“I have scars on my hands from touching certain people… certain heads, certain colors and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me.”

J.D. Salinger

I don’t know if this is a scar yet. It might be a wound that is still open and waiting to become a scar. I do know that I can still feel her fingers laced in mine, a ghost of her head on my shoulder. And the look she gave me when I smiled at her is behind my closed eyes.

I found her sitting in the middle of a walkway surrounded by her purse, a cat in a travel bag, and about a thousand people who would rather not see her. I’ll admit, with my first glance I made assumptions, as we all do. I’m human, reader. Please don’t hold that fault against me. I thought she was a carless person who chose to sit in the middle of foot traffic. I dismissed her.

When my attention was brought back to her she’d found someone to assist her. Or rather, a nice person found her. By this time, it was easy to see that this woman was in a bad way; weak on her feet, groggy, and caring for a cat. She looked lost.

I approached.

And the nice person who’d found this woman handed her off to my care. I didn’t ask for that, I didn’t think I could help any better than anyone else, but I did accept the responsibility.

From that point I carried the woman figuratively, and more or less literally, to a seat. She hung on to my hand timidly at first, hoping for me to be a source of support in a harsh world. Forgive me again for paraphrasing, but a little later she confessed to me that she’d been going through a divorce that was killing her, and this past year had been difficult. I didn’t need to know the full story, and I didn’t ask. She didn’t share. Instead, we existed as people who needed each other. For a brief time, she needed me as a grounding. And I needed her in a way I can’t quite put into words yet. It must be there, in the back of my head with all the cob webs and fuzz out of belly buttons, but I’m still sifting through all of this and might never find it.

About the time that she took my hand the first time, I realized just how thin she was. But her hands were strong, and they gripped my arm as she tottered along beside me.

All I could do was hold her steady, stop when she needed rest, and reassure her that despite everything, she’d be ok.

After about twenty minutes together I put some things together. The cat was fat. He’d been cared for despite the hell this woman was going through. She was thin. Which meant she was not being cared for through this personal hell. She did not smell of alcohol. This was a hard one. This meant that this weakness she displayed was coming from something more serious than simply having too many drinks.

I held her tighter as we wandered around. With more time together, she started to trust me. With her cat, her hand, and her head on my shoulder. While we waited for the train she hugged me. Full-on, arms around the neck appreciation. On the train she asked me to sit with her. On the escalator she said I was being too nice. “Way too nice.”

I began to think that maybe I was the first person to show this woman any genuine kindness in months, maybe even the entire year she’d been going through this.

I wanted to do more. I wanted to help, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t feel as though I had, have, the ability to give her what she needed. But her face, the calm eyes that settled on me periodically throughout our time together, that I won’t forget. The relationship we’d built in just an hour. I never told her my name. Trivial things like that didn’t matter. But I made her laugh. And that mattered a lot.

Eventually, I brought her to where she needed to go, and I passed her on to someone. My time with her had come to an end. And I was left empty and worried. I don’t think she’ll be ok. I don’t. That’s pretty hard for me to admit. When this wound heals, I think it will be a good-sized scar. I think I’ll look at this scar from time to time and imagine her getting home, feeding her cat, and growing scars of her own and, hopefully, being happy again.

There is a trend for most people in my life, when they hit the age that I am, to take certain steps. Please, indulge me for a minute of two reader, while I ponder this.

I have a spattering of good friends. A few who have gotten married, one settling into the idea to the point where he may as well be. Everywhere I look I feel as though the people around me are doing things right, and I’m doing things wrong.

Here I am, off on another solo venture out of the country to see brand new places and meet brand new people. Why should I feel… lost?

I’ve been recognizing more and more lately that I still have a broken heart. Not a heart on the mend, or a heart that needs time to heal, but a heart that doesn’t work right. I keep trying to fill it with fun and friends and being open and vulnerable, but that doesn’t seem to be working. I don’t think this is the kind of broke that finding someone to fill in the gaps will fix. I think this is the kind of broke that needs a little life-redirection. A quick turn at the next stop light and I might be on the right track again.

This is new for me. But I’m figuring it out.

I am excited for my friends. Scratch that, I am scared for my friends. They have such big adventures before them; buying their first house, buying a car, planning to have children, supporting each other through everything, thick or thin.

