I Will Not Die

Does it cross a blogger’s mind, on the verge of meeting a complete stranger over the Internet, that he might be in for an adventure when he meets a reader from across the country who happens to be in his hometown on business? Sure, but mine was only very tentative. I had spoken with this reader numerous times over e-mail and had a fairly strong grasp of his personality. But…

When I actually met him in person, I was stunned. He was completely fucking brilliant.

I have, with only extreme rarity, ever met someone with such an abundant and rich personality. It was a terrific experience, so great that we talked on a Starbucks’ patio for well over an hour after they had closed. In total, I spent several of the best hours of my adult life with this “stranger,” talking about a wide breadth of topics including: human achievement, ambition, social media, blogging, human potential, ontology, political campaigning, marketing, and many, many others.

It was a conversation I often yearn for but rarely find among most of the people I presently know. I don’t want to talk about jobs and car maintenance. It was great, truly. In fact, the conversation gave me some fresh incentives to continue to develop this blog and the community I would like to come with it. It also spurred me to consider developing this blog with significantly more seriousness than I already am, to dive in more fully, give it my all, and to stop sticking my big toe in the water to see how it feels.

One thing is for sure: somewhere along the line, I must have done at least one thing right to have attracted the readers that I have.

I thank you all…

Dereck :: Jul.29.2008 :: Site Related :: No Comments »

Subscribed readers

My prior complaint about the loss of subscribed readers after I posted my autobiography on the About page now seems to have been completely unjustified. Since that date, the number of subscribed readers is up by over sixty-percent. To all the new ones, nice to meet you [tips hat].

Smile

Several people asked why I didn’t have my picture on the site. My aim with the site is to keep it as aesthetically pleasing as possible by limiting the amount of flashy flash all over, so it never occurred to me to put it up. However, I think having my picture on the site will add some personality, so it’s now up on the About page.

The blogroll

If any of my readers are also bloggers, I’ve just added a blogroll on the left within the last few days. I’d like to add some more links though, so if you’d like to exchange links, shoot me an e-mail from the contact page and I’ll slap yours up in a jiffy.

Dereck :: Jul.28.2008 :: Site Related :: 2 Comments »

It was hotter than hell outside. Of course, just like usual, it wasn’t the temperature per se that made it so uncomfortable. It was the humidity. It had rained last night, but not enough to really cool things off, just enough to fuel that damned humidity. The air outside was almost unbreathable. The rays of the sun beat down on Jeff’s forehead as he walked back to his truck in the parking lot of a local store. He was running errands. The sweat that had accumulated on his face, and neck, and arms went nowhere because there wasn’t any breeze either. Jeff climbed back into his truck and found it to be even hotter than the parking lot he was just in, even though he had left all the windows rolled down. He started it up and pulled out of the parking space.

He was tense, anxious. He felt like he was in a perfect storm. He was tighter on cash than usual. His truck was having problems some mornings and he couldn’t figure out why. His brother was having problems with his wife, and he wished that he could help somehow. On top of that, he was worried that his career was on the fritz. He had put in almost ten years at his job, and now he’d been hearing rumors that they might soon be downsizing. The prospect of that frightened him. And there was this damned heat.

His stomach felt acidic. He didn’t know what he was going to do if he lost his job. It was really starting to bug him. He simply couldn’t afford the time off work. He lived pretty much from paycheck to paycheck. He had no safety net. He had bills, and debts, and his wife always seemed like she was sad. He remembered how he had promised her so many things when they were young. Quite frankly he hadn’t delivered on any of them. Things were always tight. They couldn’t even afford to vacation. He sometimes felt like a lousy husband. He was glad that she wasn’t a complainer like so many of his friends’ wives were. At the same time though, it made him nervous. Damn he was nervous right now.

While he was driving, and mulling all this over, “You know what,” he thought to himself, “I would really love a good pear.” He had always been fond of pears. He liked to think of himself as a bit of a pear snob. He wanted them to be just right. They couldn’t be too firm, they couldn’t have a skin that was too thick, they couldn’t quite be mealy just yet. They had to be right within this narrow window between very ripe and barely rotten. Soft, and so juicy that they would just drip all over. And cold too. He liked to eat them cold.

He knew generally what he was going through. He knew all the useless scholars and academics called it “the human condition.” As if they could somehow see it from the outside looking in. They could sit around writing in journals and such, pushing up their glasses and diagnosing the world filled with little humans as if they were examining just another anthill. “Lucky them,” he thought. It must be great to be able to somehow view this condition, and talk about just as though it was, well, what they said it was, “a condition.” Like a disease to be solved. Like some painless riddle whose complexities were even diagnosable in the first place. It wasn’t that Jeff was somehow anti-academia or anything. Actually, he was pretty sharp, definitely better than average, though not some stellar genius or anything. What they seemed to always fail to deliver though was an expression of “the condition” that could be adopted right into the very hearts of men like him. “To hell with them,” he thought.

He arrived at the next store he was going to. He was glad it was a grocery store because he was hoping to look for a pear. He stepped out onto the roasting asphalt. He went inside and felt the cool air strike his skin. He went to the automotive section and picked up some oil so he could change the oil in his truck. Maybe that would help make it run a little better. After he picked that up, he went to the produce section to investigate the pears. As he approached them, he wasn’t liking what he saw. He could tell already that they were too new. Normally that would be okay. He would normally just take them home and let them ripen for a few days. He picked up a few and squeezed them a little. Each time he put them down.

Then one caught his eye. It looked less green than the others. He pressed it with his fingertips and was pleased the way the pear gave in a little. He smelled it. It was definitely aromatic. He placed in one of those thin plastic bags that you pull off of the wheel of bags that are situated throughout produce departments. He didn’t bother tying it shut. He paid for his things at the checkout and walked back out into the blistering heat. Sweat immediately began dripping from his hairline. The air was suffocating.

He climbed back into his truck. The heat was unbearable. He turned the key, but after turning over a few times, it gave up. “Great”, he thought. He tried it again, but it did the same thing. He kept thinking back to his wife, who was probably walking around their kitchen right now. He imagined that she had, right at this moment, the same unemotional look on her face that she had been wearing more frequently these last few years. His heart felt heavy. He then imagined himself at work, on some future imaginary day when his boss would approach him, saying “sorry…” with his eyes. “These things just happen, Jeff…” he would say. He would tell him that if anything came up, they would call him. His heart sighed again. He remembered his brother’s wedding, in which he was a groomsman. His sister-in-law had looked so happy that day. Jeff remembered how big his brother had smiled all day long too. Oh, and they laughed. But now it looked like they were going to get a divorce. And this damned heat.

Tears welled up in his eyes. He squeezed them shut. He opened them and looked at the blurry world through his front windshield. Sweat dripped down both his cheeks as he first wiped his forehead with his palm, then his eyes with the back of his hand. His throat felt hard and he started crying. Just a soft, almost private cry. His chest heaved several times in close succession as more tears poured from his lower eyelids. Mixing with the sweat on his face, they dripped down onto his pants. He looked through the blurry veil and found his thin plastic bag. He pulled out his pear. He took a bite. The skin was a little thick, and the pear wasn’t cold, but it dripped juice with every bite he took. While still chewing one bite, he cried some more. This time heavier. His chest shook, and he heard a slow, sad moan escape his mouth. Pear juice ran down his hand. He closed his eyes and took another bite…

Dereck :: Jul.27.2008 :: Fiction, Happiness, Purpose :: 7 Comments »