Packed full of pie and turkey, I’m reflecting on the overall wonderfulness of my life, starting with the baseline of living a healthy and comfortable life in a great country. On top of that, I’m surrounded by supportive and kind people who want me to explore and enjoy my life. And as if that wasn’t enough, I have a super-smart and delightful son, and a motivated and inspiring wife who both love me completely. 

As I was whirling around the kitchen cooking this afternoon, I thought about just how lucky I am to be able to chase my dreams. I get to spend my work day writing stories. It doesn’t bring in much money at all, true, but it’s not about the money. (Please note: though creativity and art aren’t about being paid, I will gladly take an increase in money. Foods not free).

And this freedom to scratch this creative itch is all thanks to my dear wife. So, really, if I have to pick the one thing I’m most thankful for today, it’s the wonderful (and unfortunately under the weather) woman who I share my life with. I am a lucky man.

 

 

I have the same sense of time passing that a dog does. My focus is on the present, the moment that I’m swimming through right now. If you grill me on the date and the number of years since a specific event happened, I’m going to answer you with some head-scratching and confused looks. 

So it’s strange when I realize that a significant amount of time has passed since a life-changing event. 9 years ago, my lovely wife Kristen and I exchanged our vows and started our married life together, and I’m still thrilled to be with her when I wake up every morning.

Maintaining a partnership for any length of time is a challenge. Adapting to and weathering the storms of life puts any couple under a tremendous amount of stress: events like job changes, the birth of your child, the trials and tribulation of family drama are a lot for any 2 people to deal with.

A lot of people would buckle down, handle the changes life brings to you, and call that success. But not us. We decided to push a little farther and chase the potential of who we could be. I found a surprising passion for politics and civic engagement, along with a dream of writing my first novel. Kristen discovered a drive for competition and fitness, and a love of volunteering and community. We talked, we listened, we started chasing our dreams, and our partnership grew stronger.

We’ve experienced some wonderful and inspiring moments over the last 9 years, and I can’t wait for the next one, and a million more after that. I love you, Kristen. Happy Anniversary!

 

In this case, “it” refers to opinions, though it’s up to you to decide if that’s all I’m full of. There isn’t really any topic of conversation that floats by me that I don’t have some opinion on. But over the course of the last few weeks, I think I’ve accumulated a few too many idle opinions. I’ve been progressively more irritable and combative, ready and willing to leap in and explain why people are wrong. 

The trick here is that I’m leaping in to offer my opinions in places and conversations that didn’t involve me in the first place. My contrarian impulses went into overdrive and I wanted to wade in to every current event. Luckily, I’ve been sitting on most of my argumentativeness and I think the storm is passing.  

Now that I’m more levelheaded, I’m digging around in the emotion pile and trying to sort out what triggered all of this. Surprisingly, there’s an element of attention-seeking. I wanted people to pay attention to me, I wanted them to notice that I was here, even if the attention I was receiving was negative.

That hunger for attention may have been powered by my exile from creativityland. When I write, I have the complete attention of my hypothetical future audience, and I have control of all of the conversations within the narrative itself. In the real world conversations move very quickly and old fogeys like me get cut off and interrupted before they get to the climax of their rambling and possibly irrelevant story. 

So, long story short, I need to get some writing done to empty out the braintubes.