Passage Home

A quick glance to the right will tell you that its been a while since I posted anything to this blog.

Much has occurred in the nearly 5 years since I ended the game being IT. Very much. And in some ways, I am not sure I have the same grasp, or even a similar grasp on the context of my life that I had then.

I've had similar customer service horror stories, as yet unshared. More songs have entered and exited my life, along with other things. Joys and sorrows common to every life, struggles, pain, and . . . more of the same. But the only constant in any of our lives, change, in turn changes us.

I take these very first tentative steps back because, at the core of it all, THIS makes me feel good about something. THIS makes me see that I was called to do something, back, way back in the early days of my adulthood.

I am, in answer to the long hanging question offered by my first college professor, a writer.

I remember when I first was married, and my wife got her first job as a writer at the University of Pennsylvania, we discussed how there is a thrill answering in small talk at some party;

"What do you do?"
"Why . . . I'm a writer."

A writer! I did not ever really get the chance to say that, but my wife does. She is one, and a good one. But our styles are different. She is technically far superior to me. She can rely on a strong understanding of structure and punctuation, and . . . well, all things English. I on the other hand rely on a little voice inside me, THE voice. I believe that any writer that reads this knows what I mean. THE voice. The voice in your head that sounds right to you, that creates your style. Its the voice every reader hears too, hopefully.

And now, 5 years into the gulf I left when I stopped here, the family has two more writers, Ben and his daughter, Elizabeth. The really interesting thing is, neither of them know this about me, that 35 years ago I started on the path they have all taken after me. That I embraced a similar vision. And while they have all surpassed me in accomplishments, I still have them all beat for longevity.

So, I return, slowly, haltingly, to what is a long dormant part of me. I hope it entertains, but there is a truth here, a reality first explained to me by that first professor, as he probed whether or not I truly was what I said. He asked me a follow up question, meant to make me consider the veracity of those words.

He said; "Are you really?"

What he went on to explain was that writing is not easy, nor is it neat and clean. To truly be a writer is cannot be a choice, it must be a compulsion, a passion. Because a true writer, at the very critical moments, whether it be the height of joy, or the very darkest point imaginable, will hear a question somewhere deep in the back of their mind, detached and unemotional.

"Can I use this?"

A writer must write. Just as birds must fly, and fish must swim. The scorpion must plunge its stinger into the back of the frog as they cross the river. Its the nature of the beast. Those moments come to us all. Hopefully, mine are the foundation for this next journey.