Tag Archives: Personal Writing

Fearless or Embarrassing?

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Once, I was fearless. There was a time when I would just put words or art or actions out there and just let them be what they would be. I had an art instructor tell me once as she held up an old painting of mine, “I liked this painter better. You didn’t have fear. Look at these bold colors…”

It’s not easy to get past that. It seems to be getting worse as I get older, not better. Yes, I’ve moved toward positions of greater responsibility in my day job and in my community activities. Yes, people are starting to look at me and say things like, “Oh, yeah… I thought you looked familiar.” It’s almost like I’m right at the edge of…

That’s just it. The edge of what exactly?

I had the opportunity to do yet another thing that was outside my comfort zone yesterday. I took the chance and I think things turned out well. I have told people in a quasi anonymous way that I am an old school role player but I have not given that claim much agency lately. Well, I busted out the books and dusted off some old notes and for the first time in many years ran a D&D game yesterday. It was a slow starter. It was a very small group (made even smaller by the fact that one of the invited came down sick). Two of the players had never played before, nor had they had any real exposure to the game outside of what showed up on Community or Big Bang Theory. I’ll admit – this was way outside my comfort zone. I’m at a loss to figure out why, but I was not at all confident – and that’s just silly. I’ve been playing longer than either of the new players has been alive. Maybe that was it? Maybe all this discomfort lately is my stupid, weird version of a mid-life crisis? At least I won’t be trying to buy a Porsche I guess.

I fumbled, but didn’t roll a 1, so we made it through the game. I think I could have done some things better or some things differently but nobody ran screaming… well at least not from the living room. Their characters on the other hand, let’s just say it was refreshing to get the reactions I did. Hopefully we’ll get to do it again.

As for me – I think doing something and not totally failing has added to my willingness to step out and do stuff again. Perhaps I’ll be more proactive and get things done. It’s worth a shot – even if I do critical fumble, at least I’m doing the stuff I think is fun.

Fail Big

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I’m quite taken with something a friend of mine has said before… you can’t fail big if you don’t plan big.

There are a lot of times I find myself worried about what others will think of my written work. I spend more time than I should looking at the words I want to post here on my own site just to be certain of how they sound when read and if they convey what I actually mean.

I read two reviews today that make me wonder if I’m (once again) over thinking things. The movie “Lucy” opened this past weekend. The preview looked really interesting. The first tally from the box office I heard was something in the line of 44 million dollars. The reviewers said things like,

“First this is embarrassingly dumb, and then it just gets boring”.

or

“…Lucy is an aggressively dumb movie masquerading as a thoughtful one…”

I am actually a fan of the director and like the look of the preview – so despite reviews like this I will still see the film.

As for personal observations from this? I hope I 44 million dollars “fail” sometime in the near future..

Personal Correspondence

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You will be shocked, stunned and amazed to hear that I am of two minds on something. It happens so often these days I wonder if I’ve actually got some kind of split personality.

I was thinking this evening about personal letters and other correspondence that has traditionally been part of historian’s research into authors (and others). How will that sort of thing be handled for an author in this digital age? There won’t be a stack of e-mails sitting in a dusty box in the back corner of the attic. Well, the box might be there but the ability to get anything from it will be a different matter entirely.

How will this be handled? I don’t have a good answer for that. If you’ve got any thoughts or theories I’d be interested in hearing them.

What brought this up was a lengthy e-mail I had with two of the people closest to me in my life. It seems horribly narcissistic to think anybody beyond those two will every care at all about what I wrote “before” or “during” any period of my life but I couldn’t help the thought bursting forward. I spent a few hundred words discussing my thoughts on failure and how it changes things in somebody’s life. I have failed spectacularly in my life and learned quite a lot from it. I’m attempting to pass a certain amount of that wisdom along to others to help them avoid the “spectacular” portion of the failure. Regular fail should do just fine, hold the Epic thank you very much.

Here’s the part where I’m of two minds – do I share these words (edited) or do I keep them to myself?