We buried Brent yesterday\u2026<\/p>\n
OK, actually, it was several weeks ago. But I wrote that line at the time. I thought it was going to be a catalyst for me to pull together my thoughts. In my mind, they were all coming clear as I drove home from Toronto. It all seemed so real and ready to come out.<\/p>\n
Brent\u2019s funeral was tough. When someone dies, it\u2019s inevitable that you start to question the worth of your own life. And when someone is young and vital and seems to have their best years ahead of them, (don\u2019t they always?) it\u2019s even tougher. And for me, the loss of Brent was also wrapped up with conflicted feelings about seeing all my old colleagues, most of whom I haven\u2019t seen since I parted company with Advocis. <\/p>\n
Brent had become a major influence in my life, as he was with many others. He was like that. I only knew him through work, but he had a big impact. And those that spoke at his funeral made it clear that he had a major influence on most of the people around him. When I heard he was dead, I started remembering some of the times we spent together and some of the things we talked about. I wish it were more. But there are some things that come to my mind, or at least they did on that lonely drive back from Toronto and in the days just after. But now it\u2019s several weeks later, and I never did sit down to write those words of wisdom. No reason either. I just didn\u2019t get around to it.<\/p>\n
No matter how hard I try to be profound, I\u2019m not. Perhaps I\u2019m trying too hard. I\u2019ve got my eyes closed right now. I don\u2019t really want to read what I\u2019m typing. I\u2019d like for the words to just roll off my fingertips, like rain off the edge of the roof. I want to feel like my writing is a force of nature. Like there\u2019s something inside of me struggling to get out and all I have to do is sit down at the keyboard and it flows out. I\u2019ve been there occasionally\u2026sometimes it\u2019s when I\u2019m writing a story about something on deadline. I\u2019ve thought about it for so long that the words just flow. I\u2019ve gone over what I want to say so many times in my mind that writing is just a formality. And occasionally I get typing so fast that the thoughts don\u2019t seem to be slowed down at all. As if there were something else controlling my fingers.<\/p>\n
But that doesn\u2019t happen very often. I tend to self edit as I go along. I\u2019m always looking at what I\u2019ve just written and thinking that it needs to be changed. Or perhaps I\u2019ll go back to work on the punctuation or the spelling. I get lost in stuff like that. Sometimes, it\u2019s like the words don\u2019t come to me, but when I put them down on paper, they\u2019re there. I don\u2019t feel right about changing them. I\u2019ve always said that I\u2019m the kind of person who writes a first draft and then never worries about a second. I do a lot of editing in my head before I put pen to paper (so to speak). But once it\u2019s down there, it takes on a life of its own. And I feel like maybe I\u2019m killing something if I start to edit it too much. I know that sounds stupid, but what the heck.<\/p>\n
The other problem I have is that I\u2019m always writing as though someone were going to read what I\u2019ve written. I\u2019m not much for putting my thoughts down in some haphazard way. I\u2019m always considering what their impact will be. Does that come from a newspaper background? I\u2019m not sure. But for me, writing is not the private experience that it is for some. It\u2019s a very public thing. I figure that someone is going to read this stuff and then they\u2019re going to look up from the paper and smile at me\u2026with one of those \u201cOh, I see the way it is with you\u201d kind of smirks. I think that everyone knows more about most things than I do but they humour me and say \u201cThis is good. No, really, it is\u201d I know better. That\u2019s a pretty insecure thing to say, isn\u2019t it? Just while I\u2019m sitting here typing it out, I\u2019m starting to think, what the hell is this all about? Why is all this stuff about me?<\/p>\n
I fancy myself a storyteller. I\u2019ve read scores of books by a wide variety of authors \u2013 suspense, comedy, historical fiction, non-fiction, romance \u2013 I\u2019ve read those stories and I know that I could create them too. I\u2019m sure of it\u2026but the sad truth is that even when I\u2019m given the chance to show the world what I can do, I haven\u2019t come through. I\u2019ve talked about being a writer for years, especially when I was working as a reporter. But still, I still didn\u2019t quite get around to writing those stories.<\/p>\n
The only time I really tried was in university and I had a schedule that left my mornings open. I spent them sitting at an old IBM Selectric on the second floor of our house on Rae St. in Regina. We had a metal typing table, the kind with metal extension wings that you could fold down or up on either side, depending on where you liked your manuscript pages to sit. I\u2019d sit at that little table with a fresh sheet of paper rolled in, and look out the window at whatever was going on outside. I used to sit there a lot. My goals were modest. I really hoped to create about 1000 words a day, or about 4 double-spaced pages. But I rarely made it. A full page of copy at the end of the morning was a pretty good day. More common was a few crumpled-up pages in the garbage can, with nonsense typed on them\u2026like warm-up exercises. \u201cThequickbrownfoxjumpedoverthelazydog.\u201d<\/p>\n
OK\u2026this has been an interesting sidebar to my musings about my reaction to Brent’s death. It’s been several months since I left full-time employment and a lot has happened to me. I’ve spent a lot of time healing my body and my mind. And I’ve spent a lot of time in my basement study, writing, designing my website, working on book proposals, writing up ideas for stories… I’d like to think that writing is my profession, but the bad news is that I\u2019ve only been writing for a few minutes and my wrist and arm are starting to get sore. This repetitive stress syndrome is a real problem for me. I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m going to do if I can’t sit at the keyboard for more than a few minutes at a stretch. I need to get serious about my ergonomics here at the office. I need a keyboard tray, so I can experiment with different positions, etc. No point in putting this stuff off.<\/p>\n
This has been interesting. Now I\u2019m going to post this to The Daily Upload. Sure, no one except you will see it, but I feel good about what I\u2019m doing. Perhaps confession is good for the soul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We buried Brent yesterday\u2026 OK, actually, it was several weeks ago. But I wrote that line at the time. I thought it was going to be a catalyst for me to pull together my thoughts. In my mind, they were all coming clear as I drove home from Toronto. It all seemed so real and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p88Hib-da","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1803,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions\/1803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davetraynor.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}