When I hit the bottom of the mountain, I punched it. Hit the pedal to the floor and the car slowly climbed up. I heard gears grinding beneath my feet. The engine was whining because I had to work it so hard just to keep from slipping backwards. I’m not going to lie. It was pretty frightening. I hit the pedal harder, and the car struggled. At the top, all I saw was the steep drop ahead. I had no choice, though. Stopping on the side of the highway meant waiting out hours, hoping for the snow to stop, with no help at 2 in the morning. If the snow kept falling for hours, or if it snowed even harder, then it’d be even harder.

So, I kept going. I made it to my exit with the help of someone who rushed by earlier. I rode in their tracks until I had to get off and break some tracks of my own. The car slid violently around. I couldn’t stop at any of the lights or I’d never get going again. So I skidded out a few times into the middle of the road, into the middle of both lanes, whatever I had to do. Then there was another hill, covered in snow. I punched it again.

This time, the car shook as I went up. My entire shoe was practically flat on the car floor, and the car was still moving five miles an hour, if I was lucky. I didn’t think I was going to make it as it jolted left and right. The hill got even steeper. The snow got thicker. I felt the car slipping back, or rushing forward, digging into the banks. Finally, I met the end of it. I turned onto a nearby street. Nice and flat.

And that’s when my car died on the side of the road. All the dashboard lights blinked on, and I had to shut it down. Two in the morning, I called for a ride and hoped for an answer. I left my car there. I slept for two hours before walking back to it, hoping it wasn’t towed or hit with an expensive ticket already. I walked back before the sun rose, praying it’d be there when I rounded the corner of that last street. It was. No ticket.

A few days ago, I was driving with my father whose fuel gauge broke in his car. He hadn’t gotten gasoline in some days despite some really long drives, and suddenly, his truck died. We pulled over. We knew it was out of gas. I had to walk three miles with an empty can of windshield washer fluid to fill it with gas, then walk three miles back. It’s the way my luck’s been lately, I guess.

I try to be an optimist, though. My car didn’t get ticketed, or towed. I didn’t get into an accident, or slip off a cliff on the highway. I didn’t get hit by a car when I was walking for gas. I made it back alive. The walk was only 3 miles each way. It could have been 10. I knew the area at least, and exactly where the closest station was. But there are some things that are hard, even when you try to see the bright side of life. My dog has dementia and hip displaysia. He can’t stand or walk on his own, and he’s losing his memory. He stands in the corner sometimes and barks, and whines often through the night. He’s on medication, and we take the best care we can of him to help him along. It’s difficult, though. I remind myself that he’s old, 98 in dog years, if that 7:1 ratio is to be believed, and that he’s loved. But it’s difficult.

I moved, too. Up into these mountains in a city that’s an hour and a half away from where I lived for pretty much all of my life. Out of New York. The closing is set for next week. The entire house is empty. I’m taking what will probably be my very last drive down there on Saturday, for some last minute touches. And then that’s it.

At times like these, of major transition, I find myself feeling childlike again. I’m waiting for a (sort of) new job to start on Monday, in a new house, in a new city. A new state, even. I’ve been watching lots of cartoons. Dexter’s Lab, Spongebob, Powerpuff Girls, two different (and great!) Batman cartoons… I don’t know what it says about me that I retreat to watching these things in the face of huge change. That I revert to an infantile state in the face of crisis, I guess. But I like to think of it as comfort instead.

I’m looking back into writing, reviewing old chapters and planning new ones. It’s still Valentine. Always, you know. I think of it as my own personal superhero. It’s my pride, and it feels safe to me, always. When in doubt, I have that story to think about, to agonize over. I have it to comfort me.

Times get rough. Quite often, really. But I’m glad I have some simple things to comfort me when I need them.

Here’s wishing everyone some good luck and comfort on Friday the 13^th.

Then every day when I passed him, I felt obligated… so I kept stopping and giving him 5 dollars. So I did this three times, and now I wonder what will happen when the time comes and I drive by because I don’t have five dollars of cash in my pocket, because I’m not a rich man. But I’m glad anyway that I did what I did, and I’d do it again, and probably will.

