OffOfMadison

Tag: writing

  • Alioth & The Journal

    Oof it’s been a while since I’ve been here. I’d say I’m sorry and express some shame, but the reason I won’t do either is a large part of the ‘why’ behind my absence.

    First: you bet I’m still working on the novel, though I’m doing so at a much slower rate than I had wanted to admit out loud. Most of the time that’s on me, but some of the time it just is how it currently is, y’know?

    Second: the virtual school I work at has spun up the last month or so and we have some new leadership, so things have been more, uh, hectic than expected. New boss seems alright, to be honest, though I’m having trouble shaking some of the adjacent toxicity. Was that vague enough? Gosh, I hope so.

    Third: I’ve been on a bit of a journey. My wife and I started a 75 Hard program that has some pretty strict exercise and diet rules and we just cleared Day 50 of it. This program has also had be focusing inwards, devoting slices of time to self-help/improvement books (currently reading through Dialed In and The Five Marks of a Man) Before those two, I was reading No More Mr. Nice Guy. Like most non-fiction books, they have shining moments and dull.

    Fourth: I’ve also just completed my first month of seeing a therapist to help me with some of my anger issues. Let me tell you: WOW does that kind of thing make a difference. And, not to brag, but I feel like I have an unfair advantage as I have an amazingly supportive wife who takes any progress I make and somehow accelerates it even more. You rock my socks, CLM.

    Ok…so with that off my chest, the reason I’m not apologetic or ashamed isn’t because I have a good excuse; it’s because I’m not sorry and I’m not ashamed!

    That might not seem like a big deal to you (and sorry for presuming here), but to me?

    HUGE.

    I have a notorious habit of not letting myself off of the hook for anything. I would apologize profusely for things that weren’t only not my fault, but not even something I had direct control over. And my sense of shame? Have you seen the series Loki by any chance? Alioth from season one best embodies the amount of power and sheer space it took up in me.

    One of the variants of Loki even describes Alioth in way that also describes my sense of shame:

    It’s a living tempest that consumes matter and energy.

    Luckily, I have an amazing support system in my wife and a well plotted map forward from my therapist, so I’m finding myself with a lot more energy and drive to show up in real life and in real time. I’ve started journaling also, which has helped me in ways I never understood I needed to be helped. It’s like, if you have ever heard the phrase “the cutting room floor”, you might know how journaling has been for me

    Put simply: the cutting room floor used to be a room where film would be edited frame by frame, organized and spread out on a large expanse of floor. This allowed the director to ‘zoom out’ and see it all in order to decide what to keep and what to, well…cut. This zooming out is what journaling seems to be doing for me

    Zooming back in to this blog, I’ve been gone for a good reason (not that I feel like I have to have a reason) and now I hope to be back more regularly. I hope you’ll join me.

    Best,
    Bryce

  • Secret Garden

    A couple of years ago, my wife and I did a bit of ‘re-dating’ each other. It was actually really fun while we did it, and the day that we shared today reminded me of that kind of fun.

    One of these ‘re-dates’ was centered around our going to the library to pick out a book for the other to read. I actually remember this day really well. She was in the middle of being hired for a position that was quite a promotion for her, so things were understandably tense.

    Wait, wait..why tense?

    I had just accepted my new role as a music teacher for a virtual school in Tennessee. I had, officially, accomplished the dream of getting to work exclusively from home AND not be associated with the local school district that had almost defeated me, mind and spirit. For me to get to pursue this while she potentially had to stay behind was a tacit unacceptability that we both understood.

    No pressure, but actually a LOT of pressure on this job for her. There had been a lot of uncertainty in the multi-stage interview process for her as the school was brand new and booting up for the very first time.

    What the…weren’t you guys just on a ‘re-date’?

    Yes…I’m getting there. Patience, phantom question-asker. As I was saying, the library date happened on a day that had a lot to do with that whole process for her. Library completed (and, on that note, if you haven’t checked out the library in downtown Covington, Kentucky…it’s a true diamond in the rough), we absconded to a local ice cream place up the road. I unfortunately can not plug the shop as 1) it no longer exists and 2) it was a pretty weird place, all said.

