Now I’m adrift— sitting workless in a pathetic sea of Facebook and cheesy Yahoo news articles. Nothing’s coming in! I’m heavy loaded and slack-sailed somewhere between Tahiti and merry England. My career is walking the plank. O’ captain, my captain! Our fearful trip is done! Stupid metaphors and other writers stuff are all I have! I’m going crazy. Yes, I’m going crazy. This home office keeps getting smaller. Dance, you mutinous cat!

But then, my panic was eased with the realization of all the marvelous stuff I’ve accomplished during this TEMPORARY slow period. For instance, I’m reading a great book on how to run a marathon, which, in part, accounts for an arm load of extra hours pondering how I’ll never actually run a marathon. And I’m learning a foreign language online for the 5,032nd time. And last, but surely not least, I’m memorizing the names of all the world’s leaders. “Manmohan Singh.” Rhymes with Sting—Roxanne!

Please God…send work!

1. Always have at least three, 5-inch stacks of folders on your desk.
2. Subscribe to just enough email updates to make your phone ding every three minutes (at least.) Look at your phone and roll your eyes after every 5th ding.
3. Use your Bill Clinton thumbs-up smile to agree to everything everybody says. Then follow up privately (in email) with a polite “No-can-do.”
4. Pull a “Zuckerberg” and act tired, callous and rudely distant when people ramble on in meetings. Supervisors will think you’re awkwardly brilliant! (This works best in a hoody GAP sweatshirt)
5. Absolutely never come in before 10 a.m. Supervisors never remember the early ones, they only give that special “nod” to those still there after five o’clock.
6. Send a few random emails when you’re on vacation. Make sure the right people see it and that there’s no “action” required. Send right around happy hour, even though you’re drunk, naked and dancing around the condo with a batch of bananas on your head.
7. Walk quickly up the hall with one of three folders labeled (in bright red letters) “Important,” “Really Important,” and “Holy Shit!” Intermix throughout the day.
8. Always have a new motivational book on your desk (from the library, don’t pay for them). Put lots of sticky notes in the pages (multiple colors work best.)
9. If a meeting starts late, don’t just sit there, get up and walk out with your best “Don’t waste my time” face. This is the perfect time to catch up on Facebook before a long meeting.
10. Never have pictures of your family or friends in your office, only pictures of sailing vessels. This shows that you’re completely insensitive to the needs of your family and quite capable of amassing a ton of debt.

Okay, that should do it. Now go out there and succeed beyond your wildest dreams!

I haven’t written in this blog since summer of last year because it’s been a period of change. By mid-summer I knew the publishing dream couldn’t keep on keeping on, not without losing it all. I had to change everything–start new. I can honestly say I had no idea where to start. I had always said–usually in glib beer-induced banter–that I would do anything I had to do to pay the bills, even if that meant scrubbing floors. The universe heard me. For the last six months been working for a great company called Type-A Cleaning. I cleaned houses in the morning and had the afternoon and evenings to write. I have to say it was a tough journey for me…but one that I’m amazingly thankful for. It bought me some time to re-evaluate my life and career. And most importantly, I saw things from a place that I’ve never really been to…the place of service, pure humble service. Bob Dylan sang that we all have to serve somebody and he’s right. Cleaning centered me, albiet at times it humiliated me, but we did a good job. We did a great job.

So now I know that writing is something I really want to do and I’m heading there. Some solid business is starting to come in. With the help of some great friends like Kendall Ludwig from CurleyRed Design and my business coach, Susan katz, I’ve been able to build up a business that might actually take off. I also had the friendship and support of my Type-A employer, Michelle Spiziri and of course, Gwen, who put up with my endless woeful sighs of “What’s next?” I also had old friends like Christine Ambrose who inspired me with her own writing. I have to mention that wine and Shiner beer helped a lot too! Thank you, Texas!

So here’s the deal… the Zouck website and Facebook page will be shut off at some point in the coming months. I have a new blog–for those who care to follow–on my online writing portfolio The new blog will be aimed to writers, so no more of the rambling, freestyle, borderline self-indulgent rants that marked “Pure Stream.” I have some solid clients already and for the first time in a year, there’s some hope that I’ll make this work.

So that’s it. Thank you all for following my exploits up to this point. Here’s a salute to new chapters in life. Raise your Shiner and as Denzel Washington said before the attack on Fork Wagner…”Let the 54th get into it!”

I think that’s what’s going on today. We’re all walking around with negative words spinning in our heads, most from the news and politics. Other words come from people who just want to burn our arms with their verbal cigars, like they have the answer and it’s all someone else’s fault.

