Writing might be all I want to do, but not all I need to do. I’m lucky that sometimes I can shift balance to the one foot living in the real world and have it bear the weight of adult responsibilities, while leaving the other to toe creativity’s dark water (I often lean heavily on the shoulder of my wife for that – TY, K). That water is often cold, though, with a wicked undertow, but still, getting those toes into the water is critical. “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” (W Shakespeare)

Sometimes, though, the water is warm and welcoming, like today, when I found a few kind words for each of my stories on Amazon. Garnering feedback is never easy, so I’m happy to read any reviews of my work, positive or negative, because I understand how much effort it takes for anyone to actually post a review. Finding that some people actually liked what they read makes it so much sweeter.

I’m glad both stories resonated with some. Writing is like putting an ear to the ground and feeling distant thunder, and then describing what you are feeling as the sounds you think you might hear, if you were at the source – but you’re never sure if what you feel strumming through the ground is what’s actually happening on the far end, so there’s a lot of trust involved. Often it’s a horrible mess that ends up like flotsam on whitecaps, because you’ve completely misinterpreted the vibrations, but sometimes.. Sometimes what you feel is strong enough to grab you and carry you (or drag you under) all the way across that dark water, those vibrations creating waves and swells that either propel you across or pull you down, but you keep treading, until you feel the rocky upward sloping bed under the toes you first dipped, and you climb onto the far shore, sometimes wading out, more often scrambling on hands and knees, coughing and sputtering, but across and on shore.

And kind words left by strangers are blankets and towels found on that cold shore, and you wrap yourself up and begin to warm, catching your breath and feeling grateful.

And as you stand there, eyes closed and exhausted and wondering if you are wasting your time, wrapped in the kindness of strangers, you can already feel the vibrations through the soles of your feet, as that dark water laps your heels.

Happy new year. Welcome to 2018.

#Knowledge and #experience are far better things to inherit then money.

The best thing #parents can teach their children is how to figure shit out. That way, if parents can’t figure out life before they die, they can pass what they know down to their children, who can then pick up where their parents leave off, rather than reinvent the wheel.

What if I already am all that I could be?

What if desired ambition is an illusionary drug manufactured by selfish genes designed solely to keep us alive, so that our selfish genes can survive?

Change, by definition, requires deconstruction of whatever came before. Creation, then, is change in a vacuum. Creation is change without all the messy destruction.

Sometimes I wake into disorientation, having just lived a moment ago so thoroughly elsewhere. Am I remembering a dream, or reality? I wonder if I’m waking when I wake, or when I fall asleep.

..but there may be some treasure to be had in storytelling.

I don't have enough life left to live all the lives I want to live..

The good news is the number of lives I've lived is far greater than the number I can remember.

The bright glare of youth blinds you to the rushing road beneath your feet. You think only of all your life ahead of you, far more road before you then behind, and you eagerly race toward it.

Then life actually happens, insidiously, but you are barely aware of the increased speed of travel. You get accustomed to moving at nearly the speed of light. Everyone else is, so you don't even know you are.

Then, at some point, you slow down, hopefully by choice but sometimes not. And you realize there is far more road behind you then before you.

Every once in a while, if you’re lucky, and if you read often, a book comes along that transports, impresses, and validates. Kayla Rae Whittaker’s “The Animators” does all that. She writes with an efficiency and accuracy that will hold you until only the story decides to let you go, and no sooner, and she knows how to lead you down paths fraught with speed bumps and pot holes and an occasional and precisely timed emotional nuke.

This is one of those books that makes you say, “This is why I keep reading. This is why I can never stop writing.”

How to Success by Corinne Caputo is, without question, one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. The honest cluelessness on each page is like reading a how-to on brain surgery by someone who’s never cut so much as a watermelon, and probably hasn’t come closer to using a knife than watching a YouTube clip on slicing fruit, but has all the trust and confidence that they can, indeed, perform brain surgery and have it result in a positive outcome.

Every page is funny (“How to come out as a writer to your parents”) or irreverent(“How to bring up your book at parties!”) or maybe quasi-useful (“Math problems for writers”).

But unsaid throughout the book is the idea that you can get it done – you can write a novel, or a memoir, or a screenplay. All you need is to do it. Do it wildly, do it badly, do it loudly..but do it.

You can’t edit what isn’t written. And maybe fortune, awards, and fame await. If they do, you’ll have practiced taking an author photo and signing autographs (things to do before writing that bestseller. 😉

Full disclosure – Corinne is also my daughter, but it makes the book no less funny.