There are a lot of very popular things that I’m not interested in. I’m not saying these things are bad or criticizing anyone else for liking them. They just don’t flip any of my triggers.
I have fond childhood memories of my dad taking me to see Twins games at Met Stadium. I was even at the Metrodome for Game 6 of the 1987 World Series, the game when Kent Hrbek hit his grand slam. I think Target Field can be an almost perfect place to spend an afternoon, as long as the weather isn’t miserable. Despite these things, I can’t call myself a baseball fan. On any of those nearly-annual Target Field visits, I’m always slightly fascinated by things like the statistics displayed for each player throughout the game, and the constantly updated scores of other games being played that some afternoon. It makes me wonder what it would be like to live a life where that kind of thing meant something more to me than just a momentary diversion.
I acknowledge that country artists can be skillful songwriters and talented musicians. I appreciate the aesthetic that comes with the genre, excluding the most intentionally pandering examples of it, which is something found in any type of music. I saw the Oak Ridge Boys perform at a Boy Scout Jamboree when I was a kid, and I remember enjoying the show. I remember a city bus ride I took in college when the driver had us all locked into a country music station for better part of an hour. I was under a speaker during the ride and listened to all of this established music I didn’t know with curiosity, wondering what it would be like to be fluent in those artists and the work they produced. It’s never connected with me, though.
Whenever I encounter another slice of the world like this, a part of me speculates about how my life would have been different (or could be different) if that unfamiliar interest was (or had ever been) a part of it. I hate running. Dear God in Heaven, how I hate it. I hated it even when I was young and strong enough to do it well. I’m never going to be one of those people posing in Facebook posts with the medal they earned from their most recent “escape the White Walkers” themed 10K. There’s something about running that drew those people to pursue the interest that didn’t connect with me. I don’t understand the pleasure of spending an afternoon pulling weeds out of the dirt to make more work for myself by planting and tending to flowers or plants that may or may not ever grow. I’ve never understood the purpose of spending so much time preparing exquisitely planned meals.
But then I have one other adult at my school I can talk to about whichever video games we’re currently playing and how excited we are about it, while most of the other people we work with (many being younger than us) would roll their eyes dismissively to overhear that conversation. I couldn’t name check a single college football or basketball player in the country, but I can hear far too many songs from the 1980s and know the artist, the album the song came from, which track it was on the album, what year it was released, who the members of the band were at the time, often the songwriter, and at least one piece of completely superfluous trivia about it. I can remember favorite lines from innumerable movies. I can, and often do, sit for hours and make up stories. I mean, who in their right mind does that as an adult, when there are so many serious things to do? Lawns to tend? Grills to clean? Boats to winterize?
If it’s true that people are the results of their choices, it has me wondering about the ones I’ve made. Not just what my choices were and why I made the ones I did, but what inspired my reasons. Why am I drawn to bands and musicians that so many other people haven't heard of? Why am I able to dismiss everything about hockey so immediately? How is it my father and my nephews can identify the makes and models of different cars with little more than a quick glance while I have to work at remembering details about the one I drive?
Are we the people we are because of our surroundings, things chemically pre-determined, suggestions that come from the example of those around us, or the results of our own ongoing self-discovery?
Thursday, May 2, 2019
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Day 1: One Last Time
Today is the first in another month of daily consecutive blog posts I’ll be writing throughout May. However, it’s very possible it will be the last time I do this.
I didn’t write anything during Nanowrimo this past November, after doing it more years than not since, I believe, 2008. I doubt I’ll participate again, since the question as to whether or not I can write a 50,000-word manuscript in thirty days has been answered repeatedly.
This past December I wrote another series of daily posts with accompanying photos to tell an annual holiday story about Cinnamon, the demented Elf on a Shelf that has plagued me for the past five years. I doubt that will happen again, either. This year’s story ended in a way I felt was conclusive, and I don’t think there’s anything more to say.
This blog, “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” is ten years old this month. The reason I started it was to give myself a way to practice writing outside of a narrative structure. Back then I was picking away at one manuscript at a time when I felt inspired or found it convenient; this lackadaisical approach kept me from being as prolific as I probably should have been, so blogging seemed like a good occasional mental workout for those less active writing periods.
It’s a decade later, and things are different now. I have this blog to write, I contribute to another blog about children’s literature, and I have an agent to work with. Having an agent doesn’t mean everything about developing a writing career happens at an electric pace, but it does require more time and more intentional focus than I’d been putting forth before. If you want to get the work done, Rule Number One is you gotta show up to do it.
So, because of all that’s changed over these ten years, I’m undecided about the future of this blog.
I’ve almost shut it down before. In fact, I was weeks away from letting it disappear when I signed with my agent, until she convinced me it would be better to keep it as some kind of minimal online presence as a writer platform. Lately the key word there has been “minimal,” since I’ve only published a handful of posts this year leading up to this annual May surge. This lack of activity comes from the time and creative energy demands of other writing projects (it’s been my experience that creative energy is often a finite resource) as well as a simple lack of things to say. Posting regular content would be a great thing for a blog, but if that regular content amounts to regular episodes of boring, there isn’t much point.
