Tag Archives: friendship

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related

Monday Musings: For Our Adult Children

We want them to be happy, but we know happiness is elusive, and we remember being their age and struggling to find joy ourselves.

We want them to be safe, but we know a safe life is not likely to be an exciting life, a rewarding life.

We want them to find love, but we know that with love often comes pain.

We want them to find success, but who is to say our definition of the word matches theirs? And shouldn’t their definition take precedence?

We want them to be healthy — we would give all to ensure their good health. And they’re so young; they shouldn’t have to worry about disease. But life can be cruel and unjust, and none of us is given guarantees.

We want to be part of their lives. We want them to want us to be part of their lives. But we have spent their lifetimes trying to make them self-sufficient — personally, intellectually, financially. If we do our jobs right and well, they will go off to thrive as independent beings. As they should. As we want. But we also want to be part of their lives.

We take pride in their growth, their maturity, the wondrous adults they have become. But — and we would never, ever tell them this — we still long for those days when they were small enough to clamber into our laps with a book or special toy, content to sit in our arms for just a few moments.

Every now and then, despite their growth and maturity, we find them just as trying as we did when they were two.

We don’t want to rush them — really there’s no hurry — but at some point, at their discretion of course — of course — we would like them to have children. We hear tales of the joys of grandparenting, and of the incredible love our parents and siblings and peers have for their grandkids. We want to experience that, too. And yes, absolutely, one hundred per cent, there can be no denying, we also want to see them deal with the same sort of shit from their kids that they put us through for all those years.

We remember things we did when we were young — stupid, foolish, reckless things. Things that are not all that different from some of the crap they have done. And we think of our parents with sympathy and with guilt.

We will take calls from them at any hour, no matter the circumstances. We read their texts immediately, always. Because we never know. And the truth is, most of the time those calls and texts make us smile or laugh or kvell (a Yiddish word meaning, essentially, to swell with pride). A good conversation with one of them is often the highlight of our day.

We love to hear about their classes or their jobs, their friends and colleagues, their routines as well as their adventures. It’s not that we live vicariously through them — at least it shouldn’t be — but we want to hear that they are having fun, and we want to share in their joys, as we did when they were young.

We worry about them. How can we not? We have since they day they were born. When we wake in the middle of the night, almost invariably our thoughts go to them. We think of things we ought to have mentioned the last time we spoke, and we wonder if they have followed that piece of advice we offered a week ago, or two, or six. Some nights we lie awake for hours with these thoughts.

We savor their visits. We treasure those moments when our core family is together. We listen to them make each other laugh, and it is the sweetest music.

And we end where we began — with wishes for happiness and love, safety and good health, success and excitement. We want the world for them, even knowing how unrealistic these wishes might be. We’re parents, after all. No one expects us to be rational.

Have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Missing a Missing Friend

We lived in Australia for a year back in the mid 2000s, when our daughters were in primary school. Alex, the older one, turned 11 while we were there. Erin turned 7. Both girls were already swimming competitively here at home when we went Down Under, and so we found a swim league that was affiliated with the university where Nancy was taking her sabbatical.

Early on in our time with the league we were befriended by a family who volunteered to help run the weekly swim practices, and who had a daughter who swam with our girls. Graham and Dianna — Di — were friendly, funny, and so incredibly welcoming to us. Laura, their only child, was a couple of years older than Alex, but that didn’t seem to matter to her. She loved our kids and she was great with them.

The first place we lived that year in Australia was near the university and near the school the girls attended, but our lease there was only for about half our stay, and we were set to move after the Christmas holiday. At our last swim event before the break, I was chatting with Graham, and he asked me what we had in mind for our holiday.

“Well, we’ll be traveling a bit, and then we need to move to a new place.”

“Oh, where are you moving to?”

“Up the coast a bit to Woonona.”

“Really? We live in Woonona. What’s the address?”

I told him, and he laughed. “That’s right around the corner from us.”

When we became neighbors, Alex and Laura began to spend a ton of time together, and their friendship brought our families even closer. Like me, Graham was an avid photographer, and also a guitar player. In fact, he lent me his guitar for the rest of our stay. We had meals with them, we went on day trips, we still went to swim of course. Graham and I became close friends. Near the end of our stay in Australia, we all went to the Warrumbungles, a mountain wilderness in New South Wales, north and west of Woonona. It was beautiful, and our two families had a marvelous week together, hiking, sightseeing, cooking, hanging out in the evenings.

