Author: Phil RedBeard

In my mind, one year is pretty much an extension of the next, and only an accident of human calendar keeping lets us know when one has changed into the next. Otherwise, we would probably delineate things according to seasons or like some cultures, measure time by the moon. In any case, 2024 so far doesn’t feel much different than 2023, at least, not yet. It is still winter, and as such is in the middle of a season. I think a full moon was a little bit ago, but I tend not to notice such things except for “Hey! A full moon. Would ya look at that?”

I’ve been working on a theory about New Year’s weight loss resolutions and why they never seem to make it out of February. My hypothesis? Most people aren’t terribly out of shape. They eat more from Thanksgiving through New Years and feel bad about it because our image-obsessed culture tells them they should. So they work out, get back to where they were at the beginning of November, and move on with their regularly scheduled lives. I dunno, I could be wrong about that, but if someone needs to actually make a life style change (which is what weight loss should be anyway) that tends to happen when needed and not usually at January-the-First-of-Whatever-Year.

This leads me to gate-keeping. Gate-keeping is that insidious and evil process by which self-appointed wardens keep watch at the gates of anything and tell newcomers they aren’t welcome to enter for Enter-Reason-Here. Take Star Wars for example. It used to be that we had three Star Wars movies and they were great and everyone pretty much agreed about that because, well, there were only three. Except Return of the Jedi, aka, the One with the Space Bears, which wasn’t as good as the other two. And thus Star Wars gatekeeping was born. If you didn’t agree, you weren’t a TRUE Star Wars fan. Well, fuck that. I love Star Wars, including the One with the Space Bears. In fact, if you love any Star Wars you are ok in my book, even if it is Rise of Skywalker or Book of Boba Fett or whatever the modern (when you are reading this anyway: when I was younger, it was less Jedi and more Phantom Menace) equivalent is.

What do gate-keeping and New Year’s resolutions have to do with each other? I think many people in Western or American culture gate-keep when it comes to making or keeping New Year’s resolutions, which is why there is such a premium on the resolutions in the first place. People don’t feel that they belong, or are allowed to exist, as they are, so they acquiesce when others force them out of certain categories and don’t even try to enter. Then, only when a New Year comes along, do the gate-keepers open their doors a crack to allow anyone else in, because, after all, they resolved to enter this community, so they will actually stick with it this time and therefore are allowed. Like I said: fuck that. One: it isn’t anyone else’s business what you do or when, so start doing something cool because you want to regardless of what anyone else thinks (or what the calendar says). Two: this business of resolving is for the birds. Either you do something or you don’t, and whether you do it habitually is a much more complex thing than ordinary folks imagine, psychologically and physiologically speaking, anyway. My rambling point is: you are allowed at any moment to do anything you wish (within reason and decency), and you don’t need to resolve to do it habitually, either.

Don’t gate-keep yourself, either. Don’t exclude yourself from things you want to try or to do because of anything internal. I’ll never keep up with it is a horrible reason to self gate-keep. You either do something or you don’t. Some have trouble with personal hygiene routines, either due to depression or some other reason. But the secret to success at teeth brushing or writing the next great American novel is to simply do it when you think about it. If it is something you want to do, I guarantee it will be in your thoughts, so you’ll get a chance to do it again when you think of it again. Brushing teeth is a thing best done fairly often, but not exhaustively, and so is writing. Along the way, your mouth will thank you and you just might turn up at your desk to find a novel where before there was only a handful of papers with furious scribbling on them. Or you might find that you need to buy new running shoes because you’ve worn out a pair, or need to buy new barbells because the ones you’ve been lifting seem too light. Whatever your thing is, you might just find it becomes enough of an obsession that the resolution has taken care of itself naturally. And by not standing in your own way or waiting for Jan 1 on some calendar, you’ve made a lifestyle change all by yourself with no one else’s permission.

