The Courage To Write

If there’s one word I really hate it’s ‘facade'. The word itself and the slyness with which it’s usually said conjure up images of movie sets for old westerns. You know the ones. The buildings are merely planks of plywood painted to look like actual structures; thin 2x4’s the only thing keeping them up in the back.

Facade. I bet your reading of the word makes you think of someone whom you feel is fake. Someone who is not anything close to genuine. Someone who tries their best to make you think they’re someone they’re not.

We live in a world of facade. We live in a world where style almost always trumps substance. We live in society that embraces flash, worships immediacy, and cowers to political correctness. Honesty is not only a lonely word, it’s a forgotten concept.

But then you have moments when you come across people who are striving to be honest individuals. People working hard simply to be authentic. Who would have thought it could be an ordeal to just be yourself?

I am fortunate and blessed to live with a person like that.

Watching my wife on her journey of authenticity has been and continues to be an inspiration for me. It also serves as a reminder of what courage is. As I’ve been privy to most of the feedback she’s received from her writing, I’m reminded of what it takes to write and publish your thoughts, feelings, and emotions for all the world to see. Blogging in the manner which my wife does takes a type of courage very few people posses.

It’s not like writers of editorials who are paid to take a position on a subject and express their opinions with words. It’s not like a talk radio host who must be both entertaining, informed, and always one step ahead of the audience. It’s also not like other bloggers who are, on their own scale, Internet celebrities and whose blogs are more a commercial vehicle than a portal of introspection.

My wife’s blog is none of those things. If we’re lucky, it never will become one of those things.

The road to authenticity begins with a realization that there’s a whole lot of distance between here and there. It also begins with the conscious decision to take what’s been given you, both the good and the bad, and to make the most with it not just for yourself but also for the greater good. It’s akin to playing poker and having all your cards dealt face up. You can’t bluff your way through a hand. When life is good, you take the pot. When it’s not, you take your loss and wait patiently until a new hand is drawn.

The admiration I have for my wife, as well as the many other writer’s out there who pour their heart and soul into the words they create, is hard to describe. The rawness with which they write is mesmerizing. Their ability to make my eyes tear and my heart ache is breathtaking. Through all the chaos, noise, and superficiality, their voices serve as a compass that reminds me of which way I want to go. It’s a moment of focus in a whirlwind of blur.

There’s a lot in this life to distract us. There’s a lot in this life to make us think we’re bigger than we are. If, however, you ever feel the desire to take off your shoes and feel the earth underneath your feet, I invite you to find a blogger that inspires you, and to latch on to that person’s work.

Better yet, if you really want to explore the inner workings of your life, take a moment to write down what you’re thinking. You don’t have to post it online or share it with anyone. Write it for you. Write it for the experience of being your authentic self.

You want to live your life? Get real.

Sponsored by the Letter 'F'

As I sat down to right this last blog for the month, my mind was inundated with alliteration. My mind was on the month of February, and all I could think about was words that begin with the letter ‘F’. Yes, that includes the ever versatile, never dull to say F-bomb.

So, in honor of the lovely month of February, here is a list of choice F-words that will hopefully recap the month that was, as well as set the tone for the month that will be.

Finish: I mentioned last night I would most likely not be posting blogs as routinely as I did in January. The 30-Day Writing Challenge was fun, and it was indeed a challenge. It allowed me to explore topics I had never considered, as well as find some cathartic moments to help me get over issues that still remained a bit unresolved. However, now that I’ve proven to myself that I can indeed block out time to write on a daily basis, I must be fair to myself and finish writing Volume IV of Lives. The short novel series I began writing in April of 2009 has been living in limbo for some time now. Part of it has been the deliberate hiatus of the project. Part of it has been deliberate avoidance on my part. With Volume III written (albeit unreleased), the story of Cate and Max needs its finality, and this is the month to do that.

Fortify: It’s important for me to review what Lee and I were able to accomplish with our 30-Day Writing Challenge and learn from it. In my case, not only were my eyes opened to new ideas and styles, I was also able to strengthen and reinforce some of the lessons I had learned in the six years I’ve been blogging. Mood has as much to do with writing as muse. It’s amazing how fickle my attitude can be, and what begins as a great plan to sit down and write gets tossed out the window because of a small incident that upsets me. This month reminded me that although it’s great to have a goal to write, you can’t be a slave to your writing. When it’s not there, it’s not there. And if you try to force it, you’re not being true to yourself as a writer or to your audience. Sometimes, it’s okay to just shrug your shoulders and say “fuck it”.

Foresee: One thing I truly enjoyed about the 30-Day Writing Challenge was having a list of topic ideas for each day. Mapping out about what it was I wanted to write resolved half the problems I used to have in terms of writing daily. Before, I’d sit down and think about what to write and I’d be stuck with nothing. With our ‘road map’, however, I would be able to think about the topic as I sat on conference calls. I’d be able to jot notes as I waited for Natalie’s soccer practice to finish. I’d be able to use my morning constitutional as productive time. (Over share?).