Graham and DiGraham was incredibly generous, kind, whip-smart, fierce in his devotion to Di and Laura, and one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. He and Di were both school teachers, both utterly devoted to education, to serving their schools and communities. They were active in their unions. They were political. They loved nature, loved good food and good drink. They were, in short, a lot like us. We knew that we wanted to maintain our friendship after our return to the States. And we did. The following summer Graham, Di, and Laura came to the States for their winter holiday (Southern Hemisphere and all that) and stayed with us for several days. Another great visit. We had tons of fun, but Graham and I also spent a good deal of time talking. He had just lost his father, something I went through a decade earlier. I can honestly say that even though we were now living literally half a world apart, our friendship had only deepened.

We chatted via Skype regularly, we messaged via social media all the time. We compared notes every time one of us updated his collection of camera equipment. When we lost my brother Bill, in the summer of 2017, he of course offered his love and support.

Only a few months later, Laura sent me a message that devastated all of us. Earlier that day, Graham had died suddenly. A heart attack. Totally unexpected. A thunderbolt. I felt like I had lost another brother. To this day, I miss him all the time. The loss remains raw and painful all these years later.

Graham would have been 63 this past Saturday. Yes, on April 1, and don’t think he didn’t make the most of having been born on April Fools’ Day.

We visited Di and Laura and Laura’s partner, Brad, in 2019, while we were in Australia to see Erin, who had taken a semester there. We had a fabulous visit — conversation, laughter, great meals, a couple of hikes. There was nothing maudlin about our time together. But Graham hovered over everything we did.

It is the most painful of clichés that we don’t know what life has in store for us or the people we love. With my brother’s death, and with the planning for his memorial, which occurred only a couple of weeks before Graham died, I had been out of touch with Graham for a little while when he passed. My fault entirely, although he would have understood. But I have thought about him a lot recently because the second book in my upcoming series is set in Australia, and it is dedicated to Graham, as well as to Di and Laura. And I have long wished for one more chance to chat with Graham, to share something funny or tell him about a recent photo shoot. So instead, I am going to take some time today to reach out to other friends, people I haven’t spoken or written to in a little while, people I miss.

Because we never know.

Have a wonderful week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: The Things We Say, The Things We Don’t Say

Let’s begin with a couple of quick exercises. First, I want you to pause for a moment and think of someone you’re fond of to whom you have something to say, something you haven’t yet said. Think of your feelings for this person. Maybe it’s a close friend, someone you have leaned on for support recently, someone who ought to hear directly from you just how much you appreciate them. Maybe it’s a friend who you wish was more, but you haven’t yet gathered the courage to say, “I think I’m in love with you.” Maybe it’s an acquaintance, someone you don’t know well, but would like to know better. Maybe you’re thinking it’s time to say to that person, “Hey, want to grab a coffee? I think we could be good friends.”

And now I want you to ask yourself why you haven’t yet spoken the words. Is it fear of being rebuffed, fear of making yourself vulnerable? Are you afraid it would just seem awkward? Have you convinced yourself there’s no time in the day for such things, that you simply haven’t had the chance? [Spoiler alert: At one time or another in my adult life, I have been in all those situations listed in the first paragraph, and I have not spoken up for all the reasons — and more — enumerated in the second.]

Second exercise: Now think of the Other People in your life, the ones who have wronged you, who have angered you, who have hurt you, or who have done the same to someone you love. And think of the one thing you would like to say to them. I’m not referring here to the simple “F____ you!” or “Go to H____!” I’m suggesting you think of something you would like to say to them calmly, rationally, something that would be substantive, that would convey to them the full measure of why what they did or said was wrong and hurtful and damaging.

And again, I want you to ask yourself why you haven’t yet spoken the words. Is it fear of confrontation, fear of their reaction? Is it an unwillingness to revisit something unpleasant that is now over and done? Is it your sense that you could never say completely and eloquently enough what it is you really wish they could hear? Or is it more immediate than that? Is it that the person you’re thinking of for exercise 2 is also one of the people you thought of for exercise 1, and you fear bringing up the hurt again lest you kill a still-valued friendship or romance? [Again, over the course of my adult life, I have been in all these situations as well.]

This being a Monday Musings post, it will come as no surprise to any of you that I have been giving these issues a good deal of thought in recent weeks and months.

I was brought up in a family that did not suppress expressions of love or anger. We were an affectionate family, and we followed the example of our loving, affectionate parents. We could be a combative family, and we followed the example of those same parents, who actually bickered quite a lot, and occasionally had some pretty heated arguments. I was brought up believing that expressing emotions was healthy (mostly), that just as it we owed it to one another to say the extra nice thing, we also owed it to ourselves to speak our minds when put out (mostly).

