing hour? Why do I feel like I have to go there this summer? It's a question that I've asked myself more than once since we began planning the trip but chose not to answer honestly. Last night while I wondered if the short day and a half adventure was really worth the money it would be costing us, I knew I needed to find the honest answer to that question.
When I asked myself that questions again last night, immediately two things came to mind, Unconditional and the recent passing of my grandfather. For those that haven't read it yet, Unconditional takes place in a fictional town where the main character has a secret spot tucked back in the trees along the high shores of the lake the town is built around. The main character uses this spot to be alone with her thoughts and as a safe place to work out solutions to whatever might be bothering her. In many ways, that's what I was seeking; a place to be alone with my thoughts, to work through some residual feelings about things I have remembered, and to spend a little time in a peaceful place talking to my friend Kerry. I need to find a little space along the shore of a lake and allow myself to grieve the loss of my grandfather, something I have been both too busy and afraid to do. I need to clear my head of all these residual memories of Jack, finally close the door to my past life in Small Town America and fully embrace the new friendship we have. Finding someplace that resembles the secret spot I created for the character in Unconditional will help with all of these things, provided I can get some time alone there.
I know that traveling with an almost 8 year old and Jen's mom isn't the right mix to allow me the time I would like to spend just sitting along the rocks in Munising. Tristan will want to hike and climb, not sit quietly waiting for me to be ready to leave. I also know that part of this will involve tears, something Tristan won't understand and will ask repeatedly what is wrong. My answer of "nothing" or "just remembering someone" won't explain it well enough for him and he will be sad that I'm upset. We have that in common, getting sad because others are upset no matter what their reason is. And so, no trip to Munising for this vacation. Instead I will do my best to find a quite spot along the shore of the Menominee River, First Lake (from the State Park we will be camping at), or one of the other hundreds of lakes in that area of Michigan and Wisconsin. If all else fails, there will be plenty of time to sit and ponder life and all that is swarming inside my head high atop Silver Mountain after reaching its summit, or each night as I stare off into the flickering flames of the campfire. There, I will be remembering good times spent at Timbers, those staff members I was once close to and now feel so far apart from, and how great of an impact that place had on my life.
So, off into the woods we go for 6 nights of camping in Bewabic State Park with no trip to the northern shore at the end. By the end of the trip I should be sane enough to handle returning to work again, and hopefully will have found some time to let go of a few things along the shore of a lake somewhere.
Friday, July 25, 2008
I asked for it ...
So I’m suppose to see Jack next Monday for our, probably first ever, chat where I talk and he listens. It’s something I asked for a while back but with our busy schedules getting in the way, it’s taken a few months to make it happen and turned out to be both a good and a bad thing. The bad part is that over the last two months I’ve had a chance to turn into a chicken again and selectively forget what it was I wanted to talk to him about. The good part is that it gave me a chance to think about what it is I really want to get out in the open with him in the event that this is the last time I ever see him (ya’ just never know these things). I remember some of what I wanted to say, they are mostly things he already knows but I’ve never actually said them face to face and I think I probably owe him that much. I also remember the one big thing I need to tell him, one of those things I’ve been keeping a lid on since last fall and has caused me to be a lot quieter than I would like to be around him. I’m not a kid anymore and I know him well enough to know that, while he may be a little surprised and possibly slightly upset (I doubt it), it won’t be a deal breaker with the friendship. Come to think of it, I doubt there is much I could tell him that would be a deal breaker for us. We’ve been down that road far too many times and I never managed to shake him back then, why would now be any different?
So, in search of those pesky little things I forgot I wanted to say, I pulled out the journal, the hand written one, and started from the beginning of our reconnection process. I read through all the entries that involved him, there were many, and took a little journey back through all those mixed emotions that came with seeing him again. In a few of those entries I actually had the forethought to write down questions I wanted to ask him but didn’t have the guts to, or thought I should ask in person rather than an e-mail. For the most part, they’ve all been answered, or no longer apply. While I was re-living the past 10 months of my life through those journal entries, I realized why I wanted to talk to him in the first place. It’s not to tell him any big secret, though I have been holding one thing back, it’s just to finally close the book on my past and see what the future holds for us. I need to say a few things just so I don’t one day regret having never said it and I need to explain that one thing I’ve been withholding for my own piece of mind, not his. This meeting is once again for selfish reasons, but sometimes you need to be selfish in life. I doubt I’ll tell him much he doesn’t already know having read Unconditional a few times by now, but reading it and hearing it from me are two totally different things. Jack taught me that recently and I think it’s about time I return the favor.
