Tag: Blog

Ukraine On My Mind

Last week I wrote about the heroes of Ukraine but this week, those heroes are just fighting to survive. Over a million Ukrainians have fled creating the worst refugee crisis in Europe this century so far and more are fleeing every day. Thousands are returning to fight and save others and the pressure is on the Russians economically. But things will get so much worse before they get better because it seems the Russian strategy is to bomb as much of Ukraine into rubble like they did in Chechnya and Aleppo in Syria and then murder as many fleeing civilians as possible, all while trying to create false narratives such as the latest one that Ukraine was secretly developing nuclear and biological weapons (which isn’t true at all).

What I’m fighting like hell right now to contain is my rage at the conservative Republican establishment in this country who spent the last five years praising the butcher that is Vladimir Putin and his corrupt and extremely poor Russian Federation. To these motherfuckers, Russia is an idealistic utopia with no people of color, gays and lesbians, and transgendered people to live with, and no Jews, Muslims, or anyone not of the state-approved Russian Orthodox faith.

Over the last twenty-two years since Vladimir Putin came to power over a trillion (yes that is trillion with a ‘t’) dollars has been taken from the Russian people and stashed in banks, yachts, real estate, and in lawmakers and organizations to de-stabilize and take down the free world. And over these past years, there are people who have said this was all fake news, or paranoia, or that why shouldn’t Russian oligarchs get rich off the backs of poor working-class Russians?

I’m fighting like hell not to scream and rage at Republicans and conservatives who are speaking out against Putin now and trying to support the Ukrainian people. I’m trying not to scream and rage at them that Trump was impeached the first time for unlawfully withholding military aid to Ukraine. I’m trying not to scream and rage at them for their silence on this.

Over the years of my adult life I’ve heard this bullshit-saying that people tend to get conservative as they get older. I call bullshit on that because I’ve never been conservative to begin with, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve worked to embrace the idea that the best time to do something is NOW. Because all my life I’ve heard that sometimes you have to wait to make real changes. That’s a bullshit diversion tactic by gutless cowards who shouldn’t be able to make any real decisions because they have no conviction or courage to begin with.

Because over the last six years, in addition to trying to figure out just how fucked up I am mentally and emotionally and what I could do to repair as much damage as I can, I also really dug into my political and ideological beliefs. And I realized the side I chose as a child, the liberal, progressive, democratic side was the right one. I just wished I hadn’t given in to silence on that but the best time to break that silence is now.

I’m going to be completely honest here and say I’m worried when I speak out like this with all my colorful language that I’m just further alienating myself from people. But then I tell myself I’ve been alienated and alone all my life, and maybe the course of my life is to be the traveling old lady telling stories and always alone. I say this because when I write like this, I’m showing the world I will not compartmentalize my emotions, especially my compassion and empathy. I will not part-and-parcel them out only to a few people. I fight with every ounce of strength I have not to embrace the lure of rage-turned-hate. When I feel that lure I respond simply with: ask yourself why you think and feel the way you and keep asking until you find all the answers you can though I will warn you, you might not like the answers you find, and you will have to deal with them sooner or later. Because I have not stopped asking myself the same thing and I never will. I will never have all the answers, but neither will anyone else.

The fires of the ‘culture wars’ against black and brown people, Jews and Muslims, lesbians/gays/transgendered people have all been complete and utter fucking bullshit. They’ve been used by the oligarchs of the world to steal and drive millions of people into poverty, and into mass graves from poverty and disease. In the United States alone, next month a million people will have died from COVID-19 and many of those deaths (250,000 at the latest estimate) could have been prevented had there not been opposition to public health guidelines such as mask-wearing and vaccines.

The people of Ukraine are taking a stand against a country that has been trying to subjugate and take them over for the last century. Whether or not they will succeed remains to be seen. This could devolve into a guerilla war, or a proxy-war between the West and the Russian Federation. Or it could all end a blinding flash of light under a mushroom cloud.

At this point I say all you can do is take it day by day. I get up now and check the news and for the last eleven days the city of Kyiv still stands free. I see President Zelensky is still alive. But I also see the dead, the burned-out ruins of cities, the masses of refugees and my heart aches. That ache hurts but it reminds me time and again that I’m human, and that ache is pain, and compassion, and empathy. And I will fight with every ounce of strength and courage not only to feel those emotions, but to speak out with them, too. “Slava Ukraini!” (Glory to Ukraine!) 

Uber Tales – Do I Like It, Edition

In the almost five years I’ve been driving for Uber there is one question I still get asked a lot, and that still baffles me though I’m not quite sure why.

Do I like being an Uber driver?

