Tag: books

Christmas Break

The author reflects on the past year, emphasizing personal growth and accomplishments. They acknowledge the challenges of parenthood, career development, and maintaining sobriety. The family’s well-being and the author’s writing aspirations are also highlighted. Overall, the narrative presents a heartfelt journey of self-improvement, gratitude, and optimism for the future.

Like a lot of other folks I tend to spend some time during that final week of the year assessing. Perhaps its silly, but based on the posts of my co-conspirators, er, rather the friends I’ve grown up with or made along the way, I’m not the only one who uses this break in the schedule to contemplate the past year and by extension, where I am on this adventure.

It makes sense. I’m anything if not a meaning making machine, moving through life and attempting to make it mean something is really my life’s work in the broadest sense of that term. And what better time of year to sit and contemplate where I am, where I’ve been and what lays ahead.

That said, I wish there was some balance to this week in midsummer. A week when the world slows to a crawl, where everyone, by default, is expected to be unavailable as they congregate with their families and eat, drink and be merry. Concentrating all of our year in review thoughts to the shortest days of sunlight around the most emotionally charged time of the year, the holidays, may not be the perfect set up. That said, its probably healthy to imbue some bleakness into the assessment in order to account for the unavoidable bleakness that consciousness compels upon us beings whose sole unifying reality is death. That bleak enough?

Lets Occam’s Razor this task first. White/Black. Yes/No. Pass/Fail. The 30,000 foot assessment is easy sitting here at fifty, a bit more than half way through the ride. Pass. Don’t dismiss this victory too quickly. It wasn’t always certain that I’d land squarely on this side of the dividing line. At least it wasn’t always so clear to me. In fact there were years there, possibly decades when this outcome didn’t feel so easily attained. But as I sit here with a happy family, a wonderful partner and wife and a good deal of the adventure still left to discover, I’m relieved to say that I’m pretty good at this point. Could of course get hit by a bus (literally OR metaphorically) at anytime and I keep that front of mind, but from where I sit I’m fairly comfortable and excited for what is yet to come.

Now, let’s put some more fine points on the line and determine where I am and what I can bank.

I’ve become a better dad in time. Started out kinda rough. I always loved and cared for the kids, but those early days I didn’t really come through for my wife. I wasn’t horrendous and it wasn’t anything other than typical failings, but I’ve gotten better and I hope it’s helpful. Where I really failed was caring for myself. I still struggle to do it, but I’m determined.

I’m about 3 years back into exercising with some regularity. One thing that is for sure is that my body is not what it used to be. In fact, just on stats it’s about 30% more than it used to be. And no, I’m not saying I’m 8’1″. No, I’m afraid all my added size is concentrated in the middle as I grow horizontally. I had no idea that all those years spent playing basketball in my youth were wasted as my natural body type would be that of a wrestler or a large appliance mover.

My career is, knock on wood, moving right along. About 10 years ago we made a decision as a family for me to start making moves in my career with the conscious goal of getting to a place where we could get closer to financially secure. This would seem to be a natural goal of all workers I would assume, but I didn’t really make the effort prior to that. I mean, I was viable and as such I was secure, but like many new parents the world started to look very different when I started seeing it through a (thankfully) healthy new babies eyes. Having made decisions with that new imperative these past 10 years or so, we appear to be on track to retire somewhat close to the normal timeline. That said, there were some bumps on that road. I can tell you, it SUCKS being fired with young ones. That said, in hindsight it was the best thing for me and for our future.

I’m not drinking. I never thought I would be able to say that. I was quite committed to the task. Been a little over 2 years and I’m so happy I didn’t stay drunk the whole time. It was somehow depleting from every other aspect of my life while fueling and feeding my anger and annoyance. Drinking is stupid. If you can, you should stop. I still drink two beers a night, though non-alcoholic. I like to ensure I keep my calories up to stay warm in winter;)

I’m reading again. Not as much since I took on a new job in August. But I made my first Goodreads reading goal and thankfully reached it by midyear. It was only 25 books, but I should note, this would always have been a miss for me in every year of my life. I don’t know how people manage to live and hit some of the numbers I hear people spewing in their end of year book summaries. I am a HUGE advocate of reading, but when someone says they read 150 books this year I just worry about them. Maybe they’re fine, but maybe it’s a cry for help, no?