    As we sat down on the second floor of this older, speak-easy kind of house turned ice-cream shop and multi-tenant living, she had a call from one of her interviewers. She had almost certainly gotten the position, but the partnership between the school and K12 was holding things up.

    What does this have to do with The Secret Garden?

    Well, first, I didn’t evoke the book’s proper name in the title of this post, did I? *checks title* Nope. So presumptive!

    Unrelated, but did I mention that the book she picked for me for this date was The Secret Garden?


    *Audibly groans*

    It turned out to be one of my favorite reads. Well, favorite almost reads. I have a little left to go still to do this day. It’s almost like I don’t want it to end. This book gives me a glance into how my wife sometimes felt when she was younger, so I haven’t finished it on purpose. With my not having completed it, I feel like I still have a fresh, opened window into her past that I can peer into for the first time. I can only finish this book once, so I’m saving it.

    Also, if you’ve wondering about her job offer and haven’t read earlier posts; yes, she did in fact get the position and has been rocking it out ever since. One of my prior high school band kids is even one of her teachers. How cool is that?

    Didn’t you say something about this tying into today?

    Right! So, the thing about my wife is…she is that walled-in secret garden, in fact. From the outside, you see walls in the midst of a lesser garden. Only a very select few get to find the way into the garden within. And once let inside, nothing can ever be the same.

    You see, CLM is a very protective person. I won’t get too into those details with you, but she has intentionally placed walls up to keep almost everyone from truly seeing within. I’m just about the only lucky protagonist in the story of her secret garden to get to see her at her best.

    And, folks, her best puts the rest of the garden in an almost clair obscur. Once you’ve beheld the light inside, all else seems gray to dark. The contrast I lacked the context to see prior is stark. Today, she was her secret garden.

    Not to be too on the nose, but CLM loves flowers and gardens. I used today’s venture into our Lowe’s for a chainsaw as a way to try and get her to open up enough to enjoy that love. She did. We cut a dead tree down from the yard, sure, but then I got to see her plant so much life and radiate a glow all the while. This is what I mean about stark contrast.

    Now, a love for gardening isn’t much of a thing to hide, sure, but that’s over-simplifying what I’m trying to say. She reserves her true self. And yes, this does offer her some protection and allows her to pick and choose how much anyone can see or know. Why she chose to let me in, I’ll never understand. I’m like Colin Craven over here: dad issues, a history of some medical issues, a bit emotionally fragile…but I am also like him in that I, too, am transformed by being inside of the secret garden that is my wife, Carla. Today that simply meant watching her plant flowers and work on her container garden. But to me, that glimpse inside is precious, treasured, and powerful. I am eternally grateful to be the Colin to her Mary.

    Secretly,
    Bryce

  • Random Fandoms

    I’m going to start this post by saying, first and foremost, that I don’t believe that anyone should take it upon themselves to “yuck someone’s yum”. I think that there might be exceptions to that as there are most things. After all…

    And let’s start there. When Anakin tells Obi-wan “If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy,” Obi-wan snaps back with the above line. The irony of using an absolute to knock absolutes was never lost on me. I love Ewan McGregor’s portrayal of Kenobi as much as I love how clueless he shows the Jedi order to be concerning where they’ve ended up. Though many of the Jedi tenants stated absolutes without the follow-through in the exact verbage, they were still very much absolutes.

    I’m getting traditionally off track. I say ‘traditionally’ as when I was still directing band and choir, my high school kids always knew how to stall a rehearsal: throw down a hot take about Star Wars. I feel like I would monologue forever if I had the time to do so and, honestly, some times I did even though the time wasn’t there.

    Back to the original point: fandoms. The more that I read online, be it on Facebook, Reddit, Threads…doesn’t matter, I find that people spend so much more energy hating on other people’s passions than they do actually pursuing their own. Now, to be fair, that last part is a bit of an assumption. But I feel pretty good about it, and here’s why: though I hate to admit it, there have been several occasions where I would find such a hater and doom-scroll their past posts and marvel at the amount of effort they gave to that hate. Would I get anything from that? In the moment: no. Now though, it does give me context for this blog post so…yeah.

