Hello, It's Me...

             When I was a little kid, one of my teachers asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted be an author. Not just a writer, you see. Anybody can write, after all. Authors, on the other hand, were published and had their books readily available in every reputable bookstore in the world. They were considered geniuses and had legions of devoted followers who had memorized their every single word. They received prestigious awards and had their novels assigned to high school students, who would then be forced to write essays against their will on the brilliant themes and symbolism hidden throughout the text, like vegetables secretly baked into your children's favorite desserts. A lifetime of greatness and respectability certainly awaited me as adult, or at least I thought when I was seven.
           Also, writing for me was just plain fun. I loved creating bizarre characters and convoluted plots set in fantastical worlds. I fondly recall writing and drawing my little magnum opuses on scratch paper that my dad would bring home from work, stapling the pages together and showing off the new "book" that I had just completed and would certainly be on its way to topping the New York Times bestseller lists. My memories are pretty vague after three decades, but I recall one of them being a fantasy about one of the bullies from my school being shrunk down to the size of a bug and then getting stomped on by a large heavy boot, which I still consider to be a fairly happy ending. Bob Smith Shrinks was sure to be short-listed for Pulitzer consideration that year, I was convinced. (Note: Bob Smith is not the actual name of the kid who picked on me. His name has been changed to protect his identity and/or to avoid a lawsuit.)
          It was around this time that my older brother Mike took me to a Young Writer's Conference at the University of Toledo. I had written a story entitled "The Beast from the Planet Sedan". (I don't even think I knew that a sedan was a type of car. I thought it was just a cool-sounding word.) The story I submitted didn't win any awards, but I did get to meet noted children's author Dav Pilkey, and received a freshly signed and inscribed copy of his recently-published first book World War Won. (This was many years before he would he would create the publishing juggernaut that was the popular Captain Underpants series, although he did describe his idea for the character during one of the writing seminars we had, meaning that the idea had been cooking around in his head since at least the late 1980s.) In the inscription, he told me to "keep writing and drawing", advice that I would heed for much of my childhood, at least. In the back of the book, there were pictures of other kids who had had their own books published and I strove to top them, to create the Great American's Children's Novel, to become the next Roald Dahl and walk around wearing top hats all day and lighting cigars with $100 bills, which is what I imagined successful children's authors did all the time. I was quickly on my to literary glory, or so it seemed.
          I continued to write fiction in high school and even seemed to enjoy many of my English courses. Some of the books we read were pretty enjoyable (Slaughterhouse-Five, Things Fall Apart, Lord of the Flies, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and others I had to struggle to finish (The Sun Also Rises and The Color Purple). In any event, I enjoyed writing about them, and coming up with my own interpretations about what their authors were trying to say. It was one of the few classes where I actually enjoyed doing the required reading and assignments. In college, though, I decided to major in telecommunications and film stuides and although I didn't do much creative writing, I still had a great time analyzing and discussing the movies we watched in our film courses, and wrote passionately about what I liked and disliked about the cinematic landmarks that we were viewing. I also maintained a blog at around the same time, which I used as an outlet for all of the crazy ideas that had been running through my brain. That came to an abrupt end when I posted a hurtful entry about somebody whom I felt had treated me disrespectfully and I held nothing back in insulting and degrading this person. Out of shame, I shut down my blog permanently, though the damage has been done. I learned that while it while it might be okay to talk trash about an obnoxious celebrity like Donald Trump, it's not okay to talk trash about someone that you actually know personally in a public forum. To quote a line from The Social Network: "The internet's not in pencil, it's in ink."
         I hadn't really written much since then. I half-heartedly started a few blogs, but nothing really stuck. I'm hoping to change that with this one and try to tap back into the ambition and creative spirit that I had when I was younger. I don't really have one specific topic that I'm planning on writing about, either. This will be an outlet for all of the mad musings going through my head: movie reviews, book reviews, humorous pieces, political rants. Anything that I find interesting or that I'd like to share with you. This site will be 100% bullshit-free too. Anything that I post will be my true and honest feelings, although I will hopefully be tactful enough not to include any personal attacks that will hurt anyone's feelings. It's time to clean the cobwebs out of my brian and get those old creative juices flowing again. These muscles have atrophied long enough. Time to exercise.

Note: This blog will also be 100% completely devoid of any gossip relating to the Kardashian/Jenner family. If you're looking for that, please search elsewhere. Thanks!