But I’m not writing a post about that, either, necessarily. I wanted to write very briefly about something that’s pretty near to my heart. I want to write briefly about it, because I’ve been doing a whole lot of thinking about this book that I’m (still) writing called VALENTINE, and what to do with it, and how to fix it… and all these lingering doubts I had about the way I wrote it after getting what constructive criticism I did from readers. There’s one thing that bothered me more than anything about the book, and it was a big one: the message, the theme… it got muddled by the end.

I don’t want to spoil the book, and I don’t plan to talk that much about the changes I want to make to fix it, either. Because obviously, no blog post will do justice to what I’m trying to say, exactly. That’s what the book is for. Instead, I wanted to share a video that summarizes an important lesson that I want to put into this book. It’s also been extremely important to me, in my personal life, and something that was really rough for me when I was a teenager. I think it’s rough for most everyone when they’re young adults, and something most of us still struggle with…

This is part of an interview with famed psychologist Erik Erikson who proposed eight stages of psychosocial conflict in the human life. He says there are great battles that we wage in our minds, and with our personalities, and the outcome of each defines who we are as human beings, and how successful we’ll be in understanding ourselves and one another. It determines how happy we are with who we become, how positively or negatively others might see us, if we live a life of love and well-meaning and die happy, or if we look back on our lives alone and filled  with regret. The one that struck me the hardest was one of the hardest battles I had with myself, to figure out who I really am, and it was called intimacy versus isolation. Erikson, the psychologist who designed the theory, explains a little bit of it himself in this video.

“Intimacy is really the ability to fuse your identity with somebody else’s without fear that you’re going to lose something yourself… to be intimate, you have to [sic] have a very firm identity already.” – Erikson

I haven’t talked about this before. I’m planning a regularly updated web comic with one (or two) friends of mine. The details are still up in the air, but the current pitch is heavily inspired by Calvin & Hobbes. Right now, it’s planned to be slightly darker and based around adolescence, rather than childhood. I’m designing it to purposefully make it as least cynical as I can. I’m sort of bothered by the trend these days where characters are all misanthropes and mock one another much of the time just to hide their true caring underneath. This comic is going to be different, assuming all goes well. I’m really excited about it. Once we have a strip prepared, maybe I’ll share it here as a preview of it. We plan to make a website and release a new strip a few times a week for free.

It started to rain today, and I stood out on the deck under the rain drops eating an apple. I could hear my music clearly through the open window. It was beautiful.

This is one of the songs that I’ve been listening to. It’s by one of my favorite bands, called Cassino, an indie folk type band built from the remnants of Northstar. I don’t know if I could have nailed the tone of VALENTINE and wrote it as well as I (think I) did without their phenomenal, dreamy music.

This is a conversation I had:

me: im so in love with electricity right now i want to cut open a live wire and lick the sparks. its been a long week.

friend: that may be hazardous so keep in mind that in order to enjoy electricity, you must be alive or conscious

me: ah i better put my pants back on then. thanks for the tip.

friend: don’t go overboard now. pants can stay off.

Yeah, we’re both males.

What I’m saying is, I have wild Friday nights.

Just a few days ago I was complaining about not being able to write. Well, that night I did write. I rewrote the first chapter of the book, and tonight I’m going to look at more writing. And hopefully write more. I needed things to change that night, and I’m so happy they did. It was sort of a turning point for me to just start it and get back into it. This story is still the best thing I’ve ever written, and it deserves even more attention to make it shine like it needs to. And simply the act of writing again has made me a lot happier in general. I know it’s a great form of expression, but it’s also something I believe I’m quite good at… and I get anxious when I go for long periods without practicing or just doing it.

I’m seriously considering trying to find fellow writers to only exchange pieces of books at a time. For instance, sharing somewhere between three chapters at a time, and critiquing and editing them a section at a time instead of reading the entire thing and responding to it in that way. Like real writer’s groups do, in other words, share pieces at a time every week. Tackling sections at a time could allow for more “big” advice that could restructure stories as you go through them instead of reading an entire book and trying to explain a saggy feeling “somewhere in the middle” etc. It could be a good idea, I think?