Jumping on a plane and going to Europe, meeting hundreds of strangers and getting physically lost in a new city, that excites me. It’s the other stuff I’m afraid of. And I don’t understand how they, my friends, my family, can settle in despite or because of that fear. They face the challenge of being part of a whole and accept it. Embrace it.

I’m jumping on a plane to go to Germany for the first time tomorrow, and I feel that chaotic rush that comes from flying off by the seat of your pants. I am starting to feel the adrenaline of not knowing what will come, the ache of homesickness, the desire to walk a different world. I am starting to feel.

I hope to come back a bigger person. I hope to come back more developed and more whole. That’s how I can justify these adventures. If I am fueling a dream, a dream to become better and more focused and more driven, then I am accomplishing my duty as a writer, and as a creator and as an artist. And maybe one day, as a half-part. In the back of my mind, I can’t help but wonder if I should already be that person, and what the heck is holding me back.

For those of you reading this who prefer my fiction works and are getting tired of my thoughts, you’re in luck. Something is one the way. I am hoping to find some time to write while on the plane. I read once that Neil Gaiman found time to write on trains. I’ll take a pen and a small moleskin with me, and maybe I’ll come back with a new world if not as a new person.

As always, Reader, thanks for stopping in. Thanks for plugging on.

Reader, I want to put a trigger warning on this blog.

The fear of a broken heart has stopped greater men than me from ever loving again. Every day I have to remind myself to not let it, and every day, multiple times a day, I have to remind myself to remind myself.

Every day I have an internal debate narrated by my stronger and weaker self, and I have to let it play out. If I don’t, if I push pause or skip to the end, then nothing happens. But if I hold on, let the tape run out, and believe that I could live on from the end of the argument about my inner demons, then I might be able to love on, too.

I’m young, I’m so young. This is something that no one prepared me for and no one really talks about. Not enough, anyway. Each and every time I hear a song that reminds me of her I break a little.

Okay, so I’m not young enough for there to be only one her. Right? I’ve had a few hers by now. It’s different now, though. I feel like there is a big thing inside me that has changed after the last time. Did I reach my limit? Did I learn too much or did I forget something vital?

Reader, I want.

I do. I want a lot. And a lot of the time these desires conflict. It’s a little refreshing knowing that part of me is now un-wanting. Let me explain.

All that ranting above is a gross stream-of-consciousness way of saying that I don’t want romance right now. This is hard for me because for as long as I can remember I’ve wanted a dance partner, metaphorically and literally.

I’m coming to terms with it, but something inside me is different than it has ever been. I am a different person these days than I was in my entire history. There is no longer an Andrew, not the same one anyway. There is a new Andrew out in the world wearing my shoes and saying hello to the people I used to know.

And that’s not as scary as you’d think. Do you remember those horror stories where one brain is switched for another and someone else is living in the hero’s brain? Do you remember the horror of the thought of someone else tucked neatly into your life with your face? I do. But it’s not as scary as I thought it would be. I just don’t understand it.

I heard once that there is no fear of death, there is only fear of the unknown. I used to be afraid of death. So much so that it kept me up at night. This feels similar to that, but also drastically different. I haven’t been sleeping well, but I don’t feel afraid. Not in the same way that I was of death. I like the idea of not being afraid to die. And I like the idea of not being afraid of the unknown. I like that idea. It’s what comforts me when I can’t sleep, that there is an idea like that floating around there. An idea that says you don’t have to be afraid.

So I’m not afraid of death and I’m not afraid of this new person that’s tucked himself into my shoes and lips. A person who has kissed people that I’ve met, and seen the same things I’ve seen. I know this person, but I don’t trust him.

At the end of every tunnel comes the light. Just like a train ride. I don’t know if this is permanent, and I don’t know if it’s a ride I want to be on, but I bought the ticket, and I’m sitting in the seat. Why not get comfy and see what’s around the bend? Even if someone else is conducting.

I’m asking you a lot of questions in this blog, and that’s a little unfair. But you can contact me through this blog. I encourage it. Especially if you are feeling something similar, reader. Do you have faith in the same romance you had faith in when you were asking your high school crush to prom? What about that romance you felt when you lost your virginity? Do you remember how fast your heart raced? Do you remember how fast her heart raced?

Good night, reader. Until next time. Thank you for stopping by.

