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.

That Single Guy at a Marriage Seminar

This is the article that I was fortunate enough to be able to publish in Elevation Church's magazine a few weeks ago. Hope you like it!
-Matt

------

Nodding heads. A disarming amount of nodding heads.

My initial interaction with the work of Dr. Emerson Eggerichs was interesting, to say the least. Many soberly nodding heads. Instant agreement. It was like a super power. Anywhere I went, I could simply rehearse the major points of any chapter from whichever Dr. Eggerichs' book that I was currently reading and skeptically petrified heads would instantly bob up and down in unison, as if they had hit a speed bump on the same mental dashboard. While it's possible that I may have abused this newly discovered power (in hindsight, the dramatic wand flourishes and black top hat may have been overkill), I was naively surprised to find that these specific (and therefore paradoxically universal) truths were impacting me just as dramatically.

I was reading Love and Respect as I prepared to interview Dr. Eggerichs for this article. He was scheduled to visit Elevation as a guest speaker and, even though I was newly a writer, I had boldly volunteered to be the literary emissary representing Elevation Magazine. But, to be honest, despite my freshman enthusiasm I was still a little skeptical about reading the book. Why? Well, for starters, I was single. For me, the idea of reading a book on marriage problems was about as appealing as running through white-hot sand without wearing any shoes; just let me get to the beach first, then we'll talk sole ointment. Secondly, I was a single guy. While a single girl might receive a good-natured ribbing for daydreaming about the future, if I was caught reading a red and white striped book called Love and Respect while there was something even remotely manly going on, I was in real danger of having a bonnet duct-taped to my head. Thirdly, I was a single guy with a girlfriend, a sister and a mom. I was convinced: if there was a way to figure out a woman, it was beyond any normal human experience.

Dr. Eggerichs has that experience. I had finished reading his work; as I spoke to him over the phone, his twenty years of experience in church-pastoring and couples-counseling flowed over the conversation and filled in the many cracks that I found I had in my reading comprehension. His message is a simple one, in the vein of simple concepts that are able to slice through misconceptions like butter and completely change the way you act and think; yet this simplicity is at once strongly compelling and inherently frustrating, in that it takes real purposefulness and discipline to engage it. Centering around what he calls “probably the greatest treatises in the New Testament on marriage,” Ephesians 5, Dr. Eggerichs goes against the modern cultural grain in his ardent exhortation of husbands and wives: the summary verse, Ephesians 5:33, says that a husband must love, and a wife must respect.

“So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” -Ephesians 5:33

Realizing that while there was no debate on the first part of the verse, Dr. Eggerichs explained to me that the idea of a wife respecting her husband simply because he is a man was one that had gone largely unexplored, despite a clear context in scripture (as you might imagine, the “patriarchal nature” of the sentiment doesn't exactly warm the cockles of most popular political persuasions). But Dr. Eggerichs argues that despite the reactive nature of the idea, this differentiation between love and respect is a key insight to the marriage relationship (and male/female relationships in general).

“A wife has one driving need – to feel loved. When that need is met, she is happy. A husband has one driving need – to feel respected. When that need is met, he is happy.”

I can hear your head nodding. Even to a single guy, it's so obvious... once you see it.

Having spent nearly twenty years as the senior pastor at Trinity Church in East Lansing, Michigan, Dr. Eggerichs counseled an innumerable amount of couples, listening closely to their issues. After identifying the love/respect difference and finding the funding for a full academic exploration of the topic to be politically verboten, he created Love and Respect Ministries as a means by which men and women can learn to “decode” one another, using the trove of stories from his experiences to poignantly illustrate the ways that every relationship (even a good one) expresses conflict. Their website, loveandrespect.com, further extends support by providing forums on which couples can have questions answered and can find personal support through difficult times.

As our conversation began to wind down, I became acutely aware of the extent to which my own perspective filtered the way that I interacted with life. I found that my own story was intertwined with the stories of thousands of other relationships around me. That maybe the beach is not the only (or best) starting point for decoding my barefoot walk of respect into one of love. That perhaps a good-natured ribbing might possibly be a transliteration of a duct tape bonnet.

I remember how blessed I am to attend a church like Elevation Church. My perspective might be (quite) limited to that of a single male, but I have constant contact with thousands of other people who have perspectives that can inform and strengthen my own, from wildly varied backgrounds and life-experiences. I have access to amazing small groups that can give me direct personal support. I can sit under wise counsel like Dr. Eggerichs and Pastor Stephen. I have a tireless church staff that is ready to give everything in order to help me figure out this love and life thing. This love and respect and life thing.

As the interview coasted to a close, I caught my reflection in a mirror and noted, with little surprise, that it was nodding, too.