David Bowie, Glenn Frey, and Me

The past month has been a rough one for us music fans, with the deaths of some major musical figures.  R & B singer Natalie Cole, hard rocker Lemmy Kilmeister, singer David Bowie and, most recently, Glenn Frey, founder of the legendary rock group the Eagles are the biggest names among those who have recently passed away, but there have also been a number of deaths among lesser known members of popular bands, studio musicians, producers and other industry notables.  Music has been an integral part of my life since I was very young, so when artists who have been on my radar screen for a long time suddenly pass away, it is la kind of loss, like that of an old friend or acquaintance, depending on who it is. 

I can’t honestly account for myself as a true fan of either Natalie Cole or Lemmy Kilmeister’s band Motorhead.  While I respect their work, Cole’s soulful crooning and Kilmeister’s aggressive, grinding hard rock fell just beyond the furthest ends of my musical taste spectrum.  Nevertheless, when I heard of their deaths, it felt like someone had snipped away pieces from a beautiful but increasingly tattered tapestry, one that has always been a part of my life and that I too often take for granted.  I didn’t listen to Natalie Cole or Motorhead very often, but I liked the idea that they were out there making music that people enjoyed and was sadden to hear that they were now silenced.  With the deaths of David Bowie and Glenn Frey however, it wasn’t just pieces of the tapestry snipped away.  Some new large holes were added, alongside those created for me by the deaths of Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Freddy Mercury, Kurt Cobain, George Harrison, and Michael Jackson, among others.  They had put forth great music that had been a tangible part of my life, and they were still active in their careers when they died.  They weren’t done yet.  There was still more to come from them that we will now never get to hear.  I felt real loss.

There was a lot of coverage of the deaths of both David Bowie and Glenn Frey in the media, and an outpouring of reactions in social media.  The men were alike in some ways and very different in others.  Both of them came onto the music scene in the early 70s, both did some acting work in addition to music, and both gradually faded from regular public attention by the coming of the 21^st century.  And at the end of their careers, both men were still actively making music.  Yet Bowie was mostly considered an eclectic musical artist who had experienced occasional mainstream acceptance. His focus had always been on the art of music.  Frey, on the other hand, was very much a straightforward rock musician and businessman, who only stepped out of the mainstream to explore new ground on rare occasions.  The artistic side of music was not unimportant to Frey, but he was always very candid in admitting that it had to pay the bills too.  Regardless of the driving forces behind each of them, the end products that each gave us, their music, was truly great.  It was fascinating and touching following the reactions to both of their deaths, and it taught me some things about the part music plays in our lives.

Before the release of 1983’s Let’s Dance album, I wasn’t very familiar with David Bowie’s work at all.  I’d seen some of his albums at the store, but out of context they didn’t make much of an impact on me.  MTV hadn’t come to rural Maine yet at that point, and the only radio stations that played pop and/or rock in my conservative corner of the world kept their playlists firmly grounded in the most widely-acceptable hits.  Other than the rare “Young Americans” or “Heroes”, David Bowie wasn’t on the radio much in northern Maine in the early 80s.  That was about to change in 1983.  Let’s Dance was Bowie’s headlong dive into the new wave pop that was dominating the international airwaves at that time, and the album was a gigantic commercial success, due in large part to new fans like me who now had access to Bowie on mainstream radio.  

I remember hearing the title track to Let’s Dance for the first time late on a hot July night in 1983.  It was the night before my family was to go away on our annual two-week summer vacation to the Maine coast, and I was as excited as I would have been the night before Christmas.  Add to that the fact that it was a swelteringly hot night and it was a recipe for insomnia.  Sometime after midnight, I gave up tossing and turning, and sat on my bedroom windowsill in hopes of getting some cool air. I plugged my earpiece into my little FM radio (so as not to disturb my blissfully sleeping brother with whom I shared a room) and tuned in the local rock station.  The soundtrack of a small town Friday night’s squealing tires and chirping crickets played in one ear and the tinny sounds of rock and roll from a transistor radio in the other while I stared out at the moon over the houses of my neighborhood.  Before long, the DJ came on and introduced a new song by British singer David Bowie.  British acts were flooding the American music scene in 1983, and I was getting into a lot of it, so my interest was piqued.  The song was “Let’s Dance”, and it really hooked me on the first play.  Bowie’s vocals were mesmerizing, and the heavy drums and bluesy guitar solo captured my heart.  “Let’s Dance” became one of my favorite songs of that summer, and I ended up buying the album not long after that. Over time, I came to appreciate the full scope of David Bowie’s career, but to this day, Let’s Dance is my favorite Bowie album, though it is also the one at which many of the biggest Bowie fans turn their noses up.  Among many Bowie ‘purists’, Let’s Dance was just tolerable at best, and a sell-out at the very worst.  To me, it was, and is, terrific.  I was into his next two mid-80s albums too, Tonight and Never Let Me Down before Bowie’s new releases stopped gaining my attention.

Glenn Frey and the Eagles go back even further with me, literally to my earliest music memories.  My parents always had the radio on around my house when I was young, so I was exposed to a lot of music, albeit mostly just the biggest hits that made it onto the local radio scene.  The Eagles were very popular on the stations they listened to, likely because the band had a country-edge to them that gave them some crossover appeal, especially in my part of the state where country music was king.  I knew all the words to “Hotel California” before I was ten years old, and songs like “Take It Easy”, “One of These Nights” and “Already Gone” feel like they are encoded in my DNA.  The Eagles have always been there in the background of my life for as long as I could remember.  Not only was the band popular in my home, but my closest peers liked them too.  One of my favorite teenage memories is of riding around town with my buddies in my friend Jared’s battered red Volkswagen Beetle, all the windows down and the Eagles’ “Already Gone” blasting from the stereo.  Over time, I literally wore out my vinyl copies of both Eagles greatest hits albums, as well as my cassettes of Hotel California and Eagles Live.  I’ve never done that with any other records or cassettes, and I have owned a lot of them. 

I was an avid follower of the solo careers of the Eagles members through the 80s after the band broke up, especially Glenn Frey and Don Henley, and have carried my love of all things Eagles well into adulthood.  Needless to say, I was overjoyed when “Hell froze over” (as the band members had said it would have to) and the band reunited in the mid-1990s, and one of my regrets is that I never got to see them perform live.  My tastes have shifted over time, and my favorite Eagles songs don’t tend to be the biggest hits anymore.  I am more intrigued by the relatively-obscure album cuts that didn’t often get my attention in the past.  My current favorites are “After The Thrill Is Gone”, a Frey/Henley duet from the One Of These Nights album and “Waiting in the Weeds” from 2007’s Long Road Out Of Eden.  All those great songs, including those amazing and unmistakable Eagles harmonies that have been running through my head since I was a preschooler, would not have come to be without Glenn Frey.

My favorite part of the David Bowie catalogue, the Let’s Dance/Tonight/Never Let Me Down period of the mid-80s is one about which few others I’ve interacted with on the subject wax nostalgic. I got a lot of “Oh yeah, but what about the Ziggy Stardust era?”  I don’t dislike his earlier or later work, it’s just that the mid-80s were an especially memorable time in my life: first girlfriend, first real job, getting my driver’s license.  Music, then as now, was a major part of my life, and I am particularly fond of the songs that formed my own soundtrack to those times, which in turn gives a huge boost in my heart to that particular stretch of David Bowie’s career.  I first go to know David Bowie in the mid-80s.  That’s the David Bowie that means the most to me.

