Sometimes, You Just Have to Take a Step Back and Breathe

A lot has happened since I last wrote here. By no means was it intentional, but when I published my last piece back in June, my interest in finishing the half-written posts I had waiting to the side sort of just dropped off all of a sudden. I wasn’t enjoying it.

Writing is something I’ve always done for different reasons at different times. When I was in college I wrote because I had to. After college, I wrote to make money, but the longer I’ve gone and considered myself a writer, I’ve found myself writing for the art of it all. The experience. This blog has served as a field on which to do that, where I can tackle any topic, air any issue, and make any list that I want—because I enjoy it.

But back around the time I quit writing here, I wasn’t enjoying this anymore, or much of anything else, to be honest.

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The Work Does Not Define Us

Let’s talk about work. I don’t mean “work” the verb, but “work” the general noun, work the job, work the thing you do day in and day out, love it or hate it—that work. Because work, your career, the job you’re doing, is all too often the central part of who you are, who we are, a badge we wear to tell the world, “Here is my worth to not only myself, but to you and society as well.” We introduce ourselves as “Hank the chef,” or “Susan the optometrist,” never “Hank the occasional garden grower,” or “Susan the comic book collector,” because our work is so important to how we live, where we live, what we drive, the time we have, the places we go and the things we own, that it seems all the more important to us—even if it isn’t.

I Never Talked About Why We Went Vegetarian

I realized when I posted the “old man rails against fast food chains” post the other day, I neglected to ever explain or even mention the fact that Abbie and I had become vegetarian or, and perhaps more importantly, the reason why. Usually I slip random tidbits like that into whatever it is I’m talking about, but, for some reason, I guess I assumed I’d gone and done that already–oh well.

Our Children Are Losing Their Way and Disney is to Blame

There’s this sense we begin to take on as we get older that the generation behind us, the one following our trail and the subsequent ones following directly behind them, are for some reason inadequate. Years and years ago we believe, centuries and so on, the greatest people, the pinnacle point of humanity, lived out their days and birthed a generation that would slowly take the charge in our descent toward becoming an amorphous blob of idiocy. But we aren’t the only ones who believe that.

Celebrities, Men, Sexual Assault and You

There’ve been an odd set of moments over the past couple of months: allegations are raised over not only an individual but a powerful individual of an instance wherein they sexually assaulted the raiser of the allegation, usually, or someone else, maybe, the person is removed from their position—they step down, their position changes in some way—and it comes to light that what was said was not only an allegation, but an accurate glimpse at the truth.

It’s been a whirlwind of happenings, allegations and confirmations: Matt Lauer a couple of days ago, Louis C.K. a few weeks ago, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Al Franken, Charlie Rose—the list is staggering, and frighteningly, this list shows no sign that it’ll ever not keep getting larger.

You Don’t Have to Be “Good Enough” to Do What You Do

I think the first time I ever felt the overwhelming sense that I didn’t belong, that I was nowhere near good enough to do what I’m doing (or trying to do anyway) was in college.

I’m Writing a Book!

It’s sort of funny:

When I was in college, I had this group of friends that was, for the most part, comprised entirely of English majors. And every one of them, as you might imagine, wanted to write a novel; it was just in their nature. Our nature. Before we graduated, the majority of us had begun what we all believed to be our first “great work,” the novel that would bring us into authorship, free us from the shackles of the nine-to-five and usher us into the pantheon of some of writing’s greats.

None of those works panned out (to my knowledge). Writing’s hard, telling stories is hard, much less telling stories others would like to read, and much much less telling ones they would want to pay money for. Speaking for myself, I wrote what I thought would be my ticket, the book(s) I’d be working on for years to come.

But it wasn’t.