Category Archives: Personal

Yesterday evening I sat down to watch Into the Wild, the story of Christopher McCandless who after graduating from Emory University here in Atlanta in 1990, gave his life savings ($24,000) to charity and abandoned all of his worldly possessions and headed north to Alaska.
Oh what the hell, go read about his life here. Too much to type here.
Seeing this film brought back from the dead a long-lived desire to do exactly the same thing; abandon my modern life and go live off the land, free of society’s constraints and the dependency on other people to live. That was exactly what I was going to do after I graduated from High School thirteen years ago. I had planned on heading North to Canada or Alaska, even Colorado or Wyoming, in search of a place where my nearest neighbor would be a month’s hike. I had been a loner my whole life and wanted nothing more than to just be… alone.
I was a Chris McCandless at one point in my life, but I never took that first step into the unknown. Although I am happy where I am in life, sharing it with someone I love and in a career that allows me to be the creative person I am, part of me deep down still feels the need to abandon from time to time. I would love nothing more than to be able to take off for a year and just live alone, off the land… free, taking notes and writing of my adventures so I could come back later and compile them all into a book.
Maybe some day.

Let’s see what this one comes up with.

Originally posted 2007-02-15 19:58:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

This afternoon I submitted my third article to a certain yet-unnamed website. Well, fourth if you want to get technical about it. I wrote one this morning and submitted it but I turned around and recalled it when I got home from work. I spent all day thinking about it and decided I didn’t like the way it read.

I actually pulled posts from my old blog and reworked them to be more readable to a general audience. In my previous blog I targeted a certain audience and leaned a little too far to the smart-assy side of things in my posts. I don’t think that would go over so well in this new medium.

I have been wanting to get into freelance writing for some time now. The thought of writing content for websites and getting paid (and having residual income) is quite appealing to me. I mean, who wouldn’t like receiving a check in the mail every month to cover a few sandwiches here and there? This kid right here would.

Problem Number One was the fact that no one I found would accept content from previously unpublished writers. I’m published in the sense that I have this website and have self published my own book, but I have never written for a website before. Therefore I have nothing to credit to my name.

I decided to do a numerology reading today at lunch. Let’s see if this thing is at all accurate.

Originally posted 2007-02-15 19:41:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged. I thought that since starting this new site, I would keep my entries to writing-related posts only. Truth be told, while I did enjoy the break for a while, it has been wearing on me for some time. I can say I really, honestly miss it.

I kept all of my entries from my old blog on private. Last night I went through them all; culled some and trashed a bunch of others. Some of them were too childish and whatnot to bother putting up here. I still have them though and I may go through and do some more culling. In the meantime, my Old Post Promoter will randomly re-post them as it has been doing with my other posts.

My wife and I have been in a constant battle every year over who can buy the other the most presents on the same amount of money; not an official battle, but this year I won – for the first time. Of course, I only wanted one thing, and that one thing took up just about her entire budget. That allowed me to go hog-wild this year and get the one-up on her. Next year she’ll most likely continue her reign.
We were supposed to get all manner of rain storm on Christmas Eve around midnight, 35 mph winds and 2″ of pouring rain, but we got nothing. I did keep my fingers crossed in hope that Old Man Winter would actually lend me an ear this year and give me my first ever white Christmas, but he didn’t. The temperature didn’t plummet – didn’t even get near freezing although it’s been in the twenties every morning the past two weeks – so therefore no white lawn. I think I’m going to have to move to one of the Northern states to experience that. Not the Northeast though, I’m thinking Northwest – like Montana.
Well, that being said, I hope everyone out there had a wonderful Christmas!

Yesterday found me and Denise down in Newnan, Georgia braving ice cold winds and threatening rain. What on earth could possibly convince us to drive an hour and a half away from the comforts of our humble abode on a perfectly good Saturday morning? My good blogosphere friend, Clay Perry, was attending Newnan Market Days and seeing as it was the last one of this year and the fact he’s invited me down so many times – funny how our schedules conflict so badly – I decided I’d better go. Add to that the fact that he set me up with the owner of Scott’s Bookstore on the square, it was a day I just couldn’t pass up. More on that in a minute. Clay calls his little event Crickhollow on the Square – pretty neat if you ask me – after his little wood carving hobby (hobby for lack of a better name), aptly named Crickhollow Studios.  He is pretty talented and I like his work. His walking sticks are absolutely wonderful and I’m kicking myself for not buying one. Oh well, there’s always spring time. Perhaps another barter will be in order (traded one of his wood spirit ornaments for one of my books)?

So what’s it like living with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?
When I leave the house, I have a ritual I have to perform. I go over a list in my head while performing it. I actually say out loud “phone”, and feel for my phone in my left front pocket; then “knife”, and feel for my knife clipped to my right pocket; then “wallet”, and make sure my wallet is in my right rear pocket; “keys”, and grip the keys tightly in my left hand to make sure they’re there; “thumb drive”, and feel for the thumb drive in my right pocket; “iPod”, and make sure my iPod is in my left pocket with my phone; then “paper”, and press my left rear pocket to make sure I hear the slight crumbling sound of the paper booklet I make every week that I write stuff down in that I have to remember. Then and only then can I leave the house.
This is just one small part of what I live with every day. There are many, many other aspects, none of which I care to get into in a public forum such as this due to their very nature. Here’s a pretty comprehensive list of symptoms, a great deal of which I suffer from.

My neighbor brought this home for me earlier this year. I was tired of the unsightly piles of charred wood scattered throughout my back yard and decided it was time to beautify it and go old school in the burning shit department.
I drilled 1/2″ diameter holes all around with a step bit in my DeWalt corded drill. There’s one in the bottom for drainage and three placed vertically at every quarter point around the perimeter to allow for air flow. The result is what you see here. I only started using it yesterday and I must say, it works pretty darned good.
As you can see in the background, I have quite a collection of yard debris to torch. What you see on the right hand side is the pile of saplings I cut down to make room for my shed (I recessed it in a pocket at the edge of the woods). On the left side is the stuff from the front yard I threw over the fence to add to the party. I’ve got a ways to go. We burned yesterday and today and have barely made a dent.
I’m on the lookout for a cheap metal garbage can with a lid so I can store the ashes. When the soil gets too acidic I will use it to even out the PH. It also works great for tomatoes – just drop about a quarter cup full in the bottom of the hole before you plant. And I can use it to make soap – which I will be trying … at some point. Oh yeah, and I’ll be sprinkling it around the perimeters of my planter boxes to keep the slugs and snails out.
I want to go get some cinder blocks and build a level base for it. The barrel will actually sit on some fire bricks though, so it’s suspended above the cinder blocks to keep the heat from cracking them. That will probably get done after the planter boxes get finished.
And speaking of planter boxes, one of the businesses in the building I work in threw out a bunch of tubs that looked like they were made of fiberglass or some kind of thick plastic. I’m going to go check them out tomorrow. If they’ll work for me, all I’ll have to do is sink them into the ground and fill them with soil.
We shall see!