I can tell my patience is wearing thin regarding my epic wait for the edits to my Book of Blues. The good news is that I talked to my cousin. I talked to him in that Facebook chat-sort-of-way. I don’t blame him. 70-hour work weeks in the blizzardom of Minneapolis has to hurt regardless of whether it’s indoor or outdoor.

To my surprise he said many a good thing about Book of Blues. He says I write very, very well. He doesn’t give out compliments so that was a suprise. Smiles emanate from him when he can get steal time to read. He says that it really goes quick. These are easily better comments than what I was expecting.

He does think there is some fat to trim. I don’t disagree. I just need fresh eyes to determine where the fat needs trimming. He’s also considering my thought of splitting the book in half given it’s girth. He’ll have to consider it. The second job he has a a book store is sadly being given up. But, he’ll have more time to read it.

I’ll have to consider what he thinks about “unnecessary description” because he’s a confessed skimmer when it comes to description. I’ll need a bigger sample size. Let me know if you’re interested.

As for the little things gettin’ to me, I refer to DB and Max Power at the Whoredom. I need to write more for them.

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9 days after the Super Bowl and I’m starting to reconsider what my cousin said by “shortly after” he’d have his comments n edits for Book of Blues.

I have no patience anymore. I don’t live for much else and I’m ready to go back to work on it.

My cousin’s like me: he’s much more impatient when he’s the one who has to wait. I am. I’m half tempted to reprint the draft and go through it one more time, but that’s because I’m being impatient.

The old sayings run through my head:

• Patience is a virture
• A watched pot never boils
• Rome wasn’t built in a day
• First things first

Well as I watch the snow melt, the paint dry and the grass grow, I started to get frazzled at the feeling of my hair getting grayer, my wrinkles getting longer and my youth fading away. As I hear the sounds of sand slipping away like sands through an hourglass, I not only live in the present, but I hold on to every day like it was my last.

Need to live a little more…

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I used to look forward to hanging out in Elkhart, IN. I had family who lived along the St. Joesph river. I’d play around n get in trouble with my cousins while my family finished remodeling the house.

The St. Joseph River used to scare me. My family lived near the damn. The damn had a steep dropoff. The boat could slide right through one of the openings and over the edge. One day, the driver slid around behind a buoy during a turn to go back upstream. The boat struggled. Barely made it out of the current. The current is always strongest at the end of the opening of the edge of a cliff.
I could only suspect the natives of Elkhart, IN are feeling the same way at present. A small manufacturing town 15 miles east of South Bend, IN, Elkhart only had so much which drew the public eye. They used to be able to boast being the home of a famous NBA player, but when that player is Sean Kemp, you tighten your lip back up. Then again, given the sports stories of the day, fathering many children with many mothers amongst other things is bluesy if anything.
I live in a town that sponges off of Chicago more than it depends on Gary. Elkhart’s major industries are mobile home and RV manufacturing. They’re one of the top two centers for their industries. Currently, there’s now 15% unemployment in Elkhart County, IN and 18% in the city of Elkhart, Indiana. I wish Obama’s crew would have been filmed eating at a local dinner along the St. Joseph river while he was in the town, but the fact he showed up there was story enough.
I take another moment from the main concerns of my life and think about Elkhart along with Ft. Myers, Florida. I haven’t been to Elkhart in years. If you’ve read any of my posts then you’ve read about my Christmas n New Years experiences in Ft. Myers. The vacant storefronts and empty domestic car dealer lots have that “remains of a ghost town” feel. I went lookin’ for tumbleweed. The road leading up to the Mucky Duck on Captiva Island was lined with “For Sale” signs. Much like Elkhart, Ft. Myers doesn’t survive on hedged industries. Medicine dependent on the snowbirding elderly as well as tourism. Neither is surviving.
Obama will be in Ft. Myers on Tuesday. I don’t know what it’ll take to restore the economy. What to do with 20th century manufacturing towns in the 21st century is a question in which the answer will come with a Pulitzer Prize. Not that it can’t be done, but that it’s that serious, complex, and detailed of a question. The best answer, at best, is that it will involve a concentrated effort. Change of this magnitude takes a generation. Unfortunately, our nation usually can’t wait past a commercial break. In the case of towns like Elkhart, I can’t blame them.

I’m guessing it will take Will and repeated efforts.

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Social Media, SEO, Copywriting, Analytics, wanting a book published…I think of little else.

I keep tellin’ a buddy of mine that balance of work and recreation is needed in life. If you don’t do both you’ll have neither. My buddy calls my advice hypocritical. There’s a point in that logic.

I keep preachin’ it but I never end up doing it. Playin’ ’round and lookin’ up stuff for friends on Twitter, givin’ them samples of music I’ll listen to makes me realize why I’ve been listening to music lately: escapism. I’m not enjoying it.

I want to enjoy my days a little more. Moreso than that, I want to enjoy all aspects of my day. I want to have this kind of fun:

Mindless, entertaining fun. I hear this at work to keep my nerves peaceful and to keep office chatter from ears, but I haven’t been enjoying it. Insert jokes on musical taste all you want, but the point is they’re having fun. I’m not. It’s because I’m not balanced.

I was gonna exercise and visit friends. But then I was going to blow it off so I could do HTML training. But then I’ve been watchin’ bad TV because I’m procrasting. So, instead of doin’ all the good things in my day, I’m doing nothing.

To hell with that. I’m going on a walk. It’s up to 37 degrees. I see pavement n roads n signs of grass out there for the first time since December. It ain’t Ft. Myers, Margaritaville, but it’s the best I have to work with. I’ll be damned if I ain’t takin’ full advantage of it. Besides, I ain’t seen my friends since before Christmas.

I need to do it all.

Now where the hell are my guitars?

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The concert is of Mike Doughty from December 7th, 2008 in South Burlington, VT. He’s with Andrew “Scrap” Livingston. The concert can be downloaded at Archive.org.

As stated before, Mike Doughty has been my favorite lyricist of the past 20 years. You can follow him on Twitter at @mikedoughtyyeah. Speaking of him, he better start followin’ me soon.

I was thinkin’ about Doughty n Twitter because I was having a conversation on Twitter today with, amongst others, @WarLordWrites about the direction and future of Social Media n what you can say n write. He was more optimistic than I was. But I’m cynical and cautious like that.

The conversation got me thinkin’ ’bout my buddy’s private blog. He lets it all hang out. Few people can put me in stitches, but he’s assuredly one of them. He’s agressive as all get out. It’s simply delightful.

There’s a reason his blog is private. His blog is the reason why Social Media can never be everything those of us in Social Media would like it to be.

It’s because Amercian Society will never be able to handle blunt honesty. Blunt honesty is a feeding ground for PR-hungry activist groups n ambulance chasers. It’s because there’s money in it. Welcome to a true definition of a Free Market.

But as I think of my buddy’s private blog, I blues for the day we can be so honest. We’re not talkin’ Mel Gibson drunk traffic stop, but speakin’ your mind and actually being able to follow the belief that actions are immoral and not opinions…heaven.

In society, at this time, opinions are grounds for defamation suits. I’ll have to, instead, be a creative writer like Doughty (a poor copy of him).

I hope I don’t get caught up in mitigation for this thought.

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