I Hate Being An Ex Anything

So there I am, I'm watching YouTube videos and happen to run across videos I've shot myself. Yeah that happens when you log into your account.
I was watching Colder Weather and It's Been A While videos in their various forms, live, on screen lyrics, official, well you get the point when it dawned on me. Being an ex sucks.

An ex employee, an ex high school student, an ex youth. Yeah some people always think the future is brighter while some think of the past as the good ole' days.

I'm both.

I think the future is bright and I also long for the good ole' days but being an ex doesn't lend itself easily to either. It more easily lends itself to the present, the time being but without planning or without thought to the past.

My hopes lie in the future, my memories relish the past. One of the best times I've ever had was the big "Framily Christmas" I shared with my loved ones at Amy's house. That picture of us all on the staircase was truly a magnificent moment.

And yet, here I am, looking to the future but longing for the past. I cherish my daughters and tell them nearly every day I love them and that they make me one proud daddy. I look forward to holding my grandchildren and I look forward to many things that I can't even fathom at the moment.

I've got a tenacity in me, I'm a natural non-conformist. When someone tells me something, something inside my head asks an opposite question of "What if?" Most of the time I never voice it out loud but when it's overwhelming I do.

So yeah, sometimes I hate being an ex but there are things I'll never be an ex at.
I'm glad you know those things.

Learning To Live Again

First of all I might as well cut to the chase. I'm now a divorced man. Any of you that know the both of us know this or have strongly suspected as much.

Second, I'd like to ask any of you that know the both of us to please not treat us any differently than you did while we were together. It wasn't our faults and it was both of our faults, we've both cried and accepted blame so please love us both as you did before this news. You won't hear me say a bad word towards her and if you do then please call me on it. I mean it.

Third, I've still got the two most incredible daughters in the world! Thing 1 has enrolled in college and when she walked across the graduation stage, well there wasn't a prouder daddy in the whole place, I promise!

Thing 2 is enjoying her time in Japan and without a doubt learning so much more through her experiences than most people her age. (I almost said the "T" word, teen, which she takes great offense to being referred to)

I love them deeply and without reservation. They've taught me so much about being a dad and are both truly the best things that have ever happened to me and I'm always grateful to her for sharing her daughters with me and that's the God's honest truth.

What's in my future? Well as I borrowed liberally from Garth Brooks in the title it's pretty accurate. I've got very little natural talent when it comes to writing or making things up so I've had to borrow the sentiment from a real artist with the creativity I lack but I've made some plans and just this week took the first step in that new journey.  These plans are pretty broad and will take a few months to get accomplished but they will. I've come to some sort of peace, albeit uneasy at times, with myself.

I can't promise to update this blog as often as I did before but I'm going to try to get back into the morning writing groove again. It's a healthy habit that I've long been out of and I need that sort of outlet again for a while. It also plays a part of my future plans so I really need to get it going again.

It's a good habit, a healthy habit and I felt sharper when I did it daily.

Good Game

Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday and while it looked like a blow out to start with the game turned around after a power failure and the Niners made it close. I turned it during the half time show as Beyonce was taking the stage, the puppy bowl seemed much more interesting and was.

Commercial wise it was decent. My favorite was a Paul Harvey essay on farmers during a truck commercial. I miss Paul Harvey, he seemed to be the everyman of his day. If Normal Rockwell was the painter of common everyday life then Paul Harvey was the philosopher of the common man.

I'm sure you can find the commercial on You Tube if not many of his essays. The one Rest of the Story that always sticks out to me was his story about Helen Keller who was a dedicated communist. We happened to have been studying Helen Keller in school during that time and I recorded it and brought it in to listen to. It had a shocking effect of disbelief as I recall. The teacher really didn't want to discuss it, I suspect she might have been a communist sympathizer. It was the only class I ever flunked in my school career.

I had forgotten all about that until I heard his voice during the commercial. Wow, what a memory. Funny how they come and go like that. 

On The Way

Alright, the beta readers have been secured.
I hired a graphic artist after Thing 2 simply didn't have the time to do the work.
He happens to be the son of one of my cousins. So I'll still be paying family to handle the work. He's pretty darn good too!

When my beta readers give me their critiques I'll evaluate them and rewrite the first draft to a draft that's much better and ready for publishing! I should be able to have it ready by March if things go well.

This will be a fun chapter to write, so to speak and I'm excited about a few other stories I've got rolling around in my head!

I'm Back!

That's right, my project has come to fruition recently and now I've got the time and energy to blog once again. I stopped blogging months ago for a reason. I was going to write a novel.

I did.

I didn't have time in the mornings to write both a novel and come up with a daily blog post. To start with I purchased a book called 90 Day Novel: Unlocking The Story Within.

Following it to the letter, well for the most part, I wrote away. An extra hour each morning, mostly anyway. When I was writing heavy I could hit the two thousand word mark but mostly I averaged about thirteen hundred words a morning.

I'm aiming for the self published world as I'm not planning on making a career out of this and it's really the easiest way for family and friends to access my work should they be so kind.

I mean I could set at home and email out Word .doc files but really who's going to be interested other than family and friends? Most of them will be kind enough to download it and maybe read a chapter or two before giving up thus politely saying they enjoyed it.

Believe me I've got no illusions as to the worth of this novel however it's a story I wanted to tell. This will never be confused with the work of a real author, believe me. It's a lot of pop culture bantering and a fantastical setting that I feel I'd be comfortable in.

The characters are what I spent the most time developing and the story really takes a back seat to them. After rereading it I can say the ending felt a bit tacked on so I rewrote a bit of it and added some more stuff. I'm not sure if it worked well or not but that's not really up to me, I can say I'm happy with it though and really couldn't end it any other way with my characters and the situation they were in. Well in my view anyway, you may see it differently.

I've also got no illusions about the genre I chose. The Zombie Apocalypse genre is almost as overcrowded as the Vampire genre was in the mid-90's.

The format is always the same though:
1. Unassuming, innocent day.
2. People get sick.
3. Sick people bite more people.
4. Survivors struggle to find refuge and safety.

With very few variations that's how they all go and I've read more than my fair share so I decided to add a few slight alterations to my story without making it totally self aware and thus a satirical joke.

There are good parts and bad parts of this story but it's my first attempt at serious writing so as a first effort I know there's plenty and plenty of room to grow my skills and develop a better style of writing.

So why isn't it available right now? Easy, it's not formatted yet. Honestly it should be easy but for some reason I'm not grasping it. Once it is formatted though and I've secured cover art for it then it'll be uploaded and published!

I'm not sure how long that will take but it'll happen when it's ready to happen.

So in short, I'm blogging again. I'm not sure if it'll be daily as it once was as I'm really out of the habit but I'll do my best to keep it interesting.

By the way, if you'd like to offer your time to become a beta reader and offer feedback on the weaker points of the story. Email me, you're hired!