FINALLY...PUBLICATION!!!

One of my stories got published. The first one since my MFA graduation. Yahoo. We are going to celebrate tonight!!!

Insomnia

It's 2:45 in the morning and I'm unable to sleep. I've been tossing and turning in bed, turning the television on and off, listening to my wife breathe and nothing is helping me to sleep. It's maddening. So, I've poured myself a whiskey in an attempt to drug myself to sleep, opened a web browser and here I am.

It's amazing to me where my night thoughts go. So far I've covered the death of my parents, siblings, and wife. I've plotted out two weeks or so of lesson plans for the class I'll begin in less than a week, thought about the bar and the conversation I had with my owner, done some mental Christmas shopping for my wife, and on and on it goes.

I can't tell if it is anxiety that is keeping me up or if my wonky sleep schedule is finally catching up to me. It's hard to say. Swinging in between waking in the morning with the baby to closing the bar at 4 am is a hard thing to balance and I'm beginning to realize the toll it takes on me mentally and creatively. Lack of sleep isn't something to sneeze at, it's serious and I believe myself to be a pretty moderate insomniac even on my best days. The last weeks have really pushed the envelope though and I think I'm beginning to have some real fallout.

Well, the ice in my glass is cracking, inviting me to take another sip. Lets hope this works.

The next day.

So, I've already heard from a writing friend in response to restarting the blog and it seems like a good idea so far. The reason I halted the blog was because I found myself having to defend the blog, its contents, my thoughts. Well, tough titty said that cat to the kitty. If I am going to engage in the process of putting my thoughts out there in a public forum, well, that's what I get. I don't know what it is about this blog, about knowing that these words do make it out into the ether that appeals, but it does.

I'm working on a wedding ceremony today. I have to perform it tomorrow and it feels good. I enjoy weddings. It's nice to see two people joining their lives together. I always feel honored to have been chosen to unite them.

So, it's off to work on the ceremony and then, hopefully, I'll have some time for my own work.

Too long.

Okay, I'm considering opening this blog back up again. I've been thinking about it for quite a while, since the day I shut it down, and I feel compelled to return to it. There wasn't much in terms of content within the pages of this blog, nothing that could be considered genius or relevant but there was something essential to me, to my process somewhere in these pages. I was able to write past my censor in some ways.

I'm finding that I'm actively resisting the page these days, avoiding it, choosing anything and everything but putting my butt in the seat and that isn't something I can live with, not something I'm willing to continue. So in an effort to return to a place where the writing was an essential part of my day/week/month, I'm going to reopen these pages and see if it can't be the first step on the path that brings me back to the page.

Step one: Define goals.

1. I want to write with more frequency. I've been doing a lot of diddling around with revision, using it as a smoke screen for what I've been doing with my time. But the fact of the matter is I haven't been producing much in terms of new material. I have a couple of new drafts but nothing that satisfies my urge to burst free on the page, to really come forward and purge some of these narratives, these voices, that won't shut up in side my head. So, I want to write. I want to write three days a week.

2. I want to read more. My reading rate has dropped significantly as well. I need to fill the hopper. I need new stories, new influences, new voices inside my head. I need to get back to my old reading schedule of one book a week.

3. I want to maintain my physical fitness routines. While this new lifestyle has taken away from some of my writing time, I find that it is really good for my acuteness, stamina, self esteem, and general health.

4. I need to reconnect with friends from the program. I have dropped off the face of the map. I've avoided them because I'm ashamed of my output. I don't have much to contribute in the way of new books read or new stories completed. I need to swallow my pride and return to them. They'll understand my fallow period.

5. I want to re-immerse myself in the writing because it makes me a better husband, father, brother, son, friend, and person. Without it, I get grumpy and shallow. I don't want that.

So, there's a start. There's my top 5 reasons for reinvigorating myself in the writer's life and hopefully this blog will be just the tool I need to get over myself and return to those characters inside my head.