Sunday, September 25, 2011

The negative aspects of Negativity

Bookends did a blog Friday about negativity; got me thinking.

I once worked with a guy who was the most negative human being I have ever met, besides my heartbroken self years ago, when I had to buy food with rolls of pennies, anyway, every time this guy spouted even the slightest negative remark it was as if he had sprayed all of us with a contagion.

It was easy to understand why he was so down on everything…I mean the guy was miserable, overweight, unhealthy, not particularly attractive, and he was rotting from loneliness. BUT this man’s childhood was one of great opportunity. His family owned a huge sailboat and he and his siblings spent their entire childhoods traveling around the world on that boat. He had stories to tell about Africa, the Panama Canal and almost every continent and shoreline there is.From that childhood he emerged, not as a well-traveled and world educated young man, but as a miserable whiner who sought to take all who were around him into the depths of his own despair.

After a particularly difficult day at work, which he colored as unbearable, I explained to him that…

WE LIVE THE LIVES WE WANT TO LIVE.

If we are miserable it is because we want to be miserable. Lonely, we are choosing it. Happy, friendly, positive people are happy, friendly and positive because that’s how they want to live their lives. He said if he was choosing the life he was leading, than he must have been crazy…duh…but actually, not crazy just stuck.

After a couple of years he left. Is he happy now, no not really, am I and my co-workers, yes, most of the time? What I learned by observing negativity is to not get caught up in its whirlpool of dragging observers under.

I am living the life I want to live, it’s not bad. Could it be better, sure, could it be worse, hell yes.

Well, with a smile on my face I will go back to rolling coins again, quarters this time. I need to put gas in my twelve year old minivan. I got wheels, I got gas money. Life is pretty damn good.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Memoir

Am in the midst of a class on memoir writing.

Revisiting GIFTS IN WHITE PAPER, my memoir about the one hundred and twenty-five love letters I found that my parents wrote to each other while separated by WWII.

My pitch: I met my parents for the first time after they died. I'm dipping my heart back in. What a wonderful story theirs is to tell.

I'm about half way there, not ready to exhale yet, and I'm getting help from two of the best writers and editors that exist. Feels good to back to first person.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Ahoy

OMG
Go to youtube, Boatlift.
A side of 9/11 I heard about but didn't know about. It's only 12 minutes long. It should be a movie.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Laptopin' again

Feels good to be laptopin’.

Okay so the storm is gone, the lights are back on in Connecticut and I can flush without hauling water. Life is pretty much back to normal which means things aren’t normal at all. I’m being screwed at work, so what else is new.
I shouted at a gaggle of electric linemen in some big-ass green trucks from Quebec yesterday.

“Thank you,” I shouted. “Canada rocks,” I said. They waved and cheered; made me feel good.

“Oh Can-a-da…” I love their anthem, it’s so cool but I like ours better, bombs bursting, flags still flying. Believe me…dawns early light…it comes damn early when you have no eee…leck…ticity, especially after going to bed with half-dead D-cells and a book with a #10 cordia font or whatever the hell it was; Christ it was small in the dark.

Anyway, I finished the book, The Help. Stockett’s story as a first time fiction writer getting rejected 60 times is beyond inspirational, that chick is crazy focused.

I’m shopping for an agent for my first novel and already a quarter-way through my next book. Does that mean I consider number one totally complete….naw…they never are, even when they are.

Oh, The Help, read it, with the lights on at a reasonable hour. Now that I’m thinking about this I realize I should have read some King or Koontz in the dark. Scary shit that. I’ll wait until the next hurricane. Gotta’ find me some new D-cells first.