Procrastination is an insidious malady. I should have been writing this months ago. Weeks and weeks of lost opportunities. Water – under the bridge. Milk – spilt. Horses – gone fishing. But enough of the restated aphorisms and mixed metaphors, or whatever. I have always spelled PROCRASTINATION with a capital NOT NOW and I have reached this point of putting words to blog precisely for that reason. It’s keeping me from doing what I should be doing. “Not now” writ large.

So, on with the blog.

This first entry is about an introduction. An introduction to me. An introduction to what I’m doing. An introduction to where I hope to be going.

I’m the guy whose name is at the top. I’m Starting Over – that will be one of the things I talk about in the blog. I’m going to be Writing­ – that will be the other thing.

I am a mid-crop Baby Boomer who, after two careers, failed miserably at retirement. Gee, you might be thinking, that’s kind of early to retire. Precisely why I failed. I should have gone ahead and just ruined another hobby directly by turning it into a job. No, not me, I went ahead and bailed, took off on my sailboat and spent most of the last decade bobbing around on turquoise-blue waters sucking down rum drinks out of frosty glasses garnished with tropical fruits impaled with little paper umbrellas. What a mistake. I should have just done this ten years ago and gotten it over with. But, that procrastination thing again, here I am cast back up on the beach with nothing to show for my endless sun-soaked days on the boat except for a fading tan, a lot of empty bottles, and some really good stories.

I’m of the opinion that the Starting Over part is going to be the most interesting and fun. Pretty much everybody has had to press the reset button on their lives at some point. Jobs that have vanished without a trace, relationships truncated, financial troubles have touched many lives over their course. These things have all happened to me and were, and are, miserable to go through and still painful decades later. Now, however, things are different. First, because this time I’m starting over with less than I ever had before. Second, because this time I don’t have a clue where I’m going to end up living. I’m open to suggestions.

Writing is going to be what I’m hoping to make some money at. If you click on the header of this blog – no, not that one, up by where my name is written in that very fancy script, got it, good – you’ll be whisked off to the rest of my website and find the writings and, more importantly, the theory behind how I’m planning on notbeing that guy shooting the carts at you when you walk into Walmart. But if that’s who I turn out to be – you’ll read about it here.

Why writing? Gosh, I don’t really know. It might have something to do with waking up in the middle of the night with stories that are just begging to be told. It might have something to do with sitting in a bar and seeing a scene from a novel spread out in front of me. It might have something to do with promoting environmental sensitivity and cross-cultural awareness through deftly told tales peopled with compelling characters and textures. Most likely though, for me, writing is the last stop before ending up in retail and I will be dragged into that Dante-esque canto with my fingernails leaving bloody groves in the concrete floor. So, writing it is. Fiction writing – mostly – and humorous fiction if I can pull it off.

Fiction writers knock on a door to see what’s behind it. Their stories come from what they see inside. Humorous fiction writers knock on the door to Hell leaving a burning bag of dog crap on the stoop and hide behind the bushes to see what happens when Satan opens the door. The problem with this is that you are playing with the Devil. Pulling on Its tail is never a good idea. Humor at its core is a mean pursuit. Nobody ever broke a rib laughing at “gentle humor”. Something has to be made fun of. Just think of all the people who won’t follow this blog now just because they’re working in retail. I tossed a significant portion of the fiction-buying public with that one simple joke. To them I apologize. This is my first blog, I needed an easy laugh, and all the good Catholic besmirchments have been used.

To the rest of you I apologize in advance. Sooner or later – if I haven’t already – I will find your dirty little secrets and push that big red button that’s labeled “Don’t Push This Button!” Your turn will come.

Thanks for reading. I hope you come back to see more. Please subscribe so I can tell you about updates, happenings and new stuff to read or do. I welcome comments – feel free to send me an email and let me know what you like or don’t like. At the end of the day though I hope you have been entertained. That knowledge alone will help me through the long night shifts at the SuperCenter.

Finally, I’d like to close with something just for those retail clerks who have stuck with me this long. When you go back on the floor and you’re standing there folding and sorting underwear that somebody has gone and tried on just think about one thing. It could be worse. You could be a writer.