Tag Archives: Introspective

Out of Practice

I logged into the blog tonight (Thursday) out of a sense of obligation. I haven’t posted anything all week, after all, and my posts seem to be becoming progressively later in the week, in any case. I used to write every Monday, after all. Every Monday, publish early Tuesday, a routine like clockwork, and…

…and I’ve complained about this before.

So, I’m not here to initiate a resurgence of whining. I’m just noticing something else that goes along with this, a part of the bigger picture. I don’t keep up with the blogs that I follow as I used to any more, either. I used to carve out 30-45 minutes every day to read posts from everyone that I knew in the blogosphere. I was always looking for a new blog to follow. I classified myself among the serious bloggers, those who would list this as a very important hobby, if not a side vocation. The reason is because I think that this medium is so important. The expression that this permits is so huge on so many levels. Free information is put out there by numerous sources. As everyone kept a journal at certain points in our history, we can now throw our thoughts out there for anyone who wants to listen (sort of what I’m doing now). And, of course, what has always made it so fascinating is that readers can interact with us and our thoughts.

“Ummm…yeah, Dave,” you’re saying right now. “This isn’t exactly new. Not like we didn’t realize this and you’re giving us an ‘aha’ moment…”

I know. Not like Web 2.0 is a new innovation or anything. I think, though, that we need to be reminded of this, because we’re doing it every day and we’re lost a bit in taking it for granted. Choose your social network…whichever one(s) you use, you’re doing the same thing, just is shorter sound bytes.

And that’s what concerns me.

I will always believe that long-form blogging is important in a way microblogging can’t achieve. Not saying for a moment that the latter isn’t important, as well, but there are things that it can’t do that we can do in this medium. Yet, this medium seems to be declining, or at least that’s the word on the street with many bloggers that I’ve followed for a long time. There’s no time to write these posts anymore, they say, and many say there’s no time to read them, either.

And, certainly I find myself skimming my subscriptions and pulling out specific posts now, and that’s on the every-third-day that I manage to open Feedly at all.

I can identify any number of reasons why this is the case, most of them legitimate, if not all. My time is stretched thin with a 2-year-old in the house, family obligations, various creative pursuits, and, of course, that whole day-job thing. However you slice it, our attention spans become forever shorter, our time to read anything more than a few characters increasingly strained. Out of practice, and all that. So, perhaps this is a hobby that’s been nudged down the priority list as my season in life has changed. That happens. It’s still important, though, for all of us who write, and for all of who read, in spaces like this one. The thoughts that can’t fill a book by themselves, but that can’t be boxed into 140 characters. These spaces are important.

We just have to find the time to read them.

There Was a Time…

There was a time…it’s been around two years, now, I think…when I was on a consistent blogging schedule, at least, if not on a regular schedule with other writing projects. I took a sort of pride in it, honestly. I didn’t miss a post on that schedule. I maintained comment chains from the hospital when our daughter was born. I stopped one evening in the middle of our move to New England to write a post. I figured if a major family re-location and having a child didn’t knock me off of a blogging schedule, pretty much nothing ever would. And I’ve always respected blogging as a medium, too. Others have sounded the futurist predictions that long-form blogging is vanishing, falling behind micro-blogging platforms, and I stubbornly maintain this medium, because I think it’s important, that it has something valuable to contribute. It turns out that what finally did knock me off my blogging schedule wasn’t a major re-location or a child, but rather going back to school immediately following those two events, and then two subsequent smaller moves in the same year, all to accomplish that career-change for my day job that I dreamed of.