Which, by and by, is why you shouldn’t listen to gate-keepers ever about anything. It is never too late, or too early (usually) to start a new obsession. Overwhelmed with Star Wars, but heard enough about it that you want to jump in to the galaxy? Pick a show or film and start watching. From there, everything else is sequel or prequel to what you started with, so discover it organically. Don’t like a particular show or character or storyline? Don’t sweat it, there is plenty to like out there. Don’t like Star Wars at all? Try some other Star: Gate, Trek, Dancing with the, whatever. Find your thing and go for it! And never let someone tell you that because you don’t know all the minutia about The Thing you are getting in to, you don’t belong there. Everyone starts as a total newcomer, and learns along the way. No one is born knowing all the Trivial Pursuit answers about X Y and Z.

That might just be the longest pre-amble to saying that I am not resolved to do anything in 2024 that I was not already doing in 2023. Unless I learn a thing or start to become obsessed with something new while the calendar happens to say 2024, in which case, I will start doing it or enjoying it regardless of the season or phase of the moon. Truth is, I have enough hobbies and jobs and obsessions right now as it is, I can’t keep up anyway. I’ll continue brushing my teeth, writing, watching Star Wars, and living however I want because I don’t brook with gate-keepers, and I am trying ever so hard to not gate-keep myself.

To whit: I had a few goals for the holiday break (which is sadly almost over) and I accomplished a few of them, didn’t accomplish others, and only halfway made it on the rest. Yay! Go me! That is called living. We will all die with to-do lists, unread books, unwashed clothes, and with life unfinished. As we didn’t control or get to choose our beginning, we will not choose our ending. So make a list, and get to it, or keep doing it and enjoy the ride. I will keep reading the Lord of the Rings (halfway through Two Towers), I got my hobby room reorganized, and straight didn’t work on any action figures or dioramas. Shrug. Time enough in 2024 for all those things and more! I can’t wait to do all the stuff I want to do.

Happy New Year to you, whatever you choose to do!

As I let the dogs outside this evening, I was not entirely surprised to see dandelion blooms standing tall in the shaggy grass, gently bending in a balmy breeze. North Texas is a fairly temperate climate, and as my mother remarked earlier today: fall comes in December, which makes the winter holidays a little confusing, that is, if you are expecting a New England autumn in September and snow for Christmas.

Lately it’s been cool and breezy in the morning, and warm and sunny in the afternoon. Not too bad, after all. With temperatures cooler than triple digits, I note that Thanksgiving Day has past, and Christmas is only about three weeks away. Soon it will be time for holiday break, and with it the promise of time off of both work and school.

I will have finished the classes I am taking this semester in about two weeks. In the time that follows, I want to accomplish a few things, and I thought I would be good to put that into writing to try to make it more “official” in order to motivate myself.

To begin with, I have a few books sitting on my bookshelf. Well, let’s be honest for a moment: I have a lot of books on my bookshelf, and even added a few news one with a morning trip to my local Half Price Books. But I have several in particular that I want to thumb through and read.

I have been collecting “Art of” books for a while, and have a decent gathering. First unread among them is the Art of the Lord of the Rings which is actually the art of J.R.R. Tolkien as he originally illustrated his saga. In particular, I want to dive into that tome, but there are two Art of Star Wars books that I also want to investigate.

Another book that has caught my eye is a book on poetry, which will come as no shock to regular readers. This book showcases major poetical authors, and eras, in an exploration of forms. That particular book looks very interesting as a way to inspire more poems to write. I haven’t written but a handful of poems since I self-published my book, Whiskey Poetry. Might be time to get back into that head space for a while.

In addition to those four books, I am continuing to read the Lord of the Rings. I am getting closer to finishing the Fellowship of the Ring (currently the Fellowship is stuck in Moria), and will continue with the Two Towers and Return of the King after that. I would like to finish the saga before the new year. Maybe that is an unreachable goal, but I’ll see what I can do.

