Lucky to remember this thing on a Friday the 13th

So I came to this conclusion years ago... or, at least, I did intellectually.  But then I didn't do anything about it, really, so perhaps "conclusion" is a stupid word to use here.

I'll just get to the point:  Doing something well is often the enemy of doing something frequently.

Taken as is, I think it's fair to say that I've kept myself from frequency at the expense of quality, but then never took the time to find that quality on even a semi-regular basis.

And yes, I know that frequent practice is the best (and possibly only) way to get to the point of high quality at a high frequency.

But then again, I've also gotten fat, quit being social, and have generally lost the taste for publicly sharing my thoughts and feelings with anyone... so maybe there's more there to explore.

Or maybe I'll wait another couple of years to post again.

On the other hand, it's been almost a decade since Blogger was the platform of choice, and the chances of anyone stumbling across this is slim.  And knowing that hitting publish is a larger commitment than hitting save in a word doc might be the push enough to keep going.  Kind of like the pleasure of hearing the echo of a yell in an empty public space.

And I won't have to optimize the headers, strategically insert internal and external linking, add images and white space for aesthetic, tweak the theme options for maximum readability, target specific keywords for SEO, craft a CTA...

Yeah.  Word dump.  That's the stuff.

I'm glad I remembered this thing exists.

a list of excuses

Sometimes I feel that the act of writing is one of reaching out.

Everything ultimately is.  I know this.

But... I don't know.  The peculiar mixture of vulnerability, self awareness, and mental organization form such a potent compound that sometimes it seems all too dangerous to attempt fooling with it on a regular basis.

Or that's an excuse.  Probably an excuse.  I'm just avoiding.  And after re-reading that last "potent compound" stuff, I just sounds ridiculous.

So therefore I am left with little choice but to lean into it.  Here is my brutally honest list of top excuses that I use to keep myself from writing.

1. I don't want to look like I need it.  I don't want to need it.  For so long I've used writing as a means of digging a bit deeper within myself, trying to put words to what is essentially a gnarled mass of images and inner impulses.  The push and pull of powers outside of my control.  And it has gotten to the point that I feel as if any attempt to sit and hash things out has progressed pass the point of personal responsibility.  It's possible that I've named too many things, reduced most of life to manageable and specific constructs. Read too many books on how humans work that I can now more quickly recall passages from sociology treatises than my own immediate reactions.  Regardless of the reason, I've convinced myself that I don't really need to address any emotional ambivalence anymore.  Now, I just buckle down and do what I have to in order to survive.  On one hand, that's made me a whole lot more sane and "adult" (ugh, what a terrible word) in dealing with the world... on the other hand, it has completely turned my writer's stove down to the pilot light, if that.

2. I don't want people to read it.  To be completely honest, I feel as if anything that I write sets up an expectation to the reader that I simply don't want to be held accountable for.  I don't feel that I have a whole lot to say that people should take completely seriously, and I've gotten a bit queasy thinking that perhaps I have gotten to the point where an exposure of any inner life that I have would come across as unpleasant.  So I suppose that's just fear: fear that I don't have a life worth sharing, fear that I don't have insights worth exploring, fear that any negative experiences or thought processes that I've inevitably gathered over the years will leave a bitter aftertaste.

3. I don't care enough about people to share it.  The nagging thought that if (and that's very large and egocentric "if") I have something to say, that the person reading it simply doesn't deserve it.  Why should I have to illuminate something previously darkened to someone who can't manage it themselves?  Now, clearly, that's incredibly selfish... I probably shouldn't even admit to feeling that way.  But what's the point of this if not to eviscerate myself completely, in hopes that I can find something that I've lost?  And perhaps in this idea I can find a bit of my paralysis in cognitive dissonance.  The equal forces of "they don't deserve it" and "who the hell are you to assume you're valuable."  There is certainly an element of superiority inherent in writing, that in the organization of words a writer can somehow guide someone else somewhere new.  That dominance has somewhat eluded me in recent years, and any attempts to overcome it have evoked a palpable, physical cringe.  My ego a chalkboard, my writing the fingernails.

So this is me reaching out.  I've obviously written this, and as one of my favorite Orson Scott Card quotes goes: "I know what I really want by watching what I do."

I've needed it.

2014 is a New Year

The process of starting a business is a daunting one.  The lazy metaphor would be quicksand... the more you struggle to find footing, the quicker it sinks away from you.

