I got a gig writing some things for a group of people who need some things written.  So far, my work is good, I think.  My ego says, “Add the words ‘I think,’ because what if it turns out to be not-so-great.”

Ah, the ego.  It will keep you so very safe and completely average.

In the dreamy moments where does your mind wander?  There is a choice.  Do you prefer to go back to a better time, or do you dare attempt to fashion the unknown future?

Faith used to describe those who dared to imagine a heaven-inspired future.  In an ironic culture, faith has become a synonym for fear.

Faith perspective

The world was created good, then derailed.  There was a moment of bliss, followed by endless generations of inherited blight.  We want the bliss, but the blight is between our teeth.

Moving forward is painful and filled with trepidation.  But do not be deceived: there is no going back. 

(Of course without the struggle none of us would have anything to talk, write or paint about. Chin up. Avoid envy.)

I wish I started RoP incognito, writing as Corduroy T. Brandt, an expatriot, English freegan who blogs from a dumpster behind the Aurora Starbucks.  I should have.  That guy has a terrible mouth and outlandish opinions.  I don’t.  Or at least I am afraid to write them.

I met K.B. Lawrence on twitter a few weeks back.  Presumably she is a female with some kids and a husband.  She writes in five minute increments, and frequently blogs about those 5 minutes.  Other than these few tidbits, she (or maybe she’s a he) is a mystery.  I asked why.  This is what she said:

The Real Me, and Why She Doesn’t Have a Blog

a guest-post by K.B. Lawrence

My mom has never read my blog.  She doesn’t even know I have one.  Neither does my best friend.  My husband knows I have one, but he’s never read it.  (Unless he’s sneeked a peek at the office, and if he has, he’s smart enough to keep it to himself.)

I write on the sly, but not for the reasons people assume when they think about blogging under a pseudonym.  I’m not hiding from you (or my mom) -

I’m hiding from me.

Well…from the other me.

The Messy Truth

There’s a very cautious girl sharing my head, and I need to crawl under her radar to get something honest on the page.

When it’s time to work, writers have to be willing to get messy.  We have to revel in the stuff that’s life and throw it through the bars of the cage.  There’s no room for caution.

If you write about how to strip and stain decks, you need to write about the mistakes you’ve made, the brands you hate, the August afternoon you spent beating a power washer into submission.

If you write about being in the slow-moving line of moms that walked hip-touching-hip through the shallows until one stepped on the body of the boy who’d slipped under, you’d better make your reader smell sunscreen.

Good writing (vibrant, feel-the-splinters, smell-the-sunscreen writing) comes from a gut that has been cut open and slapped onto the page (or screen, whatever, we’re not picky here).

The other girl in my head keeps her guts intact and inside where guts belong.  She follows rules and says nice things to people and tries not to scare the other moms.  She stands in the corner at parties (She definitely hides in the bathroom during the karaoke!), and tells the neighbors that her dog is a mutt but yes he does sort of look like a pit bull (Ceaser loves her anyway, good doggy).  That girl knows how to behave herself.

She writes some boring stuff.

So I got rid of her – at least for the writing.

The Partnership

I, KB, write what I want, when I want. I slip out of that other girl’s cage and smear all kinds of unseemly things on the page (or silly things or stupid things or inappropriate things).  It doesn’t matter because I’M NOT REAL. And that other girl let’s me do it because no one sees it.  At least, no one she knows.

She’s no good at the writing, but she watches, she listens, and she rarely judges (never ever out loud, no sir).  People will tell her anything.  People will forget she’s there and start acting like their really real selves.  Then she takes notes.

So I protect her.  She needs me, because junk piles up inside of people who can’t speak. And I need her, because she stands in the corners, observing.

We all have something we can’t bear to put down on paper.  (Especially where someone might see it. Eek.) It’s too embarrassing, too strange.  But that something – the stuff that makes your stomach flip and clench – is the good stuff.  If you can’t bring yourself to put it out for the world, you could try finding the other you.  The one who doesn’t give a rat’s rear end about what her mother thinks.

Follow K.B. on Twitter.

I didn’t know that traffic on the Indiana Turnpike ever slowed to a stop.  I had the van pointed east in park, sitting, inching, waiting.  My son is twitching and rocking.  We had just passed a sign that said it was a mere two miles until he could pee, and then we reached the long line of stopped vehicles.

Phone rings.  My wife.  Drawing deep breaths, a whine, “Someone’s been in our house.  I just called the cops.”

It hadn’t been the best vacation.  There was a head lice incident.   There was not enough time for the people I wanted to see.  Temperatures were in the nineties; humidity between seventy and ninety percent.  Heat index over one hundred.  There were days of fishing, not much catching.  My three children were subject to only their father for nine whole days.  We had the dogs.  The dogs.

And then we were robbed.  I’ve had my car broken into a few times, never the house.  Never while I was sitting in a forever line of semi trucks in Indiana.

My son is listening to our conversation.  He is exhaling hard, making a hissing sound, the rocking has stopped.  Wife is telling me what has been moved, lots of things.  The only thing missing is my son’s laptop, a used Apple he bought with birthday money and some sweat.  He is staring straight ahead eavesdropping, whispering, “Why my computer?”

It has been a year and a half since we visited Minnesota.  Every year we say, “Next year we’ll take more time.  We’ll spend more time with my dad or with my cousins.  We’ll go to the beach for an extra day.  We’ll fish more.”  Every year we visit we say these things, and we never do them.  Being here alone is even worse; I can only imagine all of the promises I’ll make on my way out of town, back to Cleveland.  All the promises I’ll have broken on this trip.  These are frustrating thoughts and they make me miss Molly.  She was not able to get time off, so I am vacationing alone with the kids and the dogs.  Vacation.  No tweeting, no blogging, minimal phone calls, texts only from my wife and a few local buddies, so in that regard it has been vacation-esque.

Without Molly everything smells different.  The dogs smell like dogs.  The boys smell like dogs.  Iris smells like a boy.  I’m pretty sure I smell great.

This is my first visit to my mom’s new house.  My mom and step-dad bought a great house with a yard set up for business.  The whole thing is a garden.  They sell hostas; over a thousand varieties.  Very impressive.

So I am busy trying to be fun without my favorite person, my better half.  It’s hard.  The trip itself was easier and faster without her and her incessant water-drinking.  “I need you to pull over at the next exit.  I’m not kidding.”  Easier without that.  We’re more efficient.  But efficiency is only so valuable.  She would really like the garden.  She’s never seen it in person, only in pictures.

I am going to go sit in the garden for a minute and think of something fun to do for the rest of the day.  Then I might do it.  Enjoy the photos; sorry about the quality.  I took them with my phone.  (Yeah, my wife is usually responsible for the camera stuff.  Whoops!  I suck again.)

I have at least two posts lined up for the rest of the week, including a guest post for writers with blogs.

Got caught up in reflection this morning. Dave and Bob on Tuesdays, Ugandan Dave intermittently and, of course, the stunning and vulnerable woman with electric green eyes who eats breakfast on the go in my kitchen… where would a guy like me be without people like them?

I do not want to know the answer to that question. I do not have to know. This morning I ate my breakfast alone, but only physically alone. Grateful.