Hanging Ten...

So, my roommate, Frosty, and I have decided that our house is much too small for two adult men with our spacial needs. Co-habitation has become cumbersome. And considering that I have not perfected the pocket dimension I've been working on during my free time ( I keep telling him that the dog will turn up eventually ) I have decided to move, locally at first and then out of state, to a geographical location that is both closer to my daughter and more pleasant than having the inside of my skull scraped clean with rusty trowels by a group of uncoordinated lawn gnomes.

Wish me luck.

Needless to say, my life is in a right state of upheaval at the moment and I haven't had the time or the opportunity to show the Labyrinth the TLC it so deserves. So, imagine my surprise when I log on today to find that I now have ten dedicated minions! That, my loves, is nine more than I dreamed for and ten more than I expected. JOY!

So, in lieu of a proper blog post, I have decided to celebrate breaking the double digit mark by making a short ( but awesome ) list of things, in no particular order, that honor the number ten.

Surf Movies...

If you watched Point Break or North Shore or some other surf movie and didn't walk around for the next week talking about hanging ten on gnarly waves and calling everyone you met "brah" then you did it wrong.

The Roman Numeral X...

This dude is everywhere. He's on clocks, belt buckles, logos, and anything else you can lay eyes and hands on. He's the hardest working number in show biz and doesn't look to be stopping any time soon.

Sesame Street...

The Count. Nuff said. Ah. Ah. Ah.

Lists...

How many times do you see the top ten list? My guess is that you can not only think of a few that everyone would know, like the top ten songs of the week, but that you also have a few of your own. Like your top ten most embarrassing moments, your top ten places to get falling down pissed and throw up, and your top ten best pranks to play on your neighbor who lives in her car.

Pearl Jam's TEN...

Wouldn't you have loved to have been in the creative meeting with Pearl Jam when they thought up this beauty? Hey guys. We need to name our album. What should we name it? How about a number? Cool. I'm down with that. Fifty seven? No... it needs to be simple. How about ten? Rock on! Regardless, this album rocks my world.

Bowling Pins...

Knock 'em down. They get right back up. That's my kinda pin.

The Commandments...

Ah. The fabled commands of the Lord almighty. Carved in stone on these sacred tablets are the ten things that should be COMMON BLOODY SENSE. Still, I have to wonder what happened to the eleventh commandment that says to, "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"

The Case of Guinness your friend buys you for your birthday...

For the record, a case of Guinness holds twelve bottles. The one that I received on my birthday had ten and was held closed on one end with duct tape. Methinks something is fishy under the ocean.

Hot Dogs...

Yes. Delicious delicious hot dogs. Hot dogs come in tens. Why then do buns come in eights? Who screwed up?!

Neon...

Standing tall and proud on the periodic table, Neon is not afraid to tell the world... well, the strip clubs, honky tonks, and carnivals of the world that it is here to stay.

*Thanks to Annabelle for her creative and intellectual contribution!!

The Ice( Iron )man cometh...

It never ceases to amaze me at what you can find when you're walking around aimlessly at a festival that has everything from Top Hats to a guy hawking his mother's antique jewelry.





 
That's right kids. That IS an Ironman ice-cream bar. And I got it from an ice-cream truck. With the jingly jingly music and everything. My inner comic book nerd and eight year old self just giggled and bounced in their seats with joy... again.

I got the chance to spend the day with an awesome new friend yesterday who, surprisingly, is just as geeky as I am. While we sat chatting she announced that she had an irresistible urge for carnival food ( who doesn't?! ) so we strolled down to the Inman Park Festival to grab some funnel cake. What was intended as a quick trip for deep fried battery goodness turned into a day long adventure in which the two of us darted about like chipmunks dosed with copious amounts of sugar, looking at every shiny object that caught our attention.

After indulging our ADHD for a few hours we decided that it was time to retire and find real food. On the way to our chosen eatery I heard the tell tale sound that there was a man in a van handing out sweets to kids... legally. We came upon the ice-cream truck and after shouting excitedly so that the other people on the street averted their eyes and walked quickly in the other direction, my eye was drawn to a picture of the Ironman ice-cream bar. I was transfixed. It was a thing of beauty; bright red and yellow ice-cream that I knew, KNEW!, would be awesome!