I feel a bit lazy today.

But they say that life doesn't give you something until your ready for it.

So there's that.

One particular problem seems to repeatedly strike: the difficulty in translating thoughtful images into words.  Yeah, yeah, I know... the perennial struggle of the author.  But this one seems a bit more persnickety and devious, like trying to explain to a tourist which way to the interstate is quickest.  There isn't a lack of intelligence on either side, it's the dern words that muddle it all up.  I'd just point, but after three or so points it just starts looking hopeless; I'd go with, but it might seem insulting.  Besides, it's a bit more difficult to mentally go alongside and show the way.

I think...

Anyway.

I've been fiddling around with my other website: failurefactory.org -- I've been trying to build a "comprehensive yet accessible" explanation of improv as a "welcome to my page, don't hate me for sounding like I know what I'm talking about, but just go ahead and pretend that I do," but as I re-read the results (which, by the way, went from bone dry and painstakingly concise to feeling slightly pandering and almost too long for comfort in a mere four hours), I was struck by how agonizingly long it takes to spread a condensed truth thin enough to see through comfortably.

Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it's pretty much useless if you have to explain what the words mean.

I found a silly little poem on my phone, today... it'd been long enough since I wrote it that I had to take a second to make sure I didn't disagree:

astronauts
and sci-fi writers
are never truly fatalist
no matter how much
they try to convince you
they are

Crossroads

In the interest of putting more words out there, to keep the old linguistic muscles from atrophying, I figure I should update this behemoth. Also, I told someone about the blog, so I don't want to look like a complete sluggard. Sound like one, sure, but I should probably attempt to avoid actually inhabiting that particular attribution.

There's nothing more annoying than falling into a creative ennui. It's one thing not to care about what someone else has to say; it's something entirely different when you don't care what you have to say. Kind of a bummer. Not that I haven't tried, mind you. I attempted to force out a post the other day, but all that appeared was a small sliver of story that, to be honest, I don't know what to do with:

-----

In the morning, John woke to find everything as it was when he fell asleep the night before. This disturbed him, because he distinctly remembered tidying up. Yes, that towel had been put in its spot on the top left-hand shelf in the closet, and he definitely remembered dusting the thin, silver layer of dust off of the dark brown wood of the desktop. He had dusted it just before playing tiddlywinks with the clever, orange jackrabbits that had popped out of his slippers as they sang.

“Oh, ho!” John laughed to himself, “it was just another dream! I really must stop eating mustard before bedtime.”

John went about his morning routine, humming quietly under his breath. He didn't notice that he was humming the song from his recently remembered dream; what really bothered him was whether it had been the jackrabbits that had been singing, or if it might have been his slippers.

-----

Perhaps one day I'll finish the story.

I was talking to one of my regulars at work this afternoon...

Not to rabbit-trail too much, but one of the pleasures of working a customer service job is establishing a rapport with strangers, understanding them without a context, only to discover intriguing facets about them that completely re-frame your understanding of their identity.

In this case, I knew a regular to be an employee of a popular all-natural, hippie-type kind of grocery store. We would chat some, but there weren't really any hooks on which to hang a real conversation. Today, I dropped some eaves on a break, and found that he was an astrologer. So, of course, in true rube fashion, I immediately asked him what sign I seemed like.

Fortunately, my asinine request was interrupted. There was a storm blowing in, lightening was crackling mere miles away; the escalating wind threatened to play Mary Poppins with the shade umbrellas. The first smatterings of rain came in horizontally. Throngs of people who had been enjoying a hot summer's day suddenly realized that they were in real danger of being swept away.

Everyone made it inside.  The only casualties were two lattes and an ashtray.  The conversation resumed, but with the vigor of the chase. He was thinking of marketing his astrological consulting a bit stronger, perhaps with a website or some such. I'm not sure how, but that segued into me trying to connect with that sentiment. I tried to describe my state of mind, the self-proclaimed ennui, that I had arrived at a mental crossroads and didn't know which way to turn.

I wasn't asking for a reading, or even for advice...

I was just kind of

               talking.

He looked at me and simply said, “I think a lot of people are at a crossroads.