Beyond reading, I have a few action figures that I would love to customize, paint, or weather to make them look like they’ve lived in their worlds instead of being fresh from the factory. Action figure art and photography isn’t something I have done that much of recently, and I would very much like to get back into it. I have a list of figures to customize listed on a small white board in my studio. Along with customizing, I might try my hand at building more scenery in six inch scale, as I’ve only done a little bit of that, and would like to try walls or buildings. I did a few landscapes a while back, and while they aren’t bad, they aren’t spectacular either. So I may fiddle with scenery a bit, too.

Third on my list is infrastructure. I am always looking for ways to maximize work area and utilize space as efficiently as possible. There is some stuff in the studio that isn’t being used, and maybe could be put into longer term storage. Also, I might come up with a way to find more workspace, or more useful everyday storage. As with most things, this is a work in progress, but I find re-arranging and organizing invigorating. Plus, the more I can make use of limited space in better ways, the more I will be able to do in photography and other art. It also might make it easier to find time to create and get over the negative momentum I so easily feel with a lowered barrier to entry into the creative headspace.

Fourth, and this is pie in the sky a bit, my wife and I have two IKEA chairs that we use to hang out in the studio when we watch tv or read or work on art that doesn’t require a table-top surface. This is adequate when it is just the two of us, but if we ever wanted to watch TV with anyone else, there simply isn’t any other seating, other than desk chairs which work for work, but not for relaxing. This is a long way to saying I would love to be able to find a way to get a couch or something up in the studio. As I have mentioned, space is at a premium, so it simply may not be possible. I want to explore the possibility anyway.

Lastly, and this may seem contradictory, but I’d like to take time to just be at peace. This may include holiday events with my family, or just hanging out, but because I know I need rest, it will be vital to take time to be quiet. I don’t know if there is a way to accomplish all these goals or not, but this is what I have in mind for the month of December, and holiday break in particular.

I look forward to checking back in January sometime, and seeing how future me will do with present me’s goals. For now, I want to get through the next two weeks of work, the last two class periods for each class, and not rush through the holiday break. As much as possible it would be great to be able to relax and savor each moment as it arrives.

I am thinking about the upcoming holidays. Around here we have a Thanksgiving Day and then Christmas a few weeks after. I will have some time off work and school for T-Day, which will be grand, and then a week after the end of school it’ll be X-Mas Time. I know the rest of the world doesn’t celebrate American Thanksgiving, though our North-of-the-border cousins have their own variety in October, but much of the world does celebrate Yuletide in one variant or another. I love the end of year holidays!

It is no secret that my favorite season is autumn. In more sensible areas than Texas, my current residence, the air is crisp and cool, the leaves change color and fall to crunch underfoot, and you can smell wood fires as they heat homes. Here in Dallas, today, it was 72F and sunny. Not a bad day, but not quite one on which to heat up the fireplace either. I am thankful for temperate weather, though for the rest of the week it’ll be proper sweater weather.

I am thinking about the upcoming holidays. This will be my thirty-sixth time celebrating with family and friends. I know when I was younger, holidays were the best, but in some ways, I enjoy them more as an adult. The experience seems richer, somehow. The freedom and the fun, the joy and the jubilation remains; but it is stronger, more potent, and deeper, somehow. I love the feelings the holidays bring, especially when I can share them with my parents, my wife, my sister, and her kids. The unrestrained exuberance of shredding wrapping paper on Christmas morning isn’t mine so much anymore, but I still get that from my nieces.

Thanksgiving is all about turkey and football and punkin pie, as ever, but the day spent preparing food and enjoying it, and then relaxing with those I love is like being wrapped in contentment. I am thankful for many things this year, and I will give those thanks into the universe, because I believe the practice of appreciation to be important. I am grateful for my health – still here after Covid tried to kill me, and I’m not getting over that one. I have a great wife, she who keeps me going. Grad school accomplished the goals that I set for it. I feel ready to move into the next stage of learning and life after I finish studies in a few weeks. I have toys to play with and the means to enjoy myself, even if sometimes it is a strife against sadness to get there. Eventually I arrive in a space where I can create, and I love it.

