Nineteen Days Left: The Return of the Storyteller

 



July 7,2026

The re-awakening…

 

Whenever someone asks me what my greatest gift was, I would tell them it was my creativity.  It always has been.  Since I was a boy and dreamed of being Luke Skywalker, I have dreamed up worlds.  I am good at ideas.  I am good at world building in my head.  What I have never been so great at is putting it to paper.

 

Since moving back to Indiana, all I have been able to do was blog about bike rides and Weight Watchers.  These aren’t bad things; I rather like doing both.  However, creativity and passion have been missing.  There were times I wondered if this was because I didn’t pursue my dream upon moving home.  Instead, I took another corporate job.  One that was easy until it wasn’t.  One that was worth it, until it wasn’t.  For almost three years I struggled to spin tales.  I struggled to create.  I struggled.  I had pretty much given up on ever writing the great American novel.  Then, then I resigned…

 

Last Sunday I sat down at my personal laptop and opened Book I to my novel and sent it to a friend, I didn’t expect her to read it, I just sent it to get it out there.  Then I opened book II and stared at the page.  I think it has been six or seven years since I put any work into this.  I asked Gemini a question.  The google A.I.  Its answer excited me.  I went to my novel Book II where I had been stuck for a long time and I started typing.  As I typed, I remembered long ago friends that I had lost touch with, I stopped and pinged them.  Then I turned back to my novel and kept typing.  I wrote two thousand words last Sunday and I was excited.

 

I had no intention to work on the novel on Monday.  However, when I finished all my work, and had time.  Happens when you are a short-timer, I guess.  Nineteen days left, not that I am counting them down or anything. 

 

Tuesday produced more words, and I was hot.  Then Wednesday and Thursday even more.  By the time I had gotten to Friday I was over 14,000 words for the week.  To say I was hot was an understatement.  On Friday, my day off I eclipsed 18,000 words.  Saturday, I added to the total. 

Sunday, when I was on my ride, it happened.  Something that had not happened to me in a long time.  I created when I was out on the bike. Not a blog, but a chapter.  From start to finish I dreamed as I worked out.  This was the ultimate form of meditation for me.  It had been so long.  I came up with a line that I love.  “She realized her hand was intertwined with his, their fingers locked together.  In that touch lived the comfort of a long-forgotten past, tangled with the hostility of the present.  The hostility made her want to pull away, but the past-the obdurate past-only tightened its grip.  However, when their eyes met, the present finally overpowered the obdurate past.”  Not bad for a guy on his bike riding a circle around Germanica Bank. 

 

Part of the reason for resigning was to feel free.  I feel free and my imagination, my gift, is flowing. I am going to finish this book.  Not for glory, or money, or to be a best seller, just for me.  To prove to myself that I can do anything I want to do, anything I put my mind to do.  This re-awakening is key.  It is critical.  It is what I was looking for.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Under 300—More Than Just a Number

Image
  Saturday May 2, 2026: It was probably the most nerve-racking drive to a WW meeting I’ve ever had. I’ve made that trip in the late ’80s, again in the ’90s, the 2000s, the 2010s—and now the 2020s—but I don’t think I’ve ever felt nervous.  I was not nervous when I went in August of last year for the first time in a long time, I said I was going and I went.   I kept telling myself that it didn't matter, it was just a number.  I kept telling myself that my self worth wouldn't change regardless of the out come.  It didn't and it hasn't.  However, even as I told myself it was just a number on a scale and weight was a fickle thing that can hinge of so many things besides just what you eat.  We are talking sleep, mood, what you drink, when you drank it, restroom breaks and regularity, it all goes into the end result.  There was a nervous tension in my car and no matter how much I tried to lose myself in the podcast I was playing, my mind was thinkin...
Read more

Resignation

Image
  Lot more of this in my future! Resignation You don’t just leave behind a job when you resign. It’s so much more than that. It’s the smile you would kill to get every day. It’s that friend you can talk to for hours at a time and never get sick of. It’s the dude who pumps you up and makes you feel like you are incredible. It’s not just the bad but the good you walk away from. If you listened to me, you’ve heard in my voice for a long time that I’ve been unhappy at work. I tried to stick it out. I tried to “make” it work. I tried to make it better. At the end of the day, the joy was gone. It was harder and harder to get up on time and prep for meetings. It was harder and harder to listen to people and take them seriously. Until one Friday when you’re so close to the end of your rope it all blows up and you are the asshole. It’s at this point I take my leave. I’m tired of looking for the silver lining. I’m tired of trying to like my job. I’m tired of staying for those people th...
Read more