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Who’s telling all the stories?

I don’t have a degree in Creative Writing. I haven’t even taken any classes. My degree is in Fine Arts because all they had for web-related stuff back in the day was called “Computer Science” and that didn’t quite fit for design.

I haven’t been traditionally published, I haven’t won any awards. I have only completed two manuscripts, run both through a smattering of Beta Readers, a pseudo-edit and then put ’em up on Amazon.

But… I have three kids. One adult who lives close by, one teenager who lives on the couch next to me and one pre-teen who lives in a little tent in the living room. All are neurodivergent, with the smallest being ASD-Severe. They take a lot of energy.

I have the best co-pilot in life with me, but it’s a lot of energy for both of us. She works very, very hard. Though she, like myself, is disabled.

We hurt, pretty much all the time. Something hurts, and sometimes it hurts badly enough that we’re unable to do things. Sometimes those things are big, like can’t always get up on the roof and clean the gutters out so Winter and its rains is Super Anxiety Times as to whether or not the house will flood. Sometimes those things are relatively small, like standing and walking. As one can imagine, that brings its own levels of anxiety.

And no, there is no help. We don’t have the money for things like hiring someone to do the gutters and the “Supports and Services” for people with disability are vague, ambiguous, difficult to track down and even harder to get them to give it to you clearly. If I wanted, I could get someone to come by and clip our toenails, do the dishes, take our little guy to the movies and drive us to the beach. But no one will come by for 15 minutes and cut the grass.

It’s a rather fuckety system. I haven’t given up trying though.

But the thing is, kids go to school, eat, play, talk, sing, dance and like treats and cartoons and stuff. I also like my wife so much that we spend every night together, streaming something cool and hanging out and flirting then creaking our way into bed way too late at night.

Where in there, if anywhere, is time to pump out the series of books, stories, novels and movie scripts that rattle around in my head?

Why is it that any time I see somebody that’s doing the job that I want, living the life of a published author that I dream of, they’ve got like, no kids, some sort of Writery Degree and have a backlist of about fifty books?

Oh sure, some of them have kids, and I’m sure their lives are all about them. But what is their co-pilot doing? Yep, making six-figures. I can tell you from Lived Experience, that making all that money makes some things a fuck of a lot easier. Only one of you spending 90% of their awake time ‘earning’ all that money means the other gets a lot more freedom.

When both of you spend 100% of your awake time looking after offspring or each other, getting just about anything else done is really, really hard.

But I can’t complain. I mean, I shouldn’t anyway. The ‘problem’ is me. Me and my skewed priorities.

See, I quit Corporate America for love and a new start far from my birthplace. Then I quit Corporate Australia for family. Then I quit Small Business Life to look after my people better. Now, instead of writing all these novels, I’m making cheese toasties and listening to what happened in dreams last night and watching Kangaroo Beach and playing with slime and giving endless pets to a Spoiled Rabbit on my lap. I’ll make a tea for my lovely co-pilot and then struggle in the toilet for 20 minutes.

I could ignore all these things and pump out novel after novel but, much like the six-figure job and careers and shit, it’s just not worth not doing all the other things.

I used to be aspiring, but I’d limited myself.

It was posts like this one: Aspiring Writers Need to Quit NOW that used to make me feel super-emboldened and legit, but I could never seem to follow it up in execution. I ended up writing neither more nor less as a result.

It was only when I was doing the usual, trying to carve out writing time during an otherwise busy life, and Wifeage called me out. I can’t remember if I was complaining about not having enough time to finish a novel or not (though I probably was) but she sat me down and said only this:

You’re a writer. And writers, write.

I have never looked back since. I’ve finished two sci-fi-esque novels as part of a series and have outlined and plotted out at least 4 more in that universe. I’ve just passed the 50% mark in the Coming-of-Age/YA novel that’s sort of a reimagined memoir about a young man moving from Montana to Perth, and I’ve got about a third of the way through a crime novel set in the same universe too.

Not to mention at least a half-dozen other novel ideas based on awesome dreams I’ve had, and at least a dozen short stories that I’ve either submitted or plan to for various contests. Only two have won/shortlisted in anything, but still, that’s alright.

Anyway. thanks to people like Kristen that Rah-Rah all us writers. And thanks to Wifeage who remains my muse, my motivation, my biggest supporter.

Nobody ever had to beg me to play hockey

“You know,” my roommate said to me over the wind and traffic noise in his CJ7 Jeep as we blasted down the highway, “Nobody ever had to beg me to play hockey.”

We were roommates and teammates on Colorado’s 2nd-ever team in the Major League Roller Hockey comp. The 1st-ever team was the region’s Golden Boys, the top players and shiniest roller hockey heroes in Denver’s surrounds. The Rocky Mountain Wolverines boasted years and years of collegiate and junior ice hockey talent and the leftovers, politically and otherwise, tried out for the “other” team in a bit of a coup (or a fu-coup, as it were).

Our coach/owner was as ragtag as we were and we all loved the idea that nobody expected us to even form a team, let alone win anything. Coach was as full of big talk and big promises as he was empty when the bar tab came around. We exchanged looks at times, but we all believed because we wanted to play so badly.

