Exciting Summer Preview!

Recently there was a blog post that was getting forwarded around a lot on Facebook. It was about a man coming out, and he is happily married, to a woman, but he is also gay. I thought it was really well-written, and an interesting perspective, and it does not really relate to what I am writing about except for one thing. In his preface he says that this is normally a humorous blog, but this post isn’t, and if anyone wants to take off a day from it, he understands and it’s fine.

I think it might be hard to characterize exactly what my blog is about, other than whatever happens to be going through my head, so it is often serious with humorous elements, but I feel like it is heading down a fairly depressing road right now, and I feel a little bad about that.

I’m doing it anyway, obviously, but I will try and outline a schedule of how I think things will go. The next few posts will be about that gaping hole of emptiness and pain inside me, including how it got there and how it has affected me, and this will relate mainly to how I am romantically handicapped. Some of it may be funny, but in kind of a sad, dark way. I’m not sure how many posts it will be, but it will be interesting if the post on my father ends up going up for Father’s Day. Would that be disrespectful to fathers in general? I could probably move some things around.

The other writing I am doing now is the graphic novel. I am currently at 155 pages, and there’s still a lot of ground to cover. I would like to finish it this week. It is not just that I want to move on to things that I might actually be able to sell, though that is a part of it. Also, though, while I am working on it I am pretty much only listening to My Chemical Romance and Pencey Prep. (I could totally make a case for listening to Mindless Self-Indulgence as well.) The point is, I am trying to stay in the zone.

I have tried brining in some other things, like to get Natalia’s voice I thought I would listen to some Alturas (a Spanish guitar group) and Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam (featuring Full Force), but that did not work out great. It turns out that with LL & CJ (ft FF), I really only like “Lost in Emotion”, and think “Head to Toe” is okay. The rest is kind of annoying, especially “I Wonder If I Take You Home”. Natalia is not annoying; she is awesome! So it doesn’t work for her, and listening just diminishes my affection for the songs I do like.

(Also, I tried listening to some Jersey Shore clips to get Trey’s voice, and that was also annoying. Trey’s just not going to talk very much. However, the emotional resonance of his death is not so much that we care about him, but that we were not expecting a familiar face there, so I hope it will still work. I mean, he was always a tool.)

So, there’s that going on, and it puts my guitar listening on hold, but I decided that I really wanted to be done with the comments before Blues Fest, because then I will appreciate it more, going in better informed, and that can start off another bout of music writing. My first volunteer shift is July 5^th, so that’s the target date.

For other things that will be coming up, remember when I had all those tasks on my checklist and I would blog about things as I completed them? I really want to start getting some of those done again, so that should be happening. I have three books left for my Black History month reading (I just finished The Other Wes Moore, and am starting King Leopold’s Ghost), so that will be another post, or more.

Also, as I am writing a graphic novel (kind of) I am reading more graphic novels, so there will be a few posts about that (there are some more that I want to read before I weigh in), both on what’s out there, and my superhero history, and also my reasons for writing what I am writing now (which will tie in to the depressing stuff), and also some things that have factored in to the writing process, because there are things that have been interesting there. Oh, and on July 1^st I will have been telecommuting for a month, and I want to write about how that has been going.

Actually, that’s another reason to get the graphic novel done. Many aspects of telecommuting are proving to be rewarding, but my step counts are quite low. Next week the Summer Games start, which is a Regence thing where we are on teams and counting our steps for four weeks, so starting Monday I want to really make an effort to get walking in, and by the time it’s over maybe I have worked out some good patterns. Having one project done will leave me feeling more free to take off walking, though I should probably start writing something else right away. Well, it’s not a perfect system.

Also we’re getting another dog, so I may write about that.

So I realize that’s not an exact schedule, and if you want to avoid the gory, this is not a sure guideline. However, it may give you an idea of what the different post titles mean when those pop up. Otherwise, I am expecting the depressing stuff to last about a week, give or take.