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Okay, let’s try this again

Over the past 3 or 4 years (maybe actually even 6 years? I’m not even sure anymore,) I’ve drifted away from writing. It’s still on my mind and I’ve tried to start or work on a novel here and there more than once. None of my efforts have been more than token. To be fair, for 3 of those years, I’d gone back to school for pretty intense math-stuff that took all of my time. Nevertheless, I’ve been done with that for more than a cool-down time and I have very little creative output to show for it.

I’ve been writing for a long time. Pretty much ever since I graduated college, but not super seriously for the most of that time. One morning maybe thirteen or more years ago, I was driving to work. It was a clear, sunny day and somewhere along the Palmer hay flats, I just had a shift in thinking. I told myself that I could, in fact, write books, but wasn’t going to happen without a ton of work. Not long after that, I set up my blog. It was, among other things, a way to hold myself accountable. If I got out there and talked about what I was working on, then I’d have to do it. The earliest posts on this blog are little more than one paragraph observations I made regarding progress and problems.

Last week, like not this past weekend, but the one before that, I went to an author event at a local coffee shop (Cold Snap). Not for me, but for another writer I know (Caitlin Buxbaum of Red Sweater Press) who was promoting a book of short stories from 33 writers covering ‘Lessons Learned from Screwing Up Words‘. The book is called ‘Spell Check.’ I saw the advert for this event on Facebook and mentally filed it as: “I really need to go and say hello”. My wife saw this separately and suggested I pop in for a coffee and a bagel and show some support for Caitlin. I’m glad I did. The bagels and coffee hit the spot, but alongside that, I reconnected. I reconnected to creativity, to story telling, to people I value, and to remembering that a community of writers is as important as the audience we are pitching our stories to. We hold each other accountable, encourage progress, and share ideas.

Over the weekend, I did receive a nudge to spend some time writing. Caitlin said she’d remind me to write, so the message wasn’t unexpected, but the level of motivation I got in the form of: “Don’t forget to write today!” was really huge. It was a much bigger push than I’d have expected. Not only did I write, but I’ve been picking up my iPad every night since that reminder. That brought me back to my blog, which had, more than a decade ago now, served as a mechanism for accountability. So, here I am, updating my blog in what will hopefully be a routine for me as I re-prioritize the creative things in my life.

Image credit: Image by qimono from Pixabay

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It’s not theoretical anymore.

When you bring them home from the hospital, your days and nights are filled with feeding, diaper changing, soothing, and laundry. The cadence of it is exhausting, and the sheer relentlessness of it keeps you ‘in the moment,’ as it were. In fact, so much of parenting is ‘in the moment’ even those adult conversations about work, school, personal responsibility, finance, consequences, and even plans for the future are just theoretical. They are things you say and talk about because a growing person needs guidance.

But then, those moments ebb past – all of them – it creeps up on you. You make plans at every step, follow through, and keep the arrow pointed at launching a functional member of society. Then, one day, suddenly, as if you hadn’t been working toward it for 18+ years, you’re waiting for that last load of laundry to come out to finish the packing. It’s not theoretical anymore. It’s happening today, not tomorrow, not some as-yet-undetermined date, but today.

This part of the journey is over with our first kid. The start of a new journey begins as soon as that last load of laundry pops out of the dryer and makes its way into a suitcase.

It’s very hard, but I reckon it’s a good day for it. I’ve always regarded the fall time, or at least the turning of the leaves, as the start of a new year. I’ve never held with the January New Year thing. New years and new beginnings always happen in the fall, and this fall is a good one – As I write this, the sky is gray, the air is heavy with tepid rain and the trees are slowly molting in a light breeze. As far as fall goes, this is as typical as they come, but as a new year … it’s a big one.

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Are you FREAKING kidding me?!?!

The last time I posted was in January, just ahead of our eldest child’s 18th birthday, when I whinged about a new strange ‘milestone’ that was more in the first of a series. Now, it’s about eight months later and the speed at which the transition from a teen to a young adult occurs is stupendously more rapid than anyone would ever tell you.

When I wrote the post in January, our oldest didn’t have a job, didn’t drive, hadn’t picked out a college, and really, really still seemed an awful lot like a kid still. Today, he finished his 7th day in a row “a little early” at just after 3:30; for reference, he’s typically on the job from 7:30 – 6:00 and sometimes much, much later. He’s building fences (and other general labor activities), which involves a hell of a lot of physical exertion. Today’s adventure involved driving around work trucks, trying out some new tools — and digging even more bloody holes. While he did that, I dug around on the Oregon State University website for more detail on logistics for move-in day (late September). Yesterday he was telling me about a high-school friend who graduated last year and is now going to have a baby and get married (don’t ask me the order of operations, I don’t know and it’s not anybody’s business).

All of that to say: inside of 8 months, I went from seeing a weak but meaningful milestone pass to ACTUALLY seeing the milestone pass. It’s real, just stretched out a bit. Not only does he have a job, but he’s also driving (quite a lot), has college all squared away for the fall, and is now going through what a lot of us went through after our senior year of high school – friends getting married, having kids, and becoming “real” adults.

In all, the chain of events over the course of the past eight or so months has been pretty ‘chill,’ punctuated with odd bits of drama here and there. We went to Oregon to check out schools, ticking the parent box of ‘touring schools’ that I was pretty damn sure was not a thing I’d ever be doing. We finished up driver training and got his license. He managed to find a job that offers as many hours as he can stomach (If I ever hear the words: “People just don’t want to work anymore,” someone’s getting punched in the nuts — the problem is PAY and DIGNITY, not ethic – if you feel the words spill out your mouth, maybe just stop watching fox news.) In any case, it’s all becoming very, very real. In a little over 1 month’s time, he’s leaving home, and while he’ll be back to visit, maybe even to live for a while, our little guy is launching, and that’s permanent.

While leaving home is a huge deal that’s not what got me today. What got me is that I was looking through ‘care packages’ you can buy your kid through the school and one of the things you can get is a birthday care package. That’s when I realized — he’s going to be there by himself on his birthday this winter. The first time ever. Not home for his birthday. Now, it’s FEELING real.