I always say yes of course but I wonder why I get asked the question in the first place (I haven’t asked that of my questioning-passengers because I don’t want to come off as rude or ungrateful, or something like that). I think for me the big reason I’m baffled by this question is that in all the other jobs I’ve had, I never got asked this question. In fact, when I worked in call-center Hell most people asked how I could stand dealing with people yelling at me all day over the phone. I told them it wasn’t the people yelling at me on the phone that made that job a crap-fest but the management I worked under (for every good manager I had, I had at least five I wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire).

I wonder if being a gig-worker as Uber drivers are sometimes referred to is still very alien and dare I say, unique to a lot of people. Like some people see us as free-spirits, or losers they secretly admire for not being a part of the corporate rat-race so they have to wonder if we really like it or we do it because we can’t hack it elsewhere.

So in reply to the question of do I like being an Uber driver, I’ll list some of the things I really like about the job.

First thing I like: no set schedule. Uber will post about potentially busy times and also any incentives during certain times (incentives are extra money given in addition to fares and tips- and all tips go directly to drivers). So if I take an evening off the road I can do a morning run (five a.m. to about nine a.m.). My preferred time is currently three-thirty p.m. to about midnight, especially with airport runs because those are usually pretty good money fare-and-tip wise. But if you’re feeling like crap, or if you want to cut out and you’ve got the money to do it, you can and no one says anything.

Because yes, as a driver you are managed by an algorithm. And when asked how that’s going I always say, “I’ll take the algorithm over the human.” Uber’s algorithm has always been good to me as long as I maintain my numbers (customer rating/acceptance/cancellation) which is easy to do with this gig. In call-center Hell, I was micromanaged by people who had no business managing anything other than a stapler. It was so bad I used to get dirty looks from managers when I stood up to stretch or go to the bathroom. With the algorithm, I don’t get any dirty looks for either stretching or bathroom breaks.

Another thing I like is tenure and top status has its’ perks. There is a four-level tier system for drivers and I’ve been in the top tier since the system was implemented. And they don’t keep adjusting the goalposts for this tiered system to make it damn near impossible for anyone to get into the top tier and stay there. It’s like having an ongoing performance review without having to sit down and go through one of those every year and be grateful for whatever pitiful raise you get.

And yet another thing I like- no yelling or screaming people. I’ve had a few people mutter shit about me or just treat me like something they scrapped off the bottom of their shoe at the dog park. And I’ve had a few indecent proposals. But the good thing is I haven’t had to deal with anyone like that in a long time, and if I really had someone go off on me and not back off and apologize I could report them and not be matched with them again.

One of the things I really like about this job is the diversity of the people I meet every day. I’ve met people from all over the world and from all walks of life. I’ve had a ton of conversations about everything under the sun and then some. I’ve laughed my ass off behind the wheel, and I’ve fought like hell not to lose it at some things I’ve heard, too. And yes, what’s said in my Uber stays in there because I don’t have any details about the people I shuttle around and I don’t ask a lot of questions in my line of work. So in response to my top FAQ: yes, I like being an Uber driver. And I’ll keep doing it as long as it works for me, and as long as they’ll have me. Thanks for riding with me today.

The Written Road – Not Stealing Writing Time Anymore

When I began writing I felt like I had to hide it from the world. A lot of that was because my dad was a major jerk about his writing at times, especially to my mother. My father was like a lot of male writers in that he expected instant and unquestioning devotion and acceptance from my mother about his pursuit of writing, which she refused to give him because that was her choice. A lot of male writers succeed because they have a wife or significant other to take care of their day-to-day shit so they can pursue their high-and-mighty craft.

Female writers as I learned very early on don’t have that kind of support system and sure as hell don’t ask for it or expect it at all. For female writers, writing is something done late at night, early in the morning, and most of all, hidden away. From Jane Austen hiding her manuscripts under a desk blotter in the sitting room anytime someone came over, to Margaret Mitchell and Danielle Steele setting up their typewriters in the laundry room, to Jackie Collins and Nora Roberts writing on spiral notebooks in the carpool line, women write but feel the need to hide it until they achieve some measure of success or at least are able to make it pay for itself. But it’s a hard-fought battle to feel like you have the right to pursue your writing even though you’re doing your best not to bother anyone with it.

In my teens, I tried my best to keep my writing to myself. I didn’t really talk about it with anyone other than my father and I felt like I couldn’t because I hadn’t paid my dues. I wrote in between classes in school, and in class with my papers hidden under my textbooks (my teachers probably thought I was taking notes until my grades showed otherwise).

