Category: Writing

Reset button

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I have been retired, for the most part, for 15 months. I still do about 10 hours weekly of clerical work for the last day job. Actually, I never had a “day job”; pretty much every job I ever had required working nights and/or weekends. And come to think of it, I haven’t worked a regular 40-hour week in 10 years.

When my position was eliminated (“Nothing personal, it’s a financial decision”), it was my full intention to work for myself from that moment on. I declared myself a full-time author and started an online “newspaper” for the local news desert southeast of my home. After four months a paper on the other side of the bay decided to recruit me for their open editor’s job, and they were so eager to fill the position that they agreed to let me work 28 hours a week so that I could maintain my online newspaper on the side.

Truth be told, my side hustles never brought in enough revenue to pay the bills. Social Security and the 28-hour job kept the lights on. But I really enjoyed the four-ish years that the online news site survived. I was filling a void and making my own way.

I was also stalling. If I really wanted to be a full-time author when I grew up, taking on two news-gathering jobs was an excuse not to grow up. 

I retired 50 years to the day after I started my first full-time job. For these past 15 months, technically, I have been what I wanted to be when I grew up: A full-time author, with a part-time clerical job to help with groceries. Funny thing about growing up: It seems I don’t wanna.

Monday always has been a good day for a reset, and I write this Sunday evening with my finger poised over that button. Will this be the week that I finally start being a full-time author in practice as well as in theory? The fact that I wrote it as a question, not as a declaration, is telling.

I know me. And if you’ve followed this blog, you know me, too. I’ve made declarations before. The first time I declared I was going to become a full-time author, the goal was my birthday in March 1990. I’m currently two-thirds through a novel that I once declared I would publish by the end of 2021. And so I’m going to leave it as a question and not a declaration like, “Yes! From this day forward I am a full-time author!”

But keep an eye on me for me, please. Feel free to ask how my new book or next album is coming, as politely or as rudely as you wish. You don’t even have to be interested in reading or listening to them; just receiving the question will motivate me. At least I hope it does.

Being accountable to someone is a good motivation. I’m planning to have a spaghetti dinner at Mary’s house this afternoon, and my goal is to read her what I’ve written today. That seems to be a good way to reset my brain and motivate me; we’ll see how that works.

If pressing the reset button does work, and the good Lord willing, from this day forward I will be an actual full-time author. The thought both excites and frightens me.

Another Players triumph

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I wish we had gone to see “Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash” a little earlier, so I could shout from the rooftops that you should see this show, because by the time this post appears there will only be two performances left, and at least one of them was already sold out when I bought our tickets for Thursday night’s performance. The good news is that means they didn’t need my help to spread the word about how excellent this show is.

I have always loved coming to Peninsula Players, the professional summer troupe that stages five shows every season along the shores of Green Bay just south of Fish Creek. I consider it the premier event in a county that is full of amazing productions every summer. This was the first time Mary and I went there together, and it just may be the best show I’ve ever seen at the Theatre in the Garden.

Five actor/musicians — Joe Casey, Aja Alcazar, Trevor Lindley Craft, James David Larson, and Paul Wyatt — tell the story of the Man in Black through his songs, seamlessly trading instruments and roles in a dazzling display of fivefold virtuosity. I wish I could see it again. In the future when we meet someone else who caught a performance, we will exchange a smile and a knowing glance that we experienced something special.

Highlights: In “Daddy Sang Bass” the performers took turns playing the instruments and singing parts, each showing their prowess on guitar, bass, mandolin and banjo without dropping a note anywhere.

I got goosebumps during “Delia’s Gone,” a solo performance with Larson alone in the spotlight wrenching every bit of pathos and humor from one of Cash’s creepiest songs, and with Alcazar’s mournful wail in “Sweet Bye and Bye,” the song that marked the death of Cash’s 14-year-old brother. As the only woman in the cast, she had to represent Cash’s mother, first wife, and second wife June Carter through the course of the evening, and she pulls it off admirably.

The players unveil “Moon Over Buffalo” on Wednesday, playing through Sept. 6, and then “Murder Girl” Sept. 9 through Oct. 18. Find the details at peninsulaplayers.com.

Another roundish number

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It’s funny, after you get into four-digit numbers, a hundred here or there doesn’t have the same impact. This is Day 2,200 of my 92-day challenge, the promise to myself back in 2020 that I would post something on this blog every day for at least three months. Seventy-two months is more than three.

I hit 2,100 consecutive daily posts on May 1, and while I usually check in when I reach a post that has two zeroes at the end, it just doesn’t feel as impressive as those posts with three zeroes, which only arrive every three years or so.

But this has been a pretty momentous 100 days. 

I started reading again. Through the end of April, I had only read five books all year. That’s an abysmal number. I had been averaging more than a book a week for close to a decade before I tailed off and read only 31 books in 2025, but I was on track to finish 2026 with less than half of that sad number.

A guy who wants to write has to read. If you want your words to sing, you have to see how other conductors handle the orchestra. I knew one of my problems was that I had nearly stopped reading. And so I read five books in May, and 10 books in June, and five more in July. That felt better.

And maybe it showed and maybe it didn’t, but it felt like my writing got better as a result. After the anniversary of my last book release came and went, I started working harder on getting my next collection organized. I gave it a name — What I Came to Say — and stepped up my daily writing habit.

But I still was having trouble jumpstarting the daily writing habit I really wanted to practice — the storytelling. That breakthrough came this past week, and I wrote about that just a couple of days ago. Who would have thought the secret to writing stories was to stop talking about writing and just. start. writing? (Well, I think I reached that conclusion a long time ago, but saying and doing have always been two different things, haven’t they?)

If I ride the momentum from these past 100 days, then post number 2,300 should find us in the midst of all sorts of mischief and announcements and pronouncements, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise. (And as anyone who has listened to my latest album knows, it doesn’t even matter if the creek rises or not.)

I really do hope to enjoy the rest of my life as a prolific and productive artist — how many good books can a guy put out starting at age 73? It’s a wonderful question to explore.