Keyboard

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I have a new keyboard that I need to install. I really like working on ‘puters, but I really like not having to do anything so that I can daydream away the day. I’m taking some writing classes that are kinda fun and kinda interesting. I get freewrites, they and writing at a certain time during the day seem to be the best advice so far. Also, I really need to learn how to type…maybe learning how to type is my next big goal? I type along using about 4-6 fingers and always use my thumb for the space bar. I have adapted, but I still cannot really type and for me to want to be a writer I think I will set my sights on that goal that I first tried to do in summer school between 8th Grade and Freshman year of high school. I passed that class with a C, but elected to not get the credit on my transcript. My high school GPA was around 2.3 etc. but my college GPA was 3.7 with Cum Laude Latin honors. Maybe I liked college more? Maybe It made more sense to me what college entailed and what I could do with it, like go to graduate school, go to Law school, go to hell in a handcart. I have a book on getting a graduate degree and it says in the back that it’s okay to be a writer if all else fails, because not everyone can complete a graduate degree…people like me, because it takes too much sticking to something for me to do that education thingy again. I have class again in just two days and I’m kinda looking forward to it, but not. I want the credential, but it doesn’t take a credential to be a writer, now does it? There is a writing school/set of classes run by James Patterson and I now have a couple of books by him and he can’t write worth a shit if’n you asked me. Taking his classes would be like saying I want to write like shit or it makes no difference if I write like shit. The teachers that I have now have at least written good, passable, decent books that are worth reading and even reading again. James Patterson leaves a lot  to the “better learn some of these skills somewheres else.” The problem with writing is that many talented writers make so little money they can’t feed themselves and many marginal writers are worth millions. Personally, I would much rather be rich than famous. I know that money solves nothing and that fame would cause me to be a clock tower sniper in just a few months. Only time and practice will tell with me, so far I have not written enough to qualify myself as a real writer. Maybe I’m just trying to find my voice? The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life by Julia Cameron is a great writing book!

I know what to do different when I drive down to the University of Washington again in two days. I will leave a half an hour later (1430), get the cheaper rates, stay on the top level of the parking garage, and look for N5 that seems to be much closer to the Savery building than where I parked last week. Maybe I’ll look for a place near our building where I can grab a bite to eat and a drink? I guess I am looking forward to going to class #2. Just 29 classes to go…maybe I will take another look at that James Patterson version, maybe not. Y’now, Bill Shakespeare, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and many other writers never went to college. Maybe with what little education I do have I am actually overqualified to be a writer, maybe I need a little dumbing down and little more humility? I just need enough ego to get me to write and maybe some cool tunes to listen to once in a while? I just figured out what my daily goal is for today: you! 1,000 words!! We will see if I can get there without stalling out with no subject matter at hand.

I like the idea of education and I sometimes like the doing of it as well. I could use some water…and some tunes. I miss my wife, I hope she is okay.

I like doing Genealogy for people. Even if they do not want me to do their family tree for them I want to just to show them I can or it’s possible. Many people do not want their family tree done because they had/have crappy parents. What do you think mine were? I had to find a way to look beyond them to find some redemption in the distant past. I have Native American heritage, but I prefer to call it First Nations like the Canadians do. I have traced back to at least 34 Patriots who served in the American Revolution. I’m not much of a fan of the War of Northern Aggression, maybe it because I had grandfathers on both sides of that war. The interesting thing about my Revolutionary Patriots is that all but two of them fought for Southern Colonies. I love my deep Southern heritage. I remain fascinated with Royal genealogy and know from experience that it takes a whole lot of real work to find Royalty in a family tree. I love the movie King Ralph for this very reason…if he can do it, I can do it! I have to do a few more things before I go to bed tonight like some laundry if I can remember how to do it that will be good.

Just a few more words and I’m home free. Tomorrow I will write at least three times to see which time of the day feels best to me. Only time and practice will tell if I can make it as a writer and maybe some marketing would help too. I’m retired now and jus want to have fun!

BSA @ Hahn

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Written to the scouts of Troop 203 at Hahn Air Base in West Germany.

 