In my twenties during the years I took care of my mother is when the shit began to hit the fan writing-wise for me. I knew my parents took flack for letting me live at home rent-free and write when I wasn’t busting my ass taking care of much as I could so my mom didn’t have to while the cancer was slowly killing her. I’m forever grateful for my parents for their support of my writing at the time but knowing they were having to waste precious time and energy defending a decision that was no one’s business but mine and theirs still pisses me off now. Back then, that flack dug a fear deep inside me that took me over twenty years to put into words.

In my thirties, I tried to make it look like writing was a nice little hobby because I didn’t want anyone to use it to drive a wedge between my father and me. I was his sole caregiver and it was a choice I made knowingly and willingly, and without regret like the decision I made to sacrifice my own goals and ambitions to care for my mother.

But this sacrifice came at one hell of a price because it’s taken me close to a decade to see that I didn’t need to hide my writing, or justify it to anyone in any way, shape, or form. It’s taken me close to a decade to fully realize my writing is mine, and mine alone. And if someone doesn’t like that, that’s their opinion that they’re fully entitled to. Just as I’m fully entitled to respond to that in any way I choose to, like writing this here.

I wonder how many writers feel like thieves stealing time to do something that they think people will destroy if they find out how much it means to them. I want to say to those writers no one can take your writing from you or destroy you because of it. People who mouth off at you for pursuing something in silence and on your own time are just bullies. And the easiest way to get a bully out of your life is to stand up and call them out on their lies and bullshit then walk away and keep doing what you do.

Most of all, my fellow writers, don’t waste any time trying to figure out why people don’t want you to write or just don’t like your writing. You are not responsible for figuring out other people’s thoughts and feelings, or to work their bullshit. I spent way too much time in my past trying to do that and got nothing in return so don’t even take one step in that direction. Write, and keep writing and do whatever you have to in order to shut these naysaying morons out of your mind.

You don’t have to steal time to write. You have to find the time, or make the time you have work for you. But that’s not stealing time at all if you’ve taken care of your responsibilities.

Just write and keep writing.

Stand or Fall – In the Shadow of the Mushroom Cloud

The title of today’s blog entry comes from the song, “Hammer to Fall” by Queen. I first heard it on the soundtrack to the film ‘Highlander’ though the song was released first as a single from Queen’s 1984 album ‘The Works’. Written by Queen guitarist Brian May, it’s about growing up during the Cold War when both the United States and Soviet Union (now Russian Federation) would get into a dick-swinging contest but swing around nuclear missiles instead of their own pencil-dicks.

Two days ago, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin said he put Russian nuclear forces on high alert and of course all of us Cold War-babies had flashbacks to duck-and-cover drills, ‘The Day After’, ‘Threads’, and other dystopian nuclear apocalypse imagery. My father used to tell stories of watching nuclear bomb tests on live television in the late 1950’s and also that he got sent to the principle’s office one time for saying during a duck-and-cover drill, “Shouldn’t we all just put our heads between our legs and kiss our asses goodbye?” (when my grandfather came to pick my dad up from school and my dad told him what he’d said, my grandfather said he couldn’t punish my dad for being honest).

By the time us Generation X kids came of age, we grew pretty fatalistic about nuclear war. We hoped we’d be close enough to the blasts to get vaporized because that’s a pretty quick death. If we survived, we knew we’d have to forage for Pop-Tarts to survive (Twinkies are the foraging goal for the zombie apocalypse). But we also knew since 1945, cooler heads had prevailed, and there were people who had the balls not to push the big red button or make phone calls to the Kremlin or the White House. Because if those missiles launch, it’s all over and there won’t be anything to do except sing REM’s classic song, “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I feel fine)”.

I saw something yesterday online where a teacher asked his Generation Z students if they knew what the strategy of MAD (Mutually-Assured Destruction) was. They didn’t know and he had to tell them and they were pretty shocked. I grew up with that like my dad and his generation did. Because that’s the nuclear strategy the world has lived with since 1945 when the first and so far, only atomic bombs were dropped. The strategy is that if anyone launches a single missile, everyone else launches all of theirs in the totally fucked-up misguided idea that if we launch a counter-strike we’ll knock out some of their missiles. Yeah, I don’t think they thought that one through.

What I will say now is this: pray that cooler heads will prevail and keep the monsters from hitting that big red button and blowing us all to Kingdom Come. Pray for steady leadership like President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and for people to stand up to a President and tell him to quit joking around about bombing Russia (thanks to President Regan’s White House advisors for telling him to knock that shit off). Pray for their counterparts in Russia who are probably risking their lives and hoping they’re not near a meat-hook or a window to get thrown out of.

