Life is catching up to NaPoWriMo

It's been weeks since I even thought about this. 30 in 30 for 2016? It's been 3 years since I even tried to really write a big grip of poems. Hell it's been a long time since I wrote any poems, so the entire thing should be an interesting exercise for me.

I haven't been entirely ignoring my goal of 30 poems in 30 days for this year. I just hadn't really realized that I was ignoring this for quite so long. I swear I had good intentions and wanted regular updates. HA! Good intentions never get me far with my goals, but that's okay. Losing them would probably make me a much more bitter person. Besides, I work better with a deadline.

My plan so far has been to fill a list with titles for poems and just expand it until I've got more than 30 (currently at 45). No real idea what sort of poem any of them are, but the titles popped up in my head as I was thinking about the process. I am not one to fight inspiration when it rears its big face in the center of my thoughts. I'm planning to post each and every one of them regardless of how awful they may feel to me. The main idea behind the entire thing is just to force yourself to write as much as possible. That is something I'm pretty sure I can handle.

All this being said, real life has made it a habit of pulling all of my attention away from the creative and lofty ideas that I have running through my head. It hasn't all been bummers and burns though. A big part of my distractions from creative stuff over the past few months has been due to playing more and more tabletop RPGs with my friends. I've got no complaints about that...well almost no complaints, but the complaints I do have are not related to my time usage (Is it so much to ask that the players learn the rules after 6 or 7 session so I don't feel like I'm playing with myself the entire time?). I am actually much better at keeping up in my GM blog, but then I spend a lot more time with my head wrapped up in those games.

My first bike, aka my main means of transportation, since I was in college decided to give up on life after 5,000 miles or so:

There is supposed to be more handlebar there.

Not only did the handlebars give up on life, but they gave up on life right as I was trying to cross a busy main street during my morning commute. Spent a few weeks getting driven around everywhere and hating it. Then I got this beautiful brown and blue baby boy right here:

The bike is the baby boy I meant, not the bearded weirdo in the blue hoody

Then over the weekend I managed to bust a spoke and bend my rear axle, cause apparently I ride the thing like a bat outta hell. Took it into the shop and got it fixed the next day. My buddy at the shop said he had people with the same bike for 6 or 7 months that showed less wear on them than I had in the month and a half or so I had mine. Kind of took a bit of pride in that. Even if that really means I'm gonna ride this bike into the ground.

Hopefully Friday will be the next post and it'll be a poem, but I usually get pulled away from all my creative follow-ups by other stuff. Here's hoping that won't be the case. <}3

We Can Fix It, Rebuild It, Make it Stronger: 26/30 2011 Edits

First the unedited word salad that was the poem for that day:

26/30

Most days I am lucky

to find my head

still attached where

I left it.

My feet have a habit

of dancing when I

least expect them to.

I get a lot of looks

waiting for the bus.

If my hands knew

what they were doing

this poem would have

been written by now.

My shoulders ache

all day resisting

the urge to shrug.

I get tired of telling

them not to.

I leave my shoelaces

knotted when I kick

off my shoes.

Loose laces are a

spastic dancer's easiest

worst nightmare.


At the time I was taking public transportation to and from work and was spending about an hour each way dealing with the commute. Plus I'd usually end up getting to one of the stops before the next leg of transportation. I'd play music so I wouldn't have to deal with anyone, or be questioned about whether or not I had a ticket for the trip.

Rereading I am not sure the real idea I was going for with it. I was probably trying o talk about my commute in some way that I thought was clever at the time. Now, 5 years later, I have no idea what I was going for, but I did see potential in some of the lines I had written. My first instinct when I am editing a poem is to rearrange it and see what else it can say without changing words. That usually leads me to a better idea of what I want the poem to be when it's as finished as I can make it. Then adding or changing lines becomes easier.

I'm not sure if I did a good job of preserving the original idea, but then it's been a while and at the time I was not really just putting words on a page to try and beat a deadline of the end of the month. It wasn't a total lost cause though. Here are the edits for this one, I'm pleased with the direction it went.

26/30 Edits

If my hands knew

what my head was doing

this poem would have

been written already.

My shoulders ache

all day resisting

the urge to shrug.

I get tired of telling

them not to.

Choosing instead to find

places to hide from me,

most days I am lucky

if I find my head still

attached where I left it.

In the face of the

future’s endless everything,

standing strong against it

makes me feel like I’m always

going to come up with less

than I need to take control.


It was weird editing something I have been disconnected from for years. I can't be sure how much of this is a reflection of the idea of the original poem and how much of it is the influence of my current state of mind. I like the new poem, even if I don't know that I ever felt the new poem.