When I was in graduate school, I shared a house with someone who remains to this day a cherished friend. Her family did NOT express anger, and so the first time I expressed annoyance with her about some trivial household thing, she grew very upset. I tried to explain my upbringing, to make her understand that just because I was angry, it didn’t mean I no longer wanted to be her housemate or her friend. She caught on quickly, and by the time we moved out of our place, she was much more comfortable giving voice to her anger. Funny, her spouse has never thanked me for this . . . .

Still, speaking freely with family and close friends is relatively easy. Doing so with people we don’t know as well can be a challenge. As I have grown older, I have grown far more comfortable sharing the extra kind word with people I know less well. Most respond well to expressions of appreciation or regard, and I am ALWAYS conscious of saying what I wish to say in words and in contexts that will not come across as creepy in any way.

But then there’s that anger thing. Just as expressing ourselves with those we know best is easier than it might be with looser acquaintances, so is kindness easier to share than anger. This may seem counterintuitive, especially given the breakdown of civil discourse across so much of present-day society. Again, though, I’m not talking about the verbal equivalent of flipping the bird, which IS easy. I’m talking about opening up and saying, “You wronged me, and here’s why it made me feel hurt or angry or diminished.” That is an act of intimacy, which is why many who find it relatively easy to say, “I love you,” can barely fathom saying, “I’m angry with you.”

There are in my life right now a number of people to whom I would like to express resentment, my sense of having been wronged. For myself, for a loved one — when the bonds are close enough it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. And as I contemplate such encounters, as I try to game out the conversations in my head, anticipating where they might lead, I find myself asking those questions I brought up earlier. Why haven’t I done this already? What do I believe such expressions if emotion might cost me (or my loved one)? What do I think I would gain from speaking my mind, and is it worth the potential risks or fallout?

As with so many of my recent Monday posts, I have no clear answers for the questions I’m asking. I know there are things I want to say, and at times in the past I have dealt with similar feelings by writing letters — letters I know I will never send, but which allow me to put words to my emotions so I can move on and look in the eye the objects of my anger.

Perhaps that is what I’ll do again. Or perhaps the time has come to speak my mind.

Have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Monday Musings: About That Birthday I Was Dreading . . . .

“You want to complain about a birthday?” Life said. “I’ll give you a birthday to complain about.”

Last week, as usual, I wrote two posts. On Monday, I ruminated about my approaching birthday, making it clear that I was feeling a bit down about growing older and was having trouble putting myself in the birthday spirit. And then, in my Professional Wednesday post, I began a new series of posts — “What Holds Me Back” — about the things that sometimes limit my productivity. And I began the series with an entry about coping with life issues in general.

As it happens, I managed to write both posts ahead of time. I had them ready to go before the weekend was over. And boy did those posts come back to bite me in the ass.

In the Wednesday post, I wrote this about life, or rather Life, which I anthropomorphized to make a point:

“Life is a fickle bastard, with a cruel streak a mile wide, a perverse — at times evil — sense of humor, and a preternatural knack for intruding at the absolute worst moment. But Life can also be charming, deeply attractive, kind, generous, and downright fun . . . . Life is as changeable as March weather, as unpredictable as the best storyline, and as relentless as time itself. Life happens constantly; Life will not sit quietly in a corner reading a book and respecting our need for calm just because we have a looming deadline or a new idea we are eager to explore. Life lives to mess with us.”

Given how well I seem to understand Life’s perverse nature, you’d think I would have known what would happen if I complained about an upcoming birthday.

My birthday was yesterday. I have spent the last week sick with Covid. Nancy and I made plans to travel for the weekend, to get down to St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge to do some hiking and birdwatching and photography. We had to cancel the trip. She made me a cake last weekend, while I was writing the aforementioned posts. We wound up freezing it, because with Covid stealing my sense of smell, I couldn’t taste it at all.

“You want to complain about a birthday?” Life said. “I’ll give you a birthday to complain about.”

Jokes and sarcasm aside, I have to say, “Message received.”

Birthdays, someone once said, are the price we pay for growing older. We love them as kids, of course. We want nothing more than to add to the running total, to get Older, because with Older comes perks, not to mention presents. The presents get better with age. The perks too, for a while, and then less so. But my dad always used to say about getting older, “it’s better than the alternative.”

