talking to oneself and answering

When Jack lost, he wrote. I've thought to read that book, but I don't dare touch it. Because Hollywood feels like one thing, actors playing rolls, but you know that when Jack wrote what he wrote, it was bare to the bones. Touching death as a writer must feel like you will drown in it.

Go for night swims, goofball. And video, keep working with what you have.

playing catch up, first person

I'm grateful for the pages taken off the wall and put on the table.
I'm grateful for the stories yet to be written.
I'm grateful for the desk, the gazebo, and the computer.
I'm grateful for the plans, the phone calls, but especially the laughter.
I'm grateful for the desperate need to laugh and hear a laugh.
I'm grateful for chess.
I'm grateful for him and her and an email that almost works.


Today I am grateful for a job, a bed, indoor plumbing, a running faucet, clothes in the dryer, family stories, and a will to keep trying.

It does feel better to start the day this way.

Music yesterday.

when you're a punk and a cannonballer

We lost count of the excuses.

I think again to call him but there's always the get what you want and find you don't want it. And that's not good for anyone, or it is for a short time and isn't that okay. Everything forever is a lot of pressure, isn't it.


The pickup is within a forty mile range, and I just worry about the first fifty he's going to do and shouldn't I be there with him.


I didn't hike today and nothing got in the way.
But I found this.



Today I am grateful for time and music.

pinhoti shopping

Seeking advice.


I am certainly grateful for the internet.

story control

We have to make a board.

Here is our cover.
Here is our second page.
Don't we need an index this year?
An author's page?

Story ideas.
1. What happens when your life turns into living in honor of another? (Britt is handling it)
2. How do you become one of the Top 50 under 35? (open)
3. How did you get in? (autobiographical)
4. What are you going to do with this? (intern)

2 pages per place.
2 pages for this.
2 pages for that.
1 + 1 + how many of those?

Go in early. Make a list of all the other pages.


But you can't do any work before you play. Hike, chic.



Today I am grateful for a list and a schedule.

day one of life lessons from hiking

Day one was push, feel the sweat, watch for snakes, dang horseflies, look ahead to the shade.

And this.


Should you personally write? I'm so trapped I don't even know what else I could do.
And didn't Seth once write about how you can't save it, but then you can't be that personal with everyone all at once so you begin to look at what's right in front of you.

I think you can rationalize anything, but I tend to disagree with Seth on this point. He's already beat me at the debate because I'm trapped (in push, feel the sweat, watch for snakes, dang horseflies, look ahead to the shade). And what if this is all you ever wanted? Wouldn't that be a good thing?


Today I am grateful for the trap and the soreness that tears at my hips but at least my feet are still here. It's a good life, but the fried pies weren't so great.

baby steps

Today I am grateful for shade.

Saturday's feast of a fairy tale + a riveting thank you note to a particular day of the week

Blasts of light pattern the blinds and you hear murmurs of a rolling thunder. You were lonely here, but you kinda like to feel it. The air conditioner is blowing. It's time to change the filter. Florida tomatoes, huge, ripe, and red, are zigzagged on the table, but the bacon threatens you to slice one and the extra sharp cheddar cheese has to be grated the thinnest.

Today I am grateful for this day.


So much that I dedicate this song to a twenty-four hour period.

Dear Saturday, my Romeo, my Prince,

I love you. Thank you for loving me, too.

Sincerely,
Me, your Juliet, your Scarlet Letter

llama without drama Friday

This week started sometime last year and it's the end but not the last.
It's just that I might leave myself a note for it.


Dear you,

Don't take any of it personally. Just live it.

Sincerely,
You


Today I am grateful for every moment, every photo, every stop and start, every frown, every smile, every is it done, every it is now. I am also grateful to already miss it.

a gift

Not music but may as well be.

forgetting where we were during that summer when

I can already see that I didn't linger long enough and now would be a great time to remember how the banks of the creek would shine on the weekend. Grabbing as far up on that rope as we could and getting a running start on a single board nailed to a limb over the cold, cold water. Letting go of that rope was an instinct honed by repetition and knowing the place so deep that we'd never touch unless trying harder than we were going to try right then. Maybe it was in flight or in the splash or the panic of you've gone too far, you didn't catch enough breath or changing directions and breaking the surface to see him smiling which made that place so special then.

Either that or it was the ride home or how we slept when we got there.


Today I am grateful to see him smile and the feeling that I could again.

yet another YETI video

Today I am grateful for my mom, her mom, and all the good moms. There are so many.

ain't no teacher

No apologies, though I feel like I could owe you one. We could look at it that way.

We could say that I had something in my head, and I tried to force you to see it. But you didn't want to see what's in my head. Who could blame you? Not me. Like a bride showing examples of the wedding she dreamed, I showed you what I was trying to sift through a face hole that doesn't seem to be able to speak   clearly    enough.

