I like to think that I can sometimes have times when I can describe something well. But there are simply no words for what it looks like when you look up at me with those deep, dark blue eyes at night and study my face.
04:13 AM part of skWe have encountered a few (in hindsight small) obstacles in our quest to build our own small family and I have found that waiting for three years, Sarah experiencing a rough delivery and then being very ill, and our long ten-day waiting period has given me a perspective that I feel that I have to share.
We don’t deserve such things as miraculous as children and loved ones, but all in our rational minds forces us to believe that we deserve things because we work hard for them – that justice and the law of physics, evolution, Brownian motion and such are what rules the world. I’d like to encourage a moment of reflection on the fact that you and I are stupid little selfish jerks who don’t deserve things like warm coffee in the winter, scrambled eggs with cheese, foot massages, and sleeping in on Saturday. If you reflect on this long enough you will find on the other side a God who loves you more than you know and has answers to this and the harder more dark questions of why nobody gets what they deserve in either direction.
Things that I have done today.
- Spent 4 hours holding my daughter and rocking her to sleep so that her mother could rest.
- Watched Rachael Ray, Oprah, then a little Dr. Phil ("Man Camp") and a little Ellen with the family.
- Called a couple of people and told them it was final.
- Did a little out-loud-while-holding-the-baby prayer with my wife.
So "unknown audience",
At the encouragement of my wife, who thinks (seriously) that my emails about the birth of our daughter and other various things - like where we are meeting for dinner - are beautifully-written, careful, and cool I am starting to ramp down the amount of time that I work and ramp up the amount that I write and spent time with them.
I don't really know what I will write about, but I like the typing oh so much and she sold it so well. I believe that the paraphrase that I would use is "what would you rather do - just work harder at your job or write?". There is really no not-being-convinced after that.
So - here is what I have done so far to launch my new hobby.
- thought about upgrading Firefox on the laptop (which makes a cooler noise with every click of the key) to get the cool [x] on the tab itself.
- spent a little time hacking the mt/styles.css file to get the stupid edit screen to look right
- thought hard about nothing other than my daughter and what I will do Monday at 5pm when everything is simply over and my wife can relax and just be a mother.
Writing is - speaking from a complete position of complete ignorance (was that a method right there with the repetition?) - a craft that you get better at with experience yet at the same time one that you can be ok at without schooling or study or anything that requires anything on my part other than the typing and hitting F7 for spellcheck and such. [Seriously, can grammar check handle my crazy-ass use of punctuation? DON'T THINK SO]
I heard Kurt Vonnegut say that all writers are just writing to one person - at the end of the day the audience is simple. He said literally one person - his was his sister - and I think he meant that the motivation to write, the itch comes from one relationship that you have. I'm not sure what this mean, but let's brainstorm it out.
An unordered list of people that I could see myself writing for or to
- My friend and former boss, who I would write an essay to in order to somehow turn her towards the Lord like C.S. Lewis did me. More generically some sort of essay to convince people of what I want to convince myself of - that arrogance about intelligence or intellectualism is false and fragile and (too many ands overall I'd say here) will fail you in the face of true rational honesty when life shakes you with fear and you feel small. Also, my sista.
- Some big letter to a future SK telling her what has happened and what she means to us and what we mean to her.
- A letter to all those people that I think are living wrong and need a center in their life. Wait, that is #1 above. Stupid unordered list.
- A book that makes people laugh the way that this tutorial I read on Ruby did me or the first time I read David Sedaris. People need to laugh.
- The editors at mcsweeneys and any that like random lists.
That is all for now.
03:45 AM part of sk