I also found this in my journal … it goes with the theme so I’m posting it here too.
So, in search of those pesky little things I forgot I wanted to say, I pulled out the journal, the hand written one, and started from the beginning of our reconnection process. I read through all the entries that involved him, there were many, and took a little journey back through all those mixed emotions that came with seeing him again. In a few of those entries I actually had the forethought to write down questions I wanted to ask him but didn’t have the guts to, or thought I should ask in person rather than an e-mail. For the most part, they’ve all been answered, or no longer apply. While I was re-living the past 10 months of my life through those journal entries, I realized why I wanted to talk to him in the first place. It’s not to tell him any big secret, though I have been holding one thing back, it’s just to finally close the book on my past and see what the future holds for us. I need to say a few things just so I don’t one day regret having never said it and I need to explain that one thing I’ve been withholding for my own piece of mind, not his. This meeting is once again for selfish reasons, but sometimes you need to be selfish in life. I doubt I’ll tell him much he doesn’t already know having read Unconditional a few times by now, but reading it and hearing it from me are two totally different things. Jack taught me that recently and I think it’s about time I return the favor.
I also found this in my journal … it goes with the theme so I’m posting it here too.
Seeing his face should make me smile
Yet sadness fills the air
Spent such a long time believing
That he no longer cared
Made the distance between us bearable
Made the years without him possible
Allowed me time to forget and heal
Gave me a chance to grow and change
We’ve reconnected again
Found our way back together
Opened new lines of communication
And reconciled our memories of the past
I’ve asked, he’s answered
I’ve written, he’s read
No more holding it all back
I owe him so much more than that
What is this strange feeling inside?
Is it guilt for not telling him before?
For leaving it all unsaid
Walking away and slamming the door?
Is it joy in now knowing his thoughts?
Knowing that he’s always cared
And over the years remembered me time and again?
Or is it that fear inside?
That nagging feeling that I’ll get hurt in the end?
Nothing lasts forever after all
One day I’ll lose him too
This time there is nothing I can do
Am I just waiting for that shoe to fall?
It’s worth it I know
He’s too important to let him go
Fear of tomorrow can’t get in the way
Of the friendship we’ve built
And the joy it brings me today.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
It was worth it
One of the best features of my little Mazda 3i is the thumb controls on the steering wheel that allow me to adjust radio settings like volume, stations, and input (swap between AM, FM1/FM2, and CD). I use them constantly! It's typical for me to surf through radio stations on my hour plus drive to and from the office and this morning was no exception. I started my drive, still a little sleepy at 7:20am and per the norm had a CD playing. The radio stations around my house all have awful programming in the mornings and since I lose their signals within the first 20 minutes of my drive anyway, I don't even bother trying to find one broadcasting something I can stomach anymore.
The disk was Van Zant, one Jen had put in while driving my car to work Friday (I had the day off!) and while I like the group, I just wasn't in the mood for their soulful southern rock style. I decided to replace the disk with one that I knew had a little heaver tone to it and tapped the eject button. As the CD player spit the Van Zant disk out at me, the radio automatically kicked over to the last station it was playing before a CD was put in. As I reached for the disk to make the swap, something rare happened; the radio station was wrapping up their newscast and announced the song they would play after the commercial break. It was a local country radio station whose new morning show consists of mostly chatter and little music is ever played. I was surprised to hear that they were actually going to play a song at all let alone one I might like. When I heard the group that was in queue, I decided to wait out the commercials and see what their new single was.
Two and a half minutes and four commercials later, my waiting finally paid off as the station began to play the "new single from Rascal Flatts". Since I haven't bought a new CD for myself in years (the dawn of downloadable MP3's ended that weekly habit) I was not aware that the group even had a new CD out let alone that this was their third single release from it. Rascal Flatts happens to be one of the few country bands who have yet to put out a single or album that I don't like. With high expectations, I listened intently to the melody while the miles rolled on. The song was almost over by the time the words of the chorus sunk in and I honestly began to listen to what they were singing. "Sometimes I swear, I don't know if I'm comin' or goin' But you always say something without even knowin' That I'm hangin' on to your words With all of my might and it's alright Yeah, I'm alright for one more night. Every day you save my life".
