Personal Life

  1. The Death of My Father

    My father killed himself when I was around ten years old. I can not remember the date nor even how old I actually was. Family members are the ones who need to remind me of the date and my age when I ask about his death. It struck me hard, I was nearly apathetic and very silent for many months afterwards, much contrary to my usual personality. When he died, it was like an awakening to a harsh truth. That everyone you will ever meet and love, can and will eventually perish. This set me back...
  2. Figuring Out My Relationship with God

    Figuring Out My Relationship with God Don’t know what’s got into me but I want to go back to church. I used to go to mass every Sunday with my mother and it felt like going home sitting beside her in the pew in the same church in which I was baptized, confirmed and got married. But then Covid hit and we stopped going. And then we entered the worst part of my husband’s battle with MS which ended with his death in September of 2021, and my faith was shook up bad. There was no God in what...
  3. Piscis Fugit

    Maybe 10 years ago my daughter won a goldfish in some sort of raffle or such. Cost her one quarter. 25 cents. She named the fish "Adele" and we put her into a small fishbowl. She outlived my admittedly pessimistic expectations, and soon outgrew the bowl. We got her a bigger one. Ultimately, we bought a nice 20-gallon tank, with filter and a gravel bottom. Which is where she's been for the past several years, in a corner of the "family room," where we enter and leave from the garage,...
  4. Still not dead…

    I don’t even know when the last time is I logged on here, let alone posted content, reviewed others’ content, or acted like a member of this community. I’m still alive, still writing. In fact, I’ve started taking a class from David Gerrold, which is exciting. In case anyone’s interested, I’ve launched a new website with a series of shorts I’ve been working on, called Tales of the West. Stop on by if you care.
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  5. Books Read in 2022

    Bolded titles were my favorite (4.5 or 5 star) reads of the year. Some of the books, such as the two from H.G. Wells, could be considered outside the genres where I’ve placed them. I did my best. :) Fantasy (14) The Darkness That Comes Before, R. Scott Bakker At the Earth’s Core, Edgar Rice Burroughs Traitor’s Blade, Sebastien de Castell Tigerheart, Peter David Beyond Redemption, Michael R. Fletcher Smoke and Stone, Michael R. Fletcher The Grey Bastards, Jonathan French The King...
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  6. Man is like the grass that flourishes and is gone.

    I'm not much of a Biblical person, not because of animosity toward the Bible or the faith, but because of unfamiliarity. As a kid I only rarely attended Sunday school, and when I did I invariably got lost in any reference to a particular book of the Bible. Later I learned to understand and appreciate Christianity, but never really the Bible per se, especially the Old Testament. Anyway, the above words popped into my mind the other day, as I was rooting through long-sealed cardboard boxes...
  7. Temporary Blindness -True Tales

    SoberDate 8041 A couple nights ago a series of thunderstorms rolled thru our area at nighttime. Around 11pm I got up for a late night snack from the fridge (a cheese stick) when the power went out. I ate my cheese and went back to bed. Around midnight, my wife awoke to use the bathroom and the 1st thing she noticed was it was pitch black, no light from the clock, no nightlight from the bathroom, no light outside from the streetlight. Nothing, just total inky blackness. Now mind you,...
  8. Been a while

    It's been a while, since I posted here. My boss has been a slave driver of late, which is an odd statement since I am my own boss. My trilogy is on the back burner for now. Book 1 has a word count that is acceptable, Book2 is still a bit shy of acceptable, and Book 3 needs a lot of work to be done. But I ran out of gas with the project, and my work schedule, so let it sit for a bit and let myself recharge for that project. I have started a new project that is coming along nicely. I tossed...
  9. Honestly, It's Not for Everyone

    That’s Nebraska’s current tourism slogan, and it seems perfect to me. Most people from the state (at least among those I know) will freely admit there are no obviously sublime sights, no real mountains, no towering redwoods, no massive canyons, only one real waterfall (and it ain’t much by Niagara standards). But then they will say something like, “it’s got a lot of subtle beauty.” And so it does. I was born in ranch country, way out in the northwest corner of the state, in the shadow...
  10. It's All Good

    My kid sister died about a month ago. I'm still processing it. I tried to capture it below, but I'm so close to it that I can't tell if it's worth reading, or it's TMI. I didn't want to post it in the workshop, because it's not meant as a project but as an effort to understand. I recently touched death, touched it when I held the icy-cold, blackened, hand of my dying kid sister and learned from her the art of dying right. Susan (not her real name) was diagnosed with cancer about four...
  11. Random Thoughts on Want and Need

    Human motivation is created by wants and needs. Want and need both signal a deficit, but want is beyond need. Need is core, bones and meat. Want is extra, frills and lace. Frustrated wants bring on disappointment. Frustrated needs can harm body, mind and soul. You can live without what you want, but not without what you need. Wants and needs can feel the same in your body, a yearning that stretches to the limbs. What we want does not always equal what we need, although either can be...
  12. Scrabble

    I love playing Scrabble. My husband and I played every day before he died. My brother comes over a few times a week and we always take out the board. I’m not really a competitive person but when it comes to Scrabble I like to win. Letters and words! Is there any better combination? My instinct for symbolism comes alive. Not even my brother’s constant harangue that I fucked the board bothers me. Getting that seven-letter word! Is there anything better? My most recent seven-letter word (a...
  13. Homeless Lite

    Back in the ol' hometown and I decided that rather than staying in and paying for a hotel -- and rather than accepting invites to crash at friend's houses or sleeping on mom's couch -- I'd take my tent and sleeping bag and camp in a city park. It's a nice tent and a nice park, though my little tent is dwarfed by rows of RVs. But the night was quiet and calm, no rain and no noise. But it's hard to make the compromise between hotel and home. The tent's too small to do anything other than...
  14. Writing From Life Experience

    Often when people hear you should write from your own life experience, they think of it on a very surface level—like if you played a lot of football you should write about football. In one sense this is what it means, or rather it's one aspect of it, but there's a much deeper, broader, and more universal aspect that this understanding misses. This is the aspect I want to write about—not the external things you've done (play some sport, live in a particular region or neighborhood, work on a...
  15. Yesterday

    openly saying what is on my mind has never been easy. I used to keep journals when I was younger. But haven't had one since I was 13/14. So, this experience could get awkward lol. Yesterday I was working on rewriting Dark, since I received so much good, helpful feedback from people on here. Well, my best friend was at work, and started texting me because it was extremely slow and boring. (she is a bartender) So, I suggested I come just sit up there with her, I could bring my laptop,...
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