The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for April 2012

Don’t Regret Not Living Your Life

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Ilsa: ‘When I said I would never leave you.
Rick: And you never will. But I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that.” Casablanca

If Casablanca doesn’t break your heart and or move you in some way I question your humanity. Perhaps that sounds unfair and or unreasonable but that is just how that movie affects me. Rick’s journey is one that I relate to and hope to emulate in some ways and at the same time I never want to follow it.

I keep thinking about these moments in time that we live through. I keep looking back, looking to the side and looking forwards. I look at a post I wrote last August and wonder if I didn’t fall down the rabbit hole.

I am a collector of moments in time. I try to be present in all that I do so that when something special happens I can capture it and lock it away inside that place where the most important things of my life are filed.  By the time August is finished I will have buried my grandfather, watched my sister get married and moved out of the first house I owned. And I will have done it all in less than 30 days.

So much has happened since that moment when I walked out of the house and stepped into the unknown. I am happy. I am angry. I am sad and I am bitter. I am optimistic. There are opportunities that have come because of this. There are choices that I wouldn’t have made because of this and choices that I had to make because of this.

When I sold the house I knew that nothing would be the same and for the most part I was ok with it. Ok because a long time ago I accepted that the only way to really enjoy life is to live it. It is part of why I love this video.

Lori asks people to tell her how we let go and I say that I am not good at it. I carry some things with me. I don’t forget. I remember. Sometimes I am very good about just shrugging my shoulders and sometimes…not so much.

There are lessons I have learned the hard way. I have made mistakes and buried friends. I know what it means to lose loved ones to terminal illness. I have helped lower their coffins into the ground and then made sure that they were buried because I didn’t stop swinging the shovel. It was the final thank you and my silent way of saying goodbye.

And because I have done these things and experienced life I know that I don’t want to wake up and regret not having lived my life. The difference between thought, action and execution is substantial.

Every day that goes by in which I don’t take a step towards trying to live my dreams is a waste of time and that is the one thing I don’t have enough of. When people ask me why I sometimes get so frustrated with certain things it is because I want to live those dreams yesterday. I don’t want to wait to be happier and more fulfilled. I want it now and I will make it happen because that is how it has to go.

Action is required.

When I say that I want to write ebooks I want to kick it up a notch. Here is my plan. I am going to take a number of my posts and use them to build an ebook. You might wonder why I would do it that way and not write something “fresh.”

The answer is simple. The first book is a learning experience. I don’t know as much as I would like about what tools/resources I should use to create the book. I haven’t decided if I will make this free or sell it for a buck.

The way to learn is to make it happen. Too many people suffer from paralysis of analysis. That isn’t going to be me. The major regrets in my life were caused by that and I have no wish to repeat my mistakes.

It is time to fly. It is time to live. Come fly with me.

How To Write Funny Posts That No One Will Read

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SEX SELLS (Girls just wanna have fun)

Sometimes I want to “Google” some of my old teachers so that I can tell them that they were right or wrong about me. It would be great fun to look up the woman who said that my writing was terrible and that I should focus on finding something that I was good at.

I’d take her to the library or a bookstore and show her the books I wrote about the boy wizard who outwitted, outlasted and outplayed his arch rival. And then I’d show her that mommy porn book about the shades of grey and say that was mine too. Hell, I would probably take credit for quite a few books because had those other guys not been lucky I would have written those stories first.

And don’t get me started on The Hunger Games because Collins knows that I was all over the kids killing other kids, apocalyptic future novel long before her. Really, it is true and it is just as true that I would have invented the lightbulb, the Internet (sorry Al Gore) and cars had those other guys not had the advantage of being older than me.

Really, you can’t blame me for being angry or frustrated. I am barely getting by right now. Been chasing a couple of bucks that people owe me for far too long. Too much to write off and too little to keep me from starving. But it is enough to do something with it and I have a lot of somethings.

The funny thing is that one of my old teacher said that I am a lot of somethings and not all of them were nice. He didn’t like me for lots of reasons and not just because I am funnier than he is. He is definitely not Canadian because when he got pissed off he told me so and in terms that weren’t very nice.