So, if my writing here has become more sporadic than in the past, it’s not for lack of motivation…it’s a symptom of a larger disorganization. And, as Karen would be quick to point out, that sort of disorganization just comes with having a two-year-old in the house.
And speaking of that two-year-old…she has a toy, a plush soccer ball that she loves to throw around. It’s laying at the other end of the sofa as I write this, having been missed in the nightly cleanup. And it’s poignant to me…poignant enough that instead of pushing through with the book review that I was so excited to write this evening, I’m stopping to write about it instead. Or, rather, the day that left it there.
In fact, of the days before that.
There’s been this interesting paradigm shift in my life now that I get to be creative for a living and not just for a hobby. That paradigm shift is that I don’t come home from a boring job and try to get the creative juices flowing any more. Instead, I tend to bring work home. In fact, I just work from home pretty frequently, especially when winter storms blanket New England (read: every week) and the commute to the office promises to be ugly. I always have side projects that I’m working on, both personal and freelance, anything from writing fiction to programming a website to editing the family photos. In short, I’m always busy. And, at first, that was really, really cool, because I love everything that’s keeping me that way.
Except that there’s a trap that comes with this, I realize now. That trap is that you aren’t able to break away at some point…the obligations become too many, the deadlines too tight, the work too complex and overwhelming. Today, with a winter storm having seriously complicated our plans and eradicated our childcare arrangements, Karen had to make a work obligation and I was working from home as our daughter played. I was pushing to meet a deadline. She wanted to play. We tossed the ball a bit, but then I had to get back to work. We read a book, but then I had to get back to work. She wanted to read the book some more. I couldn’t. So it went.
That girl…she has always been the proverbial apple of Daddy’s eye. I never knew that I could feel the emotions that she has brought out in me…the absolutely unconditional love, the protectiveness, the sense of duty. She has always been Daddy’s girl, and she knows it. She and I have always had a special bond…when she would cry in her first days with us and no one else could calm her down, she hushed when I held her and whispered in her ear. She loves her Daddy. She still wants his attention the way she used to have it.
She doesn’t understand deadlines.
She’s asleep now, the apartment is quiet, and I’m looking over the rim of my laptop at that soccer ball, tossed aside when it proved an unsuccessful way to keep my attention for long enough. I’m thinking of her hugs, which have become tighter, as though she’s holding on and doesn’t want me to go away. I’m treading water in this new lifestyle.
Overall, I truly believe that the changes we’ve made in our family are good. I do. I think that she will benefit from them in the long run. But, I don’t have an experiential referent for this yet, and I have much to learn. Among all of my creative passions, I also have a strong passion to be a good father. Right now, I’m not keeping that obligation, not through lack of desire, but because I don’t have a handle on this new life yet.
I’m working on it. If you’ve been there, and you have advice, I’d love to hear it. Because I’m looking at that soccer ball right now, and I really want to be smiling the next time I find it laying around, not regretting a day of opportunity lost.

2014? When Did That Happen?

Remember some time ago when I talked about how I needed a marker for when one year passed to the next?

The last hours of 2013 were marked by sitting on the sofa with Karen after our daughter was in bed, watching a movie that we have seen numerous times (the fact that it was one of the original Bourne films, it occurs to me, is perhaps ironic considering I reviewed the latest film in the series soon after New Year’s Day in 2013), and allowing maintenance staff for our apartment building in and out in order to coordinate some sort of repair involving a sink and backed-up water in the apartment below us.

I realized that it was 2014 as some fireworks went off outside (New Hampshire is apparently really, really into fireworks). Then I went back to reading as the movie concluded. And, that was pretty much it. No ball dropping, Karen had gone to bed already, no family, no celebrating. Me, a movie, and a good book.

So…I’m old, I guess.

Or, maybe just tired. The thing is, I’m sort of sad that I didn’t really mark the passing of one year to the next, because there’s much to be said for the observance of new beginnings, if for no other reason than the power of hope and possibility. I’m certainly the poorer for not marking that somehow this year. I think that much of the reason is because Karen and I are still settling back into life after an insanely chaotic year of being a full-time student, followed by a career shift that has taken every spare second of my time, it seems, for the eight months following school. The proverbial dust is settling now, however, and I’m already making strides toward the new year. How do I know? I bought a book today, and I read this evening. I haven’t had time to sit down with a novel in…well, I don’t want to contemplate how long it’s been, and I was beginning to come a little unglued over it. I feel as though I’ve become re-acquainted with an old friend. I also see writing time in my future…like actual writing time to finish the novel that I began before our daughter was born and that I’ve put on hold for a year now.

All of these things together would, I’m sure, mark some sort of progress in the goals that I wrote about last year. I’ll let you go back and look at those and make that judgement if you feel so inclined. I’m going to just roll with things this year, as it’s been disconnected anyway. I know, however, that 2014 is going to bring great things.

I know it.

May your endeavors meet with success and your life be blessed in the 364 days ahead.

And next year, I’m going to be more intentional about this.

The Writing (Re-) Process

I’m oversimplifying a bit perhaps, but I see two general schools of thought regarding how to be creative and make a living.

And I’m reminded of the poet (whom I can’t remember) who said that the only thing worse than having a job is not having a job.

I can only speak for those of us who write, but I imagine its the same for anyone with a creative bent. I used to complain a lot. The reason was that I worked in a profession that didn’t permit a great deal of creativity. It was also a profession that was better suited to extroverts (I’m very much the introvert by nature). I came home quite exhausted at the end of the day, and it was all I could do to force myself to put down any words somewhere between dinner and bedtime. One of the reasons for my career change, I reasoned, was to allow more creativity into my day-to-day so that I would be more creative in my free time to write.

Now, I am essentially a creative problem solver Monday through Friday. I write the code that makes things on the web work. The issue is that the technologies with which I work require a great deal of time to remain current in one’s knowledge as they’re always evolving, and thus I do the same work a lot in my free time, as well. I know, you’re thinking “all work and no play.” Sometimes, though, the work is the play.

That creates its own set of problems. How does one know when to stop working, to take time off? How does one switch gears between the creativity that is work and the creativity that is play? In my case, when do I stop writing code and start writing fiction?