I knew that feeling, I'd been there in my life, and I knew exactly what the song was about. I was a little taken back at first; it felt like someone had crawled inside my head and pulled the lyrics from the back of the filing cabinet labeled "Junior High/High School". My initial reaction was to turn up the volume, enter the wonderful thumb controls on the steering wheel once again. Unfortunately, that was the last verse of the song and except for a few repeats of the chorus, it was all over. Knowing this was not the only country radio station in the area I began to flip channels hoping to find someone else who may play it again. Cumulus Media owns a ton of stations in the area and they tend to have the same play lists that are run a few minutes apart from one another so my chances of catching the song again as I traveled south were pretty good. Sure enough, I managed to get into the Detroit broadcasting range and picked up one of their stations who was wrapping up their news segment and headed to commercial break. I waited! Once again I was rewarded for sitting through the commercials, something I rarely do these days, and after the break they too played the single from Rascal Flatts I now knew was titled Every Day.
This time I listened to every word of both verse and chorus and by the end of the song knew it was one that would quickly be added to my collection. As I sat there taking in the lyrics I realized a few things. I was a little sad as I remembered hanging out in junior high and high school with those few people who "could've bowed out gracefully" and "knew enough to leave well enough alone" but didn't. I never thought I would ever miss the crazy and painful days of my youth but occasionally I find that I do. At the same time, I was happy because I remember often feeling like things were so overwhelming at times that I found myself relying on others to get me through. I remember the feeling of grasping at anything that was said and hanging on "with all of my might"; it always seemed to get me through somehow.
The realization that thankfully, I haven't been in that position for a very long time pretty much made my day. I've been stressed out, depressed, and had occasional moments spent pondering if it's all worth it in the end lately and to be honest, I even scared myself once or twice recently. As I was reminded of the dark days of my youth when I was truly desperate and suicidal, I came to the realization that I was nowhere near that path again and breathed a slow sigh of relief.
I am happy with the way my life has turned out thus far and I've gotten to a point that I realize all the rough times in the past needed to happen, they got me where I am today. I endured a lot in my youth and in the decade or so since graduating high school but it wasn't all for nothing. Without the feeling of not fitting in anywhere, I wouldn't have agreed to play "The Game" in 4th grade. That decision was the catalyst, but not the whole cause, for a downward spiral that took me to a very dark place in life. with out that event in my life, I may not have slipped so deep into depression that I thought suicide was the only cure. Without the stigma of knowing I was different than everyone close to me, I may not have befriended so many adults in junior high that helped to shape my future and show me there were better ways to deal with the pain. Without being outed in high school and enduring the abuse and stigma that came with it, I wouldn't have developed the thick skin I would require as armor for the rest of my life and, I may not have been strong enough to be there for Jen as she struggled with her own issues. Without The insecurities that led to a 3-year separation, my relationship with Jen wouldn't be the unconditional and unwavering support structure that now balances my life perfectly. Without the separation from Jack, Unconditional may never have been written and I wouldn't have been given the opportunity to share it with those that need it most (You're welcome Dave). Without my past, I wouldn't be who I am today!
It always amazes me how the simplest actions, like ejecting a CD on my way into work, can trigger such emotional and life altering events. Hearing that song, listening to those words that so perfectly describe how I once felt, made me realize just how much time has changed me over the years. I'm all grown up now and have proven those who worked so hard to make me see the light in my youth right. The pain and struggles of my youth seem like a distant memory now, some days a little less distant than others, but I have learned from them and they have made me stronger in the end. I wouldn't change a thing!
The disk was Van Zant, one Jen had put in while driving my car to work Friday (I had the day off!) and while I like the group, I just wasn't in the mood for their soulful southern rock style. I decided to replace the disk with one that I knew had a little heaver tone to it and tapped the eject button. As the CD player spit the Van Zant disk out at me, the radio automatically kicked over to the last station it was playing before a CD was put in. As I reached for the disk to make the swap, something rare happened; the radio station was wrapping up their newscast and announced the song they would play after the commercial break. It was a local country radio station whose new morning show consists of mostly chatter and little music is ever played. I was surprised to hear that they were actually going to play a song at all let alone one I might like. When I heard the group that was in queue, I decided to wait out the commercials and see what their new single was.
