Preface: Next week I am due to have sestoplasty surgery for the third time in 30 years. The last time I considered it was in 2001. That’s when I wrote this (fictional) story. This morning I found it in my archives and cleaned it up a bit to share here. *** PART ONE “Well Jim, it looks like you’re going to need surgery.” It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I leaned back. “Not what you wanted to hear, huh?” The doctor…
Summer 1994. I was driving south on I-77 with my girlfriend. We were leaving Pennsylvania on our way to Florida for a vacation. After hours of driving through mountains and forests, the highway began to widen and the Bank of America Corporate Center rose up on the horizon–taking us by complete surprise. Charlotte. We’d heard about it. There was a pretty good NBA team here. But we lived in Northern NJ, so a small southern city like Charlotte wasn’t very…
So life. You crafty little bastard – you snuck up on me. Here I am spinning around and around consuming and creating and connecting and there you are like a river flowing past. Steady. Smooth. Unforgiving. It’s time. I have a lot of things going on and need to step away from blogging for a while. There is only so much time in a day, and you don’t get any more of it. I love my life and have to…
So I was peeking in on Google+ this afternoon at about 3:30 and saw a dude post a link to the McKayla is Not Impressed tumblr. I thought it was funny so I plus one’d it, and shared it on Facebook. Because I’m not friends with the dude from G+ on FB, no attribution was necessary. I logged off for a while and did stuff away from the internet. I know – crazy, right? Anyway, when I went back later…
Hope isn’t a goal. It’s not a thing we control. It’s not tangible. We can’t wear it around our necks. Hope lives in the center of our chest as a gaslight. When we need the strength, we turn the dial. Hope surprises us when it arrives through unusual messengers. Like the olympic sprinter with no legs who inspires us to lose 40 pounds. Or the hurdler who survived homelessness and who gives us hope to overcome our own economic peril. Or the gymnast…
Yesterday was my 48th birthday. I woke with my wife wishing me a happy birthday, followed by a full-grown shepherd planting his elbows into my abdomen as he tried licking my face off. I grabbed a coffee and sat down to email. In the morning sort, I noticed a couple of messages from organizations that I willingly gave my birthdate and email address to years before. A dentist’s office that I never returned to after an initial consultation that resulted in…