I won’t spend a lot of time on the “yes, life is hard, but I have so much to be thankful for” thing. I touched on this last week and it remains true. My life IS hard these days. I know precious few people who have it easy. And I am deeply grateful for the life I have, private and professional. But reading back through last Monday’s post, I realize I wasn’t complaining so much as struggling to accept what I couldn’t and wouldn’t want to prevent. I was down, and I wrote about it.

And again, Life was, like, “You’re think you’re down now? Hold my beer.”

So, here I am, on the day after my birthday, at the end of a truly crappy week of fever and coughing and isolation and in-home masking and tasteless, aroma-less food . . . and I feel much better about turning a year older than I would have imagined possible when writing last week’s post. Like some Jimmy-Stewart-from-It’s-A-Wonderful-Life wannabe, I have seen that things could be substantially worse than they are, that being a youthful (not to mention immature) 60 is really not half bad. It’s not that I was imagining myself as a Covid patient forever, but rather that I was made hyper-aware of all the things I value in my routine, all the things I love to do — things that were denied me by the fever and taste-loss and social distancing. My morning workout, my walks, my regular work schedule, relaxed time with Nancy, get-togethers with friends, bird walks and photo walks and signing along with my guitar (my voice is still recovering), good wine and good whisky and all the wonderful foods Nancy and I make and eat.

The everyday, the humdrum, the same old same old — it turns out, I love that shit. My routine is pretty darn good, and the little things I enjoy each day — my morning smoothie and afternoon iced coffee, our household guac recipe — mean more to me than I realized, at least until I couldn’t taste them anymore. Life’s challenges remain, and, yeah, I’m sixty fucking years old. But I’m good, thanks. And when I’m not, I know that the people I love have my back. There are far, far worse things.

Wishing you all a wonderful week.

Bell Bridge Books, Belle Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Invasives, Writing

Professional Wednesday: What Holds Me Back, part I — Life Issues

As we turn the calendar to March, I thought I would turn to a new series of posts in my Professional Wednesday feature. This month, as I struggle with a bit of work-related inertia, I have decided some might find it helpful to read about “What Holds Me Back.” Because let’s be honest — those of us who seek to make a living as professional creators face no shortage of obstacles to productivity. We have to be self-motivated, we have to be disciplined, we have to be imaginative and prolific on demand. None of this is easy and at times it seems hobgoblins lurk in every corner, threatening to undermine even the most sincere determination to get stuff done.

What — or who — are my hobgoblins? How do they disrupt my work patterns, and what do I do to keep them at bay? These are the questions I hope to address in the next several Wednesday posts.

This week, I address perhaps the most obvious and formidable hobgoblin of them all: Life.

Life is a fickle bastard, with a cruel streak a mile wide, a perverse — at times evil — sense of humor, and a preternatural knack for intruding at the absolute worst moment. But Life can also be charming, deeply attractive, kind, generous, and downright fun. This is part of what makes Life such a difficult opponent in the battle over productivity. Life is as changeable as March weather, as unpredictable as the best storyline, and as relentless as time itself. Life happens constantly; Life will not sit quietly in a corner reading a book and respecting our need for calm just because we have a looming deadline or a new idea we are eager to explore. Life lives to mess with us.

All strange metaphors aside, in my experience, relating to my own work output and also my interactions with other professionals, general life disruptions are responsible for the vast majority of missed deadlines and punted obligations. Sometimes it’s the (relatively) small stuff — a kid with a bad cold or stomach bug, a blown car engine or flat tire, a flooded basement or loss of power. Sometimes it’s more serious than that — an ailing elderly parent, a dire illness in the family, a failing marriage, the death of a friend or relative. I’ve faced my share of such things — not all, but enough; every one of us has.

And in the short term, there is nothing we can do about them. Life imposes its own exigencies. When our kid is sick or our parents are fading or a relative or friend is in need, we have no choice but to prioritize the people we love and the obligations we’ve taken on as parents and partners, offspring and siblings and friends. No one with a thread of compassion or decency should punish or blame us for this. Those who would, do so at their own risk, because eventually they, too, will be on the receiving end of Life’s caprice.

The problem comes later, after the crisis has passed, but while the aftermath lingers. Nearly two years ago, when our daughter received her cancer diagnosis, I withdrew from . . . well, pretty much everything. I told my agent and editor that I wouldn’t be able to make a deadline that was still a couple of months away. I stopped seeing friends. I hunkered down with my fear and my grief and my anger, and I essentially surrendered to this terrible thing Life had done to my family and me. I was sure I couldn’t work through it, and so I didn’t even think it worthwhile to make the attempt.