Two and a half minutes and four commercials later, my waiting finally paid off as the station began to play the "new single from Rascal Flatts". Since I haven't bought a new CD for myself in years (the dawn of downloadable MP3's ended that weekly habit) I was not aware that the group even had a new CD out let alone that this was their third single release from it. Rascal Flatts happens to be one of the few country bands who have yet to put out a single or album that I don't like. With high expectations, I listened intently to the melody while the miles rolled on. The song was almost over by the time the words of the chorus sunk in and I honestly began to listen to what they were singing. "Sometimes I swear, I don't know if I'm comin' or goin' But you always say something without even knowin' That I'm hangin' on to your words With all of my might and it's alright Yeah, I'm alright for one more night. Every day you save my life".
I knew that feeling, I'd been there in my life, and I knew exactly what the song was about. I was a little taken back at first; it felt like someone had crawled inside my head and pulled the lyrics from the back of the filing cabinet labeled "Junior High/High School". My initial reaction was to turn up the volume, enter the wonderful thumb controls on the steering wheel once again. Unfortunately, that was the last verse of the song and except for a few repeats of the chorus, it was all over. Knowing this was not the only country radio station in the area I began to flip channels hoping to find someone else who may play it again. Cumulus Media owns a ton of stations in the area and they tend to have the same play lists that are run a few minutes apart from one another so my chances of catching the song again as I traveled south were pretty good. Sure enough, I managed to get into the Detroit broadcasting range and picked up one of their stations who was wrapping up their news segment and headed to commercial break. I waited! Once again I was rewarded for sitting through the commercials, something I rarely do these days, and after the break they too played the single from Rascal Flatts I now knew was titled Every Day.
You could've bowed out gracefully
But you didn't
You knew enough to know To leave well enough alone
But you wouldn't
I drive myself crazy Tryin' to stay out of my own way
The messes that I make But my secrets are so safe
The only one who gets me Yeah, you get me
It's amazing to me How every day
Every day, every day
You save my life
I come around all broken down and crowded out
And you're comfort
Sometimes the place I go
Is so deep and dark and desperate
I don't know, I don't know How every day
Every day, every day
You save my life
Sometimes I swear, I don't know if I'm comin' or goin'
But you always say something without even knowin'
That I'm hangin' on to your words
With all of my might and it's alright
Yeah, I'm alright for one more night-
Every day you save my lifeRascal Flatts - Every Day
This time I listened to every word of both verse and chorus and by the end of the song knew it was one that would quickly be added to my collection. As I sat there taking in the lyrics I realized a few things. I was a little sad as I remembered hanging out in junior high and high school with those few people who "could've bowed out gracefully" and "knew enough to leave well enough alone" but didn't. I never thought I would ever miss the crazy and painful days of my youth but occasionally I find that I do. At the same time, I was happy because I remember often feeling like things were so overwhelming at times that I found myself relying on others to get me through. I remember the feeling of grasping at anything that was said and hanging on "with all of my might"; it always seemed to get me through somehow.
The realization that thankfully, I haven't been in that position for a very long time pretty much made my day. I've been stressed out, depressed, and had occasional moments spent pondering if it's all worth it in the end lately and to be honest, I even scared myself once or twice recently. As I was reminded of the dark days of my youth when I was truly desperate and suicidal, I came to the realization that I was nowhere near that path again and breathed a slow sigh of relief.
