Your Blog Could Cure Insomnia

One of my the best emails I ever received was the one where someone told me my blog could cure insomnia.  It was proof that someone, somewhere took the time to read my words and respond to how I made him/her feel.

It might not have been the kind of response I had hoped to get. It might not have been praise but it was something that included constructive criticism.

Something along the lines of please delete and destroy all of your posts and forget your passwords because you are an awful writer.

It reminded me of the good old days when crackpots, wingnuts and whackjobs would stroll through here and threaten to kill me and or have my children removed from my home.

Why?

They didn’t like my politics and didn’t appreciate my posts. But they read and read and read and responded with as much vitriol as they could master.

Mind you those letters had about as much sophistication as an adult with the writing skills of a three-year-old could muster.

That kind of feedback is few and far between. People are too busy fighting on Facebook and Twitter about things they don’t understand but claim expertise in to visit my blog.

Yep, the traffic here just isn’t what it used to be. My kids say it is probably because I shave my head but I say there is no correlation between the two.

And then I tell the kids their argument is as logical and sophisticated as most adults use on Facebook when debating politics.

Your Blog Could Cure Insomnia

It is too bad that this is an exaggeration and not truth because it could have changed my life.

If my blog really is/was a cure for insomnia I could license it out to some giant pharmaceutical manufacturer and make millions.

Hell I could look my children in the eye and tell them I am proud to say that we have become rich by bamboozling people into paying for something they don’t really need or have to have.

Or maybe not.

Maybe I could release the snark and tell them that my effort to become a better writer and storyteller had paid off in a most unexpected and unusual way.

Because if the blog cured insomnia it would probably mean that I was/am an awful writer whose devoid of skill. That might even bother me enough to get through my thick skin, but maybe not.

Millions of dollars and early retirement might be the kind of salve that eases the pain of such a wound.

What Writer’s Fear

I don’t know that I can speak for all writer’s about what we fear. Granted I could give you links to lists of things I fear like being eaten alive or being burned to death but that wouldn’t really address the question.

You wouldn’t hear that I wonder if I’ll ever complete a real story and sell it. You wouldn’t hear that I worry sometimes about whether my stories have enough substance to make them into the kind of tale that people would pay for.

Or maybe you’d hear that my biggest concern is that I’ll never get started and that I’ll fritter and waste my time talking about it and not doing it.

It is part of why I write each day and why I have been working on tying things together. It is part of why I have been thinking about what story I should tell first and how much reality/truth I’ll put into it.

More truth would make it easier to write now wouldn’t it or so Mr. Twain would have us believe.

It is too bad he is dead, I really would have liked to have met him. Better yet I’d love to have spoken with him about writing.

Taking Chances

If things go as I hope and plan this is going to be the week I get to cross off a couple of items on my bucket list. I am on track to make them happen and if they do, I will blog about it.

But I won’t identify them now, won’t say more until they happen because I am superstitious that way.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with my son about how honest we are with people. It was one of those conversations where we talked about taking chances and being vulnerable with others.

I told him that sometimes you have to give others a chance to see what lies beneath the surface and to experience our/your heart.

When he told me it sounded like it could be hard I nodded my head and told him that sometimes it is scary.

“What happens if they don’t treat you well?”

“They might break your heart. They might hurt you.”

“That doesn’t sound good at all.”

“It is not, but sometimes they open theirs and you discover things about life I can’t explain. You have to experience them.”

The funny thing is I didn’t tell him how many times I held back and how I sometimes wondered what would happen if certain people and I had real conversations. Conversations about what we really thought and felt.

He is a cautious lad and I was concerned that if I told him about how many times I protected myself it might make him hold back more.

I don’t want to be that kind of influence. I want him to figure this stuff out in way that works for him, don’t know what way that will be, but I am confident he will get there.

Change Is Coming

There is a good chance that I’ll change the theme here soon. I haven’t made a final decision but I am thinking about moving to something that provides a better reading experience.

Something that allows for bigger pictures and more storytelling opportunities. If you stick around I promise you’ll be among the first to know when I mix it up.

• Saved: Children, Life