Also, as a post script, I want to warn you that I may be moving to Australia sometime in the near future and this may turn into somewhat of a travel blog. If that is the case, I hope you enjoy the trip to come vicariously.

“I believe there’s a hero in all of us. That keeps us honest. Gives us strength. Makes us noble. And finally allows us to die with pride. Even though sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams.”  – Aunt May

Spider-Man did that for Henry. At least, that’s what Aunt May says in Spider-Man 2. The first Spider-Man 2. But here’s the thing, Spider-Man didn’t only do that for Henry, did that for me, too. Spider-Man does that for a lot of people.

When I was an eighteen-year-old, college freshmen I found religion. I am using the term loosely here, or maybe just in a way that we don’t use the term in society nowadays. See, when I talk about religion, ever since my teenage years, I don’t limit myself to Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism,  et cetera. My understanding of religion has always been so much more simple than that. The religion that I found at eighteen was something that got me out of bed in the morning and allowed me to have a positive influence on the world around me without pressuring or forcing my beliefs onto others. And that’s what I think religion should be. It doesn’t need a fancy title or written rules, it just needs to be inspiring.

Cool, that’s pretty boiled-down. This idea of religion is also what attracted me to the idea of Omnism, or the belief that all religions are true and genuine. When I called myself an Omnist, I did so with the idea that everyone was allowed to believe whatever they wanted and, as long as they did so in a way that did not force their beliefs onto another or inhibit one’s experience, then I thought that was just groovy. Bill Maher, in his movie Religulous, claims something along the lines of the fact that no human being has the ability to understand what happens after death, so his guess is as good as anyone else’s.

I always liked that idea, and I carried that with me as an Omnist as well. I understood that because I had no more clarity or surety of which religions were true or false, I had no reason to mock or belittle anyone for believing what they believed. 

Sorry, tangent. A reasonable one, though, I promise. Let’s circle back to Spider-Man. Spider-Man represents responsibility, guilt, passion, will-power, humanity, moral fiber, pride, humility, and so much more. When I was younger, from about four- to seventeen-years-old, I did go to church, and for most people that’s enough to gain these lessons. That’s why people go to church after all, to learn to be responsible and ethical human beings. What I didn’t end up getting from church, I picked up for six-dollars at the local comic shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

On breaks between classes every Wednesday I would hike a mile up the street and scoop up the latest issue of Ultimate Spider-Man. This started as an outlet for my social anxiety, my loneliness, and even my fear of the future, but what it turned into was a passion to be like the hero I read about. After seeing my problems reflected in someone a thousand times stronger, I began to rationalize. I began to understand that I am capable of solving the exact same problems as a Super Hero. Spider-Man more than any other because, many people may not know this, but Peter Parker doesn’t use his Spider Powers to solve all his problems. In fact, they probably cause more problems than they solve. No, he uses his brain.

Hey I have one of those.

And he uses his wit. Hmm, I have a little of that too…

Alright reader, I’d like to sum up here. When I was younger, I found a book that made me understand the true struggles of human nature and the inner workings of the human soul. I poured over volumes, made weekly donations to a good cause, i.e. the writers of these books, and I tried to be a better person because of it. Simply because my idol dresses in a red and blue onesie doesn’t make him any less valid than any other (Oh, and by the way, I know that his costume is actually comprised of several pieces, not actually qualifying it for the “onesie” category, but that kind of has less impact for my point here). And I hope that you feel the same. I hope that this encourages you to take pride in your own religion, whatever that may be.

Thank you, reader, thank you so much. I almost gave up on this blog not too long ago, but even if one of you comes by and picks up a few of my words, I will consider this a worth-while endeavor. Best of luck out there! Until next time.

The heart wants what it wants, and unfortunately mine was bent on her. A touch of lust, a taste of chapstick and an itch worth scratching.

When you’re young you’re blind enough, stupid enough, to make bad decisions even if you see the consequences coming. Because you also see that you have plenty of time to roll with the punches.

She made me wait. Every time I met her, and I didn’t mind. Hell, I appreciated it. I wanted to wait for her. She was the kind of girl who made you want to wait.

Smoke rose from the puckered mouth of a woman draped in a summer shawl out my window. Her hair shifted and shuddered in the same breeze that swept that smoke away. Traffic ran, busses horned their way into the intersection, and I watched a couple of bums scutter around on their wheel chairs. I had nothing better to do. I had nothing better to do in the whole world than wait for this pretty girl and watch the lives pass by on the other side of the glass.