I am thinking about the upcoming holidays. I get so much from being able to give to others. I know there is so much more than American rampant commercial capitalism, but finding the right thing to bless someone with never fails to bring happiness. And it isn’t always a thing either, sometimes it is an experience or an intangible feeling. Sure, the aforementioned nieces love the things, but they are young yet. Everything for a season, and who doesn’t love unwrapping toys?? I sure still do, if I am honest. Christmas is more than presents, and the greatest gifts are our time and presence, which I can give in abundance.

When Thanksgiving break hits on Wednesday, I am going to break out the Christmas decorations, one of my favorite activities this time of year. I remember my mother unpacking Christmas year after year, and the magic of the lights, the colors, and the pretty things, the special objects that helped to focus that magic into a season. I love doing that for myself and my wife. It never fails to make me smile when the place is decorated and each time we come back home to see all the pretty. We have a new tree for the living room, and I’ve got a few ideas of how to switch up decor for this new holiday time. I can’t wait to see how it will all work together. I can practically smell the magic, and the pine, on the air. (The pine might be artificial, as this is Texas, after all.)

I am thinking about the upcoming holidays. Movies, memories, and fresh-made hot cocoa on a cold night: just right! I enjoy the music that we pull out once a year to sing along to, to quietly contemplate, and to spin on the record player. I have my favorite renditions, as do we all, and each year I add to my playlist new covers and new songs. I love Apple Music for being able to instantly add and stream things I’ve never heard before. (Add technology to my list of thankful notes.) I love my HomePods so I can listen anywhere in rich, space filling sound. I love my AppleTV for being able to watch holiday films, both old classics (The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Santa Clause) and new discoveries (Spirited!). Yeah, I’m a fanboy. Shrug emoji.

I’ve a smile on my face for the holidays are here! Seasons greetings to you as there are more than the two holidays I celebrate. However you choose to spend your end-of-year, I trust you will be able to do it in the way that brings you the most of whatever you need. I’ve got turkey in the freezer, a wish-list growing, and a term paper to write. It’ll be a quick break, which I need, then a final sprint to a few weeks well-earned comfort. I don’t want to rush anything because I want to savor everything again this year. The season seems to hurry by more quickly as I get older, but my capacity for it has only grown in proportion to its haste. Besides, I get to decide now when to put up my tree and when to take it down, so the season can last as long as it needs to!

I am thinking about the holidays, and soon the bird will be in the oven and Santa Claus’ll be coming down Santa Clause Lane!

First off, this whole post is ironic: my internet connection has been down since this morning some time. A technician came by this evening to diagnose the problem and something something new fiber optic cable needs to be run from a pole to…somewhere. I didn’t even know this old 70’s era house had something as newfangled in it as fiber optic cabling, but it does. But I’m typing from my phone which has The Interwebs because we are living in the future now. (It’s fun.)

I wrote yesterday about feeling disconnected from my hobbies, and how my life seems sucked up by work and school. Which it is. But that’s only half of the story. The other half of the story is what I want to tell you now.

Truth is, I have a good thing going. I have been lucky and fortunate to attend grad school, and to be doing fairly well at it, too. That is due in no small part to my wife who sacrificed to help pay for the classes, and who patiently lets me complain about professors and assignments. She, my wife, is great. It’s due to her working at the school that got me a partial discount even before we paid for tuition. It’s due to her encouragement that I keep going even through a rough class and an opaque professor. I wouldn’t have made it this far without her.

My wife continually cheers me up at work. She commiserates through the boring, difficult, and existential whateverness of it all. I enjoy my job, but nothing is all roses and cupcakes, and she, again, is long-suffering when I complain or have an arduous day. I keep going because of my wife.

And in my hobbies, where I have trouble, my wife again supports me. She helps me keep going when I am able. What I didn’t say in my previous post is that much of what happens is depression underneath the veil of exhaustion, and she understands that, which is rare. Really, I’m more mentally spent than physically, and it takes so much mental energy to go-go-go that when I arrive home, all I want to do is have it all stop. But that means no hobbies, and then I feel unfulfilled. It’s a wicked place to be in.