But I am not going to apologize because I believed not in me but in your ability to surprise me.

And you did. You surprised me.


I have to work on video this weekend.
Today I am grateful for what you taught me.

holding on

I am grateful for this hour and it's fresh pot of coffee, the music, the writing that needs to be done, the photos that have to be taken, the growing collection, the request from the editor, and the project coming to life as I turn away. I am already grateful for the surprises. They are always there.

And I am grateful that one of yesterday's surprises was a three hour, I wasn't here or there or anywhere nap.

multiple choice

Dear Photographer, I like your photo.

Did they get to the campsite and one of them turned around to say, "II gotta go back and get a shot."

To which the other replied, "Go."

or

Was there a bear situation? I mean, you only have to be faster than the slowest one. The other was able to escape but couldn't catch up and then saw the fast one had stopped up ahead.


Today I am grateful for what a view can do.

It's May. Hike.

Panic. Just do it. Go ahead and imagine your life not exactly as it is right now. I mean you could manage a few self improvement tactics. At least a couple. You're going to get around to that, right?

Yeahbut.
Right?

Let me just for a moment say that when you fall so in love, this is love, right?, you don't want anything to change, to cause a ripple in the universe of sweetly fragile. But you keep trying to hold it one last time. You know in that Pete's Dragon song when he sings, "Nobody knows how to say goodbye. It seems so easy till you try." Everyone is leaving.


It's not goodbye. It's a see you later thing. Right? And when you see them later, don't you want them to be doing great? They want the same for you. That means you hike.


Today I am grateful for an exercise so easy and free that it means stepping outside.
(Baby steps, freak)

gear notes on common ground

Dear Photographer, I like your photo.

Would you take Cormac McCarthy just to get over your crush on him? Lonesome Dove? You gave him your Viktor Frankl. Remember Dr. Frankl can coin a phrase.

"What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning to be fulfilled by him."

Maybe the original Man's Search for Meaning.

In the meantime there's this.


Today I am grateful for a good pair of hiking shoes. Now to find some sandals.

when prom is fun

There comes a time when you may find you are surrounded by a group of people you have thirty years on. If that's the case, lean into it. And say to that one guy,

"You're either going to the top or to prison. There's no middle ground. So here's the deal. Go to the top, and all these photos I have of you, I'll sell 'em and we'll split the money."

and/or

meet a million cutest couples there ever were.

Ruffles on a dress, not a chip.

Two young women who have made you laugh all year. May they never stop laughing.

Crazy lighting. Fabulous people. Good music.
Back in 1988 this song and peach taffeta were all you needed.


Today I am grateful for prom.

comfort by his side

It's in the middle of the horse trail. There's a 10:00 a.m. sun, but only late March in the south, beating down on our necks. We have no idea how far we are. Just that we left this morning. I'm already complaining. There's no shade, and the dirt is packed with heavy hoof tracks. It's too slow to measure our typical walking speed with distance. It's day two after the night we got there.

What are we doing?

A better hiker would already know the distance, would have already said we'll be there by 11:00 a.m. Seth just got the map yesterday at the house. All we knew is that we were walking into a wilderness known for it's beauty. Sipsey was amazing.

But I complained and even sat down and cried later that day. I didn't know that we would get out of there. We only had three more days.

Which was plenty.
But I didn't know that because I had no faith in my planning.
I just knew that it sounded like a great idea.


So when I asked, "Can I do this one?"

He answers, "If you can keep up. Go do the trail I did. I'll be impressed if you can do that."

I am grateful for that kid.


And since I have claimed myself to be your disc jockey. This by that guy.

in regards to the weather

He's funny. He reamed me in an email, and I didn't think I deserved it. And it's not that I don't deserve things. It's just that I'll be glad to take it on the chin when I do. When I don't, I ask him to sit with me.

"I have to tell you a story."

"A story?"

"Yes."

"I didn't sleep a wink Monday night. Heartburn the entire night, and you know at my age what that means. Heart attack."

"Don't do like me and look it up on the internet."

"No, no. There was only one thing that saved me that night."

"What?"

"I just kept thinking I can't die without him knowing how mad I was about that email, and I've been looking for you ever since."


Today I am grateful to finally find him and have a good laugh.



Home by Jack Johnson plays tonight.

the refuge

Today I am grateful for the pressure, the stress, the countdown, the conversations, the doubt.
But not as grateful as I am for the place we go to get away from it all.


Tonight's music is brought to you by Snow Patrol.

do better

It was 45 minutes of not here, not there, not anywhere, intense, absolute exit from whatever was going in the head. Broken by three bangs.

I suck in this situation.

Part of me wants them to just go away, let me sleep, but I know I have to get up. I gotta leave.
The other part of me knows that I need to be more grateful that this guy is delivering a couch to me.
Seriously.



Today I am grateful for another day to get better at this being a kind human thing.


This is on the playlist tonight.