                                                     Maybe we just need to be at the crossroads

                                                                                                                 for a while.”

lazarus

we decided to call him lazarus
on a whim
lazarus hughes
although we're sure
he's never seen a river
a forest perhaps
or maybe a pond
but certainly never
a river

few people agree
it seems
on the meaning
of owls
especially daytime owls
a sign of warning perhaps
a harbinger of something sinister
when a nighttime watchman
has so long a shift
but we think he's funny
and not so frightening
as he dances with ravens
and asks us questions
in a clownish warble
to which we laugh
and are quick to reply
us
that's who

we've known rivers
she and i
deep rivers too
whose beds are ancient
and well worn
whose hesitant first steps
are a sign of warning
a harbinger of a journey
that takes hard edges
and makes them
smoother
like the rocks
children like to skip
across the depths
of a calm surface

lazarus is a bard
we say
and wait patiently
for wise socrates to teach
we dance
in the currents of breeze
as the dusky night
brings with it
what it may
and when asked
what the river brings
we are not frightened

we think it's funny
and are quick to reply

hi. it's been a while.

perhaps it's time to write again

i've lived a bit more

seen a few more things

met a few more people

thought more thoughts


i'd like to think

that the dam

that held back

words

for so long

might

in breaking

loose a torrent

but

more likely

it's just a

trickle

Sleep Dep

Here's a friendly suggestion of awesomeness to play over the post, if you so feel (word of warning: it's not traditional music, so you may not like it the first listen... but give it time):



Truth be told, it's been quite some time since I've tried to update this blog, and even longer since I've actually posted. I suppose it has something to do with not feeling that I have anything worth saying before I have done something to back it up; if there's one thing that consistently that irks me, it's empty words.

So I haven't posted. But I've been doing a lot of doing. So that's cool.

I've learned a few things, too, in the vein of things that generally suck while you go through them, but somehow look back upon as growing times. Or maybe that's what your brain does to protect you from trauma-inducing experiences. Either way is fine with me, I think.

A Brief-ish Thought About Sleep Deprivation:

For a few months there, I was pulling twenty hour work shifts, hopping back and forth between two jobs. It was typical for me to see the sunset as I left my first job, only to watch it rise the next morning as I left the second. At first, I was ecstatic that I was able to work so much; most of the time I have a lingering guilt that clouds everything that I do that doesn't contribute to a paycheck. It prompted a certain adult freedom that I hadn't ever felt before. I began to seek out the early morning haunts that no one ever knows about: the all-night coffee places and open-way-too-early-in-the-morning pancake houses that only the rare patron greets at 5am. A french bakery that wafts welcoming waves of fresh-baked, honey-drenched croissant and french-pressed coffee air that is more than enough to get your salivary glands overworked anywhere within a two mile radius. A midnight diner that boasts mountains of sausage-gravy biscuits and cheese-enrobed scrambled eggs, with enough watery, burn-flavored coffee to drown the four-hundred-pound truckers and high-powered executives that were called to by name by the sugary-sweet waitress. I had discovered an unfamiliar culture that lurked in the uber-late and wicked-early. It existed in flashes of Hunter S. Thompson-esque surrealism, the product of an enthused exhaustion: shaking streetlights that trailed through the night, menacingly unending roads with beneficent streetlights, smiling waiters extending over-sized coffee pots and impractical advice, slow-moving passenger trains that came full of people and left empty, blurry menus of swedish omelets and mushroom sauces, dark stairways paved with astro-turf, loud non sequitur fireworks breaking the night's stillness, low-slung cars burning out tires and blaring subsonic bass.

This enthusiasm of discovery lasted approximately a month. Apparently sleep is somewhat functional, in that you don't function much without it. The evil of sleep-dep is subtle. There are the obvious side-effects: a perpetual hangover that affects everything that you do, the nodding off during intense situations, the forgetting parts of the day, the blurring of days into weeks into months. The obvious ones are easy to muscle through. Sheer will power. If you made it through finals in college, you've gotten this part mastered. It's the secondary effects that are way more devious and detrimental.

Here's the thing about sleep dep: it makes you tired of being tired. Infinite regression. Once you've begun the cycle, it becomes a spinning top of weariness that only increases its rotation, fueled by its own existence. It begins to erode your mind around the edges, numbing you to most things that were once sensitive. You begin to isolate yourself. Your interests shift from many to one primary goal: sleep. Future goals? Sleep. Long term plans? Sleep.

All other decisions are trivial.

Sleep dep is evil.

Needless to say, I quit my night job.