A twinge of guilt at being caught staring at the man who held a sign that read “Jesus is Weed” forced me face first back into my orange juice. Bitter concentrate that always makes me wince, but it cools my hot face. Cools my hot neck. And burns my stomach.
I left the coffee house to wait for her outside under the shade of the surrounding buildings, glass and cement behemoths that overshadowed the cranes that built them just a few years back. A couple of kids almost ran me over on their bikes and another came up to ask for drug money. Not an insinuation, he flat out told me he needed money for drugs. I let him talk to himself, turned him a deaf ear.

I felt out of place, out of my element. I’m a small town kid, grew up on an island. I wasn’t meant for crowds or towers. I was meant for mountains and blue water.

And when she came up the street to meet me, I forgot all that. I forgot the pain in my throat from drinking citrus, I forgot the sunburn on my face. Instead I set my mind to believing how good she looked in that red sweater.

Here we lay all out worries to bed. Here we sit and think about the day ahead. Here we play with partners new and old. Here we dream dreams so bold.

A bed is a lot of things and even more things to the right people. Some portion of my life, a bed was made to be slept in. Later on, I discovered so many other uses. Staying up late watching TV, building forts, eating cereal and rolling around with my dog, even doing homework seemed more interesting, more tantalizing when I did them in a bed. Maybe it was the taboo nature of it, the idea that this place with a specific purpose could be cheated, tainted by new activities. I never struggled when I was in bed. It was a happy place. Even when I got sick and had to stay home and spent the whole day lying in bed with a trash can near my pillow to catch vomit intermittently, I felt at peace. Nothing could bug me in my microcosm.

A small world designed around small needs. Simple needs that could be met easily and clear the mind. I’ve had some amazing conversations in bed. With friends, parents, lovers and some who fell between categories I could find commonalties. Sharing ideas and worries comes easy when you share first the soft embrace of a world built around the concept of putting a body at rest. Relation between mind and body simplify that knee-jerk reaction to relax.

If a microcosm exists, if there is a world where time can slow and pass at amazing rates, I know where to find it. Tucked in with worn pillows and tattered blankets, sheets that have been packed away and taken out over and over. A microcosm of discovery both mutual or self, heart and mind, as bear as the thread. If you are weary come rest your head.

It’s the place I learned to dream, the place I learned love, the place you can come and go as you please and it’s always the same. Go to bed, little one.

Good night Reader.

There are points in life when you start to feel the need for a change. It happens to everyone. I, myself, have googled the question by which this post earned its title more times than I can remember.

More often than not, when I start to seek advice on how to escape from it all it’s when everything I’ve felt pressured by, school, work, family, friends, bills , et cetera, piles up to the point where I felt as though I would either burst or collapse with the effort of keeping it all together. I’d imagine myself drifting off, losing all contact and starting over. Sometimes the places I’d drift to would be simple places, like a new city in a new state, but as I grew old the places became more extravagant. I would day dream of a new country or being a boat out at sea belonging to no nation.

In the past, when I felt this way, I would usually contend myself with an online search for far off places and the promise that one day I would visit those places. Then I would return to normal life, slightly less overwhelmed than I had been. But every once in a while this mounting desire to escape everything I know did reach an actual breaking point. I can narrow these moments down to six spots in my personal timeline, six pivotal moments where instead of just thinking about running away, I did it.

Just as most of you reading this probably are, I am a rational person. I try to think things through and plan ahead. Mostly. This fact makes it extremely difficult to run away. Difficult, yes, but not impossible. Have hope reader, this is not another blog about dreaming of running off in the night, this is a blog about how to actually do it.
As I said, in my adult life I have actually run away a totally of six times. Once directly following college, once when a family member needed me, and thrice when I just plain became bored with my situation.
After college was easy. I’d finished with a degree and needed a change. Obvious. This played a major role in my realization of the benefit of not running away, but running towards.

There is a lot of focus when someone is running away on the actual ‘away’ factor of it all. It may make sense, but it honestly is not be the best thing to focus on. If you focus too much on getting away from something, you start to lose focus on what you might find once you’ve made it away from the thing you’re escaping. From experience I can tell you, this makes for a lonely life once you’ve landed in your new home. You’ve spent so long thinking about what you’re about to leave that you don’t know what to focus on once you’ve gotten away from it. You end up in a new place with no direction or course of action. This may seem exciting as a concept, but then you realize the amount of work goes into making new friends, finding a home, getting a job and everything else you need to put into place just to satisfy your basic needs.
Instead of thinking of running away as your great escape, it would be best to find something to run towards.