Isn't it a little early to plan April's 30 in 30?

Hell no it isn't. It's been 3 years since I even attempted it. This year one of my goals is to get that done again. It is a challenge someone invented for National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo). No clue who it was or why, but when I heard about it I liked the idea. The idea as I heard it was to post whatever you wrote that day on social media. I don't think I ever did that last part of it, but I still tried to write 30 poems in 30 days. I was successful with the time frame 2 years in a row. Then life happened and I got distracted from it for the past few years.

I found what worked the best was to come up with a massive list of random titles for poems that I can then use during that 30 day period to knock out some of the ideas. It's a good chance to test out ideas and explore themes repeatedly until I've found what it is about them that I really draws me in.

This year I'm not sure how I'll handle it. I feel like an important step for it would be to post it to social media, but I don't really have Facebook anymore and no one is on Google + that is paying enough attention for it to count. I could try Instagram this year, but I'm not entirely sure everybody would be able to read my hand writing.

Jesus, I'm already looking for excuses not to do it. Bad habits die kicking and screaming. 2016 is cold-hearted though and gives no shits about my excuses, so between now and April I gotta figure out the best social media platform (aside from my ignored blog of course) to share my 30 in 30 poems on.

Over the next 90-ish days, I'm going to prep for getting it done and done on time this year. I'm gonna spend my prep time creating a title list, looking at old poems I like, and fixing ones I don't. It'll remind me I am capable of meeting my own expectations and practice at my least favorite part of writing: editing old work.

Say it Ain't So, George. Say it Ain't So

Let's fact it. Like Elvis touring in 77, some great artists should not push for that one last moment in the spotlight without expecting it to expose all the imperfections they've cultivated in their echo chambers of yes-men throughout their careers. George Lucas is one of those great artists that got bloated by success and made myopic by the lack of need to prove himself in his drive.

When he was making the original three movies in the late 1970s, he was a young director committed to a vision he had for a story. His vision was so revolutionary that he needed to create his own special effects studio just to handle the demands of his vision. Flash forward through a few decades of coasting on the success of those films and you end up with George Lucas of today. He is not a bad film maker. He just seems to have no spine and certainly isn't hungry enough anymore to push his vision for a movie.  

Why is any of this being brought up now? Well recently a video clip was brought to my attention:

Ignoring the creator of the video's bad attempts at humor and his assumptions about what they are discussing. It is clear that George Lucas was not pleased with the results of his efforts. However, in light of the crazy fan theory that Jar Jar Binks was originally planned to be the most evil Sith lord in all of the galaxy, the above video takes on the context of a man seeing his grand opus fall apart in front of him.

Here is a video explaining the Jar Jar Binks theory; which I feel is pretty sound as far as tin foil hat theories go:

By believing this theory, it forces me to one of the following conclusions:

• George Lucas biffed his masterpiece so horribly it was unfixable.
• George Lucas got scared of following through on his plan after the public reaction to Jar Jar
• George Lucas didn't actually plan for Jar Jar to be a Sith and lost all his talent for story telling.

None of this forgives George Lucas for what was put out in his name, but it at least clarifies the reason why what was supposed to be the grand conclusion to his epic masterpiece ended up being a steaming pile of shit.

After seeing that Jar Jar theory video, I got sort of tempted to watch the movies again to see if I could spot some of the things they mention. God help me I even tried to start watching one of them. I even tried watching cuts of it that had been changed to remove the racist accents and such, but they weren't able to mask the stink off the pile of crap this movie.

We are stuck with Episode 1, 2, 3 for another 20 years until someone decides to do a special edition of the movies and fix it to reflect a better more robust story. I guess that as a one-time die hard fan of the Star Wars universe, knowing that George Lucas might not have actually planned to have his movie be garbage is at least someone comforting. Really that's all we could expect to hope for after all this time. 

Poem: Waffles and Time Travel

My breakfast waffles are getting cold,
sucking up the morning's chill
as I'm already preparing lunch.

There are melting clouds
clearing from the puddles of blue sky
as the sun climbs slowly west.

I am fantasizing about being a time traveler.
Not the exploring history kind
or the visit the future kind.

I just want to ease on the breaks,
slow the sun's rise down a little,
savor each bite of a hot breakfast.

As soon as I've taken the last bite
my day takes a flying leap
at the chaos of obligation.

I lose my footing and stumble
for hours, wishing I had
slowed down the start of my day.

My whole day would go down easier
if my morning start with frantically
trying to finish my waffles before they got cold.



NOTES: I am not sure I know anyone who really gets to take their time in the morning during the week. It's a luxury not everyone can afford without going to bed with the sun and waking up hours before it gets up. I have had many plates of waffles that got cold while I was frantically getting through my morning and making sure I had everything for my day.