For the record, and in no particular order, these are my favorites of the year. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett, Shades of Glory by Lawrence Hogan, A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib, Kindred by Octavia Butler, Beartown by Fredrik Backman, Babel by R.F. Kuang, House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune and The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman.

My kids are doing great and I likely won’t be writing about them in much detail anymore. At least for the time being. Honestly, when they were little what I wrote was universal and connective. Felt that way to me at least. I was writing for my tribe of fellow parents with little ones struggling to navigate the transition they throw us into that we could never have been prepared for. It was cathartic for me and largely inobtrusive for them. While I may still write tangentially about them as I talk about me, I no longer feel their lives are so intertwined with mine that I have the right to put out their lives as my own. Perhaps I was wrong to do it as long as I did. I really don’t know. What I do know is that it would be entirely wrong to share their stories now as all I have are my access to their story. My point of view on their story. But their story’s are theirs completely now and it would be intrusive and honestly destructive for me to commandeer those stories for my tales. So be it.

What I can say about the kids is they are growing up. We are heading into the teen years and they are playing their roles exactly as they should. My wife continues to have an amazing bond and provides for the emotional support I can’t always tap inside me. They, all of them, are the best thing that has or will ever happen to me. I’m so proud to be their dad and her husband. We are sometimes stumbling and often soaring. We continue to learn how to be there for each other. I love them all with all my heart.

I published a short story since last I wrote here. I did it right this time and hired a copyeditor and am really proud of the how it turned out. It’s a lovely love story of sorts, a cozy tale of sorts, a melancholic tale with some laughs and more, but I can’t say what more it is without giving away a critical reveal toward the end. It’s called ‘It all Started Down at the Stewarts’ and it I’m really proud of it. I think it’s really good. Takes about an hour to read or listen to (my brother is a professional audiobook narrator and incredibly talented) on audible. If you read it and like it a positive review would really be appreciated. Telling friends you think might like it is also incredibly helpful.

I’d like to get back into the writing game. I miss it. This is the second post I’ve written this past two weeks, but I suspect this will be the first to be published. Perhaps it will be the only one. That said, I saw Neil Gaiman talking about his process for writing novels and he said he has taken to writing longhand in notebooks for his first draft. This lets him avoid interruptions that our tech has gotten way to efficient at providing and also lets him type out the second draft which really helps in the ‘re-writing’ part of the second draft. That resonated with me so I have the notebook and pens ready. Haven’t started yet, but I am optimistic.

What else is there to say. I guess that’s a wrap on 2023 and a good read on how it looks from 50 with a couple of kids and a family. Happy New Year. I would love to hear how your annual review went in your home.

Diary of a Wimpy (and AWESOME!) Bookstore

When your seven year old son manages to have his attention wrangled by a book you pounce. When he falls so in love with a book series that he reads 12 of them as fast as he can acquire them you do everything you can to feed his passions. In our case that meant spending hours on end reading with him. He would assign both me and his mother separate books that we would take to his room and lie in his bed with him while each reading quietly. If one or the other of us chuckled we would read what it was that made us giggle back so we could all get in on the laugh. For us, for our Charlie, that book series was the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books by Jeff Kinney.

Charlie at the hotel that night showing off his haul!

I don’t know if you’ve had any time recently with an obsessed seven year old. It’s intense. And when there is a exactly 217 pages x 12 books of details to obsess on ones curiosity extends beyond the pages of the books and into all the surrounding content they can find. It was while pursuing any and all things Greg Hefley that our Charlie discovered the existence of An Unlikely Story in Plainville, Massachusetts.

Well, our fate was sealed. A journey to the store was in the offing. So when we surprised him on the night before we were to drive the four and a half hours (spread over six or so as we were of course traveling with the seven year old and his five year old brother) he immediately started bouncing. Just ceaseless bouncing while exclaiming over and over, ‘this is going to be the best day ever!’

He wasn’t wrong.

There’s no telling if a bookstore so highly anticipated in the active imagination of a little boy can live up to his wild expectation. As soon as we pulled into the small parking lot adjacent the store on the otherwise unremarkable intersection in the aptly named (no offense) Plainville any concerns were allayed. He was all buzz and electricity.

Upon entering the bookstore we were all a bit overwhelmed. Immediately it was clear that this store was not the beautiful monstrosities we come across at our local corporate book monolith but rather a space designed by and for people who loved books. The high ceilings and burnished wood surfaces were beautiful in the lighting that instead of bathing every inch in overwhelmingly bright floods of fluorescent uniformity highlighted the spaces between the shelves and the items throughout the store.