Most of all, stand up for what’s right and true. If a politician or pundit has voiced support for murderous dictators like Vladimir Putin, make sure to remind them at every opportunity and hold them accountable. If they’ve taken dirty money to destroy democracy in this country and around the world, hold them accountable. Vote them out of office and support investigations into their criminal and treasonous behavior. There is no middle ground when it comes to preventing nuclear war or the dirty war of misinformation and the destruction of democracy.

As I write this, the people of Ukraine are getting the living shit kicked out of them by the Russians. They’re fighting just to stay alive and hold out long enough to get reinforcements and hope for a coup in Russia. They’re hoping the world doesn’t cave in and abandon them like the world has before.

It’s hard to live in the shadow of the mushroom cloud. Yesterday I looked up at the clear blue sky above me and thought what a total waste it would be to see it on fire. Instead of getting scared and sad, I was pissed off as hell. I was like, “Not this fucking shit again!” I reminded myself all I could do was get on with my day and pray that cooler heads will prevail yet again. I know we got a cool one here in the United States in the White House. The one in the bunker in Russia I’m not confident in at all but I hope enough of his stooges find their balls and keep him away from the red button.

To those who are feeling the terror of that mushroom cloud, come on in. Grab a pack of Pop-Tarts, take a seat, and turn up the music.

Breaking Radio Silence – Standing Up to Bullies

Over the last few days, I’ve been doom-scrolling and watching the news out of Ukraine (and I blogged about it yesterday, too). And I began to ask myself why I’m having such a strong emotional reaction to it other than fear of a huge conventional war breaking out in Europe or worse, nuclear war. But then I realized it was because I was watching a nation of forty-four million people stand up to the bully that is Russian President Vladmir Putin and the corrupt government and military leadership of the Russian Federation.

Now I’m not equating my life with what the Ukrainian people are going through in any way, shape, or form. They’re fighting for their lives, but they’re also fighting to live on their own terms. Under seventy years of Soviet-Russian occupation, the Ukrainian people were brutally oppressed. They were banned from speaking their own language and practicing their culture and customs. And now they’re being told by their neighbor that they can’t determine their own path in this world by joining the European Union and NATO simply because some asshole in the Kremlin is a joyless, soulless ghoul? Fuck no.

Bullies are loud, rude, obnoxious, and totally convinced they’re in the right even when they know they aren’t. And it’s not my job, or anyone else’s for that matter, to figure out why they’ve jammed their heads up their asses and decided being asshole is better than being a decent human being, or to figure out why they have decided to live without conscience, empathy, and compassion. I’m here to talk about the damage these people cause and what I’ve learned to repair some of it.

Some of my earliest memories are of being teased and bullied as a young child because I was fat and clumsy. I am probably one of the most un-coordinated people you will ever meet. I have balance issues like my late mother did though not with her motion-sickness thank goodness. But it lead to a lot of teasing, bullying and worst of all, alienation. Or to simplify that, it sucked and hurt like hell to always be picked last for any team.

While I suffering through the hell that was PE (physical education) class, I was suffering from another hell in the classroom and elsewhere by being shy then proving I wasn’t stupid for not babbling and running my mouth without trying to think about what I was going to say first. I have a brain that runs at about a hundred and fifty miles an hour on a good day and that means I over-think a lot of shit and have since my age was in the single-digits. I still do that though I’m really trying to get that under control.

Now here’s the really shitty part about all this: the human brain imprints repeated exposure in order to learn. Basically, if you hear something often enough you start to believe it even if it’s not true or just plain wrong and awful. And because of that, the human brain itself doesn’t really learn how to filter out things negatively impacting you emotionally as well as it should. Learning not to believe the lies and bullying about yourself is very hard to do. It took me over thirty years to realize that not only were people wrong about me being stupid and weak, but the way I had internalized their shit was wrong, too.

By the time I reached my late thirties, I believed every single person on this planet had their shit together and knew everything, and that I knew absolutely nothing and was a total loser. I did this in the severely-misguided belief that if I beat the shit out of myself first then other people wouldn’t do it to me. But then I realized something: most people honestly don’t give a shit about you after they’re through mouthing off at you about something. Because I used to fear people mouthing off at me then if I made even just one peep of noise or movement, they’d pound the shit out of me and put me in a cage somewhere far away.

That never happened. All my bullies were gutless cowards who didn’t have any heavy weaponry to come after me, and if they’d had access to any of that they wouldn’t have known what to do with it. I realized this when I had this thought come into my mind and started believing it: everyone else is just as full of shit as I am sometimes but that doesn’t make me a bad person. What that means is no one has all the answers, and if they try to bullshit and bully you into making you think they do, call them out on it even if it’s just in silence and not letting them live rent-free in your mind, or saying it to their face.

