Nolan’s Final Essay

I was truly unprepared to feel any feels this morning when I read this. I hadn’t even finished my coffeh, and was still half asleep.

Today’s youth often gets a bad rap, but this essay by a 14-year old boy about heroism is proof that not all American youth has been tainted by our often lackluster society. The story that accompanies the essay, however, is truly heartbreaking and involves a situation I just can’t make myself think about.

This post will make you smile, and could also make you cry. However it affects you, it’s a must-read.

Please head over and show this incredibly brave mother some love.

Living Between Breaths

Today I decided to move mountains. Literally. My desk is a huge mountain of papers that I do my best to avoid. I took a big step about 2 months ago and bought a new desk calendar. You may remember from a previous entry that I haven’t been able to change the calendar on my desk from the July 2014 one. I’m still working on the aptly named “Extract Head from Ass” project of cleaning off my desk and dining room table. I was making headway until I bought that stupid new calendar. I put it on my desk, on top of that mountain, and proceeded to avoid it like the plague. Shortly thereafter, DH informs me that another letter came in from one of Nolan’s donor recipients and he put it on my desk. That pretty much made my entire office off-limits. I couldn’t even look at it when…

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PEOPLE LIKE ME

I don’t often reblog. It feels dirty to repost someone else’s work on my own blog without their permission. Luckily, the way it works on WordPress is that only a 100 or so of the other’s words show on your blog, followed by a link to the original post.

I’m reblogging this post because it so accurately captures what writing means to me. I didn’t start blogging as an emotional outlet used to vanquish my demons, but that’s how it’s ended up.

I relate to so much of this. Much of the reason I neglected to treat me depression for so long was because I felt weak, and thought I should be strong enough to deal with it on my own. I, like many other people, thought it was simply a mind-over-matter thing. Guess what? It’s not.

As much as some people would like to think you can “fake it ’til you make it,” that’s simply not how it works. No matter how much you may try to cover up your depression it never goes away. Faking happiness doesn’t alter the chemical imbalance in your brain. You can hide it among the skeletons in your closet, but it’s still there looming over you like a rain cloud on a sunny day, poised to let loose on you at a most inconvenient time.

I, like Hasty, have found value and therapy in writing. Writing my feelings out is like an exorcism for my negative emotions. Like there’s a hole in the bottom of the baggage holding all of my angst and feelings of worthlessness. The more I write the more negative emotions seep through that hole and dissipates into the emotional ether. Or wherever stupid feelings go to die.

I highly encourage anyone who is struggling emotionally to write, whether or not you think you have a talent for it. What a poem. Write a story. Write a journal. Do it publicly. Do it privately. It doesn’t matter. Just do it.

HASTYWORDS

There are some things we just have to experience to understand.

I couldn’t stand listening to them whine. My classmates, my co-workers, my friends and my family coming to me and sucking my positive energy dry. Those with so called “depression” were always so negative and I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand. I am ashamed of myself for not understanding.

I didn’t understand that depression wasn’t a mood or a frame of mind. I didn’t understand that my loved ones weren’t wallowing in self-pity. I was angry every time one of them attempted suicide or succeeded in killing themselves. I was angry at how selfish they had to have been to think only of themselves, to “take the easy way out”. I am ashamed of myself for not understanding.

I remember lying in bed one night with thoughts flying through my head faster than I could grab them. One night…

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Coming Soon

There are a handful of authors whose work I utterly adore. I know no matter what they write I will love it. Some of those authors include Harlan Coben, Steve Berry, Timothy Zahn, Michael Chrichton (RIP), Michael Stackpole, Aaron Allston, and Michael Connelly. There is another author, however, whom you may have never heard of …

Guest Bards: The Reaper’s Call

I’ve been in a bit of a writing funk lately. I haven’t had that blogging feeling for the last few weeks. The only thing I’ve really felt like writing is poetry, which is what happens when I dip into these moods.

My good pal Lizzi invited me to drop some rhymes over at her side-project blog, Well Tempered Bards. I was quite honored by the invitation (still am) because I envy Lizzi’s talent with words. That she thinks enough of my poetry to ask me to contribute humbled and honored me.

Please head over to check out my poem (and read the disclaimer first), and if you’re a fan of poetry follow the blog. Lizzi is an amazing poet, and she frequently features other bloggers and their poetic talents.

Thank you again for having me, Lizzi.

The Well Tempered Bards

It’s funny where the mind takes you when you’re writing. I started this poem with a completely different direction in mind, but this is where it ended when the words took control and guided me towards their intended destination. DISCLAIMER: This is not how I feel and does not represent anything going on in my life, this is just where my words led me.

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A Culture Of Terror

Please take a few minutes and head over to Fish of Gold for this very thought provoking, and well-written post. Just who are the terrorists?

Fish Of Gold

I live in The United States of America, a country which has had few significant terrorist attacks, the most notable being the attack on the World Trade Centers, September 11, 2001. The number of civilians who died on September 11th (2,996) is roughly comparable to the number of civilians my country has killed with drone attacks just in Pakistan alone:

• Total strikes: 366
• Total reported killed: 2,537 – 3,581
• Civilians reported killed: 2000 – 3000
• Children reported killed: 368 – 997
• Total reported injured: 1,174 – 1,465

Does the fact that it wasn’t a terrorist cell, but the American military establishment that perpetrated drone attacks in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere lessen the terror felt by the people there? I don’t think it does. The US government recently admitted to killing four of its own citizens in drone attacks. Before that, they claimed that no civilians had been…

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I hear you on Gun Control. I want to hear you on Rape Control.

It’s hard to disagree with anything said here.

I’m probably in the minority, but I think sex offenders should be castrated. Brutal? Sure. Unjustified? I think not. I know way too many women who have been sexually assaulted. They live with that torment the rest of their lives. If castrating one rapist saves one woman from a lifetime of horror then it’s worth it.

Deliberate Donkey

I watch the news every morning and every evening, enough for it to loop a few times. I watch three channels, even though they all pretty much report the same thing.

We are in the midst of a national uproar over the Newton School Shootings; as we very well should be. Twenty-six people lost their lives at the hands of a maniac with a gun. Twenty were children. Children. Murdered. For going to school. It’s sick. It’s sickening. This isn’t the first mass shooting in the US and it won’t be the last.

It is estimated that 55% of gun deaths in the US are suicide. Suicide is against the law, but it’s pretty hard to bring the perpetrator to justice, especially when they are successful. That leave 45% of gun crimes as prosecutable.

A crime that is 100% prosecutable is rape, except more than 60% of rapes are never reported; some reports claim…

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A Letter to NC Supporters of the Marriage Amendment

An incredible post. I couldn’t have articulated it better myself.

Anyone who supports a bill like this is a hypocrite, though they would never see it that way.

All that makes you...

Dear Fellow “Mom” Friends in North Carolina,

Please stop asking me to “Get out and vote FOR the marriage amendment” and that “You believe marriage is between one man and one woman.”

It makes me lose respect for you.  It makes me think you aren’t very intelligent.  It makes me think you’re insensitive, and that you would feed my children to yours if you had to.  It makes me think you will find a Bible verse to justify it.  It just makes me not like you.

Here is what the voters in North Carolina are presented with this week…

Marriage Amendment 1

The measure would define marriage in the state constitution as between one man and one woman, and would ban any other type of “domestic legal union” such as civil unions and domestic partnerships.^[1][2]

Same-sex marriage is already illegal in the state of North Carolina…

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