It’s clear as well that this space was designed as a community space for book lovers, fantasy geeks, story obsessives and lovers of the type of independent bookstores that take residence more in our minds and memories than in our lives these days. Which is wonderful. For all the awesomeness we discover at the massive book behemoths there is something about getting lost in a less uniform space that I didn’t realize they were missing until they got to navigate this place of magic. It’s a modern throwback to a time when bookstores held a different role in the life of a place and a welcome balance to the modern, uniform experience. A place where a sports fan, a cookbook enthusiast, a reader of mystery and genre fiction and kids learning to fall in love with stories can share the space without feeling separated and segregated. Where each can stumble on the other and become curious about others interests.

The cafe was unobtrusive and inviting and after making all our purchases of all things Wimpy (and a novel for me and bag for mama) we were comfortable lingering and exploring our new lit stuff. In fact the cafe attendant saw how much Charlie loved the Wimpy Kid books and when we were done getting our assorted refreshments she slipped us a few cups, the sort used for a fountain soda or iced coffee, with images of Greg Hefley, the Wimpy one himself, all over them. We haven’t broken them out yet. We’ll probably save them for dinner the night his pre-ordered, signed copies of book 13 come in the mail!

An Unlikely Story Bookstore & Cafe

Feeling the Love

Basketball player. That was the first dream.
More than anything I wanted to be a professional basketball player. I wanted it so badly that I played every day. All day. Not always easy for a kid from a top 5 snowiest city. Fine, I lived 20 mins from that city. Still, I spent a good many a days shoveling the playground courts across the street. braving wind and rain. Lighting up the court while running down car batteries.
I didn’t become a pro. That’s for sure. People who’ve met me as an adult might find it hard to imagine. I’m not really carrying a basketball players body these days.
I got pretty good. Real good. Good enough to make teams with guys who would make the pros. Good enough to run on the highest level court at any open gym. Not great, but pretty good.
By the time I got close enough to greats to know I wasn’t going to make it I got disappointed. Inertia kept me going. Inertia and the energy of youth and a deep love of the game. But I burned myself out. I was the kid that dribbled a mile or two to school and back, shot until my mom would make me come in as the sound of the ball on the concrete surely was keeping up the neighbors. I didn’t go pro, not even close, but I got a ton out of trying. I travelled, accomplished a good deal and even got in to college.
I was a failing student. Not a bad one, a failing one. You had to get 3 F’s to fail off the team in high school, so I’d carried two and came close with the rest. I’ve never liked school. But I’m very thankful I went to college.
I liked night classes. They tended to be populated by grown people, moms and dads going back to school or people looking to change careers, looking for a new direction. For me the appeal was that instead of 3 one hour classes a week there was 1 three hour class per week. I used to joke, ‘I can skip the whole week at once. Just think how much more efficient that is.’
In one of those classes I heard from the Executive Director of the local ARC who described what it was like to try to make a difference by helping others. It sounded great. I liked the idea of toiling for good. I liked the idea of waging a war on behalf of those that had been unfairly treated. I was in Human Services to that point because it was an easy course of study. That night would change that. I didn’t become a better student, but at least I was in the right place.
A senior girl who I knew in passing described an experience working at a summer camp. This camp was for adults, many of whom were ‘graduates’ of the Willowbrook state school. If you don’t know what that is (I didn’t) look it up.
Anyway, she described her experience, working morning to night in cabins and in pools and in music and arts and crafts classes, with adults with disabilities. Physical and developmental. Well, it sounded awesome.Truth be told, she struck me as the type of person that couldn’t do something so selfless. I was wrong, obviously. Both that she couldn’t and that it was selfless. Not at all selfless. It may be the place I’ve given the most of myself, but it’s also where Ive taken the most.
Over the eight years I worked there, starting a career in the field, I learned a thing or two about perseverance. Working with individuals who struggle day to day, but thrive through grit, determination and practiced indifference to the naysaying of others, I learned that it starts with trying. And trying starts with saying what you want.
As silly as it was to me to even think it, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write and get paid for it. I wanted to be a writer.
Turns out its not as easy as saying you want to. Unfortunately, you have to actually try. You have to try and fail a lot. Becoming a writer has made me learn that if a writer tells you, no, you don’t want to read this stuff I wrote, you should believe them. That’s how mine was for a long time. Now you STILL may not want to read my work, but at least it’s passable.
There’s truth to people who say all you need to do to be a writer is write. It’s true. But you can pass that hurdle and still not ‘feel’ like a writer. Until you feel like a writer you’ll never describe yourself as one.
I felt like a writer after I shared my work on a fateful winter morning on Medium and shared it with my facebook friends. I literally hit share and sprinted away from my computer and out for lunch. When I returned there were 20 or so amazing notes of encouragement. So many people who read it and liked it enough to tell me. It was unbelievable.
The next amazing feeling was being paid. I sold a piece to Mamalode. It was the sweetest and most impactful $20 I will ever earn. Someone not related to me, someone who didn’t even know me, bought my words. Breaking a big market, a Scary Mommy was amazing and a few bucks more. Being selected as a spotlight blogger for a dad blogger conference, well, I had no idea how big it was until I was there. I honestly didn’t know. It was great.
This past week it’s come full circle. I’ve written a book and I feel like a writer. Not in the way I imagined I would, I’m not retiring from the day job any time soon. I self published. It was not some bidding war. In fact, if you totaled the dollars I’ve earned and the dollars I’ve spent in pursuing my dream of being a writer you’d find a fairly decent sized number under the ‘break even’ line.
Something different started happening this past week. All these people I grew up with, in one place or another, at home or at camp or somewhere those places took me, they started buying my book and posting pictures of themselves with the book or of the book posed and lighted or in their hands. And they are saying the loveliest things. They are helping me, showing off my book and helping me sell it to people who don’t know me. Not sure anyone who doesn’t know me has bought one yet and I don’t care. I’d love if they did, but it’s not the point.
Book.SelfiesThese book shots and paperback selfies, they are amazingly touching. I can’t begin to describe to you how much they all mean to me. In a very real sense they are a literal dream come true. They are kindness and generosity and love I can feel. I’m moved beyond words and grateful to no end.
I never feel like thank you is enough. I start vomiting exclamation points. I start thanking so earnestly it might sound insincere, it might even read that way to me, but it couldn’t be more honest. I’m so very thankful.
If you are on my friend list it may seem silly that 10 or 12 people are doing this, it may start to seem silly, laughable or even annoying. I don’t care. I will love these pictures every day for the rest of my life. They are the product of so many kind and charitable souls celebrating a friend who is trying. To my eyes these pictures will ALWAYS be beautiful.
Thank you.

