Expect Delays (No Longer!)

Man, I hate when that happens.

I write a blog post and I publish it and in my heart and soul I’m thinking “Ha! Okay, now that that one is outta the way, it’s going to churn out regular blog posts from here on out!”

And then like a month goes by and life happens and I move into a new apartment and my town experiences the worst blizzard it has seen since the Innuits wore short pants and it snows more and Zimmer the dog has a torn ACL scare and it snows more and I have to call my printer manufacturer to set up my printer again and it snows more and Mary from work asks me to play piano in the musical production the residents are putting on at work and gives me 3 pieces of sheet music to learn only one of those pieces was written as a duet for two pianists at the same keyboard so I have to buy new sheet music and it snows more and my boss needs me to work a bunch of Saturday shifts and I agree because I am poor and it snows more and …

You get the idea. Suddenly it’s a month later and I haven’t written the blog post that was supposed to come a mere day or so after the last one.

And so it goes.

So, let’s try that again shall we?

I’m going to begin blogging on a regular basis. On this blog. Y’see, the name and concept of the new blog is so good, at least I think so, that I figure I need to incorporate blogging into my routine with this blog so that when the new one (along with, eventually I hope, a contingent podcast and YouTube channel) goes live, I’m already in the practice of doing it regularly. This has always been an issue for me because there’s a lot of things I’ve wanted to incorporate into a daily routine that I simply couldn’t because an existing part of my daily routine as recently as a few months ago was worrying about whether or not I had done something wrong or undesirable in Kim’s house that would push her further and further away from me. As it turns out, I was and I did and now I’m living in a one-bedroom apartment with part-time custody of my dog.

The strange thing is, the whole experience with Kim seems like a blur one moment and a long trudge down the road to my abysmal failure to be an adequate partner the next. Now, mind you, my assessment of being an “adequate partner” means an adequate partner to Kim. Back living by myself, I’m back to just being my own partner, which I’m hella good at. But I did learn some valuable lessons during my time living with Kim. The first is my personal well-being is paramount and there are things I need to do to reach a state of equilibrium in order to maintain that well-being. Beyond obvious ones like the gym and meditation and time with the Z (After I had proposed we give away to a loving home, I then realized a couple weeks later that I love the 70-pound adorable nitwit and also know about the multiple studies that affirm that many people stave off the often overwhelming burden of loneliness that comes with living alone by having a pet,) the other is writing. I have always known this and I always forget and then I write for awhile and that reminds me of how much I need it. Any artist knows this. Just like any artist knows that if you grow lax in your practice, it slides up onto your leg like a serpent and burrows into your head and begins eating your brain while you wonder about that strange tickle in your ear.

So, in order to really invest in blogging to the point where it becomes as much a part of my routine as meditation or the gym, I decided to start with a subject that was light and playful. And I can think of no other subject matter as light and playful as The Bible.

There is no other fodder more rife with opportunity for an irreverent, jolly fellow like myself to play with than the Bible. I’ll be clear. I’m talking the whole Bible. Growing up Catholic, I was drenched in the New Testament. But when was the last time you heard anybody riff on the Book of Judges or really delve into the underlying meanings of the book of Esther? Never, that’s when. I intend to comment on these things as well as Samuel, Samuel 2, Daniel, Joel and Amos (didn’t even know about those books, did you? Well, you’re gonna!)

This will be my experiment in writing more often and constructing better copy to prep myself for the new blog on a new platform with a cohesive message entitled …

Hee hee hee. Silly rabbit. Can’t tell you yet. But it’s coming. Finally. As Red says in Shawshank, Andy needed a new project. The meager momentum I gathered when I lived with Kim was derailed. Well guess what? The train’s back on the tracks kids. I’m also engaging with a new project with my Mom. She has been gently poking the bear of writing an essay or book or novella or hell, I don’t know, Do-It-Yourself manual, about our respective parts in my journey back to world in the last 13 years since my Traumatic Brain Injury and then getting sober. We will be publishing it ourselves, so no editor can mess with the format, which will be kinda all over the place. It will include her experience of me in the hospital, her thoughts on prayer, personal journal entries and things of that nature. My half will be replete with references to Him, the persona I created to represent the dark side of my psyche that routinely tells me that I’m nothing but a no-account alcoholic with a brain injury that messed him up something fierce, as well as accounts of the 4 jobs I went through to get to be a janitor at the very same facility I started my rehab at after my surgery, the process of getting sober and on and on.

It’s going to be a helluva ride and I’m looking forward to it.

So yeah, the new blog/podcast/YouTube channel and the book to be named later.

As Paul Newman said in The Color of Money, I’m back.