Good Shit?

Long before I put my considerable and dubious talents to use as a daily blogger, I entertained dreams of becoming a real writer. You know, someone who doesn't just give it away for free.

So, for several summers, I packed up my old laptop and a wardrobe full of overalls and shitkickers and drove out to the annual writers' festival at the University of Iowa. I don't remember much about the classes I took, but I do remember eating in some surprisingly good restaurants in Iowa City and meeting a lot of interesting people. And, I remember quite vividly the overwhelming smell of manure as I crossed the Mississippi in the oppressive summer heat into the farmlands of our country's breadbasket. Makes ya kind of think twice about having that sandwich.

Anyway, as I spent a typical loser Saturday evening yesterday alternating between naps on the couch and brief forays into piles of stifling clutter, I found notebooks filled with scribbles from what I now think of as my "Great Plains Period." Okay, I really think of it as the "Cow Shit Era," but that just sounds so gosh darn negative.

As I said, I don't remember much about the classes I took, but I do remember they all had to do with fiction writing. Why, then, when I flipped haphazardly through the pages of my notebooks did I find nothing but stories about flailing marriages, toxic mothers, and friends dying of breast cancer? No wonder I failed miserably; I was stuck on reality, which for me has always been at least as strange as your average fiction, but, for what it's worth, not strange enough.

In a month, it will be a year since I started blogging, sharing true stories of a flailing marriage, a toxic mother, a friend dying of breast cancer, and an occasional disastrous date. I suppose I have not come very far. Except that I have stuck with it, rarely missing a day, and -- not counting the clutter in my head -- I have not accumulated much in the way of clutter that actually encroaches on my living space. These on line posts will not need to end up in the recycling bin with the "cow shit" from my Iowa notebooks, although I may very well, in a few years, come up with an equally unflattering name with which to describe my blogging period.

All good things must end, but, well, I'll need to define good before I decide to end my blog. It's certainly been good for me, a bit of therapy in the wee hours of the morning before I struggle to face the day. But good in terms of quality? That's debatable. I've gone back to read some of my musings only a few times, but the cringe factor on those occasions was pretty high.

I still entertain those dreams of becoming a real writer -- you know, someone who doesn't just give it away for free. But this space has become my friend, my great love, my "happy place." For a little while longer, I might just keep faking it.