I am happy with the way my life has turned out thus far and I've gotten to a point that I realize all the rough times in the past needed to happen, they got me where I am today. I endured a lot in my youth and in the decade or so since graduating high school but it wasn't all for nothing. Without the feeling of not fitting in anywhere, I wouldn't have agreed to play "The Game" in 4th grade. That decision was the catalyst, but not the whole cause, for a downward spiral that took me to a very dark place in life. with out that event in my life, I may not have slipped so deep into depression that I thought suicide was the only cure. Without the stigma of knowing I was different than everyone close to me, I may not have befriended so many adults in junior high that helped to shape my future and show me there were better ways to deal with the pain. Without being outed in high school and enduring the abuse and stigma that came with it, I wouldn't have developed the thick skin I would require as armor for the rest of my life and, I may not have been strong enough to be there for Jen as she struggled with her own issues. Without The insecurities that led to a 3-year separation, my relationship with Jen wouldn't be the unconditional and unwavering support structure that now balances my life perfectly. Without the separation from Jack, Unconditional may never have been written and I wouldn't have been given the opportunity to share it with those that need it most (You're welcome Dave). Without my past, I wouldn't be who I am today!
It always amazes me how the simplest actions, like ejecting a CD on my way into work, can trigger such emotional and life altering events. Hearing that song, listening to those words that so perfectly describe how I once felt, made me realize just how much time has changed me over the years. I'm all grown up now and have proven those who worked so hard to make me see the light in my youth right. The pain and struggles of my youth seem like a distant memory now, some days a little less distant than others, but I have learned from them and they have made me stronger in the end. I wouldn't change a thing!
Friday, February 15, 2008
In celebration!
As a reward to myself, and my wife, I am taking the next few days off from writing. I have successfully completed another torture session of C++ programming and as of this afternoon, the manuscript for Unconditional is at the marketing department of my Literary Agent. I think a little rest for the brain and quality time spent with my wife is in order.
In celebration of these two accomplishments in my life, the blog will go silent for a few days beginning with this posting. I expect to resume writing next week where I will begin publishing pieces of a short story I have worked on recently but tossed to the archives late last year.
In celebration of these two accomplishments in my life, the blog will go silent for a few days beginning with this posting. I expect to resume writing next week where I will begin publishing pieces of a short story I have worked on recently but tossed to the archives late last year.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
It is complete, and off to Marketing it goes!
I guess it's fitting that the original published version of Unconditional took six weeks to write and the re-write for what is now the final pre-mass market version of it took just as long. I wrote the first sentences of what I assumed would be a short story back in September of 2007 and sent the print ready file off to the internet publishers at lulu.com in the beginning of November 2007. At the time I was happy with it, how it had developed from a short story into a mini novel in such a short time. I was content with the writing in it, the characters, the story line, and the ending. I was ready to share it with Jack and knew I needed to get it in his hands before he left for his annual trip south so off to printing it went.
After receiving Jack's copy bound in pocket paperback format I flipped through it and read a few chapters here and there. I knew it could use a little 'tweaking' and there was room for improvement in the story line but I felt it was probably good enough for now. I delivered it to him the Saturday after Thanksgiving knowing he would read it immediately and hoping he would be inspired to tell me his honest thoughts about it when he was finished.
I had stumbled upon a literary agency seeking up and coming writing talent a week prior to delivering Jack's copy and figured I would submit it just to see what they had to say. I reworked a few chapters, improved upon the writing a bit, and sent it off to be evaluated. I was shocked to hear back from them within a few days telling me it had great potential and requesting that I submit it for a formal critique. I always thought I could have been a writer and now I was finally getting validation that I did in fact have the talent somewhere deep inside.
With the December holiday fast approaching I didn't spend much time writing at all, other than e-mail, and Unconditional sat on my thumb drive waiting its final read through before sending it to the critique editor until early January. Again in less than a week I heard back from the editor that it was near perfect and they wanted to get it into the marketing departments hands right away to find a publisher for it. By then I had already begun the re-write process and requested that they allow me to finish before moving forward with marketing. That was six weeks ago today exactly!
Today I made the final adjustments, grammar checks, spelling changes, and visual 'tweaks'. Today I saved the final pre-mass market version of Unconditional, attached it to an e-mail, and sent it off to the editor for her final approval before it moves to marketing. Her approval is simply a formality, a last chance effort to catch major spelling or grammar mistakes, and is virtually guaranteed. By this time next week it will be in the hands of the marketing department who will shop it around to their wide array of publishers. With any luck I'll have multiple offers to purchase and publish it to choose from. Realistically I expect it to sit on the shelf for a little while before the right publisher eventually comes along.
