Where I've Been

The other night Katie and I were talking -- as we often do -- and the conversation turned to where we "are going" in life.

It got me thinking, first, about where I am, much less going. I push carts for a big retailer with a wage barely above minimum wage. I do the same thing day in and day out. Why am I here? How did I get to place that seems to be going nowhere? What have I been doing? The answers came to me more quickly than I expected. And, I think, converge: I wanted to marry Katie.

She had a shot at what I thought would be a fantastic opportunity for her a thousand miles away and I let her know I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity for her even if it was a thousand miles away. She got the job and I followed her down because, well, I was going to marry her. (And she had no clue about the latter.)

My job did not follow me, nor did new ones appear quickly. My bills, however, did follow and did appear quickly. The only interview I had was pretty sketchy and I am glad that I didn't end up with the job. Pushing carts was the only job that came my way.

That pretty much answers the why and how. Next I started thinking , "So I am where I am so I could marry Katie... so I could prepare for the rest of our lives together." Wait, so I've spent the last year and a half getting ready for the rest of my life? That is true, but only to the extent that every day we are getting ready for the rest of our lives. "Is that it?" I wondered.

No. It is not. I am pushing carts but I enjoy my life (I am married! To a wonderful lady!). Moreover, I have enjoyed it, even when it was getting ready to get married, even before Katie knew this was my plan. I've enjoyed road-tripping, I've enjoyed spending a lot of time with my parents in Minnesota before I came down here, and more time when they were able to visit, I enjoyed seeing Katie regularly, I enjoyed going to church, I enjoyed meeting and getting to know new people (if only a couple of them well), I have enjoyed working on my car (at least part of the time), I've enjoyed learning new things at work, I have enjoyed learning how hard I can work, I've enjoyed having a regular routine that lasts longer than a semester.

And this isn't a complete list! My low level low wage life has been good! Most of the days haven't been exciting, but the events have been. (If my life was a movie I think it would be pretty good, more on that later.)

In other words, I have enjoyed living now, not just getting ready to live later, even though it has "just" been pushing carts "getting ready" for The Next Big Thing. If The Next Big Thing never comes (although I think it will) I'll be ok, in fact, I am sure I will continue to enjoy life as much as I have.

The Second Step

I have successfully completed the second step of becoming a great writer: not writing.

I know, it sounds odd to say that, especially as I just wrote a post about the one defining thing about writers is that they write. Well, they also spend a lot of time not writing, and I seem to be better at that part.

I have a common theme running through my blog posts, going back five years (although many of them are lost), that theme now continues, "I had some great things written in my head, but they didn't hit the page."

I didn't work I think that I would have a lot more time to write. In fact, I would probably have 25-40 more hours a week to write. Of course, all the things that pop into my head while pushing carts wouldn't and I would probably end up doing the same thing that I do when I get home anyway, splitting my time between reading up on the day's news and playing mafia wars.

This is a really boring post, I know that, I am just going to say that straight up. But in the past week I've spent enough time on the second step of writing that I need to spend at least some time on the first part.

Like God

me: heh

Are you on FB chat?

Jeff: Yep.

I'm everywhere.

me: Just like God...

Jeff: well… not exactly

Writing for Its Own Sake

Writer: One who writes.

It is a fairly straightforward definition but one I find more often than not difficult to fulfill. People tell me I am a good writer and I enjoy it, yet I rarely write more than pithy emails these days. So I decided that I ought to start writing again, for its own sake.

The best writers are the ones that write daily, even if most of the pages end up being recycled, to only be written upon and recycled again. I guess it is just the very practice of writing something.

I did a lot of my best writing when I was in China. I mostly blogged about stuff that interested me. Sometimes the topics, I knew, were ones nobody else cared about. Other times I tried to write towards a goal of other people being interested. Obviously writing about something you nobody cares about doesn't go anywhere. Surprisingly, writing about something that you know does interest them (but doesn't interest you) doesn't turn out well most of the time.

If I have more than one or two readers going forward I am going to be surprised. But I'm not writing for them. I am writing for me. I am writing for the sake of writing.