I’m glad I got that out of my system. Those Rants can be problematic. I am kind of taken with the whole me-as-King idea though. Look for more in an upcoming posting. I’ve hired a campaign strategist to give me some broad-brush concepts to bandy about. Some other news as well. Look for some of my published magazine articles to start showing up elsewhere in my web site. Click here for some tales of life under sail as seen through my peculiar prism or just browse to www.jamesewing.com.

You may have noticed that title of my blog is “Take Three”. If not, just look at the top of the page just under my name. See, there it is in a stylish font rendered in muted, professional colors. You also may have wondered “Why?”. That question can be neither simply nor clearly answered. But I’ll give it a shot.

First off, I’m still trying to answer a question that has been plaguing me for decades. “What am I going to be when I grow up?” Some people manage to get a handle on this at a reasonably youthful point in their lives. Their self-identity forms unbidden around them. I have tried to let this happen to me, and failed miserably. When I think to myself: “I am a ______.” I never seem to be able to fill in the blank. When I force something into the blank I end up wandering down my own personal road to hell. I am hoping that “Writer” will fit but it’s still too early to tell.

I studied Geology in college. It was, and still is, a great way to look at the world. Even today I look at a walk on the beach at sunset as wandering through a poorly-lit modern clastic depositional system. So much for romance. For me though, Geology was a bad way to make a living. I could never catch the fever of Geology-as-work despite how interesting I found geological concepts. Fortunately I was spat out of that career during the mid-1980s Stupid Banker Escapade which trashed the domestic oil industry.

That all went down at about the same time this whole new Computer thing was getting traction. Gee, I thought, that doesn’t seem too hard. It was but I found I had a knack for it and managed to trick my way into a job with a major corporation. After a couple of years of working there I found that all my grade-school teachers who wrote things on my report cards like “no respect for authority” and “doesn’t play well with others” were spot-on in their assessments. I left that job and struck out on my own. I was lucky this time and did catch the fever and loved what I was doing. The business was changing though. I saw it was time to leave and I got out while it was still a blast.

Those were my two careers.

I’m also trying to figure out where I should be. This is a tough one. I think most people end up where they are because it’s where they are from or where their jobs take them. The first location choice I made was Colorado. I grew up in New York City. So I knew a guy who knew a guy who eventually ended up in prison. Before that happened some strings were pulled and favors called in and I ended up working summers outside of Denver while I was in school. I stayed in the area after college while I was discovering I shouldn’t be working as a Geologist. All-in-all, especially considering that most other Oil Geologists were working in Texas – not that there’s anything wrong with Texas – I thought I was really lucky. Except, physically that is, I never adapted to Colorado’s climate. I grew up in the salt-saturated fog on the storm-tossed coast of the Lower Bay and my body never adjusted to the high altitude, semi-arid, desiccator that is Colorado. My thirteen years there were basically one continuous nose bleed.

After I extricated myself from the day-to-day bargain with Satan that is life in Corporate America I moved to Florida. Now, say what you want about Florida, it did have two things going for it. It is warm and it is moist. My nasal passages were in a state of perpetual bliss. I had to make the adjustment of seasons though. Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall gave way to This Summer and Next Summer. If I wanted snow or pretty leaves – well, that’s what they make airplanes for. The one thing I didn’t count on was that most other people were also moving to Florida at about the same time. The quiet edge-of-town area I settled in was quickly overrun by the unending strip-mall-punctuated-by-private-gated-“communities” of modern Florida.

Those were my two places.

When I gave up my life as a Computer ‘Ho’ I took off on my sailboat in quest of the perfect rum drink. The search was a success at a number of levels and took me to all sorts of great places. That trip also infected me with the writing bug as well as a number of other Dermatologist-baffling tropical skin conditions. 

I’m back now and looking for my third career and third place to live. Take Three. Get it? I can hear some of you naysayers muttering How about three strikes and you’re out? I admit that is a non-trivial possibility but risk is what gives life its edge, right? 

I’ll be leaving the life of a sea-gypsy in November and going back to living on the dirt. That will be a big change. I’ll also be working on this new “writing” thing and seeing if I can make a go of it. My Starting Over blogs will semi-document my quest for a new place to live. That’s going to be fun and, at least for me, quite an adventure. The Writing entries will look at my struggles to put words down onto whatever it is we put words down onto today. That’s going to be even more fun but maybe less of an adventure. Trying to make it seem interesting will be part of my quest.

I’m doing this writing because I find that it’s a blast and helps keep me out of trouble. I’m looking for a place to live because cardboard and overpasses just don’t do it for me – although they may have to in the short-term. However, I am going into it without a plan. No preconceptions, no “wait ‘til you see the novel”s, no freaking idea at all where I’ll end up. This cluelessness seems to distress my friends as I frequently find them leaving telephone books out for me to find seemingly casually open to the Yellow Pages section on “Physicians – Psychiatrists”. But I’m cool with it. Thanks to my Curse.

I call it a Curse because I have to call it something. Naming it a Blessing would make it smack of being a gift from some Higher Authority which it is not. It is not always pleasant which something called “Blessing” probably would be. I decided that this time I’m putting the Curse in charge and I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the ride.

In a nutshell my Curse is this: in my life the things that happen to me for my own good always happen at the last possible moment. This is definitely not an invitation to fatalism because if I’m sitting around waiting then nothing will happen. I have to be doing something for the Curse to be able to work. Once I am doing anything then things start happening – even if those happenings take me in a completely unanticipated direction. I’m going to be writing for something to do full in the knowledge that it may not be what my Curse has in mind for me. If not, no problem, I can just write about what I end up doing. That’s what is known as stacking the deck.

There is a very interesting book called River Horse written by William Least Heat Moon. Mr. Moon may be, in fact, more deserving of casually open Yellow Pages than I. He got the wild idea that he was going to take a boat from New York City to Portland, Oregon without the benefit of the ocean. Straight across the continent. He started out at Sandy Hook, New Jersey and – son of a bitch – out he comes in Oregon. I recommend reading it. Mr. Moon also suffers from a curse similar to mine. He was lucky enough to find a philosophical summary that at once provided guidance and a touchstone for when things weren’t going well. This saying he had mounted on a plaque at the entrance to his boat’s cabin. It stated “Proceed as the way opens”.

I have embraced it as my own.

Starting Over and Writing. Those are the activities that will get me going and give my Curse some fuel for its forge. While I’m doing those things I’ll have to pay very close attention to what’s happening around me and watch for the way to open. When it does, hold on, that’s the road I’ll be taking and I will not have a clue where it will end up.