Ok, so maybe I was good at pressing his buttons. And maybe I am guilty of talking a bit more than I should have, but this was high school and I had to do that. Ok, maybe I didn’t have to do that but when you are a teenage boy on hormonal overdrive you do all that you can to convince the girls you like to get naked with you. At least we did back then, now I understand it is different.

Daddy’s Girl

Now I am told that high school boys get lucky all the time and that the girls are happy to make the boys happy. As the father of a daughter this fills me with a sense of dread and some doom. Not complete doom or full out dread, but enough to be concerned.

Concerned because I want to keep Daddy’s Girl safe, secure and sound. I can’t protect her from everything nor is it practical to wrap her from head to toe in bubble wrap, but I sure can think about it.

Maybe that is my problem, too much thinking. Like I think it would be great fun to create some sort of bubble wrap jousting tournament. We’d all be wrapped in bubble wrap and our job would be to pop that other guy’s bubbles. Sure it might be a complete waste of precious resources and I might piss off some environmentalists but those buys are perpetually upset.

Just ask them about drilling for oil in certain places and they go nuts. I think they should go back to school and find some of those happy to please the boys girls. Nah, I changed my mind about that. They’re so uptight they wouldn’t be able to enjoy it.

Now about my daughter and the boys that come asking for her hand. I still maintain a rule that they must fight me to the death or they cannot date her. The good news with this method is that I am pretty certain I’ll win those battles and if I don’t, well it won’t matter because I won’t be around to be nervous.

Funny Man

Somewhere out there in the ether is what we call an Internet troll or as they are known in Latin, “the commenterus assholus.” He or she likes to tell me that they hate my writing and that they don’t think I am funny. Like I said before they aren’t Canadian because they are far too mean.

I am guessing that they are from the Midwest and are tired of my bashing fly over land. It is not my fault they are landlocked and don’t know anything other than snow, tornadoes and burning rivers, but I digress.

This person and or persons hates my writing and says that my sense of humor doesn’t translate well to this particular medium. Well I suspect that the medium they used is shoved so far up there they can’t remove it and that is why they are so damn grouchy. Or maybe not.

All I know is that sometimes I type really slowly so that they can keep up. Next week I am going to use pictures and we’ll see if that helps. I have lots of funny pictures.

In the interim I have to go now because I am not funny and no one reads my posts, except for them. It is kind of nice to know that I live in their head rent free. That is my favorite kind of rent.

Important posts coming really soon.

The Song Of My Heart Makes My Soul Sing

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lifejourneyThe song of my heart makes my soul sing and right now it is weeping. It would be easy to tie that into An Uncertain Certainty, New Year’s Eve or Wanted.

Nor is it about A Whiter Shade of Pale or A Telephone Call. It is much closer to Stupid Blog Tricks- The Difference Between The Best & Most Popular.

That is because I am feeling frustrated by all the things that are preventing me from dedicating time to write. I feel stifled and that is not something that I do well with.

Words Are My Tears

Words are my tears and my laughter. Writing is where I go when I need to express my pain and my joy. It is where I sort and sift through my thoughts and figure out what I want to do and what I need to do.

There is a big difference between need and want. I know the difference because I have had countless hours to think about it.  I have dedicated more than a moment to determining what is and what shall be.

And I am paying a price for it. I am taking a beating in a million different ways because it has to be this way…for now. That is because when you make certain choices in life you find out that as you close doors they lock behind you. You can’t go backwards and there is no exit other than that at the end of the tunnel- so you go through.

The Boundaries Of Blogging

I write about this a lot, these boundaries that I see. They might not be the same for you, the boundaries of blogging that is. They exist for me because some topics can’t be discussed without raising issues for others.

When those topics touch upon my children I act more conservatively than I might otherwise. There are some things that they don’t need to be involved in. There are some discussions that they never need be a part of so instead of writing as candidly as I would like to I talk around them.

It is not necessarily enjoyable to be cryptic or talk in circles but sometimes that is what dad has to do. Frankly the beating I am taking comes because I am doing my best to protect them.

There have been moments where I have wondered if my trying to do so has created more problems for them and for me, but I tend not to think so. I know some people like to share everything with their kids and I applaud that…to a point.

I want my kids to be kids for as long as they can. One day they’ll be old enough to ask me what a daddy blogger does and I’ll share some of these posts with them If it goes as I wish it will be a time when these few hiccups will have been settled and I’ll smile.