In retrospect, I was very wrong to complain back then. Being able to think outside the box and solve problems creatively each day is great, especially when I get to do it in the context of something as socially, politically, and interpersonally transformative as the Internet. Sometimes, though, when I have free time at home and want to get the latest short story idea out of my head and onto “paper,” I find myself with a very different problem: my creative juices are tapped, the muscles sore from being put to good use all day.

So, all that to say that each day job held and holds its own challenges. Both make me just as tired, but in different ways. The moral to my brief account, if there is one, is to not complain about one’s circumstances, because, as Karen would be quick to point out to me, the grass isn’t always greener.

And, while I’m not complaining at all about my current field of grass, the other moral to this story is that writing (as well as any other medium, I’m certain) takes just as much discipline now. I have to be intentional about making the time, intentional about practicing the discipline. That intentionality is key, and my impulse to think that the need for it would be offset by a new career was very misguided.

Anything creative is work. Hard work.

Here’s to those doing the work.

A Particular Rear-View Mirror

In the Rearview Mirror, used under Creative Commons

Music always takes me places.

Now that I’m…well…of an undisclosed age, I find myself nostalgically turning to songs that are older, songs from when I was…well, not of such an undisclosed age. Now, lest I make myself sound like I’m of an undisclosed age, I won’t talk about how that music had poetry and passion that “today’s music” just doesn’t have. I’ll just say that…man, that stuff really takes me back.

On the drive home one night this week, I was rocking out to Meatloaf. Fascinating music, his…I’d love to see academic papers on the theology of his music, because it’s dripping with metaphor and a general questioning of life. One of his songs, Objects In The Rear View Mirror, is a powerful retrospective on the emotional events of one’s life. I typically relate to the third verse, which talks about that first passionate romantic relationship that we all remember from some point in our past. The first verse, though, is about a childhood friend who died far too young, and the fact that the singer is still haunted by the memories of that missed friend.

And the song takes me back…

When I was in elementary school, somewhere around third grade if memory serves, I had a friend. Well, I had more than one friend, several of whom remained my group of friends all the way through until middle school, but this one I vaguely remember. I’m not even entirely certain about his name, but I’ll omit it here, in any case. I know that he hung out with us and that our play was very imaginative. I remember that he was new to the school that year, and that he had clicked with us early in the new semester.

I grew up in a rural area, where there were a lot of farms and other rural vocations. I came to school one day to hear in hushed tones that our friend had “passed away.” I don’t remember all the details of how we were told, but I remember finding out that a large farm tractor had rolled over, trapping our friend beneath it and killing him quickly.

I also remember having only a very brief conversation with my parents about it, and moving on. It had left my mind by the end of that year, by the end of that semester. I’m sure that there was some intentional effort to let it drift from memory on the part of the school administration in order to avoid re-traumatizing us, but, overall, after the initial surprise, I really didn’t think about it again. My friend had died, and I moved on.

My first career after college, and the career in which I remained for over a decade, was behavioral health. Part of that career was spent doing emergency services work, in which I did things such as hospital consultations and the like. I met people at their lowest points, and tried to help them resolve their situations. I worked out of a satellite office for our agency most of the time (it was literally a five-minute commute from my apartment…that would definitely beat my current commute). One of our administrative staff worked every Friday in that satellite office, helping our regular office administrator catch up on what was always a backlog of paperwork. One afternoon, the regular front office person ran back through hallway calling for help. One of my co-workers ran to the side of the here-every-Friday staff, who had collapsed in the front office. I grabbed a phone to call 9-1-1. They were there amazingly fast (I remember wondering how they had arrived so quickly), but my co-worker, whose pleasant demeanor had always cheered us, never awoke. I didn’t see her fall, but I witnessed the failed attempts to revive her, the rushing her out to the waiting ambulance. Then I worked the rest of the week as I always did. I moved on.

I trouble myself sometimes with the way in which I can distance myself from tragedy. It’s not as though I don’t feel the impact of loss, or mourn. Certainly I have and I do. I remember, though, when my grandmother passed, that it took weeks for the emotional response to finally catch up with me. When it did, it passed and I found myself moving on. I miss her, I do. I wish that she could have seen our daughter. But, I’ve moved on.

Ironically, I have issues moving on that easily in matters of life that are of arguably much less importance.

Back in those days, back when I did that work in that career that required me to be able to handle what shocked most others deeply, I considered it a positive attribute that I could handle those sorts of stressors easily. Now, I wonder if my handling them so easily is healthy at all. I move on quickly…I suppose that’s a good thing. I just wonder if I’ve truly dealt with what’s happened in the past. One of our family values when I grew up was to put conflict behind us quickly and move forward. I fear sometimes that I’ve generalized that too much, and that I move forward too quickly, before I’m ready to do so.

And I wonder, at times, how this bodes for my future. Or, if it really is a healthy thing that I move forward, and only have nostalgic recollections on occasion.

Objects in the rearview mirror may, after all, appear closer than they are.

Image attribution: A Gude under Creative Commons.