Headlines Are Useless

Two weeks ago several people reviewed my blog and said they didn’t like it because I used curse words in  it. Their response irked me because I felt like the work I do here was given short shrift.

My stats showed their review took less than three minutes, they didn’t read my About Me page either. Think about that, less than three minutes to sum up almost nine years worth of work.

Three minutes to decide that my words weren’t of the standard they are looking for. I shrugged my shoulders and thought about how life is and how you only get a brief opportunity to make a good impression.

Are You Still With Me?

I wrote a post called Words You Wont Read and said 2011 was a real motherfucker. It wasn’t an exaggeration. It was a very hard year filled with multiple ups and downs.

This time last year my BIL was on life support and I was trying to convince my little sister not to worry about becoming a widow and telling my 5 year-old nephew to hang on a bit longer so that daddy could come home.

My BIL didn’t die, but my grandfather did.

He didn’t die of old age. He died from a broken heart. Don’t misunderstand, I am not angry he died, the man was pushing a 100. Grandma was the love of his life and he spent the last 18 months of his life without her.

It wasn’t easy. He cried. He didn’t want to cry in front of me, but sometimes he couldn’t help it.

When I look back it is so surreal. Six weeks before grandpa died I wrote about how I drove him to the tux shop to get fitted for my sister’s wedding. I called the post Four Generations & A Wedding because it was.

You should have seen the smile on his face when he saw my son put on a tux. Grandpa grabbed my hand and told me how proud he was of us and how sorry he was that grandma wasn’t there.

The Stories We Tell And The Stories We Share

The stories we tell and the stories we share aren’t always the same thing. There are boundaries in blogging and things we just won’t write about. I hear the echoes of the people we miss and I am sorry they aren’t here to share some things.

I am a father and a writer. I made promises to others and promised myself I would stop trying so hard. When I look back on where things were and look at where they are now I see tremendous progress.

It is gratifying to see growth and to be able to confirm hard work will make a difference.

Headlines Are Useless

I teach my children to deal with what is and not focus on what the world should be like. The instant gratification societies inability to focus irks me. Three minutes worth of skimming my work irks me.

The question I ask is what am I going to do about it. I can write better headlines and see if that helps. Or I can keep writing the crazy headlines and see how that goes.

I kind of like the second option. It is fun.

Concurrently I’ll work on building my community around me and every now and then I’ll ask you to like my Facebook page and or sign up for my newsletter.

P.S. There is an entire paragraph written in invisible ink here. If you have sensitive eyes/ears you probably don’t want to read it because it is chock full of four letter words. 😉

Good night from Los Angeles.

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