Blog Fodder

I’ll smile because I’ll remember how in the midst of some very tough times the blog started to take off. I’ll talk about how the struggle made for great blog fodder and I did my best to turn the chaos and the crazy into posts that made people laugh, smile and or cry.

And I’ll continue to pull quotes from posts like this and serve them up for you and I to read

And I will do what is required so that I can determine whether the ghosts I see are the spirits of the future or the shades of the past. And in the midst of it all I will continue to hold out my hand so that you can take it. Because I never stopped being your hero and I never gave up.

Because I am running with the moon again. It is me and that big white orb that looks down upon this big blue marble. We are in our secret world where I look up at the sky and talk. That place where I say that I am trying to figure out the difference between seeing what I want to see and receiving signs from the universe.

I Hear Music

Fifteen minutes ago I was in a dark mood and a dark place. I was frustrated because these words that I talk about were stuck inside my head. Responsibilities and technical difficulties were thwarting my desire to get here and my effort to rectify that wasn’t working.

But I kept fighting, kept pushing and I made it here. I made it here and now I hear the music.

Now I hear the song of my heart and my soul is singing and if I could only give up sleep I would write all night long. But morning shall come too soon and there are deadlines that I cannot push away or put off.

Good night my friends. I shall see you tomorrow.

How To Become a Better Writer In Three Easy Steps

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Writing
Writing (Photo credit: jjpacres)

“There are terrors in the night and I am one of them. You don’t want to know what I do, where I go or who I do it with/to. That is because your freedom and safety is based upon the work of hard men who aren’t afraid to do what needs to be done.”

That headline promises to make you a better writer in three easy steps but I am not sure that I believe it. I want to believe it because I want to become a better writer. I need to believe it because belief is a key element in making that happen, but I am not sure that it is as simple as three easy steps.

You see I wrote that headline for me and not for you. I did it because lately I feel like I have become a one trick pony. Most of my stories follow a formula and I don’t like that. I want to be better than that. Every time I read the posts and and stories over here I roll my eyes.

That is not to say that some of it isn’t good because it is. I feel like my writing is improving. I am making progress. I really liked these last three posts:

They aren’t perfect but I see progress and that makes me happy. Still I feel like I keep hitting the bag in the same place and that concerns me. I want to be good in a variety of styles, not just one. And if I can push myself up the ladder a little bit than I will reach for great.

Failure

I played two hours of ball tonight and lost every game I played in. That rarely happens. Most of the time my team wins, but not tonight. We lost 7 games. We lost 7 games because I played poorly and my teammates didn’t play as a team.

It drives me crazy. We normally win because we play smarter than the other guys. We normally win because I have figured out how to use limited talent to take over the game. Some of the guys have begun to ask me why my teams don’t lose. They don’t see the connection yet. They haven’t figured out the angles.

But I have. I see the game differently than they do. I know what I need to do to make us win.

Nothing Comes Easy

It is not entirely fair nor true to say that nothing comes easy. Writing is easy for me but that doesn’t mean that it is always good or that these posts work the way that I want to. Often they don’t, but I don’t give up. I keep pushing.

That is part of why my team usually wins. I don’t quit on the play and I try to play with guys who do the same. We aren’t winning because our talent is so much better than the other teams. We win because we gut it out and work harder.

It is what I try to do here. It is why I write so many posts and update this blog so frequently. I figure that if I write enough my words will begin to come together more easily and they’ll sing the song I want them to sing.

Music

Music is my constant companion. My inspiration, my salvation, my sunshine and my field of dreams. Here is a quick snapshot of what I have been listening to this evening.

  • Something In The Way She Moves- James Taylor
  • Born To Run- Bruce Springsteen
  • Visions of Paradise- Mick Jagger
  • I Can Love You Like That- John Michael Montgomery
  • A View To A Kill- Duran Duran
  • Theme from Harry’s Game- Clannad
  • Texas Flood- Stevie Ray Vaughn

There was more than that, there is always more than that. I can’t think of a time where music isn’t on my mind. I can’t think of a moment where it doesn’t give me an idea or move me.

Dancing

I am watching Christopher Walken dance in Weapon of Choice and thinking about how I wish that I was a better dancer or at least able to be less self conscious about it. I dance with the children all the time and I do it with reckless abandon.