I was going to write more in this post, like maybe ramble about how I’ve been watching The Matrix movies a lot after reading a philosophical article about it and becoming re-obsessed with the first movie and remembering just how mind-blowing it was when I first saw it… or about my recent passion for Apple Cider, or any number of other things, but I think I’m going to write some more fiction, because I have so much energy lately, and I don’t want to slack with this story again until it’s published somewhere.

Here’s hoping.

So I haven’t been writing. Not just here, but anywhere, really. I’ve retreated from it a little bit to try to think. I know that I’ve grown as a writer anyway, because I have been reading and watching media, and following art… I always do, it’s a compulsion. So I’m sure I’ve strengthened as a writer from that. But also from the things I’ve learned on my own, in my life. Because I’ve been dealing with quite a lot lately. Not all bad things, but so much change is happening. It’s overwhelming, actually.

But I was just listening to music, thinking about how much I really wish that I had a band again to play and sing, with reliable people who’d want to get better and make songs and art… and I realized that it may not happen, ever. And even if I was in a band, I haven’t been practicing. I’m not terribly good at any instrument, and I haven’t sung in a long time. The only thing I’m really good at, I think, is writing. And I haven’t been doing that, either…

So I realized tonight, I really should be writing more. It’s hard, because I have a book already written that I feel I might have grown out of lately. It was the best that I could write back then, and the most ambitious story I can think of, and about something deeply personal that it sort of bled passion all over the place. But now, I’ve grown as a writer and a person, and I’m afraid that if I look back, I’ll see mistakes too big to correct without having to rewrite everything. Every page, every word. It scares me because of the time it takes. But I know it takes time and patience and ambition to get anywhere in this day and age, especially with a dream as far-fetched as being a novelist someday.

I need to write…

I haven’t been idly wasting time, though. I do have story ideas, but I don’t want to start anything until Valentine gets the attention it deserves. I think I need readers more than ever. But at times like this, I wish I was good at drawing pictures, or crafting songs instead of writing books. People might look at a picture, or listen to your song (or at least 30 seconds of it) to tell you what they think, but they don’t want to spend 12 hours reading a book for you to tell you how it is. I mean, even the best amateur painter or local band is competing with Vincent Van Gogh or The Beatles or whatever because of the power and limitlessness of the internet. Which is good for culture in the long run, but bad for people struggling to be noticed. There’s so much out there that competes for people’s attention. Even mine.

My family is moving from the house I’ve lived in since I was three, into a new state… college loans are rapidly approaching and I’m looking for a job in a really bad market. And my cat died after a stroke two days ago… these things are all weighing on my heavily. I feel them strongly. But I’m not writing.

I should stop now, and look at Valentine… maybe read a chapter or two and brainstorm ideas for changes. I should.

Maybe I will.

Yeah.

I’m out of college, I’m feeling ambitious and I want to start writing again. I’ll probably be writing here more frequently in the coming future. Hooray!

What I most wanted to say was that I keep watching this video, and it makes me very emotional:

i have a feeling i’m going to be using you a LOT more soon.

For a full explanation of this blog series, please click here.

Be advised, this post may contain spoilers.

It’s A Wonderful Life starts with the prayers of townspeople all over Bedford Falls, all asking for help for one man: George Bailey. Cut to a group of celestial points of light in the emptiness of space talking to each other. They’re angels. They’re worried about him, about George Bailey. He’s thinking of killing himself. This one little man is cause to send an angel down to Earth to stop him.

It’s endearing, to say the least, to find out then just who George Bailey is. He’s not a millionaire, or a philanthropist, or a doctor, or the type of man you’d see in most films. He’s a blue collar young man looking for adventure, with a big heart but even bigger ambitions. And that’s why it’s so tragic that he keeps getting weighed down, tethered to this little town. He feels he owes so much of himself to this place, to a town he claims to hate, so he sees his adventures, his college education, his dreams of building new cities and seeing new worlds all slip away. Instead, he’s stuck taking care of a building and loan company his father started.