Nancy responded differently, not because she is better or stronger than I am (although she might well be both . . .) but because she deals with emotional strain differently. She is great at compartmentalizing, which is good, because at the time she had a high-stress, high-profile job. In the time since, she has advanced to a position that is even more high-stress and high-profile. Her ability to compartmentalize has served her well.

I don’t have that ability. I can’t compartmentalize. But, I realized, I had a different ability I could harness. I had learned years ago — when we lost my parents, and later when we lost my eldest brother — to channel my grief and pain into my art. And it didn’t take me long after hearing the news of our daughter’s illness to understand that was precisely what I needed to do. Within a week of calling my agent and editor to tell them I was pulling back, I sent them new messages. I am working through this. I will make my deadline.

INVASIVES, by David B. Coe (Jacket art courtesy of Belle Books)And I did. The book was Invasives, by the way. It contains the best character work I’ve ever done, and that is no coincidence.

I suffer from anxiety and panic disorder. I sometimes walk the edge of depression. I know as well as anyone that coping with life is hard, and that glib, easy-fix solutions to the shit life throws at us are worse than useless. Such facile responses can actually hurt, because they suggest to those of us who struggle that the problem isn’t the circumstance but rather our inability to deal with it.

But I know as well, from my own experience, that we don’t have to be whole to create. Life elicits emotion and those emotions can overwhelm and paralyze. The thing is, though, we’re creators, and emotion is our bread and butter. Yes, at times the emotions we feel in life’s rawest moments are like a downed electrical wire. We touch them at our own risk. As I found a couple of years ago, however, we can be resilient in the face of the worst circumstances. Long before I was ready to interact with other people, I was ready, even eager, to take hold of that live wire and use it for something constructive and healing.

Life can disrupt our art. We all know this. But we are alchemists at heart. We can turn grief and hurt and fear and anger into golden moments on the page (or the canvas or the guitar or the stage — whatever). And, for me at least, that is how I keep life from holding me back.

Keep writing.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Facing Down a Big Birthday

I am staring down the barrel of a big birthday. This time next week, I’ll have passed a dubious milestone, and the fact is, right now I’m struggling a bit with the whole getting older thing.

Yes, I know the clichés. Even on my birthday, I only get a day older. Age is a state of mind. Growing older beats the alternative.

None of them is helping right now.

I remember feeling similarly ten years ago, as I neared my last milestone birthday. I was (and am again) acutely aware of being far closer to my dotage than to my youth. Since that last big birthday, I’ve lost a brother, watched as my older daughter battles serious illness, lost my mother-in-law and a brother-in-law, and more friends than I care to count. Life has been challenging, and at the same time wondrous and fun and rewarding, making it feel all the more precious.

Sometimes I write posts with a lesson in mind, or as a way of dispensing what little wisdom I might have. Other times, I write searching for answers. This post doesn’t fit neatly into either of those patterns. I have no wisdom today. I don’t know what lesson I might offer to myself, much less to someone else. And, frankly, I am not seeking advice from others. As I say, I know the platitudes. I am deeply grateful for all I have and all I have accomplished. And I am certain the answer for what ails me right now lies entirely within.

I think in part I am eager — impatient, even — to get on with the next phase of my life. Nancy and I have raised our children, we have enjoyed our careers, we have worked hard to set ourselves up financially for what we call “retirement,” although I don’t think it will really be a retirement in any traditional sense. I don’t intend to stop working, and while Nancy is ready for whatever might be next, she is also open to any and all possibilities in that respect. All I know is that I am looking forward to changing the pace of the life we share so that we can enjoy each other and the things we love doing together.

And so in a way, my resistance to this birthday is rooted in that impatience, but also in the understanding that the work we did to get to this point in our shared life took thirty-plus years and swooped by in a flash of laughter and love, struggle and grief. The time we have left to enjoy the fruits of that work feels potentially too brief by comparison.

When Nancy and I started dating (in our mid-late twenties), we told each other we would give the relationship eighty years, and if at the end of those eighty years together we felt the relationship wasn’t working anymore, we’d go our separate ways. Obviously, we said this with tongues firmly in cheek. But in all honestly, I want my eighty years. Every one of them. Right now, that romantic fantasy is bumping up against the reality of my 60th birthday.

