I’m In Too!

After reading about the “Post a Day” or “Post a Week” challenges at wordpress (via Allison’s post), I’ve decided that I need some kind of kick in the pants and I’ll join too. Even one post a week would bring me to fifty-two posts in a year, which is nearly double what I managed last year.

So…if I’ve gone five days with no new posts, I encourage you all to metaphorically beat me soundly about the head and shoulders until I get something into your feed readers or RSS do-hickys or whatever it is that you use to read new posts.

Feed-Readers are a bit mysterious to me, as I just use the links running down the side of my page to open each blog in a new tab…I’m sure there’s a better way to do it, but in general I’m just old-school when it comes to blogs I guess.

Any way, here’s to more output in 2011!

[Word Count: 158]

Tagged

There’s an interesting thing that happens when the house is full of people, my ability to write blog posts essentially goes away completely. Part of that is because we don’t advertise the blogs to my 16-year-old stepdaughter because of some of the content on OS’s blog; and part of it is that with people around there are simply too many other things to do.

DAYS ago I was tagged by Tiffany to complete a meme, and I’ve been incredibly slow in getting it done even though I’ve actually been thinking it over and writing up answers piecemeal every morning. What follows is the order I answered the questions, including my revision and “final answers” once I thought about it, pretty much unfiltered. And Long. Sorry guys, this is what happens when I write in chunks day after day…lots and lots of nothing all strung together.

The all important questions, and the answers of questionable value…

Happy Birthday!…

…to Oregon Sunshine. She turns thirty-something-young years old today. It generally sucks to have a birthday so close to a major gift holiday, as everyone just did the whole “I bought you stuff” thing and merriment fatigue seems to set in…

But not this year! We’ve got fun things on tap, her favorite dinner on the menu, and she’s planning a day-long horse movie marathon with the girls (and Dude if they can drag him away from the computer).

So to her I say, “I wish you a wonderful, peaceful, restful, and enjoyable birthday. Now sit back, relax, and leave the rest of the day to us.”

I love you, you deserve a day off your feet and not worrying about anything other than what fun thing to do next.

What I’m Looking For – Line 12

I have kissed honey lips

The first studio session for Life Drawing 250 was being held in a studio space I’d never been in before, a few blocks off campus in what would otherwise have looked like any other generic office building on any street in the Pacific Northwest. So generic in fact, that I missed it three times and found myself about fifteen minutes behind schedule and in danger of missing the class. If you’re not set up and ready when the doors close, you don’t set up at all.

By the time I found parking three blocks away, hauled my supplies out of the back of the Pulsar, and dodged traffic crossing three streets without waiting for the lights to change, I was out of breath and just trying to dash the last ten yards to the door before I was too late and ended up with a giant hole in my grade.

I saw her coming down the sidewalk from the other direction, clearly in the same hurry I was in, but about fifty feet further away with a duffel bag swinging beside her as she jogged towards me. I remember thinking she looked like the daughter from “My Two Dads” in a grey sweatshirt and jeans and her blond hair pulled back in a scrunchy. She was still a few dozen steps away, but my mommy taught me manners, and no matter what kind of hurry I’m in, I hold a door for a woman.

“Thanks!” she said as she passed through the doorway, flashing me a wide smile and hurrying off down a hallway.

One of the most intimate and confusing events of my life…

What I’m Looking For – Line 11

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

Graduating from a private boarding academy was full of ceremonies I’d never even thought of before. I’d just figured we’d put in four years, show up on a Sunday in late May, listen to some speeches, and get our diplomas. One of the ceremonies I’d never considered was Senior Recognition, an evening about half-way through our Senior year where students were recognized for their achievements and then had a chance to recognize family and teachers who had a significant impact on them.

It was also the night that scholarships were announced. As I had a pretty meager SAT score (1240, 800 verbal – 440 math…odd to think I work in computers and tax accounting isn’t it?) and a reasonable ACT score (32, not great but pretty good) I wasn’t expecting much in the scholarship department. In fact, I’d completely tuned it out.

It’s all about looking a gift horse in the mouth…

What I’m Looking For – Line 10

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

She came up behind me and put her hand on my arm. The shock almost launched me clean off the swiveling studio chair. With the headphones on and the studio door closed I didn’t hear her come in, and I always kept the radio station doors locked on Saturday mornings.

I’d just done the top-of-the-hour news recap and the station call sign, and she was wearing a cream-colored skirt, dark blouse, and a matching cream jacket with shoulder pads that Troy Aikman would have been proud of. It took me a solid three count with my jaw hanging open to figure out that church had just ended and she had come in on her way back to the cafeteria for lunch.

“I didn’t mean to startle you, I thought you heard the outside door close when I came in.”

It was a logical assumption, the self-closing mechanism on the heavy steel door caused a crash that sounded like a truck accident rattling the building when left to its own devices. But between the sound-proof studio and the headphones playing back my own broadcast, I probably could have been oblivious to a nuclear strike atomizing the parking lot behind the station.

Two paths diverge in a wood, this is a glimpse of a path I didn’t take…

Send in Rambo, I’m MIA but not dead yet…

Just kidding, please don’t send in a ‘Nam vet with unresolved PTSD.

A couple of people noticed that some links and comments went…missing. I thought I would address the question a couple of people had and say categorically “NO, we’re not having issues.” Let me explain.

Someone related to someone related to me found my blog, and liked it. Liked it so much they’re paying me real money to write some related articles for a local news magazine. That’s cool. Not so cool, is that full disclosure required talking the development over with my parents. Which led to my mother visiting my little slice of the interwebs.

