Lonely Like the Blues

For the past two summers, I’ve felt like a ghost. Sitting alone at home for long periods of time, forgotten and lonely. Invisible, really.

I just read two books about loneliness. When you are lonely, what better thing to do than study the state that you are immersed in? Or, maybe not.

Well, the first one, by Johann Hari, dealt with depression, but it delved into the roles of loneliness (and trauma), rather than the chemicals in our brains, for causing so many to be depressed. I won’t argue for or against his premise. His book has caused a shitstorm in certain circles, mainly those places where pushing pills for every malady is the solution. My reaction after reading it was, “meh.”

The second book, by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, had more resonance with me. This was mainly due to the state of loneliness that I regularly find myself in.

In 2014, after a break-up with his girlfriend at the time, Mark went through a period of loneliness. I’ve pieced some of this together after his death. It was why, I think, that he made such a push the last years of his life to get out and engage with others. He even recognized the importance of doing this from a health perspective, which is what Cacioppo and Patrick spend time unpacking in the book. Their findings indicate that prolonged bouts of loneliness can be as harmful to health as smoking or obesity. They also demonstrate the therapeutic aspects of social connection. Continue reading

Life’s Lesson Plan

This has been an interesting week. No two days were the same. Come to think of it, the routine and boredom that were part and parcel of the days occupying a seat in a cubicle farm are long gone. I also don’t miss working for people I couldn’t stand.

That’s not to say that life always comes up roses in the free agent economy. August began with a great deal of optimism and the herald that things were trending in the right direction. Then, a major car repair on Tuesday chewed up a week’s worth of income and I was reminded once again that life (at least the life of a freelancer) is always going to present a bumpy ride now and then.

This is what I tweeted on Tuesday.

A successful #freelancer becomes comfortable with ambiguity, is able to juggle/prioritize, remaining the same during feast/famine.

I felt like I captured 2015 from my perspective in less than 140 characters. Twitter-rific! Continue reading

Picture Talk

Pages & Pints Outline

Pages & Pints Outline

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this one might be worth 750, or so.

It’s my talk given at Friday’s Pages & Pints at Lewiston Public Library, in a photo. Well, technically not my talk, since flip charts suck as an audio platform, but an outline of my 30-minute blast on Moxie, beer, and a few thoughts on the craft of writing (and Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft). Continue reading

Record Stores and Reinvention

Long before I had aspirations to take my writing to the next level, I was merely a writer hiding his writing under a bushel. Back then, records and record stores kept me going. Actually, it was less about record stores, and more about the music that record stores carried.

In the late 1980s, I returned with my young family to the place where my roots were the deepest, which also happened to be close enough to the WBOR radio tower to pull-in its meager radio signal, which emanated out from Brunswick for a 15-20 mile radius, barely reaching Durham, where we were living with my in-laws. The signal was slightly stronger on the Lisbon Falls side of the river where we moved waiting for our house to be built, occupying the downtown side of a duplex at 16 ½ Oak Street, one of Marcel Doyon’s many rental properties in my former hometown. This connected me to late 1980s college rock and the likes of They Might Be Giants, Lois Maffeo, The Fall, and The Replacements. A few years later, I became deeply affected by something called alt-country and the band Uncle Tupelo, as well as a host of bands on the long defunct Faye Records label out of another college town, Columbia, Missouri.
Continue reading