I have written before of my emotional health issues. I have been candid about my struggles and also about the comfort and growth I have found in therapy. I have learned that whatever I am working on at a particular moment rarely impacts my mood and health in a vacuum. It’s all connected, even if I don’t always see the connections right away. I am certain my current hyper-awareness of my own mortality is tied to my brother Bill’s death five years ago, and also to my ongoing worries about my daughter’s health. I know it is connected as well to lingering professional ambitions and dissatisfaction with elements of my career path.

This is what I meant when I said the answers lie within. I know that next week I will only be seven days older than I am now, not a year. I know as well that the coming decade will be filled with . . . well, with life — with pleasure and pain, joy and sadness, good days and bad. Many have told me that they have LOVED life in their sixties. I intend to as well.

But to draw inspiration from the incomparable Ned Ryerson, I also know that first step is going to be a doozy . . . .

Have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Monday Musings: What Matters? Part II — Time

Last week, I began a series of posts addressing the question “What matters?” My point in doing so was to focus on the simple fact that we have finite amounts of time, of energy (physical and emotional), and of the other personal resources we allocate to various parts of our lives on a daily basis. To be honest, I don’t know exactly where this conversation is going. I only know that it interested me when I started thinking about it, and I figured it might take the blog in an interesting direction.

I don’t expect to come up with a lot of answers in these posts. In a way, the questions are the more important element of the conversation. Ultimately whatever answers I might find, whatever choices I might make, will be idiosyncratic, tailored entirely to my life, my priorities, my needs and wants and obligations. Again, the questions and thought process are likely to be far more informative.

Today, I want to talk about time. I mentioned in a couple of paragraphs last Monday that for much of 2022 I had failed to make time for two pursuits that I care about a great deal. And I glibly stated that I wanted to make more of an effort to play music and take photos in this new year. Of course, it’s not that easy. Not by a long shot. I want to make clear up front that I am not complaining about any of what I’m about to discuss. I love my life. I know how fortunate I am. But time issues are not easy.

To state the obvious, time is finite. Time is immutable. Some of us may have more money than others. Some of us may have more energy than others. But we all are allotted the same amount of time each day, week, month, year. We can’t buy more. We can’t hoard it for a “rainy day.”

I write about time management a fair amount in my Professional Wednesday posts. But work time is only one variable in the equation, and, I would argue, far from the most important. I can pledge to myself that I will find more time for the things I enjoy doing, but where is that time going to come from? It’s all about choices, about deciding “what matters.”

Look at most people’s daily habits and it becomes clear that we spend the vast majority of our time doing two things: sleeping and working. Nancy and I tend to be early-to-bed, early-to-rise people; neither of us does well on too little sleep. We’re generally in bed by 10:30 or so each night, and we’re both up by 6:00 or 6:15 each morning. I devote the first two hours of my day to exercise — a workout and then a lengthy walk. I work for much of the day, only winding down when Nancy gets home from her job in the early evening. She generally has a bit more work to do after she gets home, and I take that time to tie up my loose ends from my work day. We have dinner, clean up, and then will generally watch an episode or two of something on TV before retiring. Rinse and repeat . . . .

The point I’m trying to make is this: There isn’t a whole lot of room in there for squeezing in the things I want to add to my day. I do take small breaks from my writing periodically. I could — and should — use those breaks to play a song or two on my guitar. Slotting in my music that way would likely get me to play a lot more over the course of a year. And I can (and sometimes do) take my camera with me on my morning walks. The places where I walk are quite beautiful. I could easily take photos then. These are not perfect solutions, but they help.

What about that TV time at the end of the day? Couldn’t I play music then?

Yes, I suppose watching television may not be the best use of my limited time. Except the hour or two we spend on the couch isn’t necessarily about the shows themselves. It’s about sitting with Nancy, unwinding together, sharing the experience, talking about the shows, the characters, the plot twists. We don’t get a lot of time together, and time with my sweetie matters to me. So watching TV together is a choice.

Weekends offer time for doing stuff as well. We always have errands on Saturdays and Sundays. We do our laundry. Nancy gardens. I write blog posts like this one. But yes, I can play music and maybe take photos on the weekends.

But I’ve yet to address the unexpected, or the things that we don’t schedule but have to do or want to do. Seeing friends, talking to our kids, visiting with our kids, going to doctor appointments, dealing with house issues, paying bills, shopping for groceries, going to a concert or play or movie, attending university functions, which has become a HUGE part of our lives since Nancy became acting president of the school. And I haven’t even mentioned travel — for work, which both of us have to do from time to time, and for pleasure, which we LOVE to do, but which can be quite disruptive to our routines.