After college, I was running away from a city, an ex-girlfriend, toxic people and a lack of possibilities for creative outlets as well as career goals. I was running away from a lot. And I learned once I got away that I now had to find something new to focus on. I’d spent so much time dwelling on all the negative that I would be free of that I didn’t consider how much I would have to reboot my thought process. In just the time it took for me to drive from New Mexico to Illinois I had all this free space in my head that used to be taken up by those negatives. And it scared me. I felt the void that this move created in me. Even though I’d purged myself of negative thoughts and feelings, I had nothing to replace them. I felt empty.

And it took me months to recover.

The next time I ran away, instead of leaving in a panic, I set my sites on a far off place where people were waiting for me. I chose to move to cities where I would have family, so instead of focusing on getting away from a drab city I could find a city where I could spend time with family. I now had a positive to fill the void that running away creates.
If you don’t have extended family or friends drifting about the country that are willing support you through this move, your other option is a job. Every so often I will toss a job application out to a position in a city I’ve never been to. This may seem silly at first, but once I’ve started applying on jobs outside of my city, I start to think of all the potential. What if I got a job two states away? What if I accepted the offer and I had to move in a month?

Thoughts like that would refresh me and get me thinking of life outside my little bubble. I would see potential in a life I haven’t lived yet. It makes the day-to-day struggles much more palatable. It also makes me feel productive, which is huge for me because I start to get depressed if I don’t feel productive.

I’ve moved for a job twice in my adult life, and I want to say that moving to a new city where I already had work lined-up was so much better than moving to be near family. For one, I instantly felt productive and useful. Sure when I moved for family I had a feeling of being welcome, but being able to instantly appropriate into a new member of society calmed a lot of my nerves that normally light up when I move to a new place.

If you don’t have family in other states or a job waiting for you, it is entirely possible to skip out on life and start over. It’s also entirely possible to drop out of high school then become hugely successful. It’s possible, but there are also easier ways to do it.
As a man who has run away from a lot, I have run towards so much more. And since I’ve started doing that, I’ve found I am a lot happier. You can still find a more exciting life, reader. You can leave toxic environments, people, and jobs. You have so much potential. Don’t waste it on rushing into the next step. Take your time, settle on something positive you can achieve rather than something negative that you can overcome.

As always, reader, thank you so much for stopping by and reading some of my thoughts. Until next time.

You start with a hunk of marble or a slab of ice and you carve away all the unnecessary rock or frozen water until you find the sculpture within.

That’s essentially my process when it comes to creating.

When I sit down and everything lines up and the planets are out in space doing what they do, it takes such little time to actually get in the mood. When I sit down to create, I am in the mood to create. With a blank screen in front of me, I want to fill it up. Starting, adding in spaces, pulling punctuation out of nowhere, it’s all a modest experiment, but every moment of it feels like I am working towards a goal. The blank page is my block of untouched marble.

Just as every marble statue doesn’t end up being David, every blank page won’t end up as something publishable, or even readable. I go into this process understanding that, and I hope you go into reading this blog about my process knowing that I understand that… on part two.

Let’s begin where I started. This is the point where I decided to write.

In my senior year of high school my English teacher told me I should be a writer.  This was the first time someone told me I was good enough at something that I could do it for a career. So I ran with it.

Up to this point I’d only ever received questions form my parents or teachers about what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go in life. The moment this teacher, a woman well along in the way of life experience, told me I had talent something clicked inside of me. From that moment on I wasn’t sure about anything except that I wanted to be a better writer.

Flash forward a few years, I graduated from college with a degree in English with a focus in creative writing. This one person’s kind words, the fact that my English teacher took the time to pull me aside and tell me I was good, drove me to become who I am today. As I sit here and type this all out, I’m astounded at how malleable I was as a seventeen-year-old, and how little it took to shape the rest of my life. If she’d merely written, “Good job!” underneath my ‘A’ on the top of the essay, who knows what I would be doing.