The Eagles, on the other hand, seem to be a band that people either love or hate.  They gotten massive amounts of airplay over the years, and their songs may have worn thin with some people.  They also developed a reputation for being arrogant, for being somewhat derivative at times, and for being too focused on profit, all of which has worked against them with some listeners.  Jeff Bridges’ character “The Dude” famously gave voice to this in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski when he is stuck in a taxi while “Peaceful, Easy Feeling” is playing on the radio.  “I hate the f—in' Eagles man,” he said to the cab driver, just before he was thrown out of the car.  Personally, I would have thrown him out of the car too.  I love the Eagles.  Their music has always been there, either in the background or foreground of my life, ever since I can remember.  The fact that people important to me like my parents and my high school buddies were also Eagles fans cemented their place for me.  Of course they weren’t a perfect band, but for me they are almost like family, and how many of us have a full set of perfect relatives?  The positive associations I have made with their music for over forty years far outweighs the negatives.  When Glenn Frey’s voice comes out of my speakers singing “Heartache Tonight”, I’m back to being 11 years old, waiting for that song to come on the radio so I can catch it on my tape recorder. You can’t put a price on something like that.

The passings of David Bowie and Glenn Frey have underscored for me the idea that, like most art forms, there really isn’t much about music that is absolutely “right” or “wrong”.  You might say that there are no bad songs, just missed connections.  I’ve come to believe that a lot has to do with the associations we have with music and the people who perform it.  If there is a connection between some music and something positive for you, then there is a greater likelihood you are going to have positive feelings about that music, regardless if it is something widely considered “a classic”.  If the first dance you had with the love of your life was to “Purple People Eater”, then I think there’s a good chance that even that song could one of your favorites.  And as far as today’s music being “crap”, as many in my generation and older like to say, well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t.  Around the time I turned 30, most new music just wasn’t reaching my heart anymore.  But if kids today are making their own lifelong memories to a soundtrack of today’s popular songs the way I did to the music of David Bowie and the Eagles, among many others, then who am I to say their music isn’t just as good?

Goals

I always look to the New Year as a time to set new goals for myself.  I try not to view them in the tunnel vision many use to view “resolutions”, where they are black and white things that are tossed aside once they are broken.  You know what I mean: resolve to stop drinking soda, break down and have a Mountain Dew on January 3^rd, and tell yourself “oh well, maybe next year”.  It’s too easy to weasel your way out of them if you take that attitude.  I try not to even call them resolutions.

How one phrases goals is key to success or failure, I’ve found.  For example, I’d like to lose some weight this year, but “lose weight” is a pretty broad (pardon the pun) goal that can be tricky to approach with any kind of effectiveness. Where do you even begin?  So instead, this year I want to exercise more than I did in 2014 and eat less sugar than in that year, which are more specific and for me at least, more achievable.  They aren’t specific enough to set me up for disappointment, however.  Cutting sugar out of my diet entirely would do that, as would a goal such as going for a run five days a week.  Less sugar and more exercise can be as little or as much as my circumstances allow at any given time.  As long as I am ahead of where I was with those things last year, I am meeting with success. Hopefully, by exercising more and eating less sugar, the weight loss will come as a side benefit.

I do have one specific item related to that more exercise goal however.  Last July, I ran my first 5K and came in at just over 42 minutes.  Not bad for someone who really didn’t take training and preparation all that seriously, I think.  This year, I want to come in under 40 minutes in that event.  Whether it’s by a lot or a little, time will tell.

Another goal I have for 2015 is to get back into playing my guitar on a regular basis.  Not join a heavy metal band or play Carnegie Hall, just get pick it up and play more often.  I’ve played the guitar off and on since I was a teenager, with some lengthy gaps in between.  The last time, in the mid 00’s, I made some major strides in my skills and almost reached the point where I was confident enough to play in front of other people.  Then I started a new job in a new field, went back to school and started doing a lot more writing, and so back into the carrying case the guitar went.  

But now the guitar is back out, dusted off and fitted with a brand new set of strings.  I’ve discovered that GarageBand, one of the programs that came loaded on my MacBook Pro has all kinds of toys and tricks to help me hone my guitar skills and extend my interests, and since my guitar is electric, I can plug directly into it.  Playing scales and learning chords is a lot more fun when you can give your guitar the same sound as those of Eddie Van Halen or Randy Rhodes.

I can almost guarantee that you’ll be reading more posts about my latest journey with the guitar in the weeks and months to come.

This blog is part of another goal I have for 2015: write more than in 2014.  I let my writing slip to some extent last year, and posts on this blog are a public and quantifiable way for see that I am indeed writing more.  That’s not to say that all my writing has been and will be on this blog.  I am knee-deep in revision and editing the first draft of a novel I wrote in partnership with another writer.  That project is where a lot of my writing time went in 2014 and where quite a bit will no doubt go this year.  I hadn’t been producing much by way of new content though, and that’s where I really want to step things up.

Now to come up with fresh and engaging post topics, which has been my biggest stumbling block in my writing in general lately, and this blog in particular.  Your suggestions are very welcome, of course.  I’d also welcome your input on my other goals, especially improving my time on the 5K and jacking up my guitar skills, even if it’s just sending me a tweet or an e-mail asking how it’s going.

Twitter: @countofbluecars

E-mail: chriscolter@icloud.com

Little Chris and the Naive Politics of Black and White

Growing up in a small town in the 1970s, there were plenty of other kids with whom I could play.  It was a less worried time, when many parents would allow their kids to freely roam their neighborhoods and beyond.  For the most part, they did it without fear of anything more than the old lady down the street calling to report to them that their child was climbing on the roof of the toolshed.

When I was about five years old, I was the youngest member of a group of about a half dozen friends who lived in the houses around mine.  The acknowledged leader of this gang of kids was also named Chris like me, so he was called “Big Chris” and I was saddled with the moniker “Little Chris”, a nickname which I loathed and despised with a white hot passion.  Nonetheless, that’s how it was.

"Little Chris", from around the time about which I am writing.  And yes, turtleneck sweaters were considered "in" at the time.

As the youngest of the group, I was the least worldly, relatively speaking, and because of that naivety and my strong desire to be accepted by the others, I was prone to being put up to things.  It was never anything terribly serious, but I was a sucker nonetheless.  If they needed someone to swipe some apples from a neighbor’s tree, I was their man.  When they wanted to see if the wooden ramp they built for bicycle jumps was too high, I was their go-to guy.  And if they wanted to get some candy from Mrs. Johnson, who always had a bowl on her kitchen counter as treats for us kids, I was the emissary who was sent to ask for it, because I was not only the smallest and presumably cutest, but also they knew I would not refuse to go.

Yes, “Little Chris” was gullible, but as I got a bit older and gained some more life experience, that gullibility decreased rapidly.  Before too long, I was on to them, and not long after that, I could put others up to doing things if I chose.  As a little more light was shed on matters through time and experience, I saw things I hadn't previously, and it worked to my advantage.

I’ve been thinking about my days as gullible “Little Chris” lately as I have read and watched the news, both national and state.  It seems like many politicians, pundits, and media outlets these days are implementing a “Little Chris” treatment on you and me, and sadly, are meeting with some degree of success.

My intent in this post is not to single out a particular person or entity, so I’ll be dealing in generalities here.

We live in an age with an overwhelming amount of information at our fingertips.  There is such a high volume of data out there, much of it conflicting, that many suffer from fatigue in dealing with it.  It’s much easier just to have someone distill it for us.  And there is no shortage of talking heads who are willing to cherry-pick information and give it to us in a way that they want us to understand it.  It is made all the more persuasive when this cherry-picked information is given to us wrapped in emotion, drama, academic language, and/or pre-conceived ideas.  The overused term propaganda would apply here, though even it has become highly charged by some of the very people who use it, with direct connections often made to the wartime PR tactics of enemy nations.

This cherry-picking approach to politics and media bias would not be so pervasive if it didn’t actually work.  But it does.  Too many of us are easily persuaded.  Too many of us buy into what is being sold to us without asking ourselves if there is more to it.  The sins of omission seem far more frequent than those of commission in politics and media.