From that lesson more came to me and they all culminated in the big one: people can say whatever the hell they want to, but I have the right to respond in any way I choose to, even if it’s in a way they don’t like. If you stand up to someone and say they’re hurting you, you’re not wrong.

I think the best way to stand up to a bully in daily life is this: you don’t run and hide. You say, “I’m still here. And you need to go off and ask yourself why you think and feel the way you, and keep asking until you find all the answers you can though I will warn you, you might not like the answers you find. And sooner or later you will have to deal with them. Just like I’ve been dealing with mine.”

Uber Tales – Origin Story

Created by my friend Deborah Ratliff

On March 31, 2017 I became an active Uber driver. At that time I was working a part-time gig as a contract delivery driver for Amazon and needed some more money. Then at the end of May that year that contract gig ended and I went full-time with Uber because I needed to keep earning money and no one was responding to my resumes being submitted. Then I discovered I liked being an Uber driver and managed by an algorithm with no human support available at that time.

It’s now been almost five years, over twelve-thousand rides, a lot of miles, my own vehicle followed by four rentals, and numerous app updates. I’ve also survived the business crashing in March 2020 when the covid-19 lockdown happened here in San Antonio and the usual ups and downs of the ridesharing business in general.

One question I’ve been asked a lot over the years with this job is, do I like it?

I find that question odd even after being asked it for five years because before I started doing this job, no one ever asked me that before. But then before I started doing gig/rideshare work, I worked in call-center Hell. When I told people about that job the number-one question was how I put up with people yelling at me over the phone all day. I’ve told people the worst thing about call-center work for me wasn’t the yelling over the phone, but the incompetent to downright-sadistic management in the call-centers I worked in. I told them the places I worked where were run by penny-ante, nitpicking, bullshit-loving assholes for the most part. So when people say that I’m managed by an algorithm and not a human I say in return, “And your point is?” After five years of being managed by an algorithm I’ll take the algorithm over the humans because I had only a small handful of human managers I actually liked and respected.

Now I will freely admit I have not taken my Uber job nowhere as seriously as I probably could have, or should have. I mean I’m not the most organized person in the world with it nor am I the most ‘rah-rah-rah, go team!’ person about it either. For me, it’s been something I can do with the least amount of fuss and muss and as long as I maintain my numbers I’m good to go. But I’m also good to make my own schedule and take it one ride at a time. Because there has only been a few times when I came off the road flaming-hot mad unlike call-center Hell where that was almost a daily thing.

As of right now, I don’t have any truly insane, off-the-wall bonkers story to tell but I’ve got a lot of other ones to tell. Also, I’ve got a good number of observations about human nature, the world we live in, and life before and after the covid-19 epidemic.

I’ve read a lot over the years from economists and other egg-head types about how gig work truly sucks and takes advantage of people. Some of what they say is true but as someone who also worked for wages for a lot of years, I can make a lot of comparisons and contrasts between hourly-salaried work and independent gig-work. I went into this job with my eyes wide-open and no expectation of a red-carpet roll-out experience. To me, it’s just about making money and leaving it behind at the end of the road for the day. No two days are the same with this job and I’ve always said that the only predictable thing about this job is its’ unpredictability. Sometimes you hit the financial jackpot and some days you can’t get any action going at all.

One time after I’d answered a rider’s questions about my job he said to me (this is an exact quote): “So basically, you drive around all day, meet new people, and listen to music.” I told him that was about right though in addition to that I dealt with traffic, bad drivers, weather, and on occasion delivered food (back then I was doing food delivery to offset the reduction in regular rides).

So each week here till the book is published, I’ll share stories and behind-the-scenes bits like with my other three books. Hopefully I’ll get something off-the-wall nuts before I go for publication.

The Written Road – An Origin Story

I started toying with the idea of doing a how-to writing book around the same time as “Breaking Radio Silence” and “Stand or Fall” with some personal experiences mixed in. But then I had a thought one day:

My relationship with writing is complicated.

And as I asked myself why that was, I fell down another rabbit hole like with the other two books and had to take a whirl around the demented Wonderland of my past to answer that question. One answer that jumped out at me and knocked me back hard was this:

Did my father try to use writing to deal with his untreated mental illness?

All my life my father told me he had been diagnosed as manic-depressive, now referred to as bi-polar depression but had refused treatment. I can’t independently verify that diagnosis (as my father is dead and he had no proof to show me when he was alive). But after reading about bi-polar depression… let’s just say he would have checked pretty much all of the boxes for symptoms and behavior.