We started out as the Mile High Moose and we played a couple of interesting games against the Wolverines to kick off MLRH’s sophomore season, even besting them in the second game (while their best player was at a tournament in Vegas). Coach played with the team finances and had plans for our compensation comensurate on selling merchandise and tickets. We were sure we could do it, even if the money was tight. Coach hired out buses to haul us to our “home rink” an hour north of Denver in Greeley for our games and sometimes even practices.

The questions on his suitability in regards to finances began immediately and this didn’t help. A string of canceled home games against neighbouring state’s teams brought even more questions. The Fort Worth and Salt Lake City teams were both hesitant to make any trip to play the newcomers, even the highly-touted Wolverines.

Cinderella Falls Flat

Only a few weeks into the season and the bottom dropped out. Practice was canceled when the rink owner came and told us all to either pay up or get out. Coach was nowhere to be found, nor was he answering his phone, and every entity the team had contact with came forth with bills showing all that we owed. We were a team that hadn’t paid a dime to anyone but had made promises to everyone. We were dropped like hot rocks and had all gone home to cry in our beers while the impressive Wolverines kept playing and kept winning and kept impressing.

We as a team, had all ponied up our hard-earned dough to become a part of something with the promise that we’d get our gear comped, our rink time covered, our travel covered, and a nice check at the end of the season. We’d lost it all.

Then our phone rang. It was one of our captains, a former college player who was our lockerroom leader, if not the one wearing the actual “C” on his jersey. He’d spoken to the head of the league, just for giggles, and wanted to gauge interest in continuing the team for the season under new ownership. Player ownership.

He’d barely made three phone calls before the word spread like bushfire through the entire team. We were back on and all was forgiven at the rink, if not the bus depot. Roommate and I jabbered excitedly to each other in-between phone calls to teammates and sponsors, even members of the Wolverines!

Cinderella Gets Back Up

Our first practice was the only rinktime we could get, 6 PM on a Tuesday. That meant ditching work early for us paid-by-the-hour fellas and a horrific hour+ drive in rush hour to Colorado’s smelliest city. We couldn’t have been happier to do it.

Top-down, sunburnt and running late, we piled out of the Jeep and into the lockerroom excitedly looking forward to seeing all of our teammates. A little over half were there, with apologies from 3 more. That was it. The absence of our former captain, a friend of the coach’s, was notable.

Reeling a bit, we took the Sport Court and practiced anyway, and it was grand. We stopped a bit early so that our “new” captain could address the team with all the specifics. We were now MLRH’s only player-owned, player-managed, team, and we were allowed in the league that season on a highly-probationary status only through the good graces of the league chairman and his belief in us. He reckoned we showed heart and he wanted to see what we could do, even covering the rink fees in the early stages.

We were now the Colorado Mustangs, and we were ready to actually get serious about winning.

Captain wasn’t done with the announcements either. One of the Wolverine’s golden boys, a friend and teammate on their top line, was dissatisfied with how that team was going. He wasn’t happy with the owner and he didn’t like the egos that swelled the second a paycheck was mentioned. His ice time had shrunk, sure, but he reckoned we showed heart too, and he wanted in.

Mustangs Ride

Roommate and I were excited but needed closure, so I used his for-work-only cellphone to ring each of the guys on the team that had missed our first official practice as a Miracle Team.

Responses, as expected, varied.

“Aw yeah, I ah… couldn’t ah… couldn’t get out of work, yeah.”

“Was that today? Oops. I’ll make the next one… I guess.”

“Yeah, I’m cool with the team and all, but driving to Greeley?!”

The former captain was at least up-front and candid with me, telling me that he’d lost his money too and was too damn old to go hanging on to “foolish hopes and dreams”.

Reaching the end of the list I hung up the phone and looked at Roommate, my face showing precisely how I felt about their responses. He just shook his head and pointed the Jeep south, toward our ramshackle place that reeked of hockey equipment and dog.

“You know, nobody ever had to beg me to play hockey. Never in my whole life have I ever had to be begged to play.”

I never have either

I’ve played on blistering blacktop in the height of a Houston summer, sweating so much that my equipment bag gained 13 pounds in one game. I’ve slept 14 to a double-bed room in a dive outside of Austin. I’ve hallucinated about seeing giant hockey skates covering the pre-dawn highway while driving a truckload of sleeping teammates back from an all-night tournament in Dallas. I’ve played 4 straight games in a tennis-court league because nobody’s goalies showed up on a 100-degree day.

When I left Texas A&M for Denver, I spent my unemployed days doing odd jobs, looking for work and parked in the stands of the roller hockey rink, sitting next to my bag and holding my stick aloft in adverstisement of my goaltending availabilities. I’ve played 5 nights a week for 6 teams while working and going to Uni full-time. I’ve played semi-pro roller hockey in the Major League.

The Colorado Mustangs won every game the rest of that season except our last two, losing to the Wolverines in the Regional Semi-final, with the winner promised a trip to Buffalo to take on the East Coast’s best.