Let me give an example that I am just pulling out of the air.  Suppose a local media outlet reports on a horrific home invasion, where an elderly woman is beaten and robbed for drugs and money in her home.  It’s a terrible thing, and a legitimate news story, for sure.  Then, two nights later, the same media outlet starts airing a series of special reports on how you can protect yourself your loved one and your property from home invasions, complete with ominous music and scary clips from the most recent incident and others that have taken place in other parts of the country.  Interviews are aired with people who have experienced such a terrible thing.  Many viewers may become fearful.  It must be a problem, or else why would the news be devoting so much time and attention to it?  (Answer: Ratings.) Not only are viewers locking their doors and keeping their drugs secure, which would be sensible reactions, but some have also become frightened when they see an unfamiliar face in their neighborhood, and may even now refuse to go for a walk down their own street by themselves for fear of crime.  Some may go so far as to install an electronic security system in their homes.  Their fear has taken away some of their freedom, not to mention money.  And here’s the kicker: lost in the midst of it all is the fact that home invasions in that particular area are extremely rare, and the odds are greater that one would have a truck crash through their bedroom than that they would actually experience a home invasion.

I’m picking on the media taking something out of proper context in the aforementioned example, but politicians and pundits often do the very same thing.  It isn’t unusual for them to create a perceived boogeyman cloaked in emotional hot-buttons as they make their case for a particular candidacy or policy decision.  Their candidate or point of view is going to be the one to put a stop to this boogeyman (or “straw man” as it is called in debating terms), and therefore is the one with which all of us in the general public should be on board.  Welfare queens, big corporations, illegal aliens, religious fundamentalists, leftist whackos, right-wing nutjobs, the list of boogeymen goes on and on.  Some of these entities portrayed as boogeymen are actual problems, and some are not, depending on your own point of view.  If you don’t have your own point of view, politicians and pundits are more than willing to give you theirs.

So what’s my point?  It’s a very simple one: Despite what we are often led to believe, very, very  few issues in our society are black and white.  If something seems too clear, too cut-and-dried, then there is likely something we are missing.  Yes, there are people who abuse the welfare system horribly, for example.  But there are also many more on welfare who do not and use it as it was intended.  Yes, there are some large corporations that exploit their workers and plunder natural resources, as another example, but there are many more of them that do not, never have, and never will.  

In other words, don't be naive.  Do your homework.  Be skeptical without being cynical, especially when you find yourself automatically agreeing or disagreeing with something newly presented to you. 

Look at all sides before settling on a conclusion.  Don’t be satisfied with letting politicians, pundits, and the media feed you only the information they want you to have.  Seek out more for yourself. Consider the source of your information.  A press release from a lobbying group or political party headquarters may be “newsy”, but it is not necessarily news.  A pundit is not a reporter.  A letter to the editor is not a news article.  Opinions should be based on facts, but they are not facts themselves.  And don’t fall prey to hot-button terminology, especially in headlines.  Words like “terror”, “sex”, and “war”, among others, are often squeezed in there to capture your attention, even if they are not the best choices.

You owe it to yourself to be a cautious, media-literate consumer of information. Otherwise, you’ll likely end up like “Little Chris”, paying unintended consequences for being unquestioning and naive.

Slogging: A Post for Writerly Types

I consider myself an actual writer, for whatever that is worth.  It’s not my career, and I am not published at this point, but nonetheless I identify with those who have put pen to paper, or fingers to keys, throughout the ages.  Writing is something that I have loved to do ever since I was very young, and also something upon which I have gotten a great deal of feedback, mostly positive, since those early days.  Various and disparate sources have told me that I have a knack for writing, which has been both a blessing and a curse.  It’s been a blessing in that such input has spurred me on to keep up with my writing over the years and to cultivate it.  At the same time, as the great philosopher Spiderman once said, “with great power comes great responsibility”.  My writing ability is hardly what I would consider a “great power”, but it is something I possess which not everyone does and, I feel, should be used for some greater good.  So when I don’t write much, or at all, it seems like squandering, and I’ve been doing a lot of squandering lately.

Although I’ve been aware of it for a while (witness my post: Writing About Having Nothing To Write About, from last April), my lack of writing production really jumped out at me recently when I was examining the layout of this blog, “Wicked Awesomology”.  I noticed that I had tallied 47 blog posts in the year 2012, and yet only 27 for 2013.  Now I think we all realize that more is not necessarily better and I would be better off posting nothing than tossing something on here that is not very good.  Still, being down 20 posts on the year is more of a drop-off than I would like to see, especially considering that my readership numbers, in terms of visitors to the blog, have steadily risen.  In addition to the blog, I have two writing works in progress, one of which is a collaborative effort that is moving at a slow crawl at best, and the other is a novel that is still in the outlining phase, where it has been for a couple of months now.  A third work in progress, a Maine-based murder-mystery, is no longer in progress by any definition of the word, since I have completely lost my way on it.  It isn’t abandoned per say, but it is resting.

The writing slowdown has also become evident in the nature of my Twitter account, which I originally started several years ago to connect with other writers and foster my own writing.  When I first began on Twitter (@countofbluecars, by the way), the vast majority of followers and people I followed were writers, and the dominant theme of my tweets was writing.  My account has evolved over time to be broader based, and I have attracted, and been attracted to, Twitter accounts from other aspects of life, like politics, sports, humor, animal issues, the media, fellow Mainers, and so on.  I’d say only about a third of my followers are writing-related people, and the percentage of those I follow who are writers or connected to the field is less than that.  My actual tweets on writing have become rare.  I enjoy my Twitter account as it is now, so it is not a bad thing, however the demographics of it seem to indicate that the place writing occupies in my life has shrunk.

So why am I not writing more?  Hard to say, really.  Yes, I have been busy with other things in my life, but no more so than in the past when my writing production was much higher.  It’s possible that I’ve been more choosey about my topics.  A lot of the things that pop into my head as possible topics for blog posts, short stories or novels seem like they have already been done by me, overdone by someone else, or just not feasible.  For instance, I am writing this on New Year’s Day. Why not write about my New Year’s resolutions, you might ask? Already did that a couple of years ago and it did not go well at all.  (Let’s just say putting them out for public display made not keeping them even harder.)  A predictions post?  It seems like every other blog out there has one of those up on it.  Why not post some personal “Best of 2013” offerings?  Also heavily represented in the blogosphere, and plus, who cares?

It’s that “who cares” attitude that could be at least partly holding me back.  There is a popular stereotype that bloggers are self-indulgent people who post merely as a means of inflating their sense of personal worth.  It’s about the writer, not the audience, and that’s not how I roll.  I’ve tried very hard to keep my readers at the forefront.  Before I start any post, I always ask myself:  Is the topic something that those reading will actually be interested in?  If the answer is no, then I either try to change it so that it is, or else I dump it.  And then, if I do choose to stick with it, I ask myself, does it fit “the brand” I have built?  Is it the kind of post that people have to come expect from reading Wicked Awesomology in the past?  Anecdotal light humor is the general theme.  Will writing something outside that realm be well-received on this particular blog?  Would it be better suited for another venue?

A case in point:  Recently, a young relative of mine was murdered in a domestic violence situation.  It struck me very deeply, and made me want to put something out there in writing to somehow deal with it and to raise awareness.  But what, and where, and how?  That’s a pretty heavy topic for Wicked Awesomology, and would probably be longer than a standard blog post.  Would my typical readers accept such a thing, or should I look elsewhere to get it out there?  And then, could I write it in such a way that is inspiring, not maudlin and pitying?

And so on and so forth.  I could make a longer list of writing excuses, but fail to see the benefit of that.