I was about eight years old when my dad blew an ulcer and in recuperation started writing. He wrote at first on yellow legal pads then hammered away on a typewriter in the bedroom next to mine late into the night. He was obsessive and a major pain the ass about his writing at times especially to my mother (who he raged at in incredibly-horrible ways). And when I began writing when I was about ten years old, I put myself in a precarious position of not wanting to be an asshole about my writing like he was but wanting to pursue it with the same passion like he had.

I’m sure people who knew my father, and even others who didn’t, won’t be comfortable with me referring to him in the ways that I will. But my father, and my mother (both of my parents are dead, by the way), would be the first ones to tell you they weren’t perfect. One thing I’ve read about bi-polar illness is the extreme mood swings people with that illness have and my father had those in full-blown stereo. But my writing journey is about me but he will be along for the ride just like my mother is along for the ride with my ‘Breaking Radio Silence’ project.

I was around twelve years old when I decided I wanted to be a full-time working writer. In junior-high I wanted to be a songwriter/lyricist but I couldn’t find an Elton John to my wannabe Bernie Taupin. Then I wanted to be a journalist, then a screenwriter, a filmmaker-director, then a novelist. When I graduated high school I just wanted to write and my dad went to bat for me with my mom (though my mom only agreed to let me live at home and write if I did chores and errands, which I did without a second’s hesitation). Then my dad had his first heart attack when I was nineteen and my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was twenty-one. But all throughout my twenties when I was living at home and taking care of them (and later working part-time then full-time), they supported my writing. They paid my writers’ group dues, conference fees, and made sure I had time to write. This wasn’t a popular decision of theirs with other people in my life at that time but my parents asked me not to say anything and I stayed silent to keep the peace. But the damage was done (and a lot of it you can also read about in my book ‘Breaking Radio Silence’).

In the years since my parents died, I didn’t fully pursue my writing and creative endeavors due to the extreme bullshit of my twenties that twisted me into a huge knot of fear. Luckily I’ve worked through that shit and un-knotted that fear and am now pursuing my writing with a passion and determination like never before.

Most of all, I have never taken writing for granted and it’s never felt like a grind to me. And I will never let anyone try to make it a grind for me, or shit all over me for writing. Despite all the bullshit I’ve been through and the time away from it, writing has always been there for me. And yes, it’s been a form of therapy for me, too. My father kept journals that he destroyed shortly before he died so I have a feeling that writing was his therapy, too. Mine is just more public than his, and I’m also not prone to huge mood swings and raging paranoia like him (just anxiety I’ve learned to gain a significant measure of control over).

So I would say ‘The Written Road’ is a memoire of my own writing journey, a conversation with my late father, and any writing how-to I can work in.

Stand or Fall – An Origin Story

The idea for this book came to me after the US Presidential Election in 2016, a time when I simply asked, “What the hell happened?”

I’ve been a flaming-liberal progressive Democrat all my life and have voted that way since 1992. I’d gone from the high of the first Clinton administration to the low of the second one. I’d gone through eight years of war-mongering and rising right-wing bullshit of the Bush, Jr. years. I fought to maintain hope through the Obama years and thought it would be Hillary’s time after that. But my gut was also telling me it wasn’t her time and hadn’t been since 1992 when she became the right-wing’s favorite villain.

But in the six years since that fateful election in 1992, I’ve seen just how bad things can get. They make the nuclear scares of my 1980’s childhood look tame because in addition to those nuclear fears (which have never gone away), I also fear the slow and painful destruction of our world through environmental destruction, pandemics we won’t be able to respond to, and genocidal violence from far-right groups around the world who want to finish what the Nazi’s started over seventy years ago.

I have struggled hard to even start writing this book because I was watching history happen before my eyes that would culminate with millions dead around the word from an pandemic that may have been contained if the right leadership had been in place worldwide. But most of all, I struggled to write this book after being told all my life that I have no ability to talk about politics or political and social issues. And all from people who honestly didn’t give two shits about me or what I think and feel about the issues of our time. I’ve been an avid follower of political and social issues since my age was in single-digits and though I’m not an expert by any means, I feel I have a perspective that’s not dry, too scholarly, or inaccessible.

I was born in May 1974, three months before Richard Nixon resigned from the Presidency. My late father was an avowed Nixon hater and at times I thought it was mostly just his raving paranoid lunacy. But as I learn more about Nixon and the rise of the modern right-wing conservative movement from the early 1970’s onward, I’ve begun to realize my father was right when he used to go on about Nixon and company wanting to bring back the Fourth Reich as he called it.

