Taking the time to put it down...

We're winding down the final days of the Spring semester at Boston University, and way back at the start I wanted to blog and write all about my experience and bring people along with me during this phase of my life. It's an exciting time. Most people my age are "positioning" themselves for retirement. Thinking about hanging on to that job for the homestretch, dreaming about the house in Florida and playing golf everyday (nothing sounds worse to me than that.) I'm not ready for the rocking chair, not by a long shot. I still have plays to write, mountains to climb, people to love. Still so many places I want to travel to. Every day is a new day, precious, full of opportunity to grow and learn.

Today is Saturday, and I'm teaching a workshop on writing ten-minute plays for Write Here, Write Now. It's a program for the LGBT community, and the reason for it is in their mission statement. I want to help anyone who wants to learn to write. This opportunity came to me from a grad student at Umass, and as soon as I got the email I knew it was something I wanted to do. I never thought about the obstacles facing someone who is LGBT. To me, writing is so free. You don't need a license, you don't even really need a degree. I proved that with my career. I just wrote and proved to people that I could do it and for a long while they paid me a lot of money to do it. You just do it. I'm so excited to hear what my students have to say today, those first ten minutes when people are telling why they are there, what they want to do.

I wish I had been able to find the time (and the energy) to put it all down, all the steps, the up and downs, the joys and the frustrations, the disappointments and the anxieties. It's all there, a very exciting life. I would have like to have been able to go back and read about it, when I finally am in the rocking chair. But I haven't even been writing in my own journal. I used to get up in the morning, pour my coffee (I'd set the coffee maker the night before) and go straight to the computer and write in my journal for about a half hour, still in that dream state. It's what I told my students to do, write in their journals every day, if not at a specific time every day, but I couldn't do it. Between the marathon of writing two full-length plays in less than a year, and the weekly sprints of writing a ten-minute play plus reading three or four plays a week and doing the background research on the play and the playwright, teaching, grading fifteen essays every week plus rewrite, seeing theater including staying out late on the weeknights because that's when the cheap tix are, and just thinking and planning for the long-term (what am I going to do when I graduate?) I didn't have the time or energy to set the coffee pot the night before.

I don't know how some people do it. Right now I'm following this guy who as I write this is on the north face of Everest.  He's 69 years old and he's attempting two summits of Everest back to back. If that's not enough he's blogging. He's finding the time. Kind of puts me to shame, doesn't he.

Writing and the New Year

It's the first day of the New Year and we have been spending it lounging in bed drinking coffee and reading our books, flinging the windows open to get some fresh air in the apartment and the stale air out, cleaning off the porch of slush and tightening the chords on the tarps on the outdoor patio. How exciting, huh?

Sue's about ready to go out on a call. Work has been thin for her, too, and it's awful to think that we're going to benefit from someone's misfortune. Still, if you look at it right, Sue is really an angel of mercy who comes into people's lives who need a bit of help. It's weird to think that the government steps into people's lives when it concerns the family or their kids. Before I knew Sue I might have railed against government intrusion. But after knowing Sue and the job she does, society would be a lot worse--think Dickensonian--if someone like her didn't intervene. It's extraordinary to think how many people end up with kids simply because some woman got drunk one night (or two or three) and spread her legs or some guy couldn't think past his six seconds of ecstasy.

Obviously, this is the first post of the year. Last year I blogged 99 times. The year before that 108, and the two years before that 396 and 529. The high numbers are a testament of just how bored you can get sitting in a cubicle in an ad agency. This past year I tailed off because I was doing so much writing for school. It feels good to sit here, though, and type these words for whoever feels like logging on here and reading, curious of what's rattling around in my head or the goings on in my (and Sue's) life. I've said it time after time: Writers write. There's no stopping us, any more than you can stop a rodent from gnawing on a piece of wood or an electrical cord. And we write sometimes with the same disastrous results.

Jiggling breasts and SEO and long hot showers

It's been over a month since I last posted to Action Bob. And I do see that people have been checking in. I've been concentrating more of my writing time--what little there is--over at Gather.com.

Yes, I've said it over and over: I'm a word whore. I'll write anything for money. And Gather.com hired me as a Social Writer, which is just a fancy term for someone they've identified who can drive traffic to their site, adding value to it, and are willing to pay me pittance to do it. (Too bad a certain client of mine doesn't have the same confidence that I can drive traffic, and so we'll soon be parting ways.) Anyway, over the course of a thirty year career as a copywriter I've stated my job description as someone who makes wealthy men wealthier. And that's what I do. I know how to get people to part with their money through words, and just as a reminder, Bob Markle is the name of a character I've written who works in an ad agency. Yes, the belly of the beast, the engine that fueled this economic downturn we're living through now, encouraging people to buy, buy, buy even though they can't afford, afford, afford it.

But this little spot in the digital world is so comforting to me, because here I don't have to worry about Google Trends or SEO or Google-identified keywords. Writing on the Web is more about timing and trends and content is a long third, and it's something I can do only for so long. I mean, check this out:

A posting about one of the latest Facebook memes attracted 24,788 views. (Is a certain local college marcom group taking note of this?)

But a post on the unemployment figures for older Americans garnered a paltry 38. And we wonder why America is going to hell in a handbasket.

I can write about Facebook and the latest celebrity public embarrassments only so long, and then I just want to take a long hot shower with lye soap--you know what I mean?

For those of you who have been checking in, thank you for taking the time. I know I've been remiss in keeping my promise of keeping this site interesting. And for those pervs who stumble on this site because you've searched for "jiggling breast" here ya go. From May 14, 2008. I know it's not exactly what you were looking for, but life is filled with disappointments.

What's all this noise?

It's just that the whole blogging thing is so loud. And there are days, more and more lately it seems, when it's like I'm at a party and I suddenly find the need for a quiet corner. The Internet, with its passion for hits and click rates, just starts to seem like the trading floor of the NYSE.

My life is extraordinary right now, particularly in light of what it was like a year ago. And a year before that, and a year before that and so on. I just want to enjoy it, and for some reason my writer's inclination to share just isn't kicking in. Maybe it's because I'm afraid if I shout it out, someone or something will take notice and take it away from me again. People are like that. They see something good that someone has and either they want it or a piece of it, or they want to destroy it.

Nor do I want to do anything stupid, either.

So, yeah, blogging...there are things I'd like to say and tell about, but...