Opening Post or The Backstory of Bloggin Hood

Most of my childhood revolved around basketball and writing stories. When I wasn’t doing one, I was busy with the other. While the basketball was relatively competent for a 5-year-old, the stories were not. My first attempts writing involved people eating bars of soap, poorly drawn stick figures and a main character whose name was Fat Head. That was not a nickname, but a God-given name on a birth certificate. This was not Shakespeare, but boy did it make me laugh. I would write these things for hours, filling up marble notebook after marble notebook. Nowadays, I can’t sign my name without feeling carpel tunnel. Thanks for that, past me. Jerk.

Middle school provided a few opportunities to write creatively, but mostly by teachers who had no clue how to teach for 8 hours. They would assign the class to write a story on a given topic, and then go back to doing whatever people did before the internet was on our phones (I believe it was called reading). Honestly, I don’t blame them. I actually remember reading my stories in front of the class, something that seems incredibly frightening to me now, but I was proud of what I wrote. I wanted everyone to hear what I prepared. The students, in turn, did not immediately fall asleep in the first paragraph. It was my proudest achievement at the time.

High School took away nearly every ouch of creativity I had. At this point, it was pretty much all basketball. While I did earn a few nicknames on the court: “the Franchise,”Silent Killer” and “Fat Boy” (I didn’t say they were all good), any writing I did was strictly for school. I still had the creativity gene, but nowhere to use it, other than on the basketball court. There was also no girls at my high school, a free pass to show up to class sweaty after morning, lunch and free period sessions of ball. It’s amazing the teachers didn’t spray me with Axe when I walked in the classroom. The no girls thing became a theme for the first 28 years of my life, for the record.

High school introduced me to Hamlet and the novel Grendel, two books that shaped my love of literature and creativity. Hamlet was just good. No, I didn’t fully understand every piece of dialogue, but I loved the complexity and trying to figure out what the Hell was wrong with the guy. Grendel was a novel told through the perspective of Grendel, the monster from Beowulf. I thought the concept was remarkable, with some quotes still sticking with me today.  It even got me to read Beowulf…

Don’t try to read Beowulf at 17. It’s like eating a bowl of nails. I mean, sure, you’ll get your iron, but at what cost?

College was where I thought my creativity would soar, partly from my love of writing, and partly from my inspiration of my two favorite literary works. I believed I would professionally write as soon as I got my degree, until I was told repeatedly that there’s no money in it. Money, as it turns out, is used to exchange for goods and services*. I still majored in English, but minored in Accounting and Economics to get business backgrounds and land a real job. My plans to be a writer, likely a struggling one, would be put on hold.

I did sneak in some creativity, however rare. With the dawn of Facebook events, I’d write descriptions for birthday parties we had for my group of friends. They seemed to enjoy them, although nobody else would. 90% of the content was inside jokes, but it helped me find my writing voice – dry, sharp, and full of depth. It was like a good champagne, if the champagne was snarky and had several typos in the ingredient list. Still, it kept the juices flowing**.

My senior year also allowed me to write an essay in script format. I had to pick a few characters from novels we read during the semester and have them debate a topic. I couldn’t tell you which (I think it was the merits of a short story vs a novel), but I finished it awfully quick. Not because I raced through it, but because writing dialogue was surprisingly easy. It felt natural. The professor told me I nailed the voice of the characters, which meant a lot. I think she was probably just surprised somebody chose to use dialogue for 8 pages instead of writing a 3 page essay.

Did I mention my entries tend to ramble on? You probably noticed.

It was at the end of my college years, afraid that the time was ending and I’d soon be a corporate shill that I began writing scripts. These were based on my college adventures, some of which were family friendly but most were not. The only thing all the episodes had in common was there was a lot of booze consumed. I wrote 40 of these, rewriting them occasionally, and posting them to a free website I made. In retrospect, that probably wasn’t wise. I mean, if these scripts were good, somebody could just steal them since I never registered them or anything. But I never did think they were good enough to be more than a hobby. It was a dumb decision, because you never know but I never claimed to be a smart man.

In case you were wondering about the basketball for some odd reason, it was still heavily prevalent, though not as important as it used to be. In college, we lost 90% of our intramural games, winning several via forfeit. We did win 1 3 on 3 title, thanks to playing with a man named Will Smith. No, he wasn’t that Will Smith, but he was pretty awesome. He was also tall. Tall is good for basketball.

With my inexcusable decision to post, but never sent my scripts for anything, whether it be a contest, an agent, or to a studio, I tried to move on to other topics. I blogged a lot on that site, but never consistently. Every time I tried to get my momentum back into writing, I just couldn’t. Each year, I’d post some write ups of various lengths about fantasy sports, usually football, but some years it felt more of a chore than enjoyable.

Occasionally, I would sprinkle in a new project here or there. I wrote a play, a movie, 4 short stories, and attempted to write a novel as part of a full series about 47 times, but never got past a handful of chapters. To say I stopped writing would be a lie –  I’d annually try to resurrect my blog, and give up after 1 go. Last year, I attempted to resurrect my scripts and re-do the pilot and go from there, but fizzled out. Writing just stopped being important. Over the years, a combination of work, growing up and  feelings of melancholy/depression/unhappiness/whatever you want to call it, sapped the fun out of it. I figured I was done with it.

Now I don’t like writing out the f word often, but in November, two of my friends got married. I apologize for the graphic language. They asked me to be their officiant, and for the first time in a while, I got to be creative again. I spent a long while trying to perfect it – as least as close as I could. For the first time since probably middle school, I was reading something creative in front of people. Despite the jitters, people afterwards told me I did a great job. A few of them told me I could start a business. After spending a few hours thinking of names for my prospective marriage service, I realized this was a breakthrough. The creativity was back. I wanted to write again.

It was then I decided I would start a new site. A more legitimate one this time. I chose the name Bloggin Hood because it sounded funny, and maybe the missing g will appeal to the youth. I can’t tell you for sure what content will be on here though I have the first few weeks planned out, but honestly, it’ll be what I want to write. Mostly blogs first, but maybe some other works as we go. I might, in fact, revive the scripts after all. I don’t want to promise anything. I’ve tried to come back so many times, I’m just going to let this one be what it’ll be.

I can say with confidence you can expect blogs on here 2-3 times a week, and that should continue unless bigger projects develop. These will be all over the place, but likely not nearly as personal as this. I prefer being the man behind the curtain, but I figured we should start with a genuine look at your main author first before diving in to me complaining about everything under the sun. Who knows, maybe this will spark some creativity that you have left on the back burner for too long. Maybe it’ll bring you back to reading, writing, knitting, baking, or whatever it is you’ve always loved to do.

Maybe it’ll spark you to exit out of my site and never return. So be it, I got your click, and that’s 1 more than yesterday so haha.

To come full circle, I’ve gone back to playing basketball. I’m nowhere near as athletic as I once was, partly due to being out of shape, and partly due to being old. I’m working on the former, and I’m dealing with the latter. Still, it feels good to be playing again. Writing and basketball have again become prominent in my life, like I’m 5 years old all over again. I hope it comes with scheduled nap times and snacks.

I can dream.

*Thanks Homer Simpson, for teaching me this, and many other lessons.

**I really could go for some champagne now. Or at least a $2 box of wine. I’m not picky.