The defeat at times in George Bailey is palpable. He’s struggling, barely making ends meet, but always, always wants to give what he can to the people he loves around him.When George is told his father’s company will be overtaken by the evil Mr. Potter, he’s filled with dread, but doesn’t hesitate to stay and give all his saved money away to Harry, his brother, so at least he can get a college education. When Harry comes home to take over the company so George can find himself a job somewhere far away, Harry brings along his new wife and job offer… and George doesn’t think twice before letting Harry go off and live a better life. It’s not easy for him. His ambitions still burn, but he can’t bring himself to break his brother the way he’s been broken. Just like when eight-year-old Harry fell into the river, George didn’t hesitate to jump in after him to save him… at the expense of his hearing in one ear for the rest of his life. It’s who George Bailey is. He’s a hero.

His one saving grace could be Mary, the doe-eyed young girl who’s been madly in love with him since they were both kids. When George learns he’ll be stuck in Bedford Falls for who-knows-how-long, now that his brother Harry has a new wife and job opportunity, he’s angry and lost… but just happens to find himself running a twig between the fence posts right in front of Mary’s house. She calls to him, and reluctantly, he comes inside. Mary’s made a custom album cover – George Lassos the Moon – in reference to the promise he made her on their very first date, and plays the song they found each other singing over and over that night. George is too despondent, though, and the scene gets tense very fast. Only a phone call from Mary’s boyfriend, and George’s old obnoxious friend, Sam Wainwright, saves them. In perhaps one of the best scenes of the film, both George and Mary hover within a few inches of one another, listening in on the earpiece of the telephone as Sam offers George a brand new job opportunity to get in on the “ground floor” of plastics. The only catch is George has to give up his old job at the building and loans. George and Mary’s expressions go softer and softer as they both listen and the scene boils with wordless tension. When Mary finally turns to George to tell him, “He says it’s the chance of a lifetime,” he grabs her violently and tells her he doesn’t want the job or marriage or her… but then he hugs her and holds her tightly an buries her in kisses all over her cheek and neck.

There’s so much to love about this film, it’d be nearly impossible to do it justice. From the makeshift honeymoon at the “Waldorf Motel” in the dilapidated old house George used to throw rocks at, to the humiliation George feels when he gets laughed at by a crowd for proposing Violet and he run through the grass in their bare feet and climb the highest mountain of Bedford Halls so he can feel some of that adventure he’s been missing. George is painted as a complex man – deeply flawed at times, prone to anger and despair, but always with the thought of others in mind… perhaps even in his suicide, since he’s “worth more dead than alive.”

It’s the end, of course, that always kills me. My only tradition so far in life is to watch this movie every year on Christmas Eve, and every year, every time, it makes me cry. The moment George realizes he’s alive again, he begins laughing. He runs through the streets of the shabby little town he saved, yelling “Merry Christmas!” to all who will listen, all the strangers on the street, in the window to the evil Mr. Potter, and even to the cop waiting in his home to arrest him. He hugs his kids, and almost cries with joy when he sees his wife, Mary, again. When she comes in with the whole town, and a huge basket of money to help him in his time of need, it’s almost overwhelming. In one small swoop, he’s repaid for everything he’s given up along the way for all of them.

It might be remembered as the cliche Hollywood ending, but the bleakness of the story, and the complexity of the character, make the turn at the end feel earned. An angel didn’t simply fall out of the sky to help just any man in need. Rather, a man who did everything he could to help others simply got repaid in kind for his staggering selflessness. It would seem almost unrealistic, in fact, if a man as heroic endearing as George Bailey wasn’t saved somehow.

Santa Clause may be the icon of the season, and the figure that all kids look up to because of the toys he brings… but George Bailey is the real hero of Christmas for me. I have my own money troubles, my own ambitions that aren’t met that let me identify whole-heartedly with him. I like to try to be a better man, to care for and appreciate the people I love around me as he does, but I feel myself slip at times, just like him. The film might have a reputation of being trite, like a Hallmark card, but it’s actually unsparingly true in the way it paints George Bailey… not as a savior, but a good man struggling with the desire to do more with his life. He might not ever become an explorer like he wants to, but he finally realizes all that he’s accomplished in his life with a little help from a dear friend, and in the end, just feels lucky to be alive.

Really, what more could you ask for at Christmastime?

Happy holidays, everybody.