‘Last night, Darth Vader came down from planet Vulcan and told me that if I didn't get this going he'd melt my brain.’
For my first post I'll be starting on a bit of a down note. I don't want to but I would have mentioned it at some point or another and there be no better time to get it out of the way than now. Before I do get started though I'll be honest with you. This is the first time that I've actually sat down and written something in almost two years. I haven't writing a thing in such a long I sadly feel like I've forgotten how too. I used to love write. I would come home from work with scraps of paper covered in notes, quotes, character names and biographies. I would sit for hours and piece them all together in my room. Sometimes I'd forget to go to sleep. I'd then have to call work and say I was too sick. But instead of going to bed, I'd just keep writing.
I have many short stories, unfinished novels, synopsis and plots I'd love to share one day and I hope that I will build the motivation over time to one day do so.
It was by the end of 2008 that I was putting some of the final touches on what might have been my very first novel. I was excited. I was passionate about what I had created. I had never put so many words together in one place, it just seemed crazy. But then I stopped. I had no desire to write anymore. I didn't feel like I could anymore. It was like writers block but you loose everything.
A very close family friend of mine had died around this time and it had affected me deeply. I tried so hard to keep it all together but when I struggled to dedicate the novel to him I fell apart. I couldn't bear to see his name and the date and my memorial I had written for him. So I trashed it. And I started smoking more weed, playing more Xbox… going to work more. Forgetting everything I ever actually wanted to do.
Time passed and I’d landed a pretty kick ass job with Apple and I’d pretty much dedicated myself to that.
Now I find myself in 2010. Things were seeming to be running pretty normally. Work was as busy as always, things with Jess where going great and I’d landed a promotion that would send me away from home for a little extra training. That’s when I gotten the big one.
I was standing in the hotel bathroom at the time, half of my face was covered in shaving cream, a towel loose around my waist. It might have been comical if it weren’t so tragic. The voice on the other end of the phone, my mother, tells me that my grandfather has passed away. I stare at myself in the mirror as my face starts to burn. We didn’t speak for only a few seconds but it may as well have been an hour. I whispered to my mum that I was sorry and that I would be coming home immediately and that she shouldn’t worry and that I love her.
I loved my Pop as any child would love its own grandparent. He was my mentor and life teacher. He had encouraged me to pursue any interest I showed the tiniest spark for. Music, film, literature, sport. He would tell me to do what ever it is I would like to do so long as it made me happy. He would tell me that my choices would be my own and not what society would dictate of me. It was at his funeral, when I stood to speak with my brother and my sister and my cousins and when it came time for us to carry him from the church to the hearse that I had realized I have been very selfish. Very wrong. I was angry when Brett passed away. He was young, he didn’t have to die. He was an older brother that I never had. I’d never actually told anyone that I was writing a book, I’d only shown certain people little bits and pieces and said it was something I was playing with.
My point is I think that Pop might have been disappointed in what I had done. I wish now that I could have shown him. The drug and alcohol content, the violence and the sex might have worried him but I know that he would have been proud.
We humans are a funny type, alright. All it takes is just a little shaking up to get shit done.
I’ll leave you now with a video of one my heroes who sadly passed yesterday morning of stomach cancer.
thanks.
t.
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