So we run for cover because a hard rain’s a-gonna fall. But a hard rain doesn’t have to be bad. It can cleanse us…cool us off, make us laugh. Being soaking wet can be fun. We see each other as vulnerable. We realize that rain falls on all of us, whether we’re getting poorer or getting richer.

I’m pretty damn thankful for the friends I’ve made over the past year…when the rain kept falling like it would never, ever end. Rain can allow us to make a lot of new friends, if we just change the color of the words in our heads.

When I was a kid my grandfather told me stories. He told me about a snake that rolled itself up into a hoop and chased him across a meadow. The image sticks in my head—a black, slimy hoop with snaky green eyes. And when he heard a fire truck, he’d say, “Here comes the fire diddy!” I never asked what that meant and I never cared. I just loved the excitement in his eyes. And he told me of this German guy named Old Slagenwiess who smashed open a shed door with an ax when the Confederates were charging. The Rebs had stored their ammo there. Old Slagenweiss carried that ax all the way home from Shiloh or Gettysburg or wherever. He carried that ax to his grave.

The point of all this is that I didn’t have to tell you much about my grandfather other than those stories. I didn’t need to say he was skinny, had horned-rimmed glasses, blue eyes and hair parted down the middle. You probably came up with your own picture. I knew him as imaginative. A bit of an exaggerator. He was playful and loved silly words, especially those that would light up a child’s eyes. And most of all, he understood that simple stories are actually very big stories. Fifty men may have died so that Old Slagenweiss could carry his ax around. They died and Slagenweiss became bigger than life—maybe as big as the whole universe.

Then recently I read Ray Bradbury’s “Zen in the art of Writing” and I realized – finally – that I wasn’t that odd after all. Writers are a special group. We don’t give up the child, ever. In fact, as Bradbury so perfectly describes it, we should nurture every one of those deeply introspective and perceived oddities of our childhood and weave them into our own brand of writing.  Every misfit experience we had becomes the motivation of characters. When I was finally persuaded to shoot that bird, leaving my cherished plastic soldiers behind, I can capture the dread of seeing that falling bird and throwing my brother’s Daisy Winchester down, running back to my room—that character could become the twisted mind of a killer. And that love-struck little boy in baggy, multi-zippered pants who loved Rhonda Jackson in 7th grade could become the character of a suicidal rock star.

So my message here for aspiring writers (c/o the late, great Mr. Bradbury) is to never abandon that awkward little boy or girl—that long-ago, picked upon, skinny, shaggy-headed little you.  She or he could be the best thing that ever happened to your career.

Frederick Douglass as a young man

This 4th of July has me thinking of equality in this country. It’s a great country. You work hard and it gives back. The Irish worked for it and probably earned their place scaling up a bloody hill at Fredericksburg in 1862. The Chinese worked it building railroads. The Germans with farms and brewing. The Italians opened restaurants and checked their new stature with a bit of organized muscle. Even the Native Americans found their place; a few hundred thousand acres of arid land just ten paces from the barrel of a U.S. Cavalry carbine.

But what of a woman or man from Africa? Aside from building a solid portion of our colonial infrastructure, we didn’t give them a lot of opportunities to find their place. In fact, we made it damn near impossible for about 100 years after Emancipation. So just as Frederick Douglass wrote: “What is the Fourth of July to the Slave,” I also wonder what this celebration really means for all of us, new immigrants included.

The African could only give their hopes and a whole lot of patience when the Day of Jubilee sent them walking with a shirt tied to the end of a stick. Considering what they were up against, their experience trumps even that of the glorious Irish Brigade. They pulled together with the likes of Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Andrew Young and now a president who’s looking up at the  rocket’s glare right along with the rest of us.

So this week I promised myself that any time I lean towards judgment of another culture’s placement in this great mix, I remind myself that everyone’s earning it, and we all have to KEEP earning it…

So on that note! I’d like to use this podium to say that if  you buy a copy of “Frederick Douglass, My Life as a Slave” from the Zouck website at any point during 4th of July week, we’ll give 100% of proceeds to the Frederick Douglass-Issac Myers Museum down in Baltimore.

So go on out and enjoy the potato salad and jello molds…and if you’re drinking beer, remember that Pabst gives the most to the arts! Plus, it has a red, white and blue can!

NOTE: Picture of Frederick Douglass courtesy of Chloe Probst who did the inside cover illustration of the Zouck edition

Before I start, please forgive this post. It may be kind of scattered and grumpy. It’s another 98 degree, record-breaking day and GW Zouck Publishing has no air conditioning. That’s the way ol’ Mr. Zouck would have liked it, I suppose…work that’s simple, sweaty and sacrificial.

