The so called blogging and content experts may take issue with a headline that borrows from The Princess Bride because it doesn’t make it easy for the reader to know exactly what this post is about.
Should they ever ask me about it I’ll poke them in the eye, kick them in the shin and then hit them over the head with my typewriter and whisper:
“the regulars don’t come here for sterile posts about the same topics everyone else writers about.”
They know I may look similar to the other penguins, but I am not them nor do I want to be just like them.
All I want to do is be able to work with, hang out and be with them while still being me.
Why is this important now? Why does it come up?
Because when you have kids in middle and high school life is about figuring out who you are and who you want to be.
Except they forget to tell you, that it doesn’t always end with middle or high school. Sometimes it takes longer to figure it out.
Or sometimes you figure it out and then change your mind later on and that is ok.
Mostly Dead Is Still Partly Alive
There was a shooting at a local university and according to reports it was a murder-suicide.
I had my usual run of thoughts about how awful this is, I hope this crap ends and my kids never have to go through another school lockdown and there is always hope.
If you wind the clock back to the 25 year-old version of me and show him the crap I went through from 2006 to now he would tell you to get lost.
He’d never believe it was real.
“You’re screwing with me, that kind of crap wouldn’t happen. It is an exaggeration.”
Except it wasn’t an exaggeration and while there were some truly horrible moments it wasn’t that different from what many others experience because life happens.
Believe me, I am not going to lie and say that it didn’t contain the hardest and worst moments of my life because it did.
But I got through them all and maintain my perfect record for surviving every bad day.
In fact, I know it made me a better writer and a stronger person in every way.
If ever thing get hard I look back and am reminded there is no reason not to have hope and I look forward again.
I used that quote in Secret Worlds & The Things We See In Them because it fit but I share it here again because this post weaves a few thoughts in about writing.
William Shakespeare is gone and has been dead for centuries but his name lives on because he found a way to weave thought, feeling and emotion into his words.
And he did so in a way that enabled them to transcend time.
Do I want to be Shakespeare?
No, I want to be Joshua Wilner.
Would it be cool to be remembered like that too?
Sure, what writer wouldn’t want to know their words weren’t forgotten and left in piles of dusts or old floppy disks.
It is not the most important thing to me and if it doesn’t happen I won’t cry and not because I won’t be around to see it.
The only measure I worry about is being the best father I can be. That is my focus and the decisions I make are guided by it.
I tell the kids to accept that not all of those decisions will be right but that I made them because I thought it was good for us.
And when times get tough, if they can’t buy into hope, well maybe they can buy into Fleetwood Mac.