I tend to be a solution-oriented kind of guy, so all this leads me to wonder what I’m going to actually do about this lack of writing production, aside from whine about it.  A few things come to mind, actually.  One is to broaden the scope of the Wicked Awesomology blog in 2014, so that I will have the freedom to write about a wider range of topics and ideas.  The core of the blog will remain the same, but the tone will likely vary more as I take more risks with what I write.  It would probably be wise to cut myself some slack on the volume of writing I produce also.  As I mentioned earlier, more is not better, especially if the content produced is substandard.  Not all actual writing involves putting words down.  Research and planning are no small parts of the actual process, so setting a goal related to actual volume produced daily or weekly does not seem like a good idea.  I am however setting a production goal for at least one of my works-in-progress.  Since the collaborative project is, well, collaborative, I’ll get with my writing partner soon enough to set a goal on that, but as far as my adventure novel goes, I’d like to have the rough draft written and be in the midst of the revision stages by the first day of 2015.

Another thing that I want to do more of as a writer in 2014 is connect in a concrete way with my readers and with fellow writers, in hopes that the increased feedback will drive me further.  I have a couple of ideas on how I might go about doing this both in person and online, one of these ideas involves you.  I want to open up my e-mail to you for topic suggestions, critiques on posts, and general conversation about writing and/or the topics in my posts.  One thing I have heard from other bloggers is that only a fraction of your readers will respond in the “comments” section below a posting, due to its very public nature. Someone said it’s akin to those who make comments or ask questions at a public meeting.  Only those comfortable in front of a group tend to speak up.  I want to encourage you to share your thoughts on writing, mine or yours, with me via e-mail.  My address for the purposes of writing is chriscolter@icloud.com.  

I hope to hear from many of you soon. Now let’s get writing!  Or at least thinking about it.

Heading Back to Campus? Don't Screw It Up!

“Youth is wasted on the young,” George Bernard Shaw is quoted as saying, and never is that more clear to me than at this time of year when young people are headed back to college.  People told me that whole “best years of your life” thing all the time when I was starting college back in the late 1980s, but I just couldn't see it at the time.  To me, I was spending a lot of money I didn't have, to do a megaton of studying in a field that I wasn't even sure of at first.  I was torn between education, political science and journalism when I first started at the University of Maine in Orono in the fall of 1988, and while I was registered as an education major, the other two constantly sang their siren songs. 

College Life

Source

On top of it all, I was 18 idealistic years old, and wanted to be free.  High school was over, and it was time to find out who I was and what I believed.  Yet each morning, I woke up in a UMaine dormitory, more often than not put on a UMaine t-shirt or sweatshirt, and headed off for breakfast in a UMaine cafeteria, which I ate off a tray with the UMaine logo.  Then it was off to full days of UMaine classes, punctuated by study sessions at the UMaine library and other meals at a UMaine cafeteria.  To my young mind, this was vaguely cult-like, nothing like the freedom for which I yearned.

It’s not that I didn't like UMaine.  I really did.  I don’t think I would have felt differently if I had gone to school anywhere else.  And I fully understood that I was going to need a college education to get where I wanted to in the world, wherever that was.  The problem was, I wanted to get to that place in the world right now.

My sophomore year, I made some changes, transferring to the University of Maine at Presque Isle, and getting a living situation independent of school.  These things helped me feel a bit more of the freedom I thought I was yearning for, but they also set up a sort of emotional fence between me and school.  I kept my distance from almost all aspects of university life beyond academics.  College became like a drudge job for me: something you had to do and get over with so you could enjoy other things.  That outlook was a huge mistake on my part.

The college world is very different today than when I started back in 1988, but some things hold up no matter how much time passes.  If I could go back and give my freshman self some advice about starting college, I’d tell him/me these five things:

• Study.  It goes without saying that an education is what you are in college for (and what you are paying those steep tuition bills for), so taking your classwork seriously should be a top priority.  I’d qualify this, however.  I spent a LOT of time studying, but it was not necessarily the best use of my time.  Develop some study strategies, set aside regular times to study, and maybe even find a group with whom to study.  More is not necessarily better when it comes to studying, though.  Quality counts more than quantity.
• Diversify. College is a great time to broaden your horizons.  Take advantage of opportunities to get to know people who come from different ethnic, religious, and/or socioeconomic backgrounds than you.  Try listening to some different music.  Read different books.  Go to different movies.  Sample some different foods.  It’s a very big world out there.  This is the time to open your mind wide and check it all out. 
• Do active stuff.  Most likely, you are never going to be in better physical condition than you are in your late teens and early twenties.  Take advantage of that!  Ski, skate, run, hike, swim, dance!  This is the time in your life to climb mountains or ride your bike across the state during summer break.  Trust me, when you get older it will be a lot tougher to do these things.
• Take concrete steps toward your dreams. Okay, going to college is one example of this, but I am speaking about more specific things.  I recently read about a pair of siblings who spent their summer interning in Texas where they worked directly with wild tigers and bears.  They were over the moon with enthusiasm about their experience.  Keep your eyes open for internships, exchange programs, volunteer opportunities and similar things that give college kids the chance to start living life more fully.
• Get out there. These are the years when some of the best lifelong memories are made, and college usually provides ample opportunities do make them.  Go to concerts, lectures and sporting events on campus on a regular basis, and bring people with you.  Attend parties (responsibly!) and other social events.  Join groups and organizations that interest you.  Get involved in social causes that mean something to you.

During my own college years, I dreaded Labor Day Weekend and the whole back-to-college thing, due to faulty thinking on my part.  College was just work to me, a means to an end.  Getting a degree was something to get out of the way so life could really start.  Little did I know at the time that life had already started and I was letting some very important parts of it pass me by.

Now in my mid-40s and firmly ensconced in the world of work and middle age, I find myself envious of the young people I see on the roads in early September who have packed their stuff into cars in a physics-defying way, headed off to campus.  I just hope they see that it’s an adventure they’re on.  A really great one if you choose to make it that way.  Take it seriously, but never, ever forget to enjoy it!

Writing About Having Nothing To Write About

Lately, I've been going through a dry spell with my writing, which is not uncommon to many writers.  “Writer’s block” is the most often-used term, and I've got it bad.  My two works-in-progress are not inspiring me, and I am struggling to come up with posts to put on this blog.  Then, this morning, it came to me.  Why not write about having nothing to write about?

Contrary to what it may appear, I don’t just dash off whatever is in my head and post it to Wicked Awesomology.  Some bloggers treat their blogs almost like a web-based diary that the public is invited to read.  Not me though.  I treat mine like a regular column that I would contribute to a newspaper or magazine.  As such, I have to strike a balance in my posts between things I want to write about and things viewers will want to read.

That awareness of audience tends to be what stymies me the most.  Back when I was teaching, I constantly stressed to my student the importance of keeping your audience at the forefront when you compose a piece of writing.  I've seen 10 year-old-boys put together ten page stories about Pokemon characters that make complete and perfect sense to them, but without background information would make virtually no sense to most other people, not to mention be of limited interest to anyone but themselves.  When choosing a topic about which to write for this blog, there are certain things I try to avoid.

Complaining:  Writing can be cathartic, and there is a great temptation to sit down and rip something a new one just to get it off my chest.  And while it may feel good to put together a piece like that, I believe that readers will only put up with it from time to time.  After all, with all the whiners in the world as it is, who wants to sit down and read more whining for entertainment?

Repetition: There is such a thing as taking a good idea and beating it to death.  I've seen the statistics on viewership of my various blog posts, and noted what type of articles has garnered the most viewers.  In general, it has been my nostalgia pieces about my childhood and teenage years.  Those posts are fun to write, and serve a personal purpose for me in preserving my memories, but are not the kind of thing I would want to write and readers would want to read every single week.  The same applies to posts about my cats and my hillbilly neighbors.  While they provide ample fodder, you can have too much of a good thing in this format.

Sports: I am a huge sports fan, but only post about them on rare occasion.  Wicked Awesomology is not a sports blog, and many of my readers are not that into sports.  Those who are may not be into the particular teams, events, or athletes that I am.  As such, there is a risk of a sports post being a complete wash for a sizable segment of my readership.  That doesn't mean I won’t write about sports.  It merely means that I am choosy about the topic.   For those readers who do not care for the Boston Red Sox, be thankful for this.