Eventually Summer Vacation, like so many actual summer vacations, is going to end. The day will come when I have a book (or books!) to sell, and I’ll be recreating my online platform as an author web page instead of just a blog. Once that happens, I don’t see this continuing. But that's still in the future. After the month ends, we’ll see what kind of form it’s going to take. I have some ideas, but a lot can change in a month. But for now, I still have the challenge in front of me to go another full month with different posts for each of the thirty-one days.
Except I am planning to cheat a little at the end of the month. Even though I’m posting every day, it won’t all be new content this year. As we get closer to the end of the month, I’m going to dig up and repost some of my favorite older posts, including a few that maybe didn’t have the audience I’d hoped for at the time, to mark the 10th anniversary. It’s also worth mentioning that if this May turns out to be like any of the previous Mays I’ve done this, my hit count will reach 30,000 page views at some point. To commemorate that benchmark, I’ll make the same offer here I made a few years ago: If anyone notices they turn out to be the page view that hits that mark, they should let me know it was them and I will honor some kind of writing-related request that the two of us can work out.
All right then. Let’s see where this month takes us.
I didn’t write anything during Nanowrimo this past November, after doing it more years than not since, I believe, 2008. I doubt I’ll participate again, since the question as to whether or not I can write a 50,000-word manuscript in thirty days has been answered repeatedly.
This past December I wrote another series of daily posts with accompanying photos to tell an annual holiday story about Cinnamon, the demented Elf on a Shelf that has plagued me for the past five years. I doubt that will happen again, either. This year’s story ended in a way I felt was conclusive, and I don’t think there’s anything more to say.
This blog, “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” is ten years old this month. The reason I started it was to give myself a way to practice writing outside of a narrative structure. Back then I was picking away at one manuscript at a time when I felt inspired or found it convenient; this lackadaisical approach kept me from being as prolific as I probably should have been, so blogging seemed like a good occasional mental workout for those less active writing periods.
It’s a decade later, and things are different now. I have this blog to write, I contribute to another blog about children’s literature, and I have an agent to work with. Having an agent doesn’t mean everything about developing a writing career happens at an electric pace, but it does require more time and more intentional focus than I’d been putting forth before. If you want to get the work done, Rule Number One is you gotta show up to do it.
So, because of all that’s changed over these ten years, I’m undecided about the future of this blog.
I’ve almost shut it down before. In fact, I was weeks away from letting it disappear when I signed with my agent, until she convinced me it would be better to keep it as some kind of minimal online presence as a writer platform. Lately the key word there has been “minimal,” since I’ve only published a handful of posts this year leading up to this annual May surge. This lack of activity comes from the time and creative energy demands of other writing projects (it’s been my experience that creative energy is often a finite resource) as well as a simple lack of things to say. Posting regular content would be a great thing for a blog, but if that regular content amounts to regular episodes of boring, there isn’t much point.
Eventually Summer Vacation, like so many actual summer vacations, is going to end. The day will come when I have a book (or books!) to sell, and I’ll be recreating my online platform as an author web page instead of just a blog. Once that happens, I don’t see this continuing. But that's still in the future. After the month ends, we’ll see what kind of form it’s going to take. I have some ideas, but a lot can change in a month. But for now, I still have the challenge in front of me to go another full month with different posts for each of the thirty-one days.
Except I am planning to cheat a little at the end of the month. Even though I’m posting every day, it won’t all be new content this year. As we get closer to the end of the month, I’m going to dig up and repost some of my favorite older posts, including a few that maybe didn’t have the audience I’d hoped for at the time, to mark the 10th anniversary. It’s also worth mentioning that if this May turns out to be like any of the previous Mays I’ve done this, my hit count will reach 30,000 page views at some point. To commemorate that benchmark, I’ll make the same offer here I made a few years ago: If anyone notices they turn out to be the page view that hits that mark, they should let me know it was them and I will honor some kind of writing-related request that the two of us can work out.
All right then. Let’s see where this month takes us.
Thursday, April 11, 2019
Why Do We Live Here?
Today is the second April snow day I've had off in the past two years. On one hand, this is a huge problem, especially the way things have gone this year: It marks the 7th day my district has had off due to extreme weather this winter, which pushes instructional pacing back by over a week. Not a great thing when state testing begins in three school days. However, I'll openly admit that I'm willing to endure another week of pseudo-winter if it means getting a random day off from work, especially if it means getting a day to breathe and relax during what is traditionally one of the most stressful months of the academic year.
Having a major snowstorm in the middle of April does seem out of place, though. It often begs the question: WHY DO WE LIVE HERE? When the weather can turn on a dime and usually in the worst of all possible ways here, what is it about living in Minnesota that is so great it makes the climatic disorder of our region endurable? Come on, people! Let's think positive! There are many things!!
