Purse Before Slime and Other Obtuse Observations

Holy cow!

It's been nearly a year now since I started this little venture of mine, and I look at where I started and where I've arrived at this moment.

Actually, at this very moment, I'm enjoying a glass of the first homebrew I've made in close to 14 years...and I have to admit, it's pretty darned good. My wonderful wife Peggy bought me a beer machine for my birthday last month, and today, my first batch finished up and I'm sampling the contents of said batch. Now, while it's a bit on the cloudy side, it doesn't lack in the taste category at all. Matter of fact, it's damned good tasting, to say the very least. And I figure as I start homebrewing again, I'll learn as I go along and things will improve with age.

In March of last year, my friend of 30 years, Kingfish, aka ems, aka Jeff, and aka Benji sent me the url to a site by a friend of his, Space Ace. It thru SA's site that I discovered blogspot. I fought off the urge to start my own site for close to a month, and then finally, in April of last year, I decided, what the heck, let's see if I can do this. For every reason I could think of not to, I thought of five or six reasons why I should. The shoulds won out, obviously.

So, what have I accomplished so far?

Let's ponder this for a moment....

Okay, enough pondering!

I've awakened in me the desire to write again, whether it be just to give my views on a certain issue, write a poem, or just blow off, I have found the entire experience a revelation to the stirring that still exists in this 54 year old soul of mine that needs to be released. See, I always wanted to be a writer, and for reasons we won't get into now, that didn't happen. BUT, when Kingfish and all his various aka's sent me SA's blogsite, I found something that intrigued the writer in me that still wanted to get his feet wet, and I started this thing we now call blogging.

So, what have I gained from it?

First, I have found out that I still have the yearning to write. That makes me happy, so therefore, that is a good thing, as far as I can tell at this point. Thanks to ems, and his various aka's, he sent my url for my site to others for them to check out. They, for the most part, have remained silent, so I don't know if any of them are reading or not, but I have had a couple of people I didn't know send me e-mails and tell me that they had liked what I had written up to that point, which I have to admit, has been many months ago.

I also shared my site with friends and associates of mine, some who have told me they liked, some who have told me they didn't, and still others who tell me I need to be locked up in a state hospital somewhere and eating pureed food and pablum. And that's okay, too, because I enjoy making people wonder just what it is I'm getting at when I write.

Last April I went off on this entire big speel about Daylight Savings Time in Indiana and the possiblity of Indiana finally getting with the 21st century but taking a step backward and moving back into the Central Time Zone, which thankfully, we didn't. And, on April 2nd of this year, for the first time in literally decades, because I was a teenager the last time we observed DST, Indiana is finally going to go back on DST, and I for one am thrilled to death about it.

Will I write another blog about it once we start doing again? I have no idea. I usually don't know what these fingers are going to start typing until I sit down in front of the keyboard and they begin moving with a mind of their own. I did, however, realize not long after I started writing, that I didn't want my blogsite to become nothing more than an editorial page. I decided to just do what came to mind, type whatever came up in my mind and take it from there.

Since then I've just "blogged." And to be honest, I hate that term. Blog to me sounds like a serious medical condition. I prefer to call it more simply, just "writing." I remember the first time I threw in a poem, it felt good, so I decided I could do that on a more regular basis.

I flashbacked to my years in high school and when I was a part of "Summer Heat" and I decided to make "Remembering Summer Heat" a serial, with installments to cover a vast amount of time in between episodes, and trust me, the next installment is coming soon.

I took an evening and wrote a piece of total nonsense, which I used to love to do, and I threw that in, just to see if anyone responded. And indeed they did, I believe it was two spam responses, but what the hell! My piece was total nonsense and so was their response, so it served a purpose as well.

I've had customers come up to me where I work and tell me they read my site regularly, and that thrills me to no end. I had a couple of people tell me in person that they thought I had actual talent! That touched my heart.

And then the truly amazing thing I hadn't expected to happen, HAPPENED! I started reading other peoples' sites, and as I read them, I gained a broader spectrum of what blogging was about and believe me, I've seen and read some really interesting, uninteresting, and some totally worthless sites.

I discovered blogporn, and thanks, but I can certainly do without that. I found out that a lot of businesses use blogging to gain attention, and while I think that's cool, I have a problem with people gaining free advertising from their blogs. For instance, I have a sideline business that I go thru proper channels to advertise, and have yet to use my site to advertise it. I don't find it ethical, in the first place, and am actually quite surprised that people do this, but what the hell? This is basically free speech, so more power to you. You use your blogsite and advertise, I'll spend my hard earned money and advertise my alpaca farm thru other channels, ok? And no, that wasn't a plug for my farm. If it had been, I would have named the farm for you, etc...