Controversy: Some people write to be provocative.  I am not one of those people.  The purpose of this blog is to entertain and also to give me a forum for flexing my writing muscles.  I stick to that focus for a simple reason: In order to attract and maintain regular readers, I need to be providing a somewhat consistent product.  Going from a gently humorous reflection on an adventure I had with my grandparents as a child in one week’s posting to a screed on the gun control debate in the next is too wild of a swing for most readers, I feel.  Of course I have plenty of personal opinions about politics and current events, and sometimes share them in person and on my Twitter account.  Only rarely will I post about politics or controversial current events on this blog, and then I will choose my words carefully so as to state my case clearly while remaining respectful of those who do not agree.  That, of course, is a lot like work, so I usually avoid those topics.

Forced humor: One thread that runs through almost every post here is humor.  I don’t set out to be humorous when I write here, but my sense of humor permeates almost every interaction I have, so it comes through.  My posts are not too different from my personal conversations in that regard.  That said, there are some times and topics that just do not lend themselves to laugh out loud comments, so I either avoid writing about the subject altogether, or give it a straight treatment.  Trying to be funny when something just isn't a funny concept is a recipe for disaster.  A related issue is sarcasm.  I’ll be the first to admit to being a sarcastic wiseass, but that rarely comes across as I would like in my writing, so I have to put the brakes on sarcasm much of the time.

These self-imposed restrictions sometimes get in the way of finding a topic for a blog post, but they help maintain the quality of my posts, so they are not a bad thing.  I’d rather post nothing than post garbage.  I've had some ideas for posts lately, to be sure, but they've often fallen into the “complaining”, “controversy” or “repetition” categories, so I've nixed putting them on here.  

So there you have it: an entire post wherein I wrote about not knowing about what to write.  I've dealt with writer’s block before, and it never lasts, for me or for anyone.   The idea fairy will come for a visit soon enough and Wicked Awesomology will get back to my version of normal.  If she doesn't come soon though, I may have to resort to a slew of crazy cat stories.

Oh Good Grief, It's Spring Charlie Brown

“Charlie Brown, you're the only person I know who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and turn it into a problem.” ~Linus Van Pelt in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”

If you take the word “Christmas” out of that quote and replace it with “spring”, then Linus could have been talking about me.  The snow is melting, the sun is warmer feeling, and yet I am in the midst of my annual anxieties about spring. 

My spring uncertainties are not the same as those I usually get around the holidays.  I almost wish they were.  At that time of year, I get caught up in more specific concerns: finding the right Christmas presents, finding the money to afford aforementioned presents, attending parties without making a fool of myself, making time for everyone and everything, and the like.   No, the anxieties that creep into my head around springtime are lower-level and less-pressing, but no less stressful.

Some of them are not highly defined.  When it is 35 degrees, windy, and ice pellets are falling from the sky in April, I admit that at some deep level I begin to doubt that winter is really over.  Given the five months of snow and cold that have just dragged past at the speed of continental drift, one can’t blame one’s psyche for not fully buying into the idea that it really is over.  After all, there was 1816, the “Year Without a Summer”.  Temperatures were well below normal that year all around the world due to a volcanic eruption in Indonesia causing unheard-of weather and crop failures.  There was snow in Albany, New York and Dennysville, Maine on June 6 of 1816.  Even within my lifetime, in 1990, we had more than six inches of snow fall on May 23 here in northern Maine.  Winter in Maine can be like that shark in the Jaws films.  Just when you think it’s safe, the damn thing comes back to bite you.

The general appearance of the outside in early spring is just a mess, which adds to the anxiety.  We have to pile the snow high here after storms, so while most of it has indeed melted, there are still huge dirty snowbanks in nearly every yard, slowly turning to water.  Even in a good year, some of the larger snowbanks can survive into May or early June in this part of Maine.  Trash, sticks, dog droppings and various other surprises lie around on the ground, left behind during the winter and now exposed by the melting snow. 

Where there are no snowbanks, everything is brown.  The grass and leaves have not dared to sprout yet, so the remains of last year’s dominate the view, dead and mired in the mud that is impossible to avoid.  Trees are still bare, and seeds under the ground have only begun to think about getting started.  It seems hard to believe that very soon, with some spring rains and warm sun, the green grass and leaves will soon burst forth, and flowers will be blooming.  At least, that is the plan.

One of my more specific worries this year includes the fate of my old riding lawnmower, which was literally limping toward the end of the mowing season last fall.  It had been giving me trouble all last year, and my only hope at the time was to nurse it along until the end of the season.  The old rustbucket threw a belt during the last mow in October, but it made it to the finish line.  Now I have to consider my options, none of which are good.  I can try to fix it myself, but frankly I am not very good at that kind of thing and will probably make things worse instead of better.  I could take it to get serviced, which is the most likely thing I will do, though that can be expensive, and loading a powerless riding mower onto a truck is a heavy job.  I suppose I can go without and just use my trusty push mower on the whole thing this year.  While the exercise would certainly be good for me, the extra time and work involved would be a real hassle, especially when it gets hot.  Sweating ranks right up there with cholera on my list of things to avoid.  Or, I could buy a new riding mower.  Let me know if you see the money fairy flying near my house, and I’ll flag her down and do just that.

I’m also worried about what I’ll find when I wash my car for the first time this spring.  My beloved chariot, as I refer to it, is caked in at least an inch of dirt and mud.  It has been showered with gravel and sand from driving on the interstate after storms, and was buried under snow several times this past winter.  I am bracing myself for the sight of the new dings and scratches in the paint job that I’ll uncover after that first wash.  Cars, like people, can’t stay new-looking forever, but I am going to do all I can to try to keep this car looking as close to how it did when I drove it off the lot two years ago.  I've got a bottle of touch-up paint on standby, and got a full kit of car cleaning supplies for Christmas just ready to crack open.  That chariot is going to shine, I hope.  Right now, it looks like something salvaged from the bottom of the Mississippi River, so it’s got nowhere to go but up.

My warm-weather wardrobe needs a serious update as well, since most of my best clothes from last year are really only suitable for use as rags when cleaning the aforementioned car or for dressing as a homeless person.  I've been milking them for a few years now, and they just don’t have another season left in them.  That means I need to shop for new clothes, which is easily one of my least favorite things to do.  I just don’t know what a guy my age (43, for those of you just joining us) is supposed to wear.  I do know what I am comfortable wearing however.  The former and the latter don’t always seem to coincide, unfortunately.  Plus, it’s getting harder and harder to find Nirvana tour t-shirts these days.  When I win the lottery, the first thing I am going to do is hire a professional fashion consultant.

In ancient times, the new year started in the spring, not midwinter like it does for us now.  That makes more sense to me, because a lot of what’s nagging at me at this time of year is the result of transitions, the new beginnings that are the hallmark of spring.  The old has passed, and the new lies ahead with all the uncertainty that comes with it.  All the little concerns I've mentioned here either falls under the heading of fear that the old has not really passed, or that there might be complications with the unknown new.

I know on an intellectual level that of course the hard months of winter are over and the beauty of spring is looming, but it still seems impossible at this point.  But it happens every year.  There will be robins.  There will be crocus.  There will be temperatures that allow us to leave our jackets at home.  It’s just a matter of hanging on and letting nature take its own time.

I Need My Space

I’m the kind of guy who likes to stretch out.  At a full six feet tall and just shy of 200 pounds, I need some room just to be, much less to move.  I don’t think claustrophobia is the best term to accurately describe this need I have for some real estate around me, but whatever I am feeling would definitely be in the same ballpark. 

