Maiden Voyage

Well hello there. Fancy meeting you here. Alright enough with the pleasantries. Why did I start a blog. Really, it seems more and more these days, asking a writer why he started a blog is like asking water why it’s wet. That’s the simple answer.

The more elaborate answer would be I want to hold myself accountable. You see the way I figure it, writing a blog will have multiple purposes. First, and perhaps most importantly, it will be a creative outlet that hopefully will keep me accountable to myself, those I hold dear, and really anyone that happens to come upon this tiny corner of the internet. Not saying I want people to hang on every word that comes out of my mouth. Not at all. I just have always had a need, and I mean need, to want people to read my words. I was a staff writer for a little newsweekly here in Omaha called The Reader for awhile, but I’ve putting words on paper for myself and for others since I was 11 years-old. You see, I’m not so self-indulgent that I think anyone should or would care about my life, but at least I will feel accountable to myself and others …

Oh who am I kidding. As John McCrae said, I was meant for the stage. Yes, I am that self-absorbed that I want people to read my words and get something out of it, alright? Happy? I mean its not like I’m auditioning for a reality show or even submitting my work to magazines. But the blog I think offers me the chance to write for publication without all the nasty byproducts of, well, publication.

I should take this opportunity to qualify anything I have to say now and hereafter. I know that I have a pretty unique perspective on life because, well, I shouldn’t be alive. I should be dead. The statistics are there. I can dig them up if you like. Nobody survives what I went through. If you consider the bacterial meningitis and the brain surgery and fighting addictions and on and on, I should be pushing up daisies. And I am not. And it took time, a long long time, for me to realize just how fortunate I am to still be kicking at this point. So yeah, I think I might have a thing or two to say about some things.  I’m no Confucious, don’t purport to be. What I am is a 37-year-old man getting his head around what I’m gonna do with the next 40 or so years of life I have left. I tried to do it like Nick Cage in Leaving Las Vegas and go out with a pathetic drunken gasp and it didn’t work. Too many people cared about me. Too many folks thought I was a life that was worth saving. What I hope to do with this blog, with volunteer work and my career in animal care, with all of it, is prove them right.

So, thanks for reading. I still have a lot of things to learn about WordPress, so hopefully this blog will change by the day or week.

Oh, about the picture. That’s Kilgore, a.k.a. the K-Man. My trusty sidekick for 13 years. He died a couple years ago, I still have a framed photo of him next to my bed, the same picture on this blog actually. Don’t worry, I’m not one of those lunatics who talks to the picture. I save that for when I visit the flower bed where I scattered his ashes.