One thing I learned last year was to look for minutes to reclaim. I took a training course to be better at my then-Human Resources job, and part of that was to find time in my day to work on what needs to be done, and while doing that, find stopping points so that I could be interruptible. Along with Adam Savage’s example of stealing time that I discussed before, I have the training and awareness necessary to fit hobbies into my day. I lack the mental energy, or the discipline, to seize hold of opportunity.

That is where I need to improve myself. But I am lucky to have my wife, she who chose me; she motivates me to keep going, to not give up, and gives me space to pursue my passions of toy photography, making, writing, and reading and anything else I am interested in. I am very privileged.

While yes, it is frustrating to not be able to connect or indulge, there is yet more to learn and build up strength for in my life. I had a long talk with my wife this morning about all this, and I walked away with new insight and with hope that I didn’t have last night. I guess that is the season I have placed myself in right now: a season of learning.

I worked very hard to graduate high school and from an institute and a university to achieve my diploma and degree that it wiped me out for a while. But as Gandalf says to Bilbo in the film version of the Hobbit, “You’ve been sitting for far too long!” It’s about time I embrace the chaos of adventure once again, and come home “trailing mud and twigs” and awaken parts of my heart and psyche too long dormant.

This probably won’t mean that I create tomorrow, but then again, why not? Why shouldn’t it mean that? It proved difficult jumping back into class, but I did that! Why can’t I jump into a hobby or two? All it’ll take is encouragement, which I have, and a little determination, of which I have some lying around here somewhere, too.

So here I go, off into the Wild, with a humble thank-you to my wife. She is someone special in my life. I gain so much through her. May we come through trials together, and be better for it after all!

I feel disconnected from my life. My last entry here is all about the halfway point to the semester, and the wonder, joy, and excitement that brought. But if I am to be completely honest, I feel that something is lacking. And something is lacking: my hobbies. In the busyness and the bustle of work and school, I come home and I find that I don’t have the energy to sit down and paint, or photograph, or fiddle with building, or any of the things that make me smile outside of class and the office.

I am grateful to have taken this journey back to school, and I am thankful to have a job to bring in a little cash, but..

I am missing the other parts of myself.

I read occasionally, when I can focus, but I do so much reading for class that when I am done, I rarely want to pick up another book, no matter how enjoyable. I have done so much writing for class, I have neglected my blogs and personal writing, which is why my last entry was in October and this is now November.

I am trying not to be hard on myself, yet it is difficult to lay aside the self-judgment and self-criticism. I have written much on this blog about not expecting too much, or expecting the wrong things, of myself, so I won’t go into that here, just the feelings exist and are powerful. My point here is I know I am working hard, and that isn’t a bad thing.

My hero, Adam Savage, has a bit in which he talks about when he started working in commercial special effects, and later, at Industrial Light and Magic, that he put aside his personal creative endeavors because he was fulfilling that need through his work life (and his work life often took time away from his personal creativity). I don’t feel that way here. I feel robbed, not fulfilled, by work and class. Adam does say, too, that whenever he had a spare hour or two during Mythbusters he would hide away in his shop and meditate through building. That is a lesson I could do well to master.

Adam Savage has another bit of wisdom he has shared before, and that is “this is what’s happening” which is a life philosophy about working with what is right in front of you. I spend so much time wishing things were different, or wishing I was elsewhere. I need to let that go, and deal with what is. Right now? That’s work and school. A time may come for hobbies and more freedom, but that isn’t today. Tomorrow I may come up with a way to rearrange my mental furniture, or imbibe more energy, but today? That isn’t what’s happening.

What is happening right now is that I have had a good day today. I completed a project that I didn’t think I would. I got some good rest. I caught up on Tested videos (Adam Savage’s YouTube channel) and I am listening to some good music while I update my blog. Oh! and I got paid yesterday, which allowed me to renew my domain name for another two years. Yay! I need to deal with what is, and let the next thing come and deal with that when it gets here. Along the way, I think it might not be a bad thing to manage expectations and time to try to sneak in a hobby or two.