There is great joy in dancing and my children radiate it. When I let go and let my body move I tell more stories but these are tales without words.

Words, Writers and Writing

Dancing makes me think of writing because when I am at my best the words flow from my fingertips onto the keyboard. I don’t think about what I am doing or second guess myself. I simply write. I just write with reckless abandon and no regard for whether they work well.

I want to dance as easily as I write and I want my wo i rds to move you to dance.

So that is why I keep pushing and pulling, tugging and yelling. That is why I post more frequently than five bloggers put together.  I do it because the only way I know how to improve is to work at it.

But don’t think that just because I have some natural talent I don’t wish that I really could become a better writer in three easy steps.

The Best Bloggers Are Storytellers Part 2

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The best bloggers are storytellers. I wrote that last summer and I still believe it to be true. It is part of why I visit bloggers over and over and over again.

Mind you, that is an incomplete list and I can guarantee that I have unintentionally offended some people by not including them in a link or list. I am sorry for that. I know that it hurts not to be included and to feel like you have been looked over.


Bradburyonwriting

I know because I have felt it, feel it and have written about it. People have egos and sometimes they are bruised. Sometimes they are humbled. I know because life has humbled me…repeatedly. I know, I am not supposed to complain. I am not supposed to be angry, upset, frustrated or anything but happy because it could be worse. And I know that some of you want to know if I still know how to write funny posts.

I Am Funnier Than You Are

The answer is yes, I still write funny posts. I am still funnier than you are and Richard Dawson is still dead. Ok, that last line was a secret message that only one person will understand.

You are not really supposed to do that in blog posts, write secret messages to other people. That confuses the readers or so I once heard. I figure most of you are smart enough to move on and not worry about who I am exchanging secret messages with.

Somewhere there is a reader who is angry now because I said I am funnier than they are and I haven’t told any jokes yet. I also know that they aren’t Canadian because everyone knows that they are too nice to get angry, or maybe I should say they are too polite to tell me they are angry.

Good people those Canadians, they never stop smiling, even when I make fun of their currency and call it Monopoly money. Nor do they get upset when I ask them what it is like to have pet Polar bears.

TheJackB

See that link up above? It is for my Facebook fan page. If you aren’t a fan you should be. One day there might be prizes. The Oatmeal says that I shouldn’t beg you to like my page.

But what does he know. Dude is named after a cereal and he has a million more fans than I do. The Bloggess has a scary monkey named Copernicus and a book. She has a freaking book. Speaking of scary and books, Scary Mommy has a book.

I don’t have a book…yet.

I am working on it.

Really, you can see some of it here.

People

Some people love my story and some hate it. I am not worried about those that dislike it. It would be great if they did, but  I can’t help them not having taste. Or maybe I can’t help their having taste, hell I can’t figure it out.

The good news is that my friend Sandi has that covered for us. When you get frustrated you need to come here. Feel better? I know I do.

You see I feel better because even though aspects of life suck right now I am on top of changing things. I am working on a story about a boy who lives under a staircase and has magical powers he calls the force.

He has no family and very few friends and is required to fight a bunch of other kids to the death. In between fighting the kids he has to destroy a magic ring, fight off vampires, werewolves and a bunch of zombies from Band camp.

Along the way he’ll be befriended by a scarecrow, lion and some exceptionally intelligent flying monkeys. I might have them all sing and dance. I just need a catchy song and dance act. Maybe they’ll do the Time Warp.

On a semi related note, I found a video of a flash mob doing The Time Warp. I don’t know about you but I am getting tired of these flash mobs. All I want to do is get in and get out of the mall with no fan fare and I would if it wasn’t for these fercockteh flash mob dancers.

Yeah, I am the rude guy who told the fat, uncoordinated man that Lady Gaga and him don’t mix well. Or maybe I was the guy who told those dumb kids that I hate The Sound of Music. I am going to remake the movie and in my version the Germans win.

Storytelling

Stop taking this blogging thing so seriously and just write. Tell us a story with a beginning, middle and an end. Tell us about your dreams and how you are going to make them come true. Here is an example:

I am Jack and I want to become a full time novelist. If things go the way I want I am going to become quite wealthy. I’ll own a private jet, have a yacht and build a secluded island paradise or maybe not.

What about you? What are your dreams?

This is part of Just Write .