    I happen to be a person who belongs to a couple of fandoms that tend to catch a lot of hate. For this post, I’ll talk about two of them: Disney and cigars.

    First, those two fandoms do not mesh well at all. I’m pretty sure they’re at complete odds with one another. I’m ok with that, but it helps me to make some of the points I mean to in this post. I’ve been into cigars and their associated culture since I was a teenager. I have no idea why. Something about the regalia of a cedar humidor holding hand-made aged cigars was like a type of lore to me.

    I like to think I enjoy my cigars respectively in consideration to others, but still find people pretty willing to throw hate on the whole thing. And, for the associated health risks, I get it. That said, if I have a cigar in public, it would be at a cigar lounge or bar or something of the like. Typically I enjoy them at home on the deck or front porch, especially when my head is being held down by grad school work or some other menial task that I’m responsible for finishing on my laptop. Long story short-I talk/post about cigars pretty publically but enjoy it pretty privately. Doesn’t seem to matter. Anyways…they’ve always been one of my passions, not just a thing I consume, so I consider cigars to be a pretty random fandom of mine.

    On the other end of the random fandom spectrum is my love of Disney. I always really liked animated movies, so Disney was always something I at least liked. That said, I didn’t really geek out over Disney until my wife and I went for our first time as a couple. I had been before with both my family and my own high school marching band, but going with Carla made it completely different. I think having your ‘the one’ to share it with makes it all the more impactful and meaningful. It also doesn’t hurt that they’ve taken ownership of so many of the other things I liked, such as Star Wars and Marvel.

    The hate for my Disney fandom comes from being one of those childless millennials you hear so much about these days. Don’t get me wrong, I love my life with my wife and don’t feel that we’re missing a single thing in it. The hatred for this fandom starts there, though, as being a childless millennial also makes me a Disney Adult. That’s right…if you see my wife and I in the parks, you’ll see us decked out in ears, pins, you name it… and you’ll see us *gasp* without children in tow. People LOVE to hate us and people like us because we dare to derive some joy from being there despite not having kids of our own. If you don’t believe me, just do a quick search on your own and see what I mean. It’s WILD (at least, to me it is).

    It is my absolute belief that this stems from people leaning into absolutes of their own. I feel like so many people feel that there truly is one single right way to do things and that they spend a LOT of time raging against anything that runs counter to their own personal grain. I recently commented on someone’s Thread that asked something along the lines of “Drop one hot take about what needs to change about video games”. My response? Essentially that there isn’t one right way to go about playing games (easy modes for harder games, casual gaming, etc) and that people should stop gate-keeping everything.

    How can anyone be certain enough of anything to hold so many absolutes? I may be old school *checks notes* …ok I AM definetely old school, but I’ve always been of a mind to not act with certainty without being certain. This even shows up more recently in my current bout of grad school: make a claim in a paper and/or discussion post? Back it up with research or it means nothing. The last paper I wrote for my educational leadership program had maybe twelve different sources? My last discussion post: four. And neither of those things were even a luke-warm take, let alone with the same kind of heat that people seem to be slinging at others online daily…which is white hot.

    In posting about both my random fandoms, people are just pleased as punch to make all kinds of judgements about me without ever asking a single question. Being into something like cigar smoking seems to invite people to immediately knock me down a class or two before they even know my name, let alone what it is that draws me in. And the online Disney Adult hate is a force to be reckoned with. Without knowing a thing about me outside of whatever Disney content I’ve posted, people launch right into things like how I ‘ruin everything for the kids that these things were made for’ and how I must need mental help. Where do the get this stuff? I’m never sure and they don’t seem to ever be curious enough about me to even ask a single question or do any digging.