I slept in shithole dives in Dallas and in the back of a truck in Salt Lake City. Whereas our first coach had told me unequivocally that I was only there in case his precious starting goalie got injured or shellacked for 20 goals and that I would probably NEVER see playing time, this “new” team saw me splitting time with that precious goalie and posting better numbers during our road trips, despite being 10 years older.

And nobody ever had to beg me to play.

Save the Canberra Knights

The AIHL’s Canberra Knights ownership has folded the team, first claiming monetary issues and then talent issues after informing the players via Facebook earlier this week. News stories abound and the Facebook discussion is as fervent as the supporter’s pledging money on the team’s crowd-sourcing page.

I just listened to Jordie Gavin’s interview on Canberra’s Sports Radio. He and the rest of the boys just want to play.

They just want to play.

And I don’t think anybody should stand in the way of that.

Good luck boys, I’m here if you need anybody in net during your Perth trips.

Here’s that DONATE link once again: https://www.mycause.com.au/page/canberraaihlteam

Writing, or Watching the Wrench-Eater

Somedays, I miss blogging for the sake of it.  I mean, I do it now, but there was a time that I had one blog for ALL the people that knew me, where I had to watch my mouth (and my step), one for all the funny people that DIDN’T know me (in real life) and one that NOBODY read (shhh, it’s a secret!).

On those days, it didn’t matter what I felt like writing, I could just write whatever I wanted.  I could post pictures of my cute kids on the one, I could write something about farts and sex on the other and I could write about my wife’s shithead siblings on the other.

Now there’s just this one, and the expanding freedom I’m feeling with it only comes from the fact that nobody reads it.  Which makes me sad, of sorts.  And happy, of sorts.

I do wonder what people think when they stop by, like folks from the ToyNerd forums, or SwordNerds, or WritingNerds, or IT Nerds (why do I only know nerds?!), but then I remember that most of them probably already have a fairly skewed picture of me anyway.  Writing about toys, or books, or spiritual things like clouds, or angry things like Jo’s fuckhead family all off in Melbourne this weekend further cutting her out of their lives, none of it means that anybody will like me any more, or any less.

They may a bit more… informed, but it’s not like it’s anything I wouldn’t tell them were they to ask.  But really, nobody does.

Sometimes, I like to just flex the writing muscle a bit, but then I look at the clock and realise it’s 4:43 PM and I started writing at 4:23 PM.  It took probably 2-3 minutes to write this, and 17-18 to push the toddler on his swing, deal with a naughty 10-yo (the slightly autistic one), help the 5-yo blow up a flat soccer ball and shake out a tarp full of redbacks so that the kids can more freely wander this, our tiny and shitty front yard.

Maybe I oughta switch to being a photographer instead of a writer.  Then I could just walk around with my camera around my neck and I wouldn’t have to stop taking photos while keeping the tot from eating yet another one of my wrenches.

Teething

Today is Wednesday.  That’s really only notable in that we all thought it was Thursday, because Thursday is Bin Day and our bins are proudly out front of our house, patiently waiting to be emptied.  Georgia dutifully emptied all the bins into them last night, the nappy bucket and a few assorted plastic food containers that were partially forgotten in the back of the fridge.  None of us thought to check the day.

It always amuses me that the recycling bin only gets picked up every other week, and the regular rubbish gets it every week.  This is amusing only if you look at our bins on pickup day, as the recycling is overflowing and the rubbish bin is half full.  A 2-to-1 ratio isn’t bad.  Go Hippies!

Boo and I are back at the little playground and it’s another beautiful sunny day.  This time, the sun only has to fight with a few clouds, but the warmth is a mixture of sun-baking dry and did rain/gonna rain humidity.  The ‘bowl’ of the park is filled again and I fight the urge Every Single Time to chuck some fish in it and wait for them to get big enough to catch.  The fact that it’ll drain in a few days stops me, as does the idea of the egrets, ducks, and other assorted aviations around that would happily gobble my guppies.

Drew is happily stomping around in his slippershoes with a couple of slugtrails going down his upper lip.  He’s had a fever and a rotten mood intermittently all week.  Plus, he’s shat himself rather thoroughly the past two mornings, necessitating a bath on both.  Not this morning, but I’m keeping my eye on him.  He’s just climbed off me and while he was laughing I saw yet another huge bump in his gums.  When this kid teeths, he means it.  I actually have a hard time
imagining the relief I’ll feel when he’s done with all this.  Uffda.

I’ve found an app for the ABC News feeds.  I can watch video or listen online, which I’m doing now off whomever’s connection this is I’m hijacking.  Bless those that don’t secure their wireless.

After climbing on me intermittently during our half hour here, it occurs to me that he’s teething and I’m teething too.  Transitioning to something new in life, something permanent and necessary, something that’s going to bring good things and make a lot of things much easier, something that could even be called necessary for survival, is never easy.  It’s just like teething.  You get peripheral issues like explosive shats and a fever, sometimes just a badmother of a mood, but it’s almost always painful in some way.

No matter the shit you go through though, something good will come of it in the end.  I’m intensely curious to see what that will be.

Kids’re all in high spirits this morning, and I never quite know when or why this will happen.  But I’ll take it.  I’ll take it, and let’s see what I can do with it.

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