Spammers hit The Brazen Blogger That Made Cleveland Cry and Spit Or Swallow Still Means You Have Time To Blog.

Can’t say it is because they thought older posts were less likely to be monitored or if it is because of some automated software.

Nor can I confirm or deny that I am slowly unraveling because I see it as something that is happening at light speed but has taken decades.

Yeah, it is a contradiction, probably one of the great contradictions of my life.

But that is ok because life is a giant contradiction and I am living it hard.

I Might Be That Guy

I am somewhere between supreme confidence that I am going to exceed expectations and life is about to explode in a way that might not be real comfortable but I can’t tell you where.

What will be is going to be and much of it doesn’t matter because no matter what I do or how I do it the control over the situation is nonexistent.

All I can do is control how I respond and or react.

I still get comments and letters from people who dislike my words and my writing.

That is ok because I am not here to make everyone happy or ask to be loved by all. It is one of the most important lessons I can teach my children.

Be who you are.

I understand why they sometimes don’t like hearing it because it is hard.

Be who you are means taking a a risk and giving people a chance to reject you.

Happens to me all the damn time.

I hear a million reasons why I am not who I could or should be and how that might hurt me in a million different ways.

Thing is I hate not being me more.

That hurts far more than capitulating.

I haven’t always been this willing to just let go and let it all hangout but I haven’t been afraid to be different either.

It has been sort of a seesaw where I swung one way or another. It is not always easy to feel like you’re the oddball or screw up.

Sometimes it is easier to try and go along to get along.

That is something I have shared with my teens more than once because they see me as a guy who is unafraid to make a spectacle of himself and is willing to say/do anything.

I have made sure they understand even though I am unfiltered there are still those moments and that as crazy as I can be I know when to reel it in.

Donald Trump Hates My Blog More Than He Hates You’

I don’t know if that is true because I am not sure if Trump has read my blog.

Can’t tell you if he has stayed up at night wishing Jack Steiner would leave him alone or wondering why I choose to pick on him.

I hope he doesn’t because I haven’t begun to tear apart his stupid policy, ridiculous commentary and unhinged rhetoric.

What I have done is say he has proven that it is ok to make shit up and pretend the false facts you promote are true even when it might make you look bad.

Hell, I can’t figure out if he is that dumb, that ignorant and or that ill informed and confused.

All I know is he is some combination of those things and if he tweeted about this blog I would be besieged by wingnuts, nutjobs, conmen, thugs, ugs, bugs and nazis.

But I might find some interesting folks and cool people too. That might even include people I disagree with politically but who are still able to present a well reasoned argument for why they disagree.

Maybe.

It is a strange feeling to be listening to Where The Streets Have No Name and yet hear Gordon Lightfoot singing about a ghost you can see.

The first is a high school anthem, from an album that came out my senior year and pumped me up because every time I listened I heard possibility.

Thirty years later I still do.

Yet my old pal Mr. Lightfoot’s lyric comes from a song much older, but still part of my childhood, don’t know if that makes me old or older.

What I do know is I had a conversation with a teenager who calls me dad and his younger sister who is almost a teen.

A conversation that made me ache because I felt time slipping away and yet I smiled because for the most part, things are going as they should.

She Giggled

She giggled about a boy and I didn’t have to see her face to know what expression was on it.

“Daddy, he is too old for me but my friends keep trying to get us to go out.”

I know that giggle and once or twice I have been the reason girls and or women have giggled like that.

It is the giggle that tells me the day is coming when a boy will supplant me as the male she runs to first. Got a long while before it happens with the kind of finality that a husband will bring, but I heard the echoes of the future.

I heard her down the road tell me to be nice and felt her glare because she knows her dad can be a rascal and might mess with the boy that comes to see his little girl.

Got a while before that happens too and I am not going to rush things along, but it felt strange to realize how close that time might be.

Ten years ago she was so very little and ten years from now she’ll be on her own.

It goes that fast.

Where Are You?

The emails and notes come in occasionally asking where I am and what I am doing.

“Jack, you used to update this place two or three times a day and when you didn’t do that, well you still posted daily.”

“Jack, I miss your writing. Post some silly story.”

I smile at the notes and think about how I was always the active outsider of the parent blogging community.

Hit the ground in 2004 and never stopped, always said I would go to a blog conference or two but never did.

Have worked as a brand ambassador and written sponsored posts and played many of the reindeer games but never worked my way into the inside like others.

Sometimes I was accused of being jealous because I would criticize some of the Babble or Good Men Project writers of this and that.

Would point fingers at the popularity contests and talk about how the same people won because their friends were judges and not because they had talent.

Some did and some do, but not all.

*****

The blogosphere is still a noisy place and there are still some awful writers punching out crap that is dressed up in gold and sprayed in perfume.

It still stinks.

I am obviously still around and still publishing, probably more than some people realize.

The words are slapped on a page daily and some of them are still pretty good while others aren’t quite where I want them to be.

But you don’t get better by thinking about it, you improve by focusing on your craft and practicing.

Apparently I took this seriously because I have been sleeping with fear for a long while.

Some days are harder than others but most of the time I do what I have to do not because I fear the consequences of inaction but because I fear letting fear win.

Most days I get up and work and wonder where the day will take me, adventure is always at hand.

It is a strange place to be, to realize my kids really need me and yet not like they used to.

They dress and feed themselves, go about their business with minor interference from their folks and live their lives.

Not quite in a place where they can claim the sort of independence they say they want. Not quite ready to run things without some help, but it gets closer each minute.

I hear the tick-tock of the clock and pray I have made smart choices and that the sacrifices have been the right ones.

Can’t say yes or no without walking the path and crossing the doorways, but sometimes I wish we could.

It is an exciting time, but I feel like a stranger in a strange land and I know I haven’t really hit the time or place when that is as true as it will be.