The veterinary clinic where I am employed is a small building with several people of varying sizes and personalities, and a lot of “stuff”. We are always bumping into each other and tripping over things.   As much as I enjoy my work and the people with whom I do it, there are some days when I am vaguely irritated for seemingly no reason.  It never manifests itself outwardly or affects my work in any way, but it is just enough to tip my attitude from viewing the glass as half-full to one of seeing it as half-empty.  The other day, it occurred to me that there might be a connection between this hard-to-pin-down occasional irritation of mine and the times when things at work are particularly crowded or cluttered.  Hence the inspiration for this post.

Life feels a lot like this sometimes. (Source)

Like many things, it probably has roots in my childhood.  Growing up as I did in a small town, everyone seemed to know everyone else, and it was hard to avoid anyone, even if you tried.  I was raised in a small house by my parents, with three siblings and one busy bathroom.  I attended a small parochial school, but was part of an unusually large class, so we were packed tightly in the classroom from first through eighth grade.  It was much the same in high school, where no class since has had the numbers of my graduating class.  My first job was at a radio station that was in a facility the size of a shoe box.  Room to maneuver always seemed to be a tough thing to come by in my youth.

Then, as now, I always sought out some wiggle room.  I used to love to spend days at my grandparents’ place in the country as a child, and often visited my other grandmother in town since she lived alone in a large house.  Sure, I genuinely enjoyed their company, but I also liked to be able to stretch out a little.  My best friends as a child were usually kindred spirits who also liked to roam.  The gang of kids I ran with back then was not made up of the types who would hole up reading comic books or watching TV in the living room all day.  We liked to get out there and explore the world in which we had been placed just as much as we reasonably could.  There were paths to follow, streams to wade, rocks to climb, and roads to take.  I had numerous bicycles shot out from under me due to heavy use in those days.  My first car as a teenager was one of the largest on the road, a 1972 Chevy Caprice with lots of leg room for the $575 I paid for it.  Of course it cost over $25 to fill the tank, and that was when gas was well under a dollar a gallon, so it was not all good.  Plus it inexplicably smelt of cherries.  But I digress.

To this day, I still enjoy getting out for walks in the woods or going for rides on my bike or in my car on back roads.  Backwoods camping is one of my favorite warm weather hobbies.  I’ll freely admit that I have been out walking in an open field on a summer day with no one around and just flopped down on the grass, spreading out my arms and legs and just taking in the vastness of it all.  Then ants would start crawling on me, and the reverie would end very abruptly.  I have also done this while out snowshoeing in the winter too, but never for very long, since I don’t know exactly how I would explain the frostbite on my rear end to the emergency room staff. 

As much as I love sports and music, the idea of going to a crowded concert or stadium or hanging out in a packed club does not at all appeal to me.  I will do it, but it had better be a musical act or sports team that I am extremely fond of if I am going to subject myself to such close quarters.  We’re talking on the level of a reunion of the Beatles or the 1992 USA Basketball Dream Team here.  I attend a church that has lots of room, though purely through coincidence and not by choice, and it suits me very well.  Not so much on Christmas Eve though, when it is shoulder-to-shoulder in the church and I am usually ready to turn myself inside-out by the time the service is over.

Get-togethers with my family can be a wonderful thing, but if we are all packed inside someone’s house because of inclement weather, I can only take so much.  I’ll always be the first person to volunteer to run to the store for supplies if they are needed in such a situation, though I may not be back for hours.  I find that I am closest to relatives who are smokers, even though I don’t smoke myself, since I am often outside to get some air at the same time they are outside polluting it.

Carpooling is a challenge too.  While I am all in favor of saving on gas and helping the environment, it just makes me uncomfortable to be in a crowded vehicle for more than 15 minutes or so, even if I know all the occupants very well.  I’d be happier strapped to the roof.  I would probably use buses or subways if I lived in a large city though.  For brief periods, about the length of time between stops, I can tolerate close quarters, especially if it means I don’t have to look for an empty parking place or shell out money for a parking garage.

Please don’t think that it is an antisocial thing on my part, because I really do love people.  Some of my best friends are people.  However, too many too close to me for too long, no matter whom they are, make me edgy. 

Now, would you mind taking a few steps over there?  Thanks.

The Thanksgiving Post

Image from doyouremember.com

Thanksgiving is coming up later this week in the United States.  It’s a holiday I really like, not only because of my fondness for food and football, but also for the sentiment behind it: giving thanks.  Most of us in western society live in a world that our ancestors of less than 100 years ago would be astounded to see.  When I was young, my grandparents often told me of the awe they felt upon getting electricity in their homes for the first time, and the thrills of their first car, telephone, and television.  The jobs people had when they were young were harder and a lot more dangerous than most today, and things we do now in the spur of the moment, like a trip to get groceries, was a weekly event that was carefully planned for and highly anticipated.  When you stop and think, we really do have a lot for which to be thankful.

For many bloggers, there is great temptation at this time of year to write the stereotypical “what I am thankful for” post, sort of the grownup version of those essays we used to have to write in grade school.  I’m going to do that, kind of, but instead of highlighting that for which I am obviously thankful (freedom, family, friends, faith, employment, health), I am going to turn my attention to some less-heralded things that make my life just a bit nicer.

I am grateful for all-wheel drive vehicles.  Although I have driven in Maine winters for 27 years, I am only in my second winter with all-wheel drive.  I never knew what I was missing.  How great is it not to get stuck in a four-inch pile of slush at the end of the driveway?  Last winter was a cold one here in northern Maine, but not especially snowy.  We had a number of small storms of a few inches, but no blockbusters, and frankly, I was a little disappointed. I never really got a good chance to give my all-wheel drive a real test in deep snow on the ski slope I call a driveway.  It was during a storm the winter before last, when it took me 17 tries to get my two-wheel drive car up the driveway, that I decided it was finally time to upgrade to something more snow-worthy than an Oldsmobile.

Everyone who lives with even a little bit of snow should have all-wheel drive.  I bet I could park on my garage roof with my all-wheel drive if I wanted to, though it would probably be best if I didn’t try to actually do that.  Upon mentioning this notion, some of my friends have suggested that I may have been a tank driver in a previous life.  Or dropped on my head as a baby.  Or both.

I am thankful for Christmas lights that do not cause the entire set to go out just because one stinking bulb does.  The inventor of those instruments of torture should be charged with crimes against humanity.

Typically, I light up a spruce tree in my yard each December.  The trouble is, it’s tall and on a steep slope, which makes it about as easy to string lights on as Mount Everest, only pricklier and stickier. In the past, I have spent hours risking life, limb and stickiness draping “net-style” lights over it, and no matter how many times I check, there are always a few that end up burning out after placement, leaving a gaping black hole in the middle. I just can’t leave it like that, and thus the battle begins, and continues through the rest of December.

In addition to going completely dark at random, the net lights also require the patience of Job to untangle, and are impossibly complicated to put up while stretched out, balanced on one foot on the top rung of a ladder in the back of a pickup on the side of a hill.

None of that this year!

Those crappy net lights are history!  They’ve been replaced by LED lights on a reel, which will go up more easily and stay lit even if tornadoes carry the tree into the next county.  Well, maybe not, but they are really sturdy lights.  My wallet is lighter, but so too is my heart. 

2012 was the year I stepped up to high-definition television, and sports will never be the same.  For this I am thankful.  One complaint I always used to have about TV sports is that it can be hard to clearly see who is who and where the ball/puck/shuttlecock/golden snitch/whatever is at any given time.  In the past, for example, a play in a football game can be over before I can even figure out where the ball is.  And hockey?  I gave up watching a long time ago, since the puck is so hard to see.  One network did try an experiment with an electronic puck that left a virtual “tail” on the TV screen during the game, but apparently I was the only person on Earth who liked it.  Now that I have hi-def TV, it has all changed.  I can see everything clearly at just a glance.  The London Olympics were especially impressive in hi-def.

It’s not all great, mind you.  The downside of hi-def sports is that you can also see whatever bodily fluids are oozing out of the participants, whether it is sweat, slobber, or blood, in nauseating crystal-clarity.  And it is  also rather sobering to see every gray hair, wrinkle, and pot-belly on retired athlete-commentators. I hate to say it, but many of them might be better suited for radio than hi-def TV these days.  Of course, so would I, truth be told.