I often imagine what it would be like if I used the written word to make a living. Would I enjoy writing if I had to do it to pay rent, go on vacations and have fun, or would I chalk it up to something I do just to make my way in the world?  Would I want to write if I had to?

That brings me to the second subject of the second part of this blog about my process. The Why.

Why do I write.

I recognized a few weeks back that I was depressed. At this point in my life, I’d achieved a massive career goal I’d set for myself in a much shorter time than I’d thought possible. I’d just moved to a city that had everything I could imagine wanting, and I was now capable of taking on a lot more personal responsibility than ever. What made me depressed was the fact that I didn’t know what to do with myself.

For my entire life I knew what to do next; Go to school, get a job to pay bills, apply on better jobs to make paying bills easier, it all seemed pre-determined. The passed two years I’d spent making small choices based on the end-game that I could eventually get the job I now have. For two years I had a drive for something bigger.

When I got that something bigger, it actually felt pretty small.  There was no massive euphoric state to accompany it, there was no chiming of a bell in my head followed by cheering and whooping, and there was barely a congratulations you did it. In fact, no one seemed to really care. Even me.

This was not something I realized all at once. I am not that self aware. In fact, this took me about two months to realize. And it took me another month to learn how to understand this feeling. 

Writing helps. When I get to sit down and put my thoughts on a page and read through them and have others read through them, it makes me feel solid. Counter to that, when my ideas are floating around in my head and intangible, I feel as though I don’t have a grounding to the world.

Often, I feel this way at work. I find myself drifting throughout the day, not focused or thinking clearly, and I’ll pull up a word document on a computer and spill my guts. This might come in the form of a little story or a big confessional blog post like this one. And afterwards, I feel as though I got something out, something that was making me feel sad and lonely and isolated. Suddenly, with this thing out of me, I am able to get on with my day and interact with other people in a normal way.

The fact that I can focus on my craft and scribble away in notebooks or click at a keyboard and create thrills me. I love it. I really, really love it. And with this blog I can share it with anyone who wanders by. This ability to release my ideas out into the world has added a whole new level of enjoyment to my process. In fact, it is this enjoyment that ensures I take great care that what I publish is up to snuff. Because I value this process so highly, I decidedly cannot take it for granted.

Let’s talk about editing. I come from a generation where publishing online is easy. Anyone with a computer and access to the internet can publish their writing online. This means that there are so many ideas out in the world. This is as daunting as it is encouraging for me.  Sometimes I feel as though I am just another person voicing his ideas.  I have to consider that there are a lot of other people out there that may have the same ideas, or similar ones, and are capable of sharing them better or in a more interesting way. This also means that there is a lot of garbage out there.

Sorry to put it so bluntly, reader, but I wanted to get it out without beating around a bush.

As a reader of internet articles, I’ve been in the position where I have read about two-thirds the way through one of those articles only to realize that none of the ideas were grounded in fact and the writing read as though the author hadn’t bothered to read what they wrote before publishing it.

Looking at the fact that publishing online is so easy, I spawned my first ground rule: I would read and re-read everything I publish on this blog until find no flaw. Then I would consider the post as an outsider would. If I saw no issue with the post, I would publish it.

One thing you should know about me to understand how much of a commitment this is: I hate to read my own writing.

Self-editing my work is an arduous and tedious task, but I do it, and I’ll keep doing it because I respect you. You’re the one who found this blog, and I want you to feel as though I put a lot of work into sharing with you. I want you to understand that I care about what you read.

I am hopeful for this outlet that I have discovered because I love to write. It’s how I heal. I write because I understand the written word. I understand how to pull two ideas together on a page. I love that I can show people whatever I want just by chipping away at a blank page. I write because an English teacher once told me I was good enough to write at a point in my life when I didn’t think I was good enough to do anything. If you’re at that point, reader, if you feel like you can’t do anything right, I’m here to tell you that there is something out there, some small and obvious thing that you can do in a different way from everyone else. It’s this small thing that makes all the heartache and the headaches and the long days and cold nights all worthwhile.  I was so fortunate to have found that one person who encouraged me at just the right time in just the right place.

I hope you found this two-part post about my process as enjoyable being a reader as I did being its writer.  As always, thanks for stopping by. Until next time, reader.

Someone asked me recently how I found the time to write in my blog. I want to put this in perspective before I go into a lot of detail about my creative output.

