My friend Ryan gave me a book a couple of years ago called Several Short Sentences About Writing, by a dude named Verlyn Klinkenborg. I may’ve mentioned it on this blog before, but that was maybe on Facebook instead, or maybe it was just in my head. The book discusses the importance of the humble sentence. It aims to get the reader/writer to think about each sentence as almost an entity unto itself. No sentence is any more important than the other, because the sentence really is all there is. Without the sentence, there would be no paragraph. There would be no literature. It’s an interesting book, and it’s helped me become more confident in my writing. I remain a bit embarrassed about making it public, yet I persist in the practice.

Before I go on, I gotta get this outta the way: Verlyn Klinkenborg! Whatta name! I recommend shouting “Klinkenbooooooooorg!” as you shake your fist angrily at a cold, empty, uncaring sky. It’s fun.

So anyway, I was showering earlier, listening to Drug Church and shaving my head, as I often do after work, and I started thinking about the fact that I practically never sit down and write, even though I love to write, and even though I know that writing makes me feel better. Writing has always made me feel better, so why don’t I do it more often? Like for real?

But I was talking about Several Short Sentences About Writing, by Verlyn Klinkenborg. I noticed the book on the shelf while I was getting dressed after my shower, and I was reminded of the humble sentence, and I crammed that memory together with my shower quandary and made a regular ol Frankenstein’s monster of a realization that I should sit down and write a few sentences, and see where it goes.

So far, right here.

I’ve been working in foodservice for almost 32 years now. (For the record, that’s 66.6% of my life so far spent preparing and/or delivering food to people. That’s both metal as fuck and a stone cold bummer.) For almost the entirety of my history as an employed human being, I’ve been keeping a journal in some form or another. I am in possession of dozens of my journals from as far back as late high school/early college. Sometimes I look through them. The reasons vary. One time I’ll be moved by nostalgia, one of my greatest enemies. The next, I’ll be in search of something hilarious I remember writing down, or the date of a concert. Maybe I can’t figure out what to write about, and I need some inspiration. It’s happened before.

Sometimes I’ll find a cool doodle I made, complete with song lyrics. I’m not sure what’s goin on here, other than a self-portrait of sorts, but I like it.

A common subject in so very many of those journal entries is the fact that I don’t write often enough, and that I don’t wanna be working in foodservice when I’m 50. It’s recently come to my attention that I’m almost fifty years old. The way I figure it, in today’s economy, and going off the premise that we have at least two years left as a civilization, I’ve got maybe three options for not working in foodservice when I’m fifty goddamn years old. Here they are forthwith, in no particular order:

1. Become dead.
2. Become rich (preferably as fuck).
3. Get into management (likely still foodservice, less standing, more meetings).

Thing is, as much as I dislike the foodservice industry, I’ve disliked every other industry I’ve worked in more. Retail, construction…I guess that’s pretty much it. I did some screen printing work for about a month in my early twenties. I enjoyed it, and my boss was cool, but I quit, on account of I didn’t like having to drive 30 minutes each way to work a second part-time job when my primary part-time job was driving around delivering pizza all night. What I’m saying is that where employment is involved, my current situation could be worse. It has been worse, even in the last couple of years.

So the new life plan I came up with in the shower is to keep workin for The Man and payin the bills until I can figure out how to get rich as fuck, and meanwhile to stop thinkin and talkin about writing, and sit the fuck down and write as much as I can, every chance I get, whether I show it to anyone else or not, just like I used to do all the time. Because I’m a writer, goddamnit, and I always have been. At best, I’ll write something I can feel comfortable sharing. At worst, I’ll feel better afterward.

That’s all I got for now. Thanks for reading. Tell your friends. And listen to Drag the River. You’re welcome.