I am thankful for great new music from great old artists.  This year has seen a number of AARP-eligible musical acts with new albums. (Is the term “albums” even a thing these days?)  Coming as they do in the face of so many musical acts that are nothing more than corporate inventions enhanced by recording studio technology, it is nice that these old war horses are not only still putting out music, but putting out really good music that is selling pretty well.

I’ll toss a few examples out for you: ZZ Top’s La Futura is one of the best overall rock albums I’ve heard in a long time, and their best in years.  Bonnie Raitt released Slipstream, a new collection of her signature blues rock that sounds as fresh as anything she’s ever done.  Bruce Springsteen hasn’t lost a step with his Wrecking Ball album, full of socially-conscious and catchy rock tinged with folk.  And Rick Springfield, yes the “Jessie’s Girl” guy, has just released Songs for the End of the World, a terrific, solid rock album that sounds like it was influenced by some work Rick recently did with the Foo Fighters.  Paul McCartney, Heart, Rush and Van Halen also had attention-getting new releases in 2012 that are worth your attention.

All of the acts I’ve mentioned are well into their 50s and 60s, and they still sound great.  I can only hope that I am as on top of my game at that age.

And finally, I am thankful for the online writing community of which I have become a part.  There are not a lot of like-minded writers near where I live.  Heck, there’s not a lot of anything near where I live, except maybe trees.  And moose.  I know a few, but connecting regularly in person is a challenge with schedules and distance being what they are.  Fortunately, Twitter, Goodreads, Writers Digest and this silly blog have helped me make connections with hundreds of talented writers from all over the world.  Some are old enough to be my parents, some are young enough to be my kids.  Some are published, some are trying to be, and some just write for themselves.  Some are famous, while others have never shared their writing with another soul.  For some it’s a career, for others a hobby, and for others, therapy.  They range from poets to naturalists, and from horror masters to technical writers specializing in physics.  It is gratifying to hear that my writing struggles and theirs are so alike, in spite of our diversity.  And it is great to be able to give and get support for our various writing projects.  Regardless of specific content, the writing process is mostly the same for a lot of us.  We also share our successes and our predicaments, we laugh and sometimes shed a tear together, and generally help keep each other inspired.  It’s been great, and I look forward to “meeting” even more of you.

Enjoy your family and your turkey (though not in the same way!).  Enjoy your football games and your holiday parades.  Enjoy your Black Friday shopping (yuck!) and your pumpkin pie.  If you are outside of the United States, well, enjoy your Thursday.  Whether it is officially Thanksgiving where you are living right now, take some time to step back and look at all the things, both big and little, that you can be thankful for right now. No matter who you are, I think you will find that are an awful lot if you take the time to ponder them.

Summer, Verano, Eté, лето, Sommer...Whatever You Call It, It's Over

Source: FreeFoto.com

Summer in these parts is spectacular.  There’s no other word for it.  Living in a place with a challenging climate like northern Maine’s, one tends to gain an appreciation for weather that doesn’t try to kill you and wreck your stuff.  Yes, we do get some nasty thunderstorms and the occasional stifling hot stretch in the summertime, but that’s pretty easy to deal with when compared to the prospect of clearing two feet of wet heavy snow from your roof or bundling up against temperatures of 20 below zero.  When people around here complain about a hot day in the summer, a frequent retort from my fellow winter-loathers is “At least you don’t have to shovel the heat.”

But for me, it’s not just the summer weather that appeals, but the summer attitude.  It’s that feel in the air that starts on the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend and ends abruptly the day after Labor Day.  You might describe it as the equivalent of the first time each year when you open the windows in the house and let the fresh air in.

There is a feeling of freedom in the air.  College students are home for the summer. School kids are on a long break. Adults are taking time off from work.  People around town are towing boats to the lake, tending gardens, taking leisurely walks, grilling burgers, and fishing in the river.  Even if you are working or taking summer classes, it just feels different during the summer months.  It’s almost as if a collective weight on our shoulders, if not entirely lifted, has been lightened.

Many new faces appear in our lives in the summer.  People who have long since moved away come back to visit.  It’s not unusual to be picking up a few things at the grocery store in the summer and run into a high school classmate you haven’t seen since senior English class over a quarter century ago.  Tourists without specific roots in the community pass through, seeing with new perspectives the things that we locals often take for granted.  For visitors, that statue in the park that we barely give a second glance on our way to work each day becomes the focus of discussion and photographs.  The “wallpaper” of our lives becomes a vivid portrait to someone else.

Places and things that are shuttered during the cold weather months open for business again.  The dairy bar, the golf course, the community band, the farmer’s markets…they all set forth pleasant new opportunities for locals and visitors alike to enjoy the unique pleasures of where we live.  Roadside stands are unboarded, and go from selling just fiddleheads around Memorial Day to strawberries and cut flowers around the 4^th of July, to a vast selection of fruits and vegetables by Labor Day.  And many of these stands still go by the honor system.  Signs next to a small container simply state the prices of items and ask that the customer put the money in the box.

Special events allow us all to mingle and relax.  Agricultural fairs, festivals, parades, concerts, church suppers and picnics, and numerous other opportunities present themselves almost every weekend.  Few if any of these are of the caliber to be featured on the Travel Channel.  Heck, most don’t even merit a mention on the Maine Tourism Board’s website, yet we turn out for them in droves anyway.  After all, how many chances does a person get to have a piece of the world’s largest ploye?  We are fed, entertained, and most importantly I think, have some quality time with our family, friends, neighbors and visitors.

The summer attitude is even reflected in the clothing we wear.  Loud Hawaiian shirts and fluorescent yellow flip-flops don’t even generate a second glance in the summer months. An older woman wearing a huge floppy hat and bright blue sundress with smiling dolphins on it doesn’t turn a head. A middle-aged man in plaid shorts and a striped shirt? Meh.  It’s summertime.  Who cares? Kids wear only a bathing suit (usually the same one) for days in a row, shirtless teenagers skateboard in the park, and even business types go without a tie from time to time.  I actually saw my perennially conservative and buttoned-down boss wear khaki shorts to work one especially humid Saturday.  As for me, I take great pleasure at this time of year in going as many consecutive days as I can without wearing socks.  Fashion becomes relative between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

This is the time of year we live for around here.  It’s this time of year that keeps us going when there’s a driving blizzard in January and we have to shovel out the driveway in dawn darkness just to get to work.

The whole time we are enjoying summer however, we watch the pages on the calendar falling away out of the corners of our eyes. Memorial Day is followed in short order by June, which leads to July, and then August.  The next thing we know, Labor Day Weekend is here.  You can feel it coming before September even starts.  Fewer and fewer vacationers and other visitors are around.  More and more camps at the lake are closed up.  School-aged kids are sent to bed earlier to get in the groove for the daily routine soon to come with the start of another academic year.  College kids pack up their stuff and head back to their studies.  Nature lets you know that Labor Day and all it implies is on the way too.  First you take the air conditioner out of the window, then you stop using a fan in the window, and sometimes you are even sleeping through the night with the windows closed by the beginning of September.  The lushness of our surroundings is paler, less vivid.  Brown is slowly creeping in to replace the greenery.  Some leaves have even started to fall, and quite a few flowers and seasonal plants have “gone by” as my grandmother used to say.

The day after Labor Day, which is when I am writing this, can be sobering.  Yes, the calendar still says it is summer, and the thermometer outside my office reads 72 degrees, but it’s not summer anymore.  Not really.  Vacations are over and the visitors have gone home.  We are back at work, back at school. The special events have been held.  It’s time to dress more practically.  Noses to the grindstone people, there’s serious business to attend to now!

*sigh*

Just 262 days until Memorial Day Weekend, 2013.