    All of this brings to mind a fandom that I thankfully don’t see get a lot of hate; Ted Lasso. Everyone knows the barbecue sauce episode and if you don’t, do yourself a favor and look it up. Much of what Ted says in that famous monologue really stuck with me and this really great (and recently viral-ish thanks to Mr. Lasso) Walt Whitman quote, in my opinion, is a way we should all strive to live:

    “Be curious, not judgmental”

    Absolutely,
    Bryce

  • Working on a working title

    As someone starting a blog just for the practice of writing, I seem to find myself thinking about it an awful lot since I started it recently (yesterday). I got here through author advice and through over-working the front half of my book. Having provided a bit of background and history in my first blog, I’m going to vaguely setup how “the book” came to be. My hope is to add to the narrative of why I’m here blogging with you now.

    “The book” doesn’t have a title, for one. I’ve gone through a couple since beginning it years ago, picking it up and then putting it back down…all in different seasons of my life. This yielded a lot of different takes on what the focus of the title should be. I will say this, though, the book began with a single directionless sentence.

    “The dust had settled.”

    That’s not to say that those words are still the very first in the book as they are not. But the whole project started there while I was bored on a second gen Chromebook before the band I directed had to perform at a football game. School ended at 2:45 with the football game beginning at 7. Band call time was 6, so I often found myself with lots of empty time such as this.

    If I remember right, I had just finished the entire Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Besides feeling utterly betrayed (no worries as I will not inundate you with spoilers), I constantly found myself remembering the series’ opening line:

    “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” 

    Just…wow what an opening line. It assumes you know things that you, as a reader, definitely wouldn’t know on your first read. For example, the word “gunslinger” helped me to immediately see so much about the world without another single word. The gunslinger, without any description, instantly had clothes, stature, and even a face. And having that sentence set in the desert gave me a climate and even a smell. King made me squint my eyes to sunlight I couldn’t actually see as it bounced off the dunes. I swear that, in the moment I read that sentence the first time, I felt warmer than I had prior. With so few words he made me feel and see so many different things.

    Not to make all of my blog posts about thanking authors, but thank you so much for that sentence, Mr. King (though I wish I had taken your in-book warning to stop reading book 7 when you gave it). Anyways, I wanted to to do the same thing, and thus “the dust had settled” was born.

    Now, I’m under no delusion that I’ve replicated the effect of that opening line, but I’m also completely aware that, even at the tender age of 43, I’m a complete rookie here…and that’s ok.

    The sentence slowly became some paragraphs. Revisions inbetween classes turned into characters and a flow. This all formed a preface and chapter 1 a lot sooner than I had imagined. As I mentioned in my first post, I sit down and write with an attitude of “ok, now what happens.” And as I really started to write back then I noticed something: that for the first time in my life, I wasn’t hit with “blank canvas syndrome.”

    Whenever I would compose or arrange music for either my choir or band (especially composing), I would run into an almost immediate writer’s block starting out. Half of the the process was finding my way out of that block each and every time I sat down to write music. Arranging was easier than composing as it’s working from already existing material, but it would still happen when it came to voicing or, say, marching percussion parts.

    Whenever I worked on “the book” and (as I’ve only recently learned) this blog, I’ve not found this block to happen. That doesn’t mean I would keep everything I did end up writing on any given day, but I never had any trouble writing forward (or even, sometimes, backward). So, no matter what was going on in life, I was always able to pick “the book” up and make progress, even if it was by baby-steps.

    Truth be told, that doesn’t mean I was dutiful in keeping “the book” going as I very much was not. School, college, band…I had tons of excuses for not sitting down and working on it. And, honestly, most times I didn’t even need an excuse. Recently, though, I’ve been making an effort to write every day…both in “the book” and here in the blog. Day 2/Post 2…so far so good.

    “The Book” is completely outlined and into Chapter 5 is written up to page 75. I even have notes for how Book 2 begins. I don’t mean any of this to be anything but descriptive of how it’s going. I can at least tell you this: it makes me happy to write it and even happier to have my wife read it.

    The real trick, I’m finding, is trusting her to be completely honest with me about it. As far as current levels of adversity go, I’ll take it.

    Best,
    Bryce