Soft (Re)launch

I hate when I sit down to write and am able to access only a big blank or a flock of thoughts winging together like magnetized metal shavings, or, even worse, when my shitty little internal editors insistently smash my pinkie down on the delete key. It's one of the reasons why I've never committed to a blog. I chafe at task-oriented writing, even if I'm the one who assigned it. (At the moment my editors are demanding to know why I always write about myself, and the only answer to that is that I'm all I've fucking got, assholes.)

Why, then, am I soft-(re)launching my website now? Because it was time, because I love Schitt's Creek, and because I've tormented my marvelously talented (and patient) designer friends Kim and John Einemann long enough. Why am I committing to not only regular blog posts but also a photo 52? Because I want to write more, and because I need a year of weekly themed photography self-assignments to kick myself in the ass.

Also because I'm two months closer to fifty-one than I am to fifty and that is SO not twenty-eight anymore, or even forty-eight, and any sense of limitless possibility has left my life. Taking its place is an urgency that I'm too fond of blunting with distraction: when I sat down to write this, I immediately had to investigate my natal birth chart, then figure out how to use my backflow incense burner (a cool Christmas gift from my oldest, dearest friend Susan), and when I moved the desktop envelopes to a safe distance from the lit incense cone--which I discovered really IS on fire and will absolutely burn you--I unearthed the missing semi-broken iPhone 7+ that Reed borrowed a long time ago without permission and apparently put back in the wrong pigeonhole and thenceforth operated, regarding all things device-related, under a cloud of disgruntled parental suspicion, some of which I then needed to discuss with Reed, who refused to forgive me much as I had refused to forgive him, and thus eternal misunderstandings and topics for future therapy sessions are born.

(Note: no psyches were harmed in this reenactment.)

And now I have to get up because, while writing this, I've bored myself and I need a snack.

Distractions and internal demons aside--when I cleaned off my shelves during my semi-annual post-Christmas purge, I discovered that I had an aspirational stack of very pretty self-help books aimed at dreaming, planning, and delivering on one's potential and promises. They all preach essentially the same message, and not one of the blasted things was going to get the job done for me.

The Avett Brothers maybe said it best: "Decide what to be and go be it."

Nike distilled it even further: "Just do it."

So I'm doing it. And I'm asking, because I would very much appreciate your company--will you join me?