I like air conditioning in the summer mornings. When I wake, and pull myself out of bed, there is a chill in the air: it feels like autumn, if even for a second. Summer here in North Texas (where I’ve made my home for an alarming seven years now) is so brutal lately as to be overwhelming. I was reading another blog which talked about change being slow, inevitable, and arriving when it will. That is North Texas. Summer arrives sometime in May (usually) and won’t leave until well after solstice, until it is good and ready.

Leaves don’t fall from trees in North Texas because the days have finally turned chilly and the sunlight is fading above branches. No, leaves fall because the land turns parched in the scorching sun, and there is little to sustain them in the boughs of their tree. Even today, two days removed from October, leaves litter my lawn and driveway and the high will be near 100 on the Fahrenheit scale. This morning I awoke to the artificial chill, and longed for true autumn. It will arrive slowly, heralded by what summer should feel like in more temperate, reasonable climes. Sometime around November and into December will come a chill in the air, chased out by a warm, sunny afternoon.

By January and February, something like real cold will descend just to remind people what jackets and hoodies are for, before leaving for a brief spring. Summer roars back in a vengeance, withholding rain and drenching all the lands in harsh sunlight once more. Or so it has seemed and been for the years I have lived here. Certainly climate change is working its dark, evil magic on weather patterns, and maybe in the long ago before times Texas wasn’t so harsh, so much a crucible to test a person’s will to live in heat and misery. I know not, that was long before me.

I remind myself of autumn with decorations and false maple leaves strewn around my living room, and a picture of mountains topped with arboreal color on my computer’s desktop. It almost works. For a brief time, when the AC turns on again to blow cool air into the room, and I lose myself in the image, I can dream of autumn. It “…shakes me like a cry/ Of bugles going by” as a favorite poet, Bliss Carman, would say. A “touch of manner, hint of mood” he would say about the penultimate season. That is all I feel I grasp here in North Texas.

It may not always be so, and wasn’t. I grew up in Virginia where the four seasons lived when I was young. I also spent time in upper New York State and Penn’s Woods where four seasons yet reign (though New York was, like Wisconsin after, ironically flipped from Texas. There winter never wanted to leave, slumbering deep beneath heavy blankets of snow, if you’ll pardon the cliché). Maybe someday I’ll journey like a vagabond once more to a place where leaves change in the chill of real cold. Maybe someday.

For now, I’ll try to make my peace with the pieces of fall that I do get, artificial or not, and turn the calendar page from September to October, though the seeming eternal summer still reigns outside. Just now, I can hear through the (closed) window the muted roar of someone’s lawnmower. Grass grows again following recent, begrudging rain. We haven’t needed to mow for months of drought. Lawns leapt upwards in hope, only to be cruelly cut down. I wouldn’t really care to cut grass, except for the conformity of it all and the fact that suddenly, in the tall spikes, I can lose sight of my small dog and I’d rather she not have to struggle through thickets just to pee. No one should, really.

The morning train barrels by behind my house, and shakes me from my reverie. Time to be about the busyness of life. May autumn bring blessings to you, wherever you be and whenever she arrives. When the leaves fall, may it remind you, not of death, but of the new life that shedding old things brings.

The last time I wrote on this blog, I started reading Stephen King’s On Writing. I don’t remember because my memory is unreliable these days. I know because I use an app to track my reading, and it says it took me thirteen days to read On Writing.

In the Before Times Long Ago, I would have read King’s book in an afternoon, or even quicker, but since graduating university, my ability to read books has lessened over time. I’d not be able to concentrate, and the will to read would not materialize for weeks (or even longer).

Then came the bout with Covid that nearly killed me. I think I read during that week, but in a haphazard way. I didn’t start or finish a book, but read selections from the Star Wars trilogy novelizations. That exercise was to stave off the boredom of potential death more than a real effort to read anything straight through.

