About Me
I marvelled at the fact that she was always able to anticipate where I might go wrong; "Now you might be tempted to do it this way, but don't because that will give you this result and that's not what you want. Instead, you're going to want to do this." I once commented to her that she must have been the best student when she was in school because she was so good at explaining things.
She said "Actually, I was one of the worst students, and that's why I'm able to teach math the way I do; because I made every possible mistake myself. I know where my students might stumble because they're the same places I stumbled."
I've struggled greatly with every possible facet of living life; I never fit in with my peers at school, and I grew up in an abusive household. I started reading self-help books when I was 11 years old because I wanted to make sense of things, and I wanted to understand why the people around me were doing the things they did.
I'm 42 now, and I've made many, many, mistakes since then, but I've always made a point to learn along the way. In each instance, I've picked up books, taken personal-development courses, and gone to therapy to understand precisely why I fucked up, and what I should do in the future to prevent said fuck-up from reoccurring. It's that fact - my ability to honestly analyze my own mistakes - that makes me uniquely qualified to talk about the living of life in the way I do.
After a lifetime of either falling on my ass, or making an ass of myself, I have a solid foundation of fuck-ups that now allow me to look at any situation, and to understand it in such a way that I can explain it - a.k.a. to "verbalize the human experience."
I have fallen so very many times.
But - thank GOD - I've always managed somehow to get back up.
This website and my writing is about sharing what I understand to be true about living life. I’m passionate about verbalizing the human experience in a way that allows for the easy application of complex ideas, because we're all in this together.
I do want to make it abundantly clear however that I'm not here with the intention to convince anybody of anything; I have no skin in the game with regards to changing anybody's mind about the way they think or live. I'm here for me; because I need to trust myself to show up and do the work I've been called to do for a lifetime, but have been running away from for a long time.
I need to write and express myself because it's the only way I know to honour my potential.
If you want to come along for the ride, fine. If you don't, also fine.
Either way, I wish you a pleasant journey. :)
PS - I swear and I pray (to a non-denominational God) because that's what helps me soften the jagged edges of life. My explanation for both are below.
You must tell the truth if your dialogue is to have resonance and realism… If you substitute “Oh sugar!” for “Oh shit!” because you’re thinking about the Legion of Decency, you are breaking the unspoken contract that exists between writer and reader – your promise to express the truth of how people act and talk...
The point is to let each character speak freely, without regard to what the Legion of Decency or the Christian Ladies Reading Circle may approve of. To do otherwise would be cowardly as well as dishonest, and believe me, writing...in America as we enter the twenty-first century is no job for intellectual cowards.
Look, I've sat across from thousands and thousands of people listening to the hardest things you can imagine, and the two things that everyone has in common when they're talking about those things are cussin' and prayin'.
Look, I've sat across from thousands and thousands of people listening to the hardest things you can imagine, and the two things that everyone has in common when they're talking about those things are cussin' and prayin'.
If you don't want me to cuss, and you don't want me to pray, ask somebody else. Because what I'm not going to do is get up and bullshit you.
Comments
Post a Comment