Anyway, here’s what’s in my head this morning.  I’m starting to think we have to return to basics when it comes to expectations. I mean, look what’s going on in the world. The Arab Spring of great expectations is in lift-off mode.  China and India are all about super high expectations. But for the US and Great Britain , we’ve been cranking the expectation meter nonstop since the dawn of the industrial revolution and what do we really have?  Do we have happiness? We sit in traffic jams and wonder how we can maintain a standard of living based on having lots of stuff while also having time—any time—within a 60-hour corporate week to play with that stuff.

Is that what happens when rising expectation hits a pinnacle mark in society? We expect that we can all live like the rich at reasonably affordable prices?  It does when creativity and culture have been devalued and replaced with diversionary meaningless fluff. Post-industrial companies, looking at the ominous statistics of this rising American and English underclass have three choices. They can lower costs of products under the guise of it being good for us (which actually translates to more lay-offs and lessened wages). They can screw the 25% and keep selling to the other 75% at profits that unsure investors a  partially filthy-rich retirement. Or they can reconsider their profit allocation and reinvest in supporting our culture, our cities, and the worker. To me, it looks like our corporate leaders have chosen the greedy, short-sighted goal of supporting only options one and two.

So what does this mean for us…the grumpy Yanks and Brits who have been hoodwinked  into thinking more of nothing is better?  It may mean that the underpaid 25% of us have to start valuing more soulful pleasures.  We have to take back our culture and our creativity.  We can value playing and listening to music that we create. Growing our own food and restoring or building a house that’s just big enough. I’m hopeful that as corporate greed underpays us down to where everything glitzy is beyond our reach, that we’ll retaliate and force a more egalitarian definition of glitz; one that will make the other 75% actually envious. Maybe we can appreciate glitz with our hands wrapped around a cool glass of sweet tea in the park on a Sunday… and not from the steering wheel of a Cadillac Escalade.

But…until that sublime, gentle day in the park, I’m thinking this song still explains the mood of our post-industrial working-class expectations, even after 30 years. Thank you Sid and Johnny—couldn’t have said it better myself. PS – Does anyone think the drummer looks like Kevin Bacon? Dag…that guy is everywhere!

Remember, o pioneer… that only you know the meaning of your journey.  Other people may think of you and remember the practical intention of your actions. Or they might say, there is a person who can tear down walls. They might say you’re optimistic, hopeful and energetic. Some might say you’re just out there having fun. If you’re lucky, they’ll say you’re trying to make a difference in the world. But the real story is that you had a need to search, and the courage to follow through with it. I hope you always have the freedom to start new journeys. What you’re doing is more than just a reaction to circumstances, which is the way the majority of people are drawn to action. It’s a wonderfully defiant act—the act of following your soul. And it will define how you approach all of life’s challenges going forward.

God bless the young pioneers….

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Now just a quick follow up on last week’s post about procrastination. It dawns on me that some folks may think I make this stuff up–floating boats in frog ponds–come on. So to prove at least one part of my procrastination OCD, I’ve included a live arrangement of “Ein Niderlendisch Tentzlein” on the Ukulele. Note… my blank expression is just my attempt to study the vast complexity of the sheet music. It’s not my normal look…. I think?

masterful ukulele technique

writer's block

THE THINGS WRITERS DO TO AVOID WRITING

Today’s post is for commiserating with those of you who actually choose to write, either for money or as a hobby or simply as a way to inflict deep psychological wounds upon yourself.  I thought I’d give you an example of one day’s worth of procrastination techniques employed before an article I had to write yesterday. The following is an actual list of pre-writing activities (in chronological order):

1. Stare out window
2. Retreat immediately to Facebook. View profile page of old friend not seen in 15 years and notice she does stand-up comedy. View every YouTube post she’s ever created
3. Go to kitchen to make smoothie
4. Listen to rousing classical music song and decide I must join a classical music “Meetup” group. Research and find a local one, then look at every person’s picture and decide they’re all weirdos and decide not to join.
5. Inspired by classical music, start playing Ukulele…decide to master the Baroque piece “Ein Niderlendisch Tentzlein” and decide I really am wasting time…
6. Stare out window again
7. Decide that my 7 year-old Frye Boots need polishing, start to do so until I find that work boots look really stupid polished. Feel slightly embarrassed about wearing them now.
8. Check stats for my previous blog post and feel depressed.
9. Notice an old wooden ship-model on garage shelf that’s dusty and broken. Decide that it might look really cool half-sunken in the fish pond in my garden. Run outside and place in pond and find it doesn’t sink. Looks more like a piece of floating trash.
10. Finally sit down, take a deep breath, and write my first line.

Ah yes…. and they wonder why writers drink….    Til next time — EJP