So, given the fine fellowship we were able to foster following our first listing of fascinating topics (I told you I had an alliteration avalanche), her is a list of topics and ideas for the month of February. I am not putting any dates to them and I am not listing them in any particular order. This is about looking at a topic and either being able to write about it or letting it steer your imagination in a direction that allows you to write about something else.

Since February is the month of love, several of the topics have love-themed qualities to them. Also, Lee received feedback on one of her posts suggesting the next set of topics be about what ‘we’ can do together. Finally, Lee and I both explored some dark and painful topics in our writing in January. We want this to month to be positive, light-hearted, and fun. Given all that, here’s the list (again, in no particular order).

Happy writing, everyone.

• First Kiss
• First Car
• First Love
• Childhood Crush
• Favorites (Pet, Food, Restaurant, Vacation, TV Show, Actor/Actress, Athlete, Sports Team (Pro), Sports Team (College), Day of the Week, Season of the Year, Shirt, Relative, Book*, Song*, Movie*)
• Describe Yourself as a Sixteen Years Old
• Proudest Professional Moment
• Guilty Pleasures
• Neighbors / Community
• Siblings or Cousin
• Tackling a Home Improvement Projects
• Hobbies
• Causes you love/support
• Common Courtesy
• Common Sense
• Misunderstood Song Lyrics
• Your Role Model
• Mission Work (i.e. could you leave it all to go serve/help others?)
• Tolerance/Understanding (i.e. seeing an argument from the perspective of your adversary)
• One Thing in the World You’d Like to Change

If you think of something you’d like to see added to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below of visit Lee’s site and leave a comment there. Thanks!

* I know these were covered in January, but there may be someone coming across this posting for the first time.

30 Day Writing Challenge

I always complain, mostly to myself, that I do not write enough. “I need to write every day,” I mutter out loud. “Writer’s write. Just do it.” Still, even with the all the self motivation turned self loathing, I find excuses and reasons to not get it done. Peer pressure and accountability, however, add a whole different dimension to the mix.

Imagine my surprise - a very pleasant surprise, I might add - when my wife came to me and said, “I want to write every day. I want to launch my blog site and write something, anything, every day.” It’s kinda’ like going to the gym. By myself, it’s simply not going to happen. When driven by someone else, however, I may get around to actually doing it.

So this is a prologue to a challenge Lee and I have imposed on ourselves; to blog every day for thirty days. It’s a month of January show down. A blog-off, if you will.

As you might imagine, we had to come up with guidelines and a game plan in order to make this work. It’s very easy to run out of ideas if you’re trying to write on a daily basis. We also don’t want the blogging to be fluff or uninteresting. It’s for that reason we came up with the target road map listed below.

We also want to commit to this exercise and not make it overbearing, yet ensure the content is readable. For this reason, we agreed on word count parameters whereby each entry must be at least 250 words in length but no more than 1000, unless, of course, the power of inspiration kicks in and the piece basically writes itself.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out and thank our friend Rebecca Smith for the idea of this writing challenge. Her blog entry, Thirty Days of Truth, gave us a starting point for this project. Couple that with the writing project being covered by The Daily Post and we have a very solid framework on which we can build our writing challenge.

We go into this knowing full well we’ll fail - we’re on a vacation cruise from 1/6 - 1/10 - but we’re allowing for the brief hiatus. As for the other days in the month, here is what we plan to discuss. Let’s hope everything goes according to plan.

• Day 01: Something you're looking forward to this year.
• Day 02: Something you regret not having done last year.
• Day 03: Something with which you struggle.
• Day 04: Something that is part of your routine that you enjoy.
• Day 05: Something in life that gives you balance.
• Day 06: Something that excites you and fills you with joy.
• Day 07: Vacation Hiatus
• Day 08: Vacation Hiatus
• Day 09: Vacation Hiatus
• Day 10: Something at which you've been a champion or the best.
• Day 11: Something about which people seem to compliment you.
• Day 12: Something you hope to change about yourself and why.
• Day 13: Discuss some of the things on your bucket list.
• Day 14: Someone who has made your life worth living.
• Day 15: A band/musical artist whose music impacted your life.
• Day 16: A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
• Day 17: Someone with whom you shared a friendship/relationship that simply drifted out of your life.
• Day 18: Someone you met randomly that's made an impact on your life.
• Day 19: Something that shook your belief system to its core (a big disappointment in your life).
• Day 20: Discuss your favorite movie and why it's so special to you.
• Day 21: Write about your best friend (not significant other) and what makes them special.
• Day 22: Describe a dark/turbulent moment in your life.
• Day 23: Describe a truly spiritual moment in your life.
• Day 24: Discuss a spontaneous moment in your life that that turned out to be fantastic.
• Day 25: Discuss something you planned that ended up not being what you expected.
• Day 26: How do you handle/deal with both success and failure?
• Day 27: What is your vocation (why are you here on earth)?
• Day 28: What is your biggest dream in life (what one great thing do you want to accomplish)?
• Day 29: What WAS your biggest dream in life (you wanted to do as a kid but no longer can)?
• Day 30: Someone in your family that means so much to you.
• Day 31: Epilogue: Write a letter to yourself.
  