For me in the 1980’s, I felt like conservative Republican were just like the bullies I dealt with in school. These bullies singled me out for abuse simply because I was ‘different’ though I was only different because I was fat, shy, and clumsy. I’m a straight, white, heterosexual female but add in the ugly appearance, creativity, and compassion and you can see why I was targeted. So yes, my feelings towards conservative Republicans are personal. To me, any argument that politics isn’t personal is total fucking bullshit perpetuated by people who only want to silence anyone who isn’t falling into lock-step, jack-booted, Nazi-red MAGA hat wearing perfection.

But don’t worry, I won’t leave the left out on this one either. I don’t like left-wing purity culture that’s only minus the fucked-up sexual purity of right-wing purity culture. I also don’t like the doom-and-gloom of the left-wing sometimes, so much that I would love to bitch-slap anyone who jams their head up their ass instead of taking names and kicking ass by voting and giving a genuine shit about the world we live in.

What really prompted this book is the right-wing desire I see to destroy this entire world and everyone in it if they can’t have it all for themselves. In the 80’s and 90’s I thought right-wing Republicans were mostly harmless. Since the 2000’s, they’re deadly. They started two wars, one on false pretenses, and let an epidemic kill a million people in this country. And worst of all, they’ve openly embraced fascism, neo-Nazism, and attempted a coup on January 6, 2021 they still haven’t answered for in a court of law.

I have fought like hell to maintain hope that we’ll put this one out but sometimes I’m fond of saying, “I’ve seen this movie before and I know how it ends.” I grew up on dystopian science-fiction and it always gets worse before it gets better. Just how much worse, I don’t know. Before my generation got bogged down and gave in to the latchkey-pessimism we were raised on, I had hope. Or at least I did in 1992. By 2000, that hope had been broken and I’ve been trying to pick up the pieces ever since then. This book is the story of hope found, lost, and hopefully found again.

Breaking Radio Silence – An Origin Story

In the Fall of 2016, I set out on what I thought would be a straightforward journey: to use writing to try and figure out why I thought and felt the way I did. At that time, I knew there were things I needed to deal with and I thought writing them out would help me see exactly what they were and what I could do about them. I titled this project, “Untitled Self-Help/Memoire Hybrid” as I felt this project would be a combination of self-help and memoire used to illustrate the things I was working through. But in the Spring of 2018, that began to change when the title, “Breaking Radio Silence” came to me.

In the Summer of 2018, I felt like I was going through a Category Five hurricane of emotional storms every single day. I was physically exhausted by this and just barely holding on. In time I realized I was breaking the silence I had imprisoned so many thoughts, feelings, and memories not just to try and get away from the pain, but to keep them from coming out of me and being used against me as a weapon. I felt like I was having a conversation with myself like I never had before, felt like I was allowed to.

In the last months of 2018, I reached what I call the ‘storage unit’ of my mind. This is where I put my most-painful thoughts, feelings, and memories. In those last months of 2018, I went through that storage unit and opened some very painful boxes and sorted the contents out. Most of all, I put those contents into words in my mind and by doing that, I lifted weights of shame and guilt I never should have carried around in the first place.

But I still had a very long way to go to get to the point I’m at now. From 2019 till now, 2022, I had to keep asking questions to figure out why I couldn’t write this book. The big question that got answered over the last six months was this: why have I never followed through on anything I ever wanted to do? The answer to this one was one of the most painful realizations about myself because it was full of regrets and anger, a very volatile mix I had to work through.

The emotional storms are nowhere near as intense as they have been in the past. There is a calm and focus inside me because I’ve come to the most important conclusion about myself and the answer I didn’t know I was looking for. And that answer is at the end of the day, I am worthy and capable of love, and being loved in return. I have also realized that I can try my best to truly connect with people in any way I can, including through writing.

I will tell you right here and now that “Breaking Radio Silence” will not be an easy read, but it will be a hopeful one. And I hope that readers will get something out of it that will help them deal with their own thoughts, feelings, and memories.

The ultimate purpose of writing this book is to help other people, people like myself who have been through things like I have and are trying to deal with the wounds and find healing, and for people who are going through things like I have and need something to hold on to.  

In the end, healing can be had. It’s a long, hard road that never really ends. But it begins with one thing: breaking radio silence. And it continues with a conversation that wasn’t had before.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting excerpts from the book in progress along with related pieces to the theme of breaking radio silence. I feel this is going to be an ongoing project for me even after the book is finished and published.

Breaking My Silence – A Manifesto and a Conversation

I call this blog ‘Conversations from the Road’ because I view my writing as a conversation between me and the world, and from the road because I feel life is a road we’re all on. This will be a daily blog and this week I’ll be showcasing what each day will be dedicated to for the foreseeable future (or until some book projects are finished).