While I’m not at all ashamed of what I’ve written, it did prompt a couple of things, including a quick whitewash of links and comments that someone didn’t want readily visible while my mom was clicking around…because people should have the right to write a personal blog without their in-laws showing up and taking a peek…

All comments and links are back up, I don’t expect to have any more visitors anytime soon.

I will admit it had a bit of a chilling affect on my own writing. It’s one thing to split open your soul and spill it gently onto other people’s screens over the internet, it’s something else to know that the screen where it’s showing up next is your mother’s.

As I said, I don’t expect any more visitors for a while, so I hope to get back into the swing of things and start posting regularly again. I’ve got about a dozen drafts in the works, so hopefully I have enough material to get deep into November. Which is good, because I’ll be participating in NANOWRIMO again this year…you can follow that over on Serial Storyteller if you want to watch me train wreck in week two again. How’s that for positive thinking?

2nd Footnote to Line 9

When I write blog posts there are two key things I try to keep in mind:

First, I tend to write things from specific times and places and events in my life, and those things intersect with the times and places and events of others, and other people have their own memories and feelings about any given set of events.

And second, that memory is distinct from truth because it is personal history, it is the history we write – and re-write – about ourselves.

Reading the original post, and the comments to the post and the prior footnote, I realized that I needed to make one point very clear:

Those events are decades old. Time has passed, and much more has happened in my life, and in the lives of my family than is encapsulated in that post, or any post; or even in any one recollection of events.

I also want to make it categorically clear, that I love my family, I love my dad VERY much, and I have learned much about who he is, and about who I am, by working to understand his personal history, and his memories, and what makes him tick.

My dad is a loving, caring, compassionate person who has a character that runs far deeper than I understood as a teenager. As a kid, I thought of my dad as essentially a two-dimensional presence; a combination of family history and household rules, and also the man who took us camping and hiking, and helped shape so very much of my own eclectic tastes in music and art and history and philosophy. When I was twenty-years-old I didn’t realize even a fraction of the impact he had on who I am, today I can hardly identify a fraction of who I am that doesn’t bear his imprint.

As I’ve discovered who I am in the face of my own backstory, I’ve discovered SO MUCH about who my father is, and how deep those waters run. I wish I had really known him better when I was younger, but as these things go, perhaps I can only truly begin to know him as I begin to face similar issues and write my own memories and personal history.

There is one other thing I want to clarify, while my father was struggling to find success in 1990, the next two decades saw him find incredible success. In some ways that success has created other dynamics that I have had, and will have, to deal with for a variety of reasons; but it would be a tragedy of history and memory to leave anyone with the impression that my father has done anything other than ultimately rise to and exceed the expectations placed before him.

How that ultimately affects me is a story still left to be written.

The Conversation

First, I’ve been struggling again with the next line in my “What I’m Looking For” series, and I’m close…I’ll try to post lines 10 and 11 today.

But bigger picture, I’ve come to a realization recently and I’d like to put it out there so everyone will understand where I’m coming from. Let’s talk about comments. Specifically, how I answer comments.

The comments are my favorite part of blogging. I enjoy writing comments, and I deeply love when people post comments on the things I write. My favorite blog in the whole world is noteworthy not for the posts themselves so much as the wonderful comments and conversations that happen there.

Conversation is the key word. I feel like every comment here is a part of a conversation. Every comment I post somewhere else is part of a conversation. Some conversations are very public, and I just feel like I’m contributing one more voice in a collective; that I’m just chiming in, and no reply is necessary or expected.

But here, on my blog, I feel like I’m having conversations in a coffee shop…personal and sincere, but not private. I feel like everyone who shows up is due the respect of a response, even if it’s just a verbal nod of the head and the confirmation that I was paying attention and I heard what you said.

What I don’t want, is to come across like I have to have the last word. Or, to sound like some sanctimonious prig who always thinks he knows better…or knows more. I want this to be a place where people feel invited to have a conversation. I value every comment, and I want to encourage that conversation, even if I disagree with someone’s position, my disagreement and my response are a part of a conversation and NOT meant to be seen as “the last word.”

I do not think of myself as someone with all the answers…hell, I don’t even think of myself as someone with even a decent grasp of SOME of the answers. I am a person who will write about what I’m thinking, and then enjoy talking about what other people have to say about those things.

I guess what I’m saying is that I have a terrible addiction to words. I use lots and lots and lots of them. If you write a 30 word comment, and I stitch in a 300 word response, please PLEASE don’t feel like I’m somehow talking over you…I’m just a talker; and I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate the chance to talk.

I don’t confuse the amount of words I can say about a topic with being “right” about a topic; I’m just perpetually afraid that other people don’t draw that distinction.

Footnote to Line 9

Sometimes, when I’m trying to write a larger series of things, I’ll get stuck by something that doesn’t work the way I want it to. Usually, the solution is to fix the thing that isn’t working. But, occasionally, the solution is to toss out what isn’t working and finally get down to what it is that I’m really trying to write.

Line 9 was the latter. The post that finally went up is something that I’ve been trying to write for at least the last four years. It’s personal, it’s still raw, and it’s going to end up significantly revised in the future. But it’s something about me that I’ve carried around and processed for decades.

“We are who we come from,” according to my family. And who I come from has been drilled into me since before I could walk. Family history is paramount, and the process of ingesting it, and digesting it, and retelling it has a lot to do with who I am as a storyteller, and who I am as a person.

I realize that Line 9 is long, even for a print article. Yes, I’ll eventually edit some out, change this, sand off that, add a sentence here or there…but it’s also about being complete. Perhaps too complete at the moment, but everything has to start somewhere.

Think of it as a draft. One of the hardest drafts I’ve ever written.