Mission Statement

Allow me to quote one of the best finales in TV history if you will:

“I should’ve done this a long time ago.”

Just as Captain Jean Luc Picard realized he had missed out on spending time with his friends, I realized that my doubts of whether or not blogging would be a self-indulgent failure or not faded away as it became apparent that we shouldn’t let pride overshadow the chance to be ourselves.

I tried starting a blog once before, but I allowed indecision as to its subject and theme derail any chance I had at making it successful. (That and I never finished drafting the second blog.) This new endeavor I believe will circumvent that issue, because this time, I have a goal.

I read somewhere recently that a writer is just an amateur who never gave up. Well, I still haven’t given up, but up until the last few years, I wasn’t trying very hard either. I mean, I have had an encyclopedia of excuses for the last 2 decades. Those closest to me know I have the passion. Those who’ve known me the longest have read my work, and many encouraged me to continue. But I’ve allowed myself to fall victim to the most absurd of conflicts – reality versus fantasy. No contest, right? If you want to keep a roof over your head, your stomach full, and your family healthy, you have to keep in touch with your responsibilities and earn an income. A rational mind knows a dream is just a dream.

But dreams keep us moving. Optimism, my friend! It’s the glimmer of hope we need when things get the worst. Without our dreams, we’re nothing more than constructs in The Matrix, or The Stepford Wives, or, perhaps to reference one of my wife’s favorite movies, citizens of Pleasantville. Preprogrammed stereotypes, cookie cutter wallflowers that are born to work and breed and die and respawn. Sorry, but I refuse to fall into any such classification.

As far as I can remember, all the way back to grade school, I have wanted to be a writer. The magic of words, how we interpret them and use them to jump start our imaginations and our reasoning centers, and how we’ve used them to chronicle our tragedies and our triumphs? It’s never failed to amaze me. They are the blueprints to our understanding of ourselves and each other. The right or wrong choice of words carries more power than a thunderstorm and can cut deeper than a blade.

In fact, you are reading words right now. Honest! Watch.

Maple flavored rice was a snow goblin’s worst recipe ever blessed by the grand aardvark.

I got you to read that! And I would apologize, but the double take had to have been worth it.  (I just needed to lighten the mood.)

I posted on my Facebook page a few months back that after almost 18 years, I had finally finished the first draft of my long gestating novel(s) and that I had begun to truly plan for eventual publication.  Thanks to the advent of self-publishing, a large number of unheard voices have found audiences, but by the same token, conceited hacks have as well, therefore the bar has been lowered enough that even men who trick readers into reading about rice and aardvarks has a shot at seeing a dream come true, especially if those men accept that pride doesn’t come from whether or not their work is well received or remembered, but that pride comes from knowing that they didn’t give up.