You guys were such fun to be with! My time spent with military brats was the best time of my life. I walked into my first scout meeting as an adult leader and a scout asked me if I knew the Scout Law. Then he asked me if I knew the Scout Oath. Upon hearing my answers, he raced into the meeting room and announced that, “I knew,” and that I wouldn’t be fooled so easily. That particular scout could never recall either the Scout Law or the Scout Oath correctly for as long as I knew him. I have known the Scout Law and Scout Oath since I was ten and it’s more important to me now than it ever has been. Scouting makes great citizens and I enjoyed every minute I ever spent in Scouting. I have always wondered what became of each and every one of you guys. The real reason I left my position as Scoutmaster had nothing to do with you guys. It was all about me. My wife baked a cake for my birthday and she served it outside of our home near Altlay, West Germany. There it was right in front of me, a cake, and I panicked, I didn’t know what to say or do, a sort of scary flat effect that signified the onset of Manic Depression in my life. I was 23 and didn’t know what had just happened. It scared the hell out of my first wife and she soon left me. It scared me as well so I first tried living with my new-found filter of anxiety and fear without any real success. Over the years I got worse and thought I was really amazing when I was actually hurting everybody I met. I got to the point where I could smell things that weren’t there and hear things that weren’t there before I put my pride in my pocket and went for professional help. The EAP (Employee Assistance Program) counselor saw me for one hour. He wrote furiously almost every word that came out of my mouth. He then referred me to a set of counselors that might be able to help me. I chose the one who could figure out my problem in five sessions or less. Upon meeting the new psychologist, he asked me what I thought my problem was, I told him that I had Bipolar I. On our fourth meeting I asked him if he was going to kick me loose and what he thought was really wrong with me. Yes, he said, and he said that I had Bipolar I. He also referred me to the med-nurse who immediately put me on Depakote. I felt amazingly happy for three days and then I started felling like I needed a career change, so I thought about moving down to California and offering to run the Manson gang for a while. I stopped taking meds the next day. Decades of counseling followed and being fitted up with Psych meds became my hobby. I have been saddled with a debilitating psychological problem that grows worse. In no way did I ever want to stop doing Scouting, but I was given a disease that I have never handled correctly or well. I miss you guys and will always wonder what happened to you.

 

 

Memoir

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I have a Memoir class in like eight days and I don’t even know if I have a voice still. I had a voice at one time and now it’s in hibernation or something. The teacher isn’t letting me know what books to buy or how to prepare in any way so I guess it’s gonna be a writing class and not so much a book work class. The teacher’s name in Theo Pauline Nestor and I have read her two books as well as Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. I read ‘Tis by Frank McCourt too cuz it kinda extends the story from the Angela’s Ashes. I also bought the book Working it Out: 23 Women Writers, Artists, Scientists, and Scholars Talk About Their Lives and Work which includes a piece about/by Virginia Valian whom Theo Nestor spend quite a bit of time discussing as to her work practice or how one gets work done. I have no idea how this class is going to work. I have a memory stick about half full with my Writing folder, Genealogy folder, class websites, bank, and blog in it. Just in case, cuz I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do. The teacher of my next class is in contact with me, his class has to do with writing Fiction. I have two Memoir classes and two Fiction classes to get through. The list of Actual writers I have actually met is growing, I will add one next week and another one about five weeks later. So far I have met Norman Mailer, Bill Kenower, Terry Persun, and various members of the Skagit Valley Writers League, of which I am also a member. I am setting myself up to be a writer and the only thing I seem to be missing is the writing so my goal is to write about 1,000 words per day even after the classes start. My therapist likes my barrels, netting, and really long sticks story start maybe because I added some stuff to the story while I was talking to him…y’know like what a writer does when their in the zone and writing. Only time and practice will tell as to my being a real writer. I had business cards made up with a classic typewriter as the background. I started a science fiction by Terry Persun and it’s pretty enjoyable. The beginning takes place in a dystopian world so I had to look that up so that a word I now use has some meaning. The main reason I am taking a set of classes from the University of Washington is so that I can be an alumni of a school that has sports teams I can route for, oh, and I guess, so that I can learn to write better. I think that once I get down there and get over the initial whatever it is I will do fine. I did vow that if I ever did anymore schooling I would only do it where there was a face to face part, no online for me from here on out. If I have a genre that I really like it has to be Espionage. I like Espionage because I grew up watching the Vietnam War on TV and I served in the United States Air Force in Europe during the Cold War. Ciao!

A quick 500 words.

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No whining? So I have to write without whining? How does that even work? I’m supposed to have this gift rattling around inside of me, but I don’t know how to get the muse to show up at my door. As I get rolling I need to eradicate the BE verb and use action verbs that can stand on their own. The rain fell softly on the tin roof. Wow is that dull. I have lived a life that I do not realize its potential. If I operate on the premise that I am afraid then at least I have somewhere to start from. I am afraid of becoming famous. That much I know. I am no longer afraid of drinking simply because I have had one beer. I am still afraid of visiting a dentist for any reason. I would much rather read a good book than just about anything else. I need to be loved, but I do not really believe that to be true. I don’t seem old enough to be old, but I remember being young s if it were yesterday. I must be in the continuum of middle age. Any day now my pension will kick in safe as houses. Writing is my new gig and I intend to make the most of it. If I can just write one book I will be happy, win a prize or two and make some money…great. Accept phone calls? No way. I have no real need for vanity apart from having a healthy ego. A certain amount of wealth would do very nicely. I remember riding my old red Schwinn bicycle for whole days without using my hands. I can even remember being able to smell Food, trees, breakfast. Now I can breath, but not smell. I would like to be deaf, I have even asked God to strike me deaf, maybe just so I can smell again. Breakfast would be very nice to smell. I used to Spelunk a bit when I was young and doing something other than reading. I have rappelled and enjoyed that very much. I even climbed Der Zugspitze in West Germany, well it was West Germany at the time. I am a Cold War Veteran. I like that. I spend quite a bit of time thinking about Europe, the history of it and the modern dichotomy that espionage makes use of. I visited castles and drove on Der Autobahn. I was also a Scoutmaster in the Boy Scouts of America and was voted into the Order of the Arrow as an adult. The OA is Scouting version of the National Honor Society. I consider it my highest honor. When I mas outprossesing from Hahn Air Base the Education advisor took several looks at my transcript and asked my why I have joined the military as an Enlisted person I had no real answer for her. I finally finished my BA in 2014 majoring in Liberal Arts because I wanted to major in too many things over the years.