The Traditional First Year Anniversary Gift Is Paper, So Send Checks

This blog, Wicked Awesomology, has hit the one year mark, so I’m going to do what so many other media entities do on a significant anniversary: toss out a retrospective episode.  It’s either that or put together something entirely new, and frankly, that sounds like work to me.

Wicked Awesomology started as nothing more than a personal creative outlet for me.  I had no real long-range plan for it beyond its merely being a place for me to flex my dubious writing muscles and do some frivolous stuff while working on longer, more serious pieces offline for publishing purposes.  To use a music metaphor, posting to this blog for me was to be like a rock band doing nightclub performances between recording sessions on their new album.  (For you younger readers, you may have to Google the terms “rock band” and “album”.  I’ll be over here weeping copiously for the future while you do so.)

As fate would have it, I started taking my Twitter account (@countofbluecars) seriously at about the very same time I started Wicked Awesomology, and my blog posts became frequent fodder for Tweets.  And it all took off from there.  My readership started to grow, and after a time it got to the point where people would contact me with questions  if I went too long between posts.  After a while, I ran out of good excuses.  One can only use “the cat threw up on my keyboard” so many times before skeptics call you on it, I’ve found.  So I more or less committed to a weekly posting schedule, and things have continued to grow.

What follows are some behind-the-scenes tidbits about Wicked Awesomology.

Where the name came from:

“Wicked awesome” is an expression that has been used by kids in Maine since I was very young, and probably even before that.  I’ve heard that it has spread to use by some people beyond the borders of the state in recent years, but it remains a statement of the superlative here as it always has.  Along with “cool” and “gross”, it is probably my longest-used slang term, and seemed well-suited for the name of a blog that aspires to be “wicked awesome”.

Most popular post:

To go by the statistics, the most popular post is The Accidental Coffee, written last winter.  Because I post on Blogger, which is a subsidiary of Google, the contents of blogs often turn up in Google searches. “Coffee” and “funny” are wildly popular search terms, and somehow my blog post got caught up in the slipstream of those terms and piled up a bunch of hits.  Things subsided when I took down the photos I posted to accompany it, which apparently were driving a lot of the traffic.  I’d love to think that all those people were looking to read the post, but, come on. Who would I be kidding?

Favorite post:

Quite a few of the posts on Wicked Awesomology rate especially high with me.  Adrian and the Cannibal’s Internet Connection is special because it was the first piece of fiction I’ve thrown out there on the blog, and fiction writing is my thing.  Heartbeat City Here We Come is one of my more introspective pieces and taps a side of me that I don’t let out in my writing often enough.  And Eye Cooties was fun because it allowed me to make a mountain out of molehill in a way that many readers found entertaining. One Tweet I got in response to it said “I can’t believe you got an entire blog post out of catching conjunctivitis, and that it was one I actually enjoyed reading!”.

But my personal favorite is Out Home at Christmas with Bing.  The post was one of those that just dropped into my head while driving one winter afternoon, and it practically wrote itself when I set my fingers to the keyboard.  It’s essentially a collection of sentimental (in my own way) recollections of childhood Christmases as they related to my paternal grandparents.  I was very close to them growing up, and the times I spent at their place in the country are among my fondest recollections of being a kid.  My grandmother died in 1995 and my grandfather in 2000, so writing about them and putting it out there for the world to read about keeps their memories alive in a way.  I’ve written about them since (see: Gone Fiddleheadin’), and based on the enjoyment I get from doing so and the positive feedback I get from my posts featuring them, I likely will again.

Least favorite post:

Easy one! I Don’t Know If I Want You To Read This Yet, which went live on the blog just a couple of weeks ago.  It’s another short story featuring Adrian McAllister, a character I was “getting to know” through writing some short pieces.  Adrian is the protagonist of a mystery novel I am working on, and I thought I could learn more about him by putting him in situations that are not necessarily part of the novel in progress.  My first attempt, the aforementioned Adrian and the Cannibal’s Internet Connection turned out quite nicely, I thought, and ranks as one of the most popular posts on Wicked Awesomology.  The second one, simply entitled Confession, where Adrian goes to confession at a Catholic church and is given learning how to surf as a penance still sounds like a great premise to me, but I don’t feel like I pulled it off successfully in the short story format.  The supporting characters I included needed more development than that format would allow.  I gritted my teeth, polished it up, and put it up on the blog not so long ago mainly to get it out of my hair. It’s not terrible.  I wouldn’t have posted it if it was.  But it’s not an example of my best by a long shot.

Strangest post:

The Accidental Coffee  was an odd post inspired by an odd problem I had one night.  I accidentally made a pot of coffee, and didn’t have the heart to just dump it out.  On the other hand, I couldn’t drink it, or I’d be up all night.  When I mentioned the problem to a friend, he said, and I quote, “That’s the kind of problem only YOU would have!  You ought to blog about it.”  You’ll have to read the post for the details, but it turned out quite well, I think.  It was one of those great times for a writer when the words were coming to me faster than I could type them.  Other than a cursory check for grammar and spelling issues, I didn’t even tweak it after I was done.  I just put it together as fast as I could and got it out to the world.  It’s gotten more hits than any other posting on Wicked Awesomology to this point, though I do think some funny business with search terms on Google artificially inflated the numbers.

Post that spurred the most feedback:

Give It Up, a post from April about giving things up for Lent.  Most of the feedback I get on Wicked Awesomology does not come in the comments section, but rather through Tweets and e-mails.  Because this post touched on a religion-related topic, it stirred some things amongst my readers.  To everyone’s credit, all the feedback I got was respectful and polite.  Nonetheless, it reminded me that posts on religion, politics, and sometimes even sports, can be polarizing.  I have plenty of forums available to me for airing my own opinions on those topics, but I do not choose to have Wicked Awesomology be one of those.  If I post on any topic that can be polarizing, I do so in a lighthearted way that is not meant to alienate anyone.  This blog is not my soapbox.  It’s more of an observation deck.

Other backstage stuff:

I try to post something new at least once a week, if possible.  It’s taken a while to get to that routine, but it seems to be one that works well for both me and my readers.  I really don’t know how some bloggers can post daily.  I just don’t have that much to say that is worth reading!  Unfortunately, neither do some of them, but they haven’t figured that out yet.

If I post a book review, it usually means that the great god of writing inspiration has taken the week off and is down the street drinking Lowenbrau in a seedy bar, trying to forget that I exist.  At this point though, I feel a commitment to providing fresh, quality content on a regular basis to my readers, and posting a past book review of something I’ve read and previously posted on Amazon or Goodreads.com is a good way to do that when the spirit doesn’t move me.  I’d much rather take that route than post garbage.  The book reviews I post are for books I’ve really, really liked though.

My offline writing projects sometimes take up a lot of my time and creative juices.  I have been working on a collaborative novel with a very talented author (whose identity I am presently keeping secret to protect the innocent) for about nine months now.  I also have a “solo project” underway featuring Adrian McAllister, as I previously mentioned.  These are a very different type of writing than blog posts, requiring a lot more planning and infinitely more revision and editing.  A blog post typically takes me a couple of hours, whereas a single chapter in either project can take several days just to attain finished first draft status.  When those projects are bearing down hard on me, you are likely to see a book review post too.

Wicked Awesomology is a balancing act for me as a writer.  It’s a forum for me to toss my writing experiments into, but it has also become a place with a reliable core of readers who have come to have certain expectations.  Your comments, questions and suggestions on blog posts (content or style) are very valuable for me.  Unless you want to tell me I suck.  The little red devil on my shoulder tells me that on a regular basis. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment on the post itself, or via Tweet or e-mail.

At this point, I’ve got just over 8000 page views on Wicked Awesomology in the past year.  It’s not huge, but much more than I would have expected.  The graph thingamabob in my statistic section shows strong, consistent growth over time.   It’s very gratifying.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and stay tuned.