(1/31/11) - The following is a recap and review of our writing challenge, as well as a look ahead to writing in February.

Turn the M Upside Down

To me, writing is a lot like exercising. I may not necessarily enjoy the physical act of writing, but I do feel a huge sense of accomplishment once I’m done. It’s the satisfaction of having written that I find gratifying. The process of writing, by contrast, can be arduous and even grueling at times.

Just like when you’re in the middle of sit-ups or on mile four of a six mile run - neither of which, by the way, I’ve done since college - there is a sense of despair that can sneak into your thought process once you begin writing. “Should I keep going? Should I quit? Does it matter?” It’s a mental poison that clouds the vision of the goal and can make gravity feel a thousand times more powerful than it is.

Still, through it all, we press on; one more crunch, one more step, one more word.

I miss writing. I wish I had a routine by which I could sit down and just write every day. I am not sure that will happen anytime soon, but I do wish I could drive myself to write with more frequency. I casually call myself a ‘blogger’, yet one post a month does not a blogger make. Bloggers write with regularity. They are timely and current. They generate readership by providing new content. I’m not a blogger, I’m a glorified hack.

As I look back, however, as to why I haven’t written much lately, it turns out I actually have. I just haven’t written much for myself. Most of my recent writing has been within the scope of extracurricular projects. I’ve volunteered my time for a charity organization and event, and I’ve poured much of my imaginative process into that effort. That’s left little time and creative juice for my personal writing. As it turns out, though, that’s quite fine with me.

I’ve come to learn if there’s one thing more rewarding than writing for me it’s writing for others. Being a contributor to this charity effort has not only provided me with a new level of satisfaction as a writer, it has also opened doors and created new opportunities I’d never previously considered. As the title of this post suggests, it’s allowed for my writing to go from being about ‘me’ to being about ‘we’. It’s also served as a microcosm of what I want my life to be as a whole, where my actions are more about giving and less about taking, where my focus is more about seeing others than looking at myself.

Don’t get me wrong. I still aspire to one day make writing my day job, and I still get a thrill when I am able to produce a piece that provides me with the ego stroke I oftentimes crave. I still plan on writing that next short-novel, and I understand there is a certain aspect of ‘look at me’ in the process of marketing oneself as a wordsmith. That being said, I feel less of a rush to make all that happen and more a desire to lend a helping hand, even though that help may come one keystroke at a time.

Just like that upside-down ‘M’, a change in perspective can make all the difference.

Attitude of Gratitude

I first began blogging just over 27 months ago. I can’t say there was one particular reason as to why I started writing. Rather, I think it was a myriad of reasons and circumstances which compelled me to click away at my keyboard. And in these past 27 months I’ve written about so many things. Kids and cars, love and lust, failure and forgiveness. It’s all there. My life for the world to see.

Over the past several months, however, I’ve been asked by several friends why I don’t write as often as I used to. I would post 3–4 times per week. And not just 2 paragraph ramblings. I’m talking about 500–700 word rants and soliloquies about what was happening in my life. For me, it was my therapy. It’s how I dealt with the pain of losing my dad. It’s how I coped with the fact I left my wife. It’s how I healed after my heart was crushed. It’s how I rejoiced after my life was saved.

So here I sit looking back at what can only be described as a tempest of time. A whirlwind of emotions and experiences that brought me to where I am today. The father of two wonderful and beautiful children. The boyfriend of a woman who is true, endearing and so amazing that I am often rendered speechless. The member of a community that is so loving and embracing, it’s hard to imagine a life without it. All those dominoes that fell, all those ripples that floated outward, all those breezes that were born into gusts that begat changes in direction, perspective and understanding; they all brought me to where I am today.

And where I am today is a wonderful and remarkable place. I am a couple of chapters into the new book that is my life. My new life, where the rear view mirror is no longer haunting and the horizon is something to be embraced and no longer feared. It’s a life in which my daily battle is to temper my desire to floor it because I know the future has so many more wonderful events in store, yet I want to pace myself and be able to thoroughly enjoy the here and now.

I used to write to dull the pain. I used to write to justify the course of my actions and the decisions I made. I used to write because I hoped that someone reading would empathize and understand. We all know that misery loves company and I was miserable. Even though I never really was, I felt alone. I felt in despair and the only thing keeping me together was the ability to click a button that reads “Post to Blog.”

I have to admit, it’s much more of a challenge to write now. Just like crawling into a bottle or laying in bed for days upon days, it’s so easy to write when you’re sad and depressed. I have so much for which to be thankful, that I just want to shout it out to the world (hence this entry). Yet I find myself too busy enjoying life that I don’t make the time to sit down and write. And sometimes, that’s alright with me.