Okay, let's get this show on the road

Hello, good people of the long table.

I hope you had a good week and are off to good weekends.

Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?

Per my last post, I have an obstruction to clear before it is nothing but open road. I have done an absolutely gargantuan amount of writing this week toward that end. I have literally done nothing but write. In terms of sheer volume, my output has ranked right up there near the top of my highest word counts in a week. I’ve probably averaged 4,000 words a day - which, for perspective, is… crazy. A complete novel runs 75,000-100,000 words. A month of averaging 4,000 words a day would total 120,000 words - the equivalent of a longish first draft of an entire book.

So, ya know, that’s good… ish.

Most of them will never see the light of day because they were attempts at telling parts of the story required to move my last boulder which led places which weren’t ‘right’. A solid chunk of them will someday show up those as posts of their own… so all was not lost from things presently parked.

What I’ve been doing most of all this week has been letting something… write itself to me. I’ve been getting to the frictionless place where it is as if I am not writing at all and am just a conduit between a spring and the surface.

There is a fundamental ‘outage’ that I am trying to repair: this place having become estranged from what it was at the start of 2024. Up until that point, this little thing of ours existed for me as the real-life embodiment of the metaphorical backyard with a long table where people meet for noisy dinners. It was a place where I was the host of the gatherings but with that role carrying no distinctions from being an attendee.

I was the host simply because this was ‘my place’ but it wasn’t mine at all. It was more, I was the guy with the yard big enough to fit the table. I didn’t sit at the head of it, because there was no head of this table. There were just people around it.

I had this very comfortable ‘sense of place’ in the way that you would when you’re having people over and they are people you know and love and are so comfortable with, you are simply present with them. You are simply yourself. They are simply themselves. And laced beneath those two things is something not articulated and not even felt, really, but instead experienced as the absence of a feeling: consciousness of yourself… of how you’re acting… of what the other person will think… of… propriety and social graces… and the light jockeying of casual social interactions.

I was simply… me.

And I am never not me here.

What crept in over the past year and a half was a perfect storm of sorts which swept away first my presence - I went dark - and then, in a sense, my existence.

It wasn’t that I felt different or was different in how I inhabited this place - how, in the sense of ‘how I was showing up on my side’ - it was that there was suddenly a gap between us where how I showed up as me diverged from how that showed up for you.

With people not having a window into what was really going on - and having a completely dishonest, fictionalized window elsewhere which gave an entirely false view into both a situation I was a part of and the other person in it - when I showed up here as ‘me’ as usual: 1) the view was only partial; 2) didn’t shed light on what wasn’t shown; and 3) actually contributed to false impressions…

First, I couldn’t repair that because I was at a traumatized gunpoint.

Then, I couldn’t manage to repair it despite trying, because doing so required… talking about the traumatizing gunpoint… which required facing the gun long enough to disarm it.

Finally, by a month ago, I was at a place where I could break the last chains tying me to the past armed hostage situation… but then I couldn’t repair the ‘Understanding Gap’ because it so fucking vast, I didn’t even know where to start - and there was just no way I could bring people all the way to understanding.

I can’t really. I can’t. There is no way to get people all the way up to in the car next to me seeing through windshield with me… and I don’t like that. It leaves me feeling like I am not understood… and that gets in the way of having the things I write in the future being understood - understood in the way I mean it - understood as the thoughts and experiences of someone who you understand.

In order to at least bridge that so we can move past… the past… I need to fill some of that gap. In writing feverishly toward that end, I realized that in order to do that, I need to do a reset of sorts. Rather than talk about what has been the main subject despite not even being the story of the chapter, I need to share with you guys the actual story of my past year and a half as if you have heard nothing of it.

Believe it or not, that is not only not a retread of things you’ve heard, it is pretty damn close to nothing you have heard at all.

If you are okay with coming along, I want to take you on a drive with me. Ya can’t bring anything with you. Leave all your impressions, preconceptions, and recall at home and just come… By the end, we will back to where we were at the start of 2024 - and I will be back to where I was then: here, present as myself, understood, and comfortable knowing that I am.

I have a story to tell that is going to take some telling. I am working through it as quickly as I can. I am posting the first section within the next couple hours. It is a good-sized read for a weekend. It is a story that I am so happy to tell - and am so happy to have found my way to where I could tell it.

I hope you enjoy reading it.

It is the first part of filling the Understanding Gap.

What will follow after that story is a postscript of sorts about the past year and a half and what they were really about. The postscript will introduce what remains to be covered. I will then cover it. And we are… free.

In the meantime, will this is the worst possible time for this, I am going to need to include subscribe buttons in everything and throw out pleas to consider becoming paid subscribers because… I have to. I’ll save talking about that more for another time.

Okay… full post coming shortly. Just going to give it an hour or two to space out this message and the next.

You actually have an uplifting post from me headed your way…

Hope you enjoy it.