Take Hold (Or, How I Want To Be There In My City)

Later this year, I will get married on a golf course on the other side of the country.

I keep coming back to that statement because it’s a really hilarious one to me. It’s one I’m very excited about to say the least. But hilarious because golf has no significance to myself or my fiancé, it’s just a really good spot where her parents live that is pretty and we have access to. It’ll be a simple service. We’ve planned it as such. Simple and purposeful. We’ve tried to be that in our relationship. We’ve tried to take hold of the absurdity. We’ve tried to take hold of the opportunity every day to be purposeful for each other.

There was a moment in an airplane earlier this year where Atlanta seemed to stretch on forever. I really do think we were in the sky for over an hour and we were still above city lights. I’m sure what I was actually seeing at that point was somewhere in Alabama but after a day of flying from Seattle at 4:00am to Atlanta and then back west a time zone, everything was just blurring together. Continue reading “Take Hold (Or, How I Want To Be There In My City)”

The Post-Blog World

diner coffee has its own strengths

People are essentially the same everywhere you go, but more so if the situations surrounding them are similar. Seems stupid to say, but I’m going somewhere with it.

If you go to a smaller city anywhere in the country and eat at a a small local favorite diner, you’ll encounter the same people. They will all wear hats and shirts supporting the local sports team, there will always be a at least one booth that’s a couple of older friends you can tell have been eating there together for years and years, and the waitress is 100% likely to call you “honey” or “sugar”. Obviously you can’t go to Chicago and expect it to be like Topeka, but you can go from somewhere like Jackson, Mississippi, to Everett, Washington and in some ways it’s the same. Sure, there are mountains right outside the window of the diner as opposed to the normal view in Jackson of a parking lot where nobody knows how to park. But it still feels a tad bit like home. Continue reading “diner coffee has its own strengths”

Craven On....

If I put this in a category, would you even notice?

The other night, I found myself sitting on the stairs leading off the back porch of a friends’ house alone while they’re out of town and I’m watching their dog. I wasn’t really thinking of anything in particular, but I did remember that I like writing and I haven’t done any in a while.

Actually, I’ve done a lot of writing over the past couple of years. Most of it is all for my own sake so it doesn’t ever see the light of internet. I originally started this website because I was working a decent job that offered no creative outlet. This and making the occasional YouTube video served as the creative outlet. For the past two years, though, I’ve had a job where I made those videos and people actually paid me for it, so there’s been no need for a creative outlet.

At least not in the same way. There have been side projects, including writing a few very large screenplays that I hope to actually film in the next year. And there’s the fact that I actually started my own small production company and for some reason didn’t actually tell anybody about it. 2016 was an odd year for sure. Continue reading “If I put this in a category, would you even notice?”

The Human Condition

The Light Is Green

I remember sitting at the spotlight down the street from the house I live in. I haven’t lived there long; just since the beginning of the month, so the street light and the route to get to the places I normally go are all new to me now. It’s not a significant change, but it’s still odd to have to adjust to these things.

Because of this, I find myself sitting at spotlight that normally isn’t important to me at all, waiting to turn right onto a busy street that will take me to my regular places. And I keep waiting, because I pulled up to the stoplight, which was red, and looked at the intersecting cars, waiting on them to move through and perhaps for a chance to sneak in with all of the others who were going where I wanted to be going. Only, nobody was moving. Continue reading “The Light Is Green”

Real Talk

This Is Awkward

I was recently given an advance copy of This Is Awkward by Sammy Rhodes for review purposes. Here is my review. This Is Awkward releases today, and here is a link to Sammy’s site where he wrote about it and also where an Amazon link is located.

Our culture has plenty of issues: political turmoil, prolonged adolescence, and of course we still have reality TV dating shows which show just how terrible we all are as a nation.

Through all of this, two things seem to stand out above all of our other problems: we don’t know how to be genuine, and we just so badly want to be liked. These seem to linger at the core of most of our problems, with substance abuse or infidelity or depression sprouting from a desire to be loved, but an inability to be really honest and find a way to love ourselves. Continue reading “This Is Awkward”

Is This Thing On?

Veni, Veni

I have a stupid Christmas tradition that I started a year ago and hold dearly. Can you call something a tradition if you only started it a year ago? And really, it’s more of an “end of the year” tradition, I guess. Doesn’t matter. It’s a Christmas tradition now and I’m standing by that.

See, I take off of work from the week of Christmas until the new year rolls around. I might drive somewhere out of town or do something special during that time. For the most part, though, all I do is watch the movie Four Brothers as often as possible. I take it with me whenever I go somewhere, especially friends’ houses, and I ask them frequently if they would like to watch it with me. I bring it up quite a bit. My friends are rarely amused by this.

It’s funny to me. And it’s stupid and quite honestly I’m sure it annoys everyone I talk to but at the end of the day it is something I do and something I think it is funny. And if there is one thing that is true about me, it’s that I will go fully in on something I find to be funny, regardless of whether or anyone feels the same.

Perhaps that’s why it’s become a tradition: it allows me to end the year entirely on my own terms. Not terms dictated by the pressures at work, and not terms dictated by the social pressures surrounding me at all times. It’s my own stupid way of embracing what is, for me at least, the most insecure time of the year. Continue reading “Veni, Veni”