Notes from a Developing Dad

From the start this blog has been an art project for my kids. It was meant to be a place where I could document the process, from the start. I wanted a place where they could visit where they were before the memories were there own. A place to shade and fill in the memories they cling to years from now, when we are old and the world is there’s. To this day that remains the thrust of my writing.

Over time that initial idea has expanded. I want them to know who I was when they were little, but the further I went down that road the more I wanted them to know who I was when I was little like them. I want them to know who Nana and Papa were and why I think of them as heroes. I want them to have a place to learn the story of how I met their mom. I want them to read about the love we had for each other that lead to our family. I want them to read about how hard it all was as well as how fun and amazing it has all been. I wanted them to understand my flaws and see my imperfections. I want them to understand that I knew they were there and worried about how they’d be affected by them.

As you can see the sprig of that initial idea, to make an art project for them of our early family is at the root, but like any organic thing fed and loved, that idea grew and continues to grow. One way it grew was that it turned out that there was an audience for this kind of art. This project with a specific audience seemed to be relatable to many others feeling and experiencing the transformative nature of parenthood in a way that made others seek out some of my sotories. Some were funny and some tender. It was a huge day when outlets like Scary Mommy would accept these writings and publish them. I’m thrilled to have worked with amazing editors at sites like Mamalode, Good Men Project and Sammiches & Psych Meds, amongst others.

It’s been and remains a journey that I’ve enjoyed. It was only natural when I came to a point where I decided I wanted to collect the best of my writing, the most personal, the funniest, the most well written and turn it into a book. It was exciting to work on these pieces and in the process I started to see a forest amidst examining the trees. This process of growing into the dad I am now has been extraordinary and I’m so happy I have this place where not only they will be able to come to learn about us but Karen and I will be able to visit years from now when we want to visit this most vital and amazing time in our lives, when we are rich in memories and have time to collect ourselves and make sense of lives well spent I’m heartened to know this place will be here for us.

If you would like to purchase a kindle ebook or a paperback copy of your own with these stories you can find them here.