What matters? What can we give up or shorten or stretch? I blithely give advice to new writers about finding time for writing in their lives. “Just an hour a day, enough to write five hundred or a thousand words, can put you on the path to writing professionally.” It’s true. But where the hell would I find a spare hour? I have no idea. And I don’t have small kids in the house. I don’t have pets. I don’t have a job other than writing and editing.

These choices are hard. They demand sacrifice. All of us are spread thin. None of us has tons of free time. I don’t want to sleep less, or exercise less. I don’t want to give up time with my spouse. I want more time with my daughters, not less. I don’t want to cut back on work. I enjoy my job and — oh, by the way — I enjoy getting paid. I want to travel and see friends and family; I don’t want to be a hermit or a shut-in. But I also want to play music, take pictures, birdwatch (I always take my binoculars on my morning walks, so I do birdwatch each day). These things are good for my mental and physical health as well.

What matters? The hard truth is that all of it does. And I have no doubt that when you look at your life, and try to figure out how you might fit in something new, be it writing or exercise or time for a new friend or romantic partner, you encounter the same problem. Each choice involves some sort of sacrifice.

I don’t know if this post has been helpful or interesting for any of you, but I find these issues fascinating. In any case, thanks for reading along. More to come in the weeks ahead

For now, have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Monday Musings: What Matters? Part I

When I was a kid, I always had an Etch A Sketch. Honestly, I’m not sure why. I sucked at it. I didn’t have the patience or the dexterity to create anything of quality on that silver-gray screen. I tried often enough, but I couldn’t manage to draw much more than squiggles and odd shapes. Still, what I always loved about Etch A Sketch was the ease of starting over. Lift the screen, give it a hearty shake, and the slate was blank again, ready for my next attempt.

As it happens, that is also what I love about New Year’s. I have always seen the turn of the calendar as an opportunity to give my routine, my goals, my emotional approach to life a hearty shake, and build them again from scratch. Yes, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it does capture the spirit of how I approach the holiday. Last year’s achievements and disappointments are done — I don’t want them to be either a source of discouragement or cause for complacency. I start each year with a blank screen. That’s the goal at least.

In the past, I made resolutions, an exercise I eventually decided was rather useless. Better, I decided, to set out goals and aspirations, to keep practices and habits that were working for me, and at least attempt to jettison those that weren’t. This may sound like semantics — what’s the difference between “resolutions” on the one hand and “goals and aspirations” on the other? To me, I guess, it’s the difference between attempting to draw something on paper with pen and ink, and making the attempt on an ever-erasable plastic screen.

With all this in mind, I begin today a series of posts that will span the next few weeks. The general idea of the posts is to answer a question that is deceptive in its simplicity: What matters to me?

Over the course of a year, or ten, or fifty, we pick up . . . stuff. I’m not speaking just of physical things — indeed, that sort of stuff is really the least of it. I’m referring to tasks; habits; pastimes and hobbies; ambitions and fears; passions, loves, and things we find repellent; professional goals and responsibilities; personal relationships; chores and obligations; etc. In short, anything and everything that consumes our time, feeds or saps our energy and our emotional strength, informs our decision-making at home or at work or in between. Everything.

As I say, this is going to take a few weeks to get through. But I think the exercise will be worthwhile for me and, I hope, informative and perhaps even inspiring for you.

Today, I begin with a big picture approach — the 10,000 foot view, as it were. And I do so by focusing on two examples of stuff.

As I take stock of 2022 and look forward to 2023, I see things in my life that I have neglected and others that I have focused on with too much intensity. I am a musician and a photographer. I take much joy in playing my guitars and taking my camera out into the field to capture images. That is, I usually do. As I reflect on the past year, which has been an emotionally challenging one, I find that I have neglected these hobbies. Too often over the past twelve months, I have gone days at a time without playing any music at all. I have gone weeks at a time without taking photos. And this is about more than leaving expensive equipment to gather dust. These pursuits feed my soul, allowing me to create in ways that are entirely separate from my profession. I need to do these things. I know I do. They keep me centered, happy; they bring me peace. My emotional health depends in part on my commitment to doing these things. Just as I wouldn’t go weeks without eating fresh fruits and vegetables, I also shouldn’t ignore my creative passions.