Then one day while going thru random blogs I happened upon a young woman's site that caught my eye. I read the entry in front of me that appeared, and was so impressed, that I continued to read further back at other entries she had written. I was so impressed with what I had read, I went back to the very beginning of her site and read every single entry she had written. To say I was thrilled to have discovered her site would be an injustice, because, quite honestly, her writings blew me away! She wrote in a poetic style that captured my attention, my heart and my love of the written word. When I read in her intro that she had only been writing for a few months, I was amazed, because truly, she writes some of the best poetry I have read in years. She possesses a style that is so unique, so her own and so uncanny.

I was an instant fan and left a brief comment to let her know how much I enjoyed what I had read. I had no idea that this young single mother of two would capture my attention to the extent that she has. I so admire her writing style and I so admire her ability to write about almost anything she's given the challenge to write about. I daily check her site and am disappointed if she hasn't added any new entries, but hey, after all, this young woman is not only a single mother of two, she's a full time student as well. Trust me, folks, this girl is on it and I have an admiration for her she wouldn't believe!

I shared her site with others, with my friends and associates, my wife, hell, anyone I could think of that I thought would appreciate her unique style of poetry. People came to me, called me, and e-mailed me and told me what a great author I had discovered. And as much as I would love to say that I "discovered" her, that would be a lie, because truly, she is an author in a class by herself and I had nothing to do with discovering her, but I've done my dead level best to encourage her to continue to write and to pursue a career beyond "blogging." And yes, faithful readers, she's honestly that damned good.

I don't really know her, but I feel she's a close friend. I don't where she's from, what she does other than being a full time mommy and student, and I don't know anything other than what I've read that she's written and the comments we've shared back and forth. And that in itself has made this entire period of "blogging" worth it all.

As a gifted writer, she has had her share of the bullshit artists have to contend with. Rude, unneccesary comments have been thrown at her, people have bugged her because they contend that everything she writes about is all about her, and damnit, that isn't what being a writer and an author is about. It's about being able to be whoever you need to be at that particular moment and putting into words so the reader "feels" the emotions that they are trying to convey. In a word to the question"Is she able to that?" the answer is an unequivocal YES!

My heart was broken when I went to her site one day and found out that the pressure from so many trying to put her words into being things that meant them or her caused her to discontinue her site. I can't imagine how she must have felt, but I understand that when an author writes, so many ignorant assholes assume everything you are writing about is strictly about you. Finally, she took all she could and said to hell with it and moved on to another site so she could write and be her creative self and do so with a select audience. I was honored to be included in an invitation to be a part of that select audience. And yes, faithful few, even though I don't really "know" this wonderful and talented young woman, I consider her a very close friend.

Someday, folks, you'll be reading this young lady's writings, and it won't be online, either. I truly believe she's going to become a published author by a bonafide publisher. I can't wait to see that happen for her. And it's not a question of "if?", but a question of "when?"

She will make her mark for so many to see, and I will continue to do my thing here on my site, because that is truly where my writing will remain, because I'm nowhere near the writer she is. And I can live with that. I'm not selfish, folks, and I'm thrilled that something wonderful lies ahead for this talented young lady.

I'm happy and contented to be able to do my blogs, to have my faithful few who continue to read, and I hope that in the future I receive more comments on the site, because they do make me feel honored that you've taken the time to write something in response.

In the future, Lord willing, I'm going to rise above the problems I have health-wise and I'm going to continue to add to my site with more nonsense, somesense, poetry, and my continuing serial. I hope to someday soon begin to add short stories, possibly a novella, and whatever else happens to float my boat at the time.

I hope you all, my faithful few, continue to read and hopefully enjoy at least part of what I'm writing. The positive comments help, and thankfully, so far, I've not received any negative. I'll deal with that when it happens, but for right now, I'll take what I get and let it motivate me onward to do more in the future.

Do I care about how you feel about how I've done and what I've written?

HELL YES!

Do I think I've offended anyone?

Probably!

But that's what makes writing such a challenge.

And that's what keeps this fat old bald fart going!

Trust me, if you read all this, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you got thru part of it, I still thank you.

And if you want to please a 54 year old guy who never got to be the writer he always wanted to be and you have something positive to say, please, take a moment and please leave a comment.

As far as what lies ahead here, I have no idea. I only know the motivation is here to keep trying to do it as long as I can and hope that I'm pleasing at least one person along the way.

Let me end this blog by writing something unique enough that it might catch your attention, ok?

A flat basketball without ink in it can do more damage to the sunspots than the average joe when he fails to pay for his cup of coffee after filling up his car with overpriced gas, unless it's in one of the two remaining states that don't observe Daylight Savings Time!

And finally, from the bottom of my heart:

Go get 'em, Autumn!