Weekly Words 2

Push yourself in school and get good grades. Get good grades and get into a good college. Graduate college at any cost, because you will be handed a career after college that will carry you through the rest of your life. Now get a car. Now get a house. Now get a mortgage so you can get a second car. Now get a credit card, use it constantly, and tell yourself it is for the card rewards. Now remember that this is the only way to become an adult.
A whole generation of people came of age at the tail end of an old way of life that was not a viable solution to living in the new millennium. This generation of people, whose parents were lucky enough to come of age when a high school diploma was enough to get somebody a steady job they could support a family with that job, has been struggling to compete in an economy built off the old ways of living life. Competing not only with each other but with people from older generations that are still competing for the same jobs due to the recent recession. Jobs that the lost generation doesn't even want in the first place. Jobs designed for the old economy with 40+ hour work weeks that leave little time for a personal life or creative endeavors, unless sleeping for less than 6 hours a night is fun for you.
For most people this is just what's necessary to hang on from paycheck to paycheck. A lot of people are dealing with crushing student loan debt and high rent prices that make getting by an accomplishment in and of itself. Trapped by expenses in big cities with dwindling job prospects and exploding populations. Few are able to get it together to get out of where ever they are, faced with a paycheck that leaves them two choices: spend what little extra was earned on something to make their stuck lives better or live with the patience and lifestyle of a monk to save up and get out. Neither is terribly appealing given that the two options are mutually exclusive in most cases.
I don't know where I'm going with any of this. Certainly not toward a new profound understanding of the problem or a solution. It's just been in the news a lot lately. What with Bernie Sanders is leading the national conversation with his presidential campaign. He's a crafty politician who is using the truth about income inequality and the rampant bribery passed off as political donations from corporate lobbying groups to get the population motivated to vote in next year's presidential election. Whether you're voting for him or not, he is still striking a nerve with the population that understands the way the world looks like it is shaping itself and doesn't like it.
I can't help feeling part of the statistics being talked about in most of these news stories. I still remember how excited I was back in 2008 to leave my then "unbearable" job to start looking for work elsewhere. At the time, I'd received a few other job offers while working at the place, so I'd expected it to be an easy task. Then the national economy fell apart and I stumbled for 5 months before I found something else. All it took was 5 months for the white picket fence dream to evaporate. That is an empty feeling that is hard to fill when you're unemployed. It's been a long while since then though. I'm way overdue for building a new happy ending dream. I'm just not sure what it could be yet.

Weekly Words 1

What's in a title change? Less obligation to an arbitrarily specific idea and more flexibility in this case. I get distracted by my weeks sometimes. Coming off a weekend and wrestling with the fact that I've got another 45 hours of work time before my next weekend, obsessing over the things I didn't get done. Life gets away from you when you pay too much attention. Needless to say I've decided my goal isn't a specific day of the week to spill my head, as long as it's done once a week. This could be the death knell of my whole effort: giving myself room to ignore my goals. I don't think so though, but this will be a good challenge for me anyway.

This week The Midnight Disease by Alice W Flaherty has been staring at my from my shelf for a while now. A book about inspiration as a replicable brain state that is written by a neurologist. She talks about how certain brain states caused by trauma (two examples she uses are postpartum depression and people that had injuries to their brains) compel the person toward creative express without every really knowing why they have this new need for it. Some people turned to painting pictures after a brain injury, after having spent a life with no interest in it previously. Her own experience with postpartum depression caused her to write prolifically. The book is very interesting in parts, but then other parts read like they were written by a neurologist.
It forced me to confront the idea that all the periods of my life that have been filled with my most prolific writing have been a result of whatever unique brain chemistry cocktail I had pumping through my noggin at the time. It is strange trying to wrap my head around the fact that my inspiration had been a compelling force out of my control, but it came from a place within me. Inspiration from my brain guts and not some exterior force. The idea helps put my efforts into perspective. At least in the sense of knowing that my chemically induced brain state is replicable. At least I don't remember any physical trauma to brain during any of these times; and I don't have any new scars on my head that I can't remember getting either.
I don't know that bringing about those specific brain states that caused all that activity in the "gotta write" center of my brain is necessary. I think moving forward is more a matter of training the conscious part of my brain how to better interpret the parts of itself that I try to avoid. It will be an effort in understanding the absences and silences in all my thoughts. When I find those places where there are things I can't say, won't say, or don't know how to say I'll look for the shape, broad strokes, and edges of it. The details come out in whatever I end up writing. Now if I can just figure out how the hell I'm supposed to do any of that I'll be set to have carpel tunnel inflaming hours of writing.