Your Prompt.

 I write.

Some say I’m a bit of a storyteller – at times long winded. Perhaps it’s the Irishman in me. Truth is, I’ll talk to anyone that will listen. And when I write, I don’t have to worry whether anyone is listening or not.

So I write – sometimes to preserve a memory and not use up so much brain space remembering the particulars of a moment in time. These stories come about when we have a significant family event worth sharing and remembering or a hunt that was successful for more than one reason or another. As we grow older, the specifics, dates, times and details start to fade away. But I have found that if those details were written down while fresh, a quick re-read immediately reignites a fond memory as if it happened yesterday.

I write to process emotion. For a while there I was knocking out eulogies like unplanned and unfun clockwork. Those “Ted Talks” were my way of honoring some special people in my life and I got good at something I didn’t want to. Summing up the life of friends and family in an essay was my way of paying tribute to them while helping me cope with loss.

I never aspired to be an essayist. I did have a couple of high school English teachers that we could blame for this. Their approach to the written word freed me up to get words out of my head and onto the paper. Their positive feedback laid a foundation that enabled me to not worry too much about form, structure, and traditional conventions of writing. Thank you, Mrs. Nordine and Mrs. Hallan. I am forever grateful for you and your creative prompts, your endless enthusiasm for language and your belief that a jock might even have something worthwhile to write about.

I proudly served in Uncle Sam’s Motorcycle Club from 1993-1997. Those of us seasoned enough to have survived the “Olden Days”, remember a society without social media, without instant and constant news feeds, without email and text messaging connecting us to everyone in the world with the swipe and stroke of a thumb or a finger. We lived in a world of Snail Mail, and it was that precious Mail Call that kept me connected to my life back home. Every service man and woman can speak to the feeling of relief to finally hear your name called as the platoon sergeant doles out envelopes and packages from home to troops abroad. Maybe it was in those letters when I replied that I started to develop my own style. Either way, my appreciation for the written word grew.

On a liberty call in Dubai, UAE in 1994, some buddies and I hit a Rashad Johnny variety shop with a pocket full of dirhams. Traditionally, Marines on libo tear through the streets of foreign lands in search or good food, good beer, and bad women. As I recall, Dubai offered none of that. What I left that little variety shop with though has become one of my most prized possessions. It’s a little blue notebook. Nondescript and plain. No title. No frills. Just bound sheets of writing paper. My good friend, Lance Corporal Ratboy, bought one as well. Together we vowed to write as often as possible while on float.

We intended to journal.

Heroic - I know.  

And believe it or not, we both purposefully set aside time on most nights to write in our “feelings journals”. In that blue notebook I would write what was on my mind; write about what was bothering me; write about the ins and outs and daily life of jarheads aboard the Navy’s finest ships. I wrote down thoughts of home and missions both ahead and behind us. I wrote down song lyrics and how their authors moved me. Periodically time didn’t allow me to put pen to paper. But eventually it became such a habit that I felt like something was missing if I didn’t catalogue the day’s musings. In that journal I mumbled and muddled my way to pass the time.

That blue notebook took me through the end of that first float. It recorded combat, lost paychecks and broken hearts. I broke it out again 2 years later and traveled across the Pacific once again, feelings journal in hand. An Irish jock from small town mid-America turned scribe and part time litterateur had learned the therapeutic effects of writing.

By the time the Marine Corps let me out in 1997, technology had progressed enough so that a few short years later I was able to “get the girl” with the help of constant contact through daily emails. The woman of my dreams fell to my rugged good looks and uncanny way with the written word. By the mid 2000’s, she and I established a family blog to keep our loved ones up to speed on our growing family. It wasn’t long until that Blog became a creative outlet for me to again play with written babble whether anyone was “listening” or not.

10 years ago, when I spent a year in Alaska, the audience grew.

And now the blog sometimes goes untouched for a while…dormant… its scribe waiting for a Prompt.

 

PS – I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell any of my Marine buddies about my Feelings Journal.