Try Again

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Only me, that is what it takes to be a writer. I am the one that can make or break his new life of mine. What I can come up with will be nice to see because I cannot see anything in my mind’s eye when I am typing this apart from the occasional looking up to make sure this is all getting printed off/typed up. I am a big fan o the books by Anne Lammot, Natalie Goldberg, Stephen King, Eudora Welty, Annie Dillard, etc. That’s writing books. Authors that I like, collect, read, and have met include Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway, John Ronald Ruel Tolkien, John Steinbeck, Annie Dillard, and William Faulkner. I went through grade school, junior high, and high school without writing one single paper or book report. If you add up all of the papers that I wrote for college it might be over fifty pages, but I doubt it. I simply haven’t written enough and I sure haven’t read enough to even think about becoming a serious writer.

I hope to change all of this very soon when I embark on taking these several courses @ UW. I just went to a four hour class on Science Fiction & Fantasy and on the writing business. I will try to write a thousand or more words every day and see if that gets me up and running again. Only time, and a bunch of writing will tell what I am really made of.

Genealogy

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I have worked long and hard on my family tree. My mom started all of this work back in the 1970’s and gave me copies of what she was able to discover in the early Eighties, but was unable to find a Patriot that we descended from or anything except our “immigrant ancestor” which she said was John Lewis who gave five sons to the American Revolution. We descend from one of his daughters. Over the many years since I have worked on and repaired what she had found and I have even thrown it all out an started again many times. I have two versions of my family tree saved on Ancestry, an almost anything goes version with much of what I have learned and a strict version with only what I can find that record after record supports. I have been doing genealogy for so long that it bores me even to talk about it anymore.

I have traced back to at least 34 Patriots who served in the American Revolution, more on my dad’s side than on my mom’s side, and I have joined the Sons of the American Revolution I intend to maintain that membership for as long as I live. We are in the process of proving a Patriot for my wife, Annie, so that she can join the Daughters of the American Revolution. I have even traced back to the kings and queens of Europe.

I have done dozens of family trees for people. I have traced people back to the Revolution, the Mayflower, Native Americans, and Royalty.

Another 15 minutes

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I start off with a Memoir class in a couple of weeks. I have to follow instructions and write about my past, my past, of a person that I don’t even want to know, me. I really am looking forward to these classes, I just wish I could do them online,but after I graduated from college I said that if I ever do anymore schooling I would do it in person…so we shall see. y problem is that I do not like people and don’t really want to have anything to do with them. What’s next now that I’m retired? I do not know. I just want to get on a motorcycle and ride because that’s all that makes sense to me now that I am faced with the rest of my life. Theo Nestor talks about 26 minute exercises in her book and on her blog. I guess I will look at that before I write again…this afternoon. The best leadership I have ever witnessed was in Scouting followed by the United States Air Force. I saw a company destroy itself over the 0 years that I worked there and I will be very surprised if I have a pension for very long. I am going to give my life, what’s left of it, the best shot I can, but I don’t know what to do from day to day. Holy Catfish I want to go 100 plus on a bike and not give 2 fucks what happens to me. Is that so wrong? I hope and pray that I can stand to be with people for 3 hours out of every week for the next several months. Mouths! That’s what I don’t like about people. Well I have one too so I ill have to learn to live and let live. Just a few minutes to go and I get to do something else! What, I don’t know. I miss many of the people that I have worked with over the years, but I am done with blue collar work for the rest of my life. If I can’t make it on brains then I do not make it. Maybe a little training in the writing arts is what I need. Ciao

Kings

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This is just a quick list of my Royal great-grandparents.

English: Henry VIII, Henry VII, Edward IV, Edward III, Edward II, Edward I, Henry III, John, Henry II, Henry I, Matilda, Stephen, William the Conqueror, Harold II, Edmund II Ironside, Aethelred II the Unready, Edgar the Peaceful, Edmund I the Magnificent, Edward I the Elder, Alfred the Great, Aethelred I, Aethelwulf, Egbert.

Scottish: James I, Robert III, Robert II, Robert the Bruce, Alexander II, William I the Lion, David I the Saint, Donald III Bane, Malcolm III Canmore, Duncan I the Gracious, Malcolm II, Kenneth II, Malcolm I, Donald II Dasachtach, Constantine I, Kenneth MacAlpin.