(1) SNOW DAYS
Speaking as a teacher, there are few feelings as welcome as discovering you have a surprise day off. It's like waking to an extra Christmas morning without any of the subsequent depression.
(2) CABINS
What could be better than giving yourself a duplicate set of housework chores for a place where you might spend 19 out of your 365 days each year?
(3) THE MALL OF AMERICA
It really is a fascinating wonder of a landmark, and not just a black hole of a tourist attraction where locals bring the out of town visitors they secretly wish had just stayed home.
(4) HOCKEY
Our sport. Our birthright. Not an athletic cult. Nope. Not at all.
(5) CHANGING SEASONS
We have winter, when the world extracts its revenge on humanity for all of the climate change. We have spring, also known as the three weeks between the final snowstorm and the first of the 85ยบ temperatures. Then there's summer, the time of year when the whole world is either crispy from drought or defined by nightly storm warnings. Wrapping it up is everyone's favorite, autumn, when we witness the world slowly dying off, although there’s probably going to be a nice weekend when you can see fall colors while you pay to have your kids wander aimlessly through a field of corn which you can only hope has been cut to form a maze with an actual solution so you'll see them again someday.
(6) SPORTS TEAMS
Our teams rule! Yeah! Go teams! If you take all of our local pro teams, we've had FOUR CHAMPIONSHIP SEASONS in the past ten years! Of course, all four of them came from our WNBA team The Lynx, which far too many sports fans here treat as an afterthought. But hey! They count!
(7) MINNESOTA NICE
More like Minnesota introverted passive-aggression.
(8) THE OUTDOORS
What better place to be than where all of the sunshine, mosquitoes, and ticks can be found? Because none of those have ever been associated with life-threatening diseases.
(9) WONDERFULLY MAINTAINED ROADWAYS
You know they have to be in great shape if they're being worked on starting the first day each year the highway department thinks they can safely begin working, and work continues until two weeks after the first major snowfall settles in. To say nothing of the expediency involved in repairing spring potholes, none of which ever get so big or deep that they'd have their own tides when filled with snowmelt.
(10) SAFETY
Let's face it. We're pretty close to the center of the continent. In another twenty years, we'll be one of the few remaining regions that isn't underwater.
Having a major snowstorm in the middle of April does seem out of place, though. It often begs the question: WHY DO WE LIVE HERE? When the weather can turn on a dime and usually in the worst of all possible ways here, what is it about living in Minnesota that is so great it makes the climatic disorder of our region endurable? Come on, people! Let's think positive! There are many things!!
(1) SNOW DAYS
Speaking as a teacher, there are few feelings as welcome as discovering you have a surprise day off. It's like waking to an extra Christmas morning without any of the subsequent depression.
(2) CABINS
What could be better than giving yourself a duplicate set of housework chores for a place where you might spend 19 out of your 365 days each year?
(3) THE MALL OF AMERICA
It really is a fascinating wonder of a landmark, and not just a black hole of a tourist attraction where locals bring the out of town visitors they secretly wish had just stayed home.
(4) HOCKEY
Our sport. Our birthright. Not an athletic cult. Nope. Not at all.
(5) CHANGING SEASONS
We have winter, when the world extracts its revenge on humanity for all of the climate change. We have spring, also known as the three weeks between the final snowstorm and the first of the 85ยบ temperatures. Then there's summer, the time of year when the whole world is either crispy from drought or defined by nightly storm warnings. Wrapping it up is everyone's favorite, autumn, when we witness the world slowly dying off, although there’s probably going to be a nice weekend when you can see fall colors while you pay to have your kids wander aimlessly through a field of corn which you can only hope has been cut to form a maze with an actual solution so you'll see them again someday.
(6) SPORTS TEAMS
Our teams rule! Yeah! Go teams! If you take all of our local pro teams, we've had FOUR CHAMPIONSHIP SEASONS in the past ten years! Of course, all four of them came from our WNBA team The Lynx, which far too many sports fans here treat as an afterthought. But hey! They count!
(7) MINNESOTA NICE
More like Minnesota introverted passive-aggression.
(8) THE OUTDOORS
What better place to be than where all of the sunshine, mosquitoes, and ticks can be found? Because none of those have ever been associated with life-threatening diseases.
(9) WONDERFULLY MAINTAINED ROADWAYS
You know they have to be in great shape if they're being worked on starting the first day each year the highway department thinks they can safely begin working, and work continues until two weeks after the first major snowfall settles in. To say nothing of the expediency involved in repairing spring potholes, none of which ever get so big or deep that they'd have their own tides when filled with snowmelt.
(10) SAFETY
Let's face it. We're pretty close to the center of the continent. In another twenty years, we'll be one of the few remaining regions that isn't underwater.
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