Since Covid, all I have really read, aside from a few books here and there (I think Carrie Fisher’s and Anthony Daniels’s memoirs were among the longest), were picture books: The Art of Star Wars in several volumes. I am certain I’ve written about my frustration with being unable to read before on this blog.

Finishing On Writing feels like a breakthrough. King endorses reading as much as possible if one wishes to be a writer. That advice you will find in any treatise on writing. I also believe it. Something about the way King espouses that sentiment struck through my mental fog straight to my reader’s core. I want to read again, and frequently. I cannot say the desire existed much before.

I wanted to read in the way that people want to exercise or eat healthily: they know they should. But they don’t want to, really. Doing such things becomes a chore, a necessity, an aggravation, and usually, a non-starter. With me and reading it was similar: I just didn’t do it. Even reading King’s book took thirteen days because there were several in those almost two weeks that I just didn’t want to pick up the book. Persevere I did and finish I did.

Reading On Writing turned into a journey I needed to take. I had no idea what the book was going to say, nor did I expect the emotional impact it has had on my psyche. King talks about his life of writing, which includes his eventual sobriety and concludes with a life-threatening accident. I knew of neither. Look, the rest of King’s compendium really isn’t my thing and I knew almost nothing about him personally, but I picked up On Writing on a whim because I knew he was a good, established author. I figured something he had to say could be useful.

King’s advice was more than helpful: it was life-changing. Not least will be if I can read again because it was permissive. I know pretty much what King said already: eliminate adverbs, read plenty, write regularly, and so on, but the simple way in which he presented his advice, and life story, said to me that I can do those things, too. He doesn’t pretend to be some great writer, as opposed to a best-selling author, and he doesn’t stand on pretense. He is, and he invited me to be as well. Read what I like to read; write what I like to write (minus a few adverbs). And no worries about the rest.

Sometimes we all need the permission to do what we already know to do. Permission can take us from inaction to action. As kids we all wanted to do things, but it wasn’t until a parent or other authority gave us permission that we actually went out to do the thing (usually). I think Stephen King gave me permission to read, as weird as that sounds. I didn’t pick up his book asking for that, but late-90’s King communicated permission anyway.

I have a large backlog of books to read, including the Lord of the Rings. (Anyone reading right now knows that Lord of the Rings is among my favorite reads, which is to say, I’ve read it.) I set out to read Tolkien’s masterpiece once a year. That dream died when reading died. Now I just might try again. Autumn is the time of year I usually crack open Tolkien, in honor of Bilbo’s September birthday, and I think this year I will do the same. I have textbooks to read, and other reading on my horizon, but Lord of the Rings will be read!

I have a new purpose in reading. Enjoyment, of course, but to learn as well. Learn how other writers write. Learn how to craft wonder, intrigue, suspense, or put forth knowledge. I never read with that in mind before, but King told me to read with my eyes open, to note what other writers do and why and to emulate. I will do my best. After all, hand in hand with reading is writing. Ever since I first started reading thirty some years ago, I have wanted to recreate the experience I had in pages for someone else. If I am going to be a good writer, I must as well be a good reader.

I feel reborn, relieved, and reinvigorated. Light and full of light. Hyperbolic as well. I’ll take it all. I’ve not felt this way in a long time. A good book will do that for me, but I’ve forgotten the feeling. All that I had included dim memory and stale knowledge. Now I’ve got first hand experience once more! It feels good. Plus, life is short and if reading and writing get me through the pain of it all, so much the better. It did when I was a teenager, starting a mental health decline, but like so many things, I’d forgotten what billions know: reading is a pathway: to betterment, to amusement, to knowledge, and to joy. Yes, to escape as well. Who doesn’t need escape from time to time?

I’ve finished On Writing. But I’ve not finished writing, in fact where I’ve been precocious before, I plan to be prolific now. I’ve not finished reading, either. Where I may have been voracious before, I now plan to be insatiable. As author George McFly once said, “Like I’ve always told you, you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything!” I still contend with mental illness, life, and a host of adversity, but anything can be accomplished, and I’ve put my mind to overcoming!