At the same time, I have allowed anger to creep into my everyday life. I harbor resentments — some personal, some professional, some related to circumstances that I’m really not at liberty to discuss publicly. And really, the roots of my anger are beside the point. Too often, as I take my morning walks, I find myself fixating on wrongs and the righteous anger I feel in response. I imagine finding and taking the opportunity to speak my mind to those who have hurt me or those I love. (That really is as far as my imaginings go. I’m not a violent person, but I know the power of words. And I know that I’m quite capable of cutting someone to the bone with a well-turned phrase.) The point, though, is that this anger, and these imagined conversations do me no good. They keep my focus on my grudges; they allow me to wallow in my bitterness.

Music and photography have been fundamental elements of my happiness for decades. Wouldn’t I be better off if I again found time to make those activities central to my daily existence? Of course I would.

Hostility toward those who have angered me matters far less to me than love for my family and my friends. Wouldn’t I be calmer, more content, if I focused my emotional energy on the latter? Of course I would.

What matters to me? What matters to you?

These are, I believe foundational questions. The things we care about — the things we love, the things from which we draw strength and joy — these are what define who we are and how we live. At least they ought to. As I navigate the coming year, I wish to be guided by those things that bring me happiness rather than those that take me to dark places.

Deceptively simple, right? And yet, it takes work and careful thought.

More in posts to come. For now, have a great week.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe

Monday Musings: Holiday Wishes

Girls tree holiday 22This will be brief. We have had our girls in for the holiday, though Winter Storm Elliott very nearly kept our younger daughter in Denver for the weekend. We have managed the cold and kept the house warm with fires in the fireplace and well-placed space heaters. We’ve enjoyed clam dip and cinnamon rolls, homemade soups and Indian-style butter salmon. We’ve even had a couple of meals out.

We’ve exchanged gifts, watched movies, talked and laughed and reminisced. We might even have imbibed a cocktail or two.

I said in a previous post that all I really wanted for the holiday was to be with Nancy and our daughters. That was my wish, and despite a once-in-a-generation weather event, and several cancelled flights, I eventually got exactly that. I am content.

I could say more, but honestly that’s all I feel any need to say.

Except that I hope your holiday brought you joy and laughter, good food and a cup/glass/flute of your favorite beverage, time with loved ones and perhaps a moment or two of solitude, if that was what you needed.

And I hope New Year’s Eve/Day, which, in my experience, tends to be a holiday that disappoints, is enjoyable, safe, and whatever else you hope it will be. I will not be posting on Wednesday, but will, of course, recommence the blog next Monday, January 2, 2023.

2023.

Okay, that’s just freaky.

Bell Bridge Books, Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Invasives, Islevale Cycle, Radiants, Thieftaker Chronicles, Writing, Zombies Need Brains

Friday Fun: Holiday Time!

So, what are you getting for the holidays?

The Loyalist Witch, by D.B. Jackson (Jacket art by Chris McGrath)What are you giving for the holidays?

INVASIVES, by David B. Coe (Jacket art courtesy of Belle Books)May I suggest a book, or several books?

RADIANTS, by David B. Coe (Jacket art by Belle Books)Yes, I know, this probably seems a little crass. But here’s the thing: Creators like me make our livings off the sale of our creations. It really is that simple. If our books (or music or art or whatever) don’t sell, we don’t earn.

TIME'S DEMON, by D.B. Jackson (Art by Jan Weßbecher)Now, many of you are probably saying at this point that you have already bought my books and, I hope, read and enjoyed them. That’s wonderful. Thank you. Truly.

The holidays, though, offer an opportunity to share with others the things that you have enjoyed. Maybe a relative or friend loves historical fiction. Turn them on to the Thieftaker books! Maybe someone you know and love enjoys thrillers — Radiants and Invasives might be just the books they’re looking for. Maybe you have a fan of time travel on your holiday gift list. The Islevale Cycle books are time travel blended with epic fantasy. Sounds perfect, right?

Someone else you know might be a huge fan of short fiction, in which case, I would recommend you to the Zombies Need Brains site for any number of speculative fiction anthologies.

And if you’ve already given my books to every person you know, terrific! Thank you so much much! May I introduce you to some friends of mine: Faith Hunter, A.J. Hartley, Milton Davis, Gerald Coleman, Nicole Kurtz, John Hartness, Edmund Schubert, Joshua Palmatier, Tamsin Silver, Stuart Jaffe, C.E. Murphy, J.D. Blackrose, Darin Kennedy, Patrick Dugan, Paige Christie, and so many others.

Creators all, with books to sell, books that make great gifts. Check them out.

And have a wonderful holiday.