Perhaps my partner in crime saw the look of childlike wonder on my face; perhaps it was the doofy ear to ear smile. Whatever it was, the next I knew she was presenting me with my very own iced Ironman head on a stick. A treat which I happily shared after capturing the above picture.

The lesson here kids? Nostalgia and nerdiness tastes like a two dollar novelty ice-cream. Indulge.

-D

Do. Or do not. There is no try...

As a creatively minded individual, I yearn to interact with the world around me and the people who inhabit it; to share with them a piece of myself in the hopes that the story I tell, the picture I paint, the song I sing, or the character I pretend to be will bring joy to their lives... if only for a moment. At the very least I'd like to force them outside of the mundane and leave them standing, slack-jawed, with that "what the fuck?!" look on their face; to give them a brief yet entertaining respite from the banal topics normally shared over dinner or drinks. 

The problem with this desire is that, more often than not, sharing is a difficult thing to do.

It is fear that makes my previous statement true. The fear of rejection, the fear of failure, and the fear that we will never live up to the vision of greatness and perfection that we cling to in our own minds. Sharing ourselves with others, especially the fruits of our creativity, means reaching into a place that is more than personal. It means drawing from the very font of who we are and taking that place inside us where we are most ourselves and displaying it for the world to see. 

That sacred ground, for most of us, is constantly besieged by self-imposed demons with names like insecurity, poor self-image, and worthlessness that harry us and whisper to us, even in the face of our vast potential. They speak to us with poisoned tongues and in voices remarkably like our own; convincing us that what we do will never mean anything to anyone and that we shouldn't even bother. I believe this is a struggle with which we can all empathize on one level or another.

This struggle between passion and inhibition, or more accurately, the losing of this struggle is what has defined my creative endeavors for far longer than I care to recall or admit. Projects such as this blog, which has been more than a year in seeing fruition, were squashed by the weight of my insecurity and fear. 

I had, for the longest time, intended to return to the habit of writing consistently when the idea of starting a blog came to me. A blog and the development of regular content would include consistent, if not daily, writing as well as pushing me to be more than a casual observer of my own life. I would need to be an active participant; cataloging my experiences and observations. It was the perfect exercise to redevelop and hone my skill after so many years away from the craft.

Despite all of the positive reasons to start a blog, I did not. Every time I sat down with the intention of starting I talked myself out of doing so. There were important factors that needed to be considered, after all. There was the question of content. There was the question of style and demographic. Also, there were logos, backgrounds, layouts, and designs to think about. These things were all valid concerns and issues that needed serious consideration I told myself, rationalizing. Address these issues and then... then I'd be ready. And so I kept my words inside my head and left my page blank; the cursor blinking expectantly.

It became a psychological match of tug-o-war; one with which I was all too familiar. On one side of the mental rope stood that lone part of me whose greatest desire is to be that which I have always dreamed I could. On the other side stood the legion of demons and monsters spawned from everything I had ever experienced that told me it could never be. Like so many times before, the two sides snapped and clawed at each other snarling fiercely with unbridled hate. The solitary part of me feral and lean from years of starvation; deprived of substance. The beasts masked in the disapproving faces of my life's naysayers; most of them wearing my own. 

And so it went for the turning of an age, in what passes for time across the landscape of the heart and of the mind.

Recently, I've been lucky enough not to fight alone. I've made and reconnected with close friends; the kind that know you to your core. Soul-kin, if you will, and their supportive and encouraging voices began to join mine in my fight. My passion and desire no longer stood alone. And though my demons greatly outnumbered my friends and I, their lies and falsehoods could not outweigh the veracity of our fight. In the end I had to admit that all of the "concerns" and "considerations" that kept me from putting myself out there were nothing more than excuses to justify my fears of failure and rejection. 

So here I am. Standing at the edge of the unknown with that little piece of my psyche that believes I can be great riding shotgun on my shoulder; looking out over the swamp of insecurity and doubt that has swallowed the vehicle of that greatness. I know that it's time to reach into myself and find the strength to pull that ship out of the muck in which it is mired; the strength that I know is there and that my friends see. If I don't... I'll never reach the stars.


Thanks for reading, blogland. It has been a very great pleasure to finally meet you.


-D