I've heard that January through March is the best time to attract publishers. I've heard it can be an instant match that becomes a lucrative publishing deal. But, I've also heard that it may take months or even years to find the right deal and I'm aware that it may never happen. It would be nice if it stuck to my existing 6 week timeline. six weeks to write, six weeks to re-write and edit, six weeks to land that great deal. That would be nice! For now I wait to see what happens and take a little break before returning to the other 'writing project' I started in December and put in the archives by the end of 2007.
After receiving Jack's copy bound in pocket paperback format I flipped through it and read a few chapters here and there. I knew it could use a little 'tweaking' and there was room for improvement in the story line but I felt it was probably good enough for now. I delivered it to him the Saturday after Thanksgiving knowing he would read it immediately and hoping he would be inspired to tell me his honest thoughts about it when he was finished.
I had stumbled upon a literary agency seeking up and coming writing talent a week prior to delivering Jack's copy and figured I would submit it just to see what they had to say. I reworked a few chapters, improved upon the writing a bit, and sent it off to be evaluated. I was shocked to hear back from them within a few days telling me it had great potential and requesting that I submit it for a formal critique. I always thought I could have been a writer and now I was finally getting validation that I did in fact have the talent somewhere deep inside.
With the December holiday fast approaching I didn't spend much time writing at all, other than e-mail, and Unconditional sat on my thumb drive waiting its final read through before sending it to the critique editor until early January. Again in less than a week I heard back from the editor that it was near perfect and they wanted to get it into the marketing departments hands right away to find a publisher for it. By then I had already begun the re-write process and requested that they allow me to finish before moving forward with marketing. That was six weeks ago today exactly!
Today I made the final adjustments, grammar checks, spelling changes, and visual 'tweaks'. Today I saved the final pre-mass market version of Unconditional, attached it to an e-mail, and sent it off to the editor for her final approval before it moves to marketing. Her approval is simply a formality, a last chance effort to catch major spelling or grammar mistakes, and is virtually guaranteed. By this time next week it will be in the hands of the marketing department who will shop it around to their wide array of publishers. With any luck I'll have multiple offers to purchase and publish it to choose from. Realistically I expect it to sit on the shelf for a little while before the right publisher eventually comes along.
I've heard that January through March is the best time to attract publishers. I've heard it can be an instant match that becomes a lucrative publishing deal. But, I've also heard that it may take months or even years to find the right deal and I'm aware that it may never happen. It would be nice if it stuck to my existing 6 week timeline. six weeks to write, six weeks to re-write and edit, six weeks to land that great deal. That would be nice! For now I wait to see what happens and take a little break before returning to the other 'writing project' I started in December and put in the archives by the end of 2007.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Well ... They've both read it now.
I saw Mom and Dad last weekend for the nieces birthday party. Mom told me she had finished reading Unconditional, that it was very good, but that the ending was not at all what she expected. Then she shot me one of those looks where you know she was editing her vocabulary and trying to figure out how to ask or say something. Since the entire family was there, and most of them were in the room with us having their own conversations, I understood her careful word choice ... but the look threw me a bit. I'm not certain what her reaction to it really is.
Dad called last night and left a message on the answering machine. He told me that he finished reading it, he was impressed, and that I did a good job. He also told me he would like to talk to me about the book. For some reason I am not at all nervous about that conversation, yet talking to Mom about it still makes me nervous.
So now they know, they've read it, and I'm certain they have questions. I guess we wait to see what they have to say about it, if it changes anything, and if they have the courage to ask whatever questions they may have after reading it.
I have a few weeks reprieve, we won't see them again until the end of February ... but I suspect at least Dad won't wait that long. I won't be surprised to get another phone call over the weekend from him, Mom will more than likely wait until we go up next though.
Dad called last night and left a message on the answering machine. He told me that he finished reading it, he was impressed, and that I did a good job. He also told me he would like to talk to me about the book. For some reason I am not at all nervous about that conversation, yet talking to Mom about it still makes me nervous.
So now they know, they've read it, and I'm certain they have questions. I guess we wait to see what they have to say about it, if it changes anything, and if they have the courage to ask whatever questions they may have after reading it.
I have a few weeks reprieve, we won't see them again until the end of February ... but I suspect at least Dad won't wait that long. I won't be surprised to get another phone call over the weekend from him, Mom will more than likely wait until we go up next though.
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