Today I’m starting with a manifesto and a brief explanation behind it. This has been very hard for me to post because I’ve never really said anything like this out loud. But I know I have every right to say what I want to say, and respond in the way I want to even if someone doesn’t agree with it. The piece below is razor-sharp and is about as plain and straightforward as I can make it. But it’s all about me and no one else.

My Personal and Writing Manifesto

  • My writing and how I live my life are not an act of defiance, or an act of revenge. My writing and my life are not about getting even, settling scores, winning an argument, making a point, or any bullshit like that.
  • I will not apologize for anything I don’t have to apologize for, or just for being myself. I will not defend myself or my words and actions when I don’t have to.
  • I will not bend or break for anyone, and I will not go silent for anyone.
  • I will always have hope for a better future and I will always work towards that.
  • I will always believe in myself and my abilities, and that I am so much stronger than I will ever know.
  • I will always remember that everyone is just as full of shit as I am somethings but that doesn’t make me a bad person. No one has all the answers or knows what the future will be even if they say they do.
  • Most of all, I will always believe in love, and that I am worthy and capable of love and being loved in return.

I wrote this on January 9, 2022 by hand and told myself I could not throw it out under any circumstances and that I had to publish it. Why? Because these are my core beliefs that I live and work by, and I know I’m going to piss someone off with what I say or do so I might as well go all-in. That fear of pissing someone off and having to deal with their bullshit has held me back more than anything in my life. I’ve always backed down and gone silent even though the people who have mouthed off at me or bullied me forgot what they said ten minutes after they walked away from me. People have the right to say whatever they want to me, and I have just as much right to respond to them in whatever way I choose, even if it’s in a way they don’t like. People say they can agree to disagree but that’s not the case most of the time. They can agree to disagree if the other person shuts up and runs and hides like I always did but will not do anymore.

The story behind all this is very long and complicated and will be told over time here through blog entries and my non-fiction triumvirate of books as I call them (Breaking Radio Silence, Stand or Fall, and The Written Road). But I’m not all doom-and-gloom and writing-therapy here. I’m also about having fun, finding joy and peace in this world, and sharing knowledge. So let me give you the low-down on the tag line under my headline banner: Writer, Creator, Explorer.

Writer

I have wanted to be a full-time working writer since I was twelve years old. I’ll be forty-eight this May so you can see how long that’s been in the making. A lot has happened and the world has changed a lot, too. But the dream has always been there and has refused to die. And my goal in life is to live simply out of an old shuttle-bus I want to convert into a house-on-wheels so I can live and work on the road and see as much of the world as I can. To get that started will be this blog, my three non-fiction books, my Uber book (Uber Tales), my fiction-writing (novels and short stories), and extra writing features like Deep Dive Friday. This week I’ll go into more detail on each one.

Creator

Since I need to earn money I need to create stuff to sell or monetize. I will be putting out fun merchandise to help me develop graphic design, branding, and marketing skills. I’m also going to be putting out YouTube videos and working on developing a podcast.

Explorer

I’ll be starting out locally here in San Antonio, Texas (my hometown) but I will venture out into the world using writing and photography to show everyone here how lovely our planet was before it’s nuked or poisoned to death (hopefully I’m wrong on that but I’m a Generation X pessimist sometimes).

Now, a bit about me.

I’m single, never married or had kids. I’ll be forty-eight in May of this year (2022). I have a dog and a cat. My dog is Darcy, a ten-year old rescue mix who I think look like the result of a blind date between a border collie and a golden retriever. She loves people, cats, but hates other dogs (long story there). My cat is Ronan, an eleven-year old black-and-white chonky boy who isn’t the sharpest claw in the paw sometimes but very sweet.

I’m a flaming-liberal progressive Democrat and have been all my life and always will be.

My tastes in entertainment and culture are all over the place though I do have a very special love for 80’s music and the bygone era that was MTV and cable television. I love all kinds of music in addition to rock ‘n’ roll: jazz, soul, r&b, rap/hip hop, country, blues.

My favorite foods are tacos (I’m from San Antonio so tacos are life down here) though I will try anything new. I drink my two cups of coffee a day and the world should be forever grateful for that. I am trying to eat healthier and exercise more for a woman entering middle-age that’s a good thing (it could keep me from becoming a hunchbacked old crone).

I currently work full-time as an Uber driver because I fell in love with the freedom to make my own schedule and not have a human boss to deal with. Prior to driving, I worked in call centers for seventeen years, also known as call-center Hell. I don’t miss my former life and have decided of all the bosses I’ve ever had I’m my absolute favorite.

I hope you enjoy what you see here and will come along with me on this conversation from the road of my life going forward now.

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