In a week or so this blog will be fourteen years old, which would either make it a very old eighth grader or a very young freshman in high school. Fall birthdays are the worst no matter how you cut it.
I started writing Battling the Current because I was confounded by where I had found myself in life. I was living in Kansas City with few friends, a job that wasn’t very satisfying, no social life to speak of and an overwhelming feeling that I was struggling against this flow of mediocrity and boredom that was driving me to bitterness. Hence the title, I was battling the current state of my life and the world around me.
(Funny sidebar. I started writing in November 2004 because I was so upset about politics and Bush being reelected. Remember when that was the worst thing that anyone could imagine in politics? Do you know what I would give right now to go back to that time? Hell, do you know what I would give to just not be appalled by watching the news every day?)
Anyway, so I started posting five nights a week about whatever was on my mind. It turned into a mix of pop culture analysis and bar stories with a disturbing level of focus on the daily activities of Lindsay Lohan. What it really captured was my life in my early 30’s as I tried to figure out who I was, what I was supposed to do with my life and find someone who would be willing to share the journey with me. The blog ended up being what I deemed vaguely successful. I had an actual readership; stunned that people I didn’t know read it and horrified that people I knew read it as well. It’s a wonderful little time capsule of my life.
Then a funny thing happened. I actually found all of those things that I was searching for.
Ok, that is not entirely true. I don’t think anyone ever figures out the fullness of their life, especially in their 30’s, but my life made a spectacular turn. Mainly, I finally met the woman of my dreams. Met her again to be more precise but this time we were at the right time in our lives and suddenly all of those late nights at bars talking to random women were replaced with, well, married life. And the blog slowly faded away…
There were a lot of reasons. Most of my focus was on marriage and my job and I had always kept a hard and fast rule to never write about either. Life grew busier and busier and I could barely find time to think, much less spend time each night writing about reality television. Some of my luck in life changed and to quote the Drive By Truckers I was spending most of my time trying to keep it in between the ditches. It was hard for me to find time to write and even when I did I couldn’t go back to writing the way I did before.
But the thing is I really need to write. I feel much better when I do and it is much easier for me to express myself through a keyboard than out loud (though my grammar will always leave much to be desired). And I think I have figured out what to write about and what my goal is going to be this time around.
My plan is just to write about the little things in life. Some bits of beauty or joy or laughter or just thoughts about the world that hit me. Sure there may be some pop culture commentary in there but I hope to keep things light and positive. Everything around us is so dark and caustic and it is so easy to find ourselves drawn into the muck. My goal is to stay away from politics and far, far away from hatred and just focus on the good that is around us. Toss in some old story ideas as well along with some music suggestions because that was always one of my favorite parts of the blog.
The main thing is that I’m going to keep these posts short. I’m borrowing this whole idea from my favorite author Jonathan Carroll whose book The Crow’s Dinner is basically a compilation of pieces like I just described. In fact, I will be using a lot of pictures and quotes that he has shared online because they inspire me. But the main thing is that I’m not going to focus on hitting a word count or a readership level or anything more than writing about some of the beauty around us.
We will see how far this goes. I can’t guarantee anything but it might be nice to have a corner of the internet to myself again.
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