I went on a date recently with an individual who had just lost her job, was planning to move away to grad school in five-months and expressed an interest in publishing her own blog posts as a hardcover collection by the end of the year, December 2018. She obviously had a lot on her plate and seemed to be seeking advice. I have never felt like the type of person anyone would need advice from, so this initially shocked me.

To set the tone of this post I will start with the fact that our date was bad. The food was bad, the beer was bad and the conversation sat comfortably somewhere between chitchat and public school lecture.  The only good thing to come out of this date would be this blog post, which has a lot of potential, but we’ll see where it all ends up. 

See, reader, I’ve had the idea to talk about my creative method on the blog for some time now. Lord knows every other writer in the world has been asked about their own process, so I thought I might beat the wolves to the bite.  The trouble came from not believing it would make for very interesting reading, and it was this issue that stopped me from writing about my method before. Admit it, if you sat down and saw a post that began with a monologue about which socks I wear when I sit alone in the kitchen to scribble out a bit of writing to share with you, you would skip it and go right to the stories about Cloudy Day and his detective agency.

At least, I hope you would.  I’m very proud of the way that story came out, all in all.

Now, when I went on this date I hadn’t the slightest hope that I would gain anything in the way of creative writing out of it. I suppose that just goes to show you, you never know where inspiration will spark. In fact, rule one of writing for Holding The Universe Together: You never know where inspiration will spark.

That’s a good spring board from which to launch the rest of my tale.

As I explained to my date that night, I don’t find the time to write, it just sort of comes along. I’ll be sitting at home or at work and a computer will happen to be in front of me and I will just so happen to feel like writing 800-1000 words. Honestly. I don’t think I’ve said anything so honest in my life. Some writers, very famous ones with loads of fans and published works, will tell their fans in their published works that any good writer should sit down and write at least a thousand words a day. Stephen King, in his book On Writing, explains that as you develop your skill and patience you will eventually come to a point where you are writing over two-thousand words a day.

That’s over-whelming. I tried it. One summer, the one I spent living in Alaska, I dedicated my time to writing at least one-thousand words a day. I felt great about it, I felt achieved and successful, even though all of those words are still sitting in a couple of journals near my bed at this point. As a result I did get a lot of ideas down on paper that I might never have if I hadn’t taken that time.

The problem is, it didn’t stick. It didn’t stay with me. And maybe that’s why I’m not an accomplished writer, but it’s just so… limiting. To sit and write every day with a goal in mind, it starts to feel like a chore. And suddenly writing isn’t any fun anymore.

I love to write, reader. I love it more than anything, and if I could do it with the dedication of Stephen King, believe me, I would be so happy. But I can’t. Or better yet, I don’t want to. I would rather let the moment happen, let the writing find me, rather than go hunting and searching for the writing. That sounds metaphysical and spiritual, but it’s not. I just believe that there is a time and a place when everything comes together in the right way and it doesn’t do anybody any good to go looking for that time and place.

So here I am, in front of a computer, and I am writing down ideas that have been floating around in my head for days. These ideas have been turning over in my head, mixing and mingling and becoming bigger and smaller at the same time, condensing and refining for a little over two weeks. Until now, when I find myself sitting near a computer on a rainy day, alone in my apartment ready an dedicated.

That’s how most of these stories and autobiographical collections came about. That’s how this blog came about. In its own kind of over-whelming nature, the ideas and words in my head craved an outlet.

I don’t think that my date understood the point I was trying to make. She seemed to be the type of person who focuses on the goal rather than the route while I am much more interested in the path under my feet than where it ends up. You may take this as a caution if you ever feel like going on a date with me.

In a jumbled up sort of way, there you have part one of this selection called: The Process.

I didn’t want to make it a two-part story when I sat down to write it, but now it feels like one. I certainly can’t go into the rest of my creative process in less than two-hundred words.  I will hint at the next section, though. In the next part I am going to talk about how my style has changed over time and my biggest influences as a writer. I’ll talk about what got me to this point, the advice I followed and the obstacles I’ve over-come. I’ll also try to get into the actual process of sitting down and writing for me, which will go into how I write, edit and when I know it’s ready to be published. Then I’ll talk about how it feels to share all this with anyone who happens to stumble across it and hopefully wrap the ideas I started in this blog in a neat little package.

See you for Part Two, reader. And as always, thank you so much for dropping in and reading.