Back on track
After reading Green Tuna's blog today, which was extraordinarily moving, and reminded me of my grandfather in a lot of ways, I almost feel like what I came up to the computer to write about is incredibly insignificant and selfish.

Give me a moment while I regroup.

OK. Actually, I come with a bit of good news. Good news for me, that is. This is a "yay me" kind of post, so if you are so inclined to skip ahead, or backward, as it were, please by all means do so because I'm going to fill the next few lines with some self-congratulatory banter.

This morning, I had fully intended to lay in bed for as long as I could stand it, then slowly wake up, shuffle around the house in my slippers, and wonder what time it was, and if the clock I was looking at had been changed or not.

Instead, around 8:45 (9:45 had we not set the clocks back), I was wide-eyed in bed, the words of a short story brimming to the surface. They surged through my brain, and I knew that if I didn't get up that very second, they would be gone forever and I would be extremely angry with myself for wasting yet another opportunity.

So I got up. And I wrote four pages of a story. Which hasn't happened in, shit, I don't even know how long. Maybe since I graduated from college in 1998. Maybe even farther back than that.

I could go into detail as to why I haven't been writing, but suffice to say that for a while, my creativity had been snuffed, due to a lot of life-altering decisions and stresses while I tried to choose a path and make it work.

The fact that I was able to write this morning means that I am almost all better. I hope. And I hope this wasn't just a one-time thing.

The story is a little bit Stephen King and a little bit Dave Barry, which is funny because those two writers play in a band together. But they are also among my major influences. I was thinking about this today while brushing my teeth, that in different phases in my life, I have had three, perhaps four, major influences in my writing style thus far:

7th grade through early high school: Stephen King
Late high school through early college: Kurt Vonnegut
Late college through mid 20's: Dave Barry
Mid to late 20's: Oprah books

If this story turns out to be something, I will submit it for a short story contest. And we'll see where that takes me. No matter what, it's a huge step for me.