Nano, 4 days on

Okay, so I'm definitely on the Nano journey. And, yes, I'm on it with a boat load of baggage in tow. But that's okay. I'm still determined to get this thing done and I fully expect to have the banner "NaNoWriMo Winner 2013" splat across this blog come December 1st.

I'm also excited to be doing my first Nanowrimo Write-In tomorrow with some fellow Gulf Coasters also competing in the event. We're heading over to a local coffee shop in Ocean Springs, MS, tomorrow afternoon. It'll be fun to meet some of the other crazies participating this year.

Off topic, I thought I should say something about my last couple posts. Truth be told, I don't know who comes by to read this blog. I expect more spam bots than real people, but you never know. That said, I can't say whether or not my ramblings of late over my dog, Candy (her name came with her and she was too old to change it), are appropriate for an "author blog", but here's my take...

For now, writing is my hobby. I'm not making a living at it (can barely even take my wife out for the occasional pizza, in fact, on my paltry writer's income), and my audience isn't such that I worry over making high-vis missteps when posting entries or comments. I just don't carry that kind of weight in the virtual world. So really this blog is also something of a hobby and I'll treat it as such and worry about giving it a 'professional' gleam if my stuff really ever takes off.

These days, though, I need the catharsis that comes with venting to the great unknown. It is - believe it or not - a little therapeutic. In another life I would never have considered such an act. So security minded and privacy focused was I that even the thought of letting go a magazine I'd gotten in the mail with my name and address labeled on it was a sin to burn in hell for (if you believe in such a thing). Actually, I still do rip off those labels, but you get the drift. I've loosened up a bit and am more willing to put things out there.

I've come to realize that no one really gives a shit about me enough to worry about a little whining over my woes. So there. Maybe if I had something in the bank worth stealing my identity over, or were famous enough to draw people in so much that they hung on my every syllable it'd be a different story. But until I win the lottery or sell a million books, here I am, World. Deal with it.

The best things in life...

...aren't things.

When I look back on life fifty years hence, it's not going to be the big flat screen t.v. in my living room, the number of DVDs in my video library, the nic-nacs cluttering every flat surface in my house, or the watch on my wrist that come to mind. It'll be the friends I've hung from cliffs with, the rush of adrenaline I felt the first time I leapt into the rapids of a wickedly flowing river, the remembrances of flying low over the deserts of the Middle East, of seeing the bedouins with Mercedes SUVs parked outside their tents, the loves and the losses and then finally the look in my wife's eyes when she said "I do" at sunset. I'll remember my motorcycle tour through Europe and those exquisitely seductive roads curving through the French, Swiss and Austrian Alps, the silence of a ship with failed boilers in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the taste of a blood orange on a tortuously hot day in the Gulf and the first time I felt the skyscrapers of New York towering above me. I'll remember my first flight in an airplane and the view of the clouds from their topsides. I'll remember my first taste of a good scotch, the satisfaction of completing my first story, the euphoria after finishing a triathlon and a marathon, and especially the pain I'd feel the day after a marathon. I'll remember the sensation of "floating" through space as I looked into a bottomless abyss SCUBA diving in the Pacific, the jungle waterfalls I rappelled down with friends in Guam, the goosebumps on the back of my neck the first time I felt the true power of the wind at sea, the love of my animals and mine for them, and the loss I felt at their passings. I'll remember the barbecues with my friends and family, the backpacking trips into the backcountry of America, the beers over campfires, and the last moments I've spent with loved ones.

I'll remember a lot of things in life when I'm at the end of mine, but I'll be hard pressed to remember the furniture I had when I was twenty-six, or the clothes I wore when I was thirty-two.

When I look back on life it is those meaningful experiences and interactions that I'll remember most dearly, and not my material possessions. Buying something nice might put a bandaid over whatever void you're feeling in your life for a minute, but bandaids fall off with time. A good experience lasts a lifetime.

Time waster or future maker?

I’m in grad school finishing up my last term this summer en route to my master’s degree. I have essays coming due, a big term paper that I’ve yet to start (and have little interest in writing), and a mid-term to prep for next week. So, what have I done with my time today?

I read a blog. Not just any blog, but the blog of another indie author who has managed to turn indie sweat into legacy house dreams. (‘Legacy’ meaning the traditional publishing houses). It was and is and interesting, engaging and utterly absorbing read for someone at the start of their own indie publishing career. A sort of “how to” manual that speaks to the doubts, frustrations and tribulations that I’ll wager all writers endure, whether they cop to them or not. It begins prior to her even being an indie author and ends (haven’t gotten there yet) with the news I’ve seen of her getting signed by the big boys.

So as the day winds down and I look at the calendar on my desk chock full of to-do’s with not a one of them scratched out, I sit here with a sense of guilt at having not accomplished any tangible work. But should I have the guilt? Another way of looking at this is to say that I’m still studying, just in a different class. The class of publishing and of life; or, more specifically, the class covering the “how to guide of getting to where I want to be.”

I suppose the guilt comes from the grown up side of me that has worked, sweated and bled in the “real world” and considers this writing stuff to be for those wishy-washy artist types out there who would rather live out of their vans buying meals with the pocket change they garner from busking than having real jobs. The trick is to manage both until one or the other takes off, I guess. In my heart I know which I’d rather take off. In reality, I’ve paid a pretty penny for this degree, and it’d suck to piss it away with only a few months to go, so even if I have low hopes for using the degree in the “real world” I’d better get’er done.

‘Nuff said.

We buried a friend

We buried a friend yesterday. His name was Vince and he was about twice my age. I hadn’t known him long, maybe two years tops. But he was one of those characters in life who make an impression. Even in the first days of our meeting he wasn’t in the best of health, but his mind was always clear. Always sharp with humor and the kind of off-balancing questions that if you were looking the wrong way when they struck would knock you on your ass in a fit of laughter.

Twice my age… That’s not long at all.

It gives me pause and forces my priorities – often straying from life’s long term goals to the little mundane worries of the everyday – back into perspective. We don’t have long on this planet to make the experiences that we will be proud to look back on when we're Vince’s age (which wasn’t all that old, by the way). You never know when it’ll happen, so don’t let yourself get bogged down in the small stuff. Don’t worry over the little things, and especially those things that haven’t even occurred yet, despite what your inside voice is threatening will happen.

Worry, as they say, is interest paid on a debt you may never owe. Life IS short, so despite the cliche, get your ass moving and do something worth looking back on in your golden years. Thirty years in a cubicle (not me) ain't cutting it, world.