Tomorrow will be Day 0, so mathematically, today’s title checks out.

There really isn’t room for anything now except preparation for travel. I still need to pack, but I finished all the things I needed to finish for work.

The cat is in heat again, so we didn’t sleep well and woke up rough. I trudged through work, which was mostly meetings and administrivia. Tomorrow is Sprint Planning, and since I’ll miss it, I had to arrange all of my tasks for the next two weeks, flesh them out, document them in our Sprint Planning Wiki, setup the meetings, and basically do everything I would normally do tomorrow, but in a much shorter time. I finished my work day around 8PM.

During this time, I gathered information from my bank so we could send off our taxes. That’s sent off. Thanks to The Repossessed Ghost, taxes are much more interesting this year.

Once I’m done with this post — #38 in a row — I need to shower, pack, make sure all of the books and computer equipment and stuff is ready to go, and then angle for bed early since we have to board our plane at around 6:15AM.

Am I nervous? A little, only because it sounds like a few people I really would like to talk to will be at Boskone, and I didn’t find out until recently. I hope I get the opportunity!

We were missing a box or two at Arisia. We’ll have that missing content and then some, so organizing the table will be a bigger challenge than last time. Melissa and I are up for it.

We’ll have fewer days to sell more books, to a conference that is theoretically smaller than the one we attended 2 weeks ago. At least, that’s what some Arisia attendees told me. Arisia broke off from Boskone and then became the larger conference. Steven Radecki told me that we sell more at Boskone, though. Boskone one fewer day than Arisia. I’ll do my best to make some connections and make some sales.

At the main table, in addition to all of the other Water Dragon books, we will have bunches of copies of The Repossessed Ghost available. For the first time, we’ll have copies of One for the Road. I really hope we do well.

This is a slice of the writer’s life. There’s more to being a professional writer than writing. You have to sell your books. Going to conferences like Boskone and putting your face and your books in front of people is a part of it. I don’t enjoy this as much as I enjoy writing, but I don’t hate this, either.

In April, the Live From Arisia recording will be available on Small Publishing in a Big Universe. I’ll be taking the microphone again so hopefully, we’ll have a Live from Boskone episode in the near future, too. It sure would be neat to interview David Gerold or Joshua Bilmes. I’m not holding my breath on that, but it might happen!

Wish me luck. When next I post here, it will be from Boston. Hopefully the travel will be easy and fun.

Here is #37!

I had a killer headache today. Bad enough that it made me nauseous, and I had to take some time off from work. I’m feeling a bit better now, and I’m going to try and get my work done tonight. Before that, I want to talk about this post I saw on Bluesky.

Here is the direct link, since I wasn’t able to embed it.

I didn’t respond to Mr. Cargill or any of the other people in that thread. It is some sweet encouragement that people need to hear, and I’m not a monster.

But maybe I’m a little bit monstrous, because I have opinions on every sentence in the message. Let’s break them down one at a time.

“Your dream of becoming a writer isn’t stupid.”

Agreed. It is not stupid. If you’re thinking that you can write a book and throw it online, and money will suddenly fill your bank account, you’re being overly optimistic. But writing is all it takes to be a writer, and writing is not stupid. Writing is awesome. Writing is life.

“It isn’t unreachable. It isn’t a pipe dream. And it isn’t a waste of time.”

It’s relatively easy to become an author. The bar to entry is low. And, it isn’t a pipe dream or a waste of time to hope for the ability to sustain yourself on your writing. There are lots and lots of people that are doing exactly that, and between you, me, and the monitors between us, you’re a more talented writer than a lot of people that are making it.

Pursuing a career as a writer isn’t as outlandish as pursuing a career as an astronaut. It doesn’t take the same kind of investment as becoming a doctor or a lawyer. You won’t be gated by any physical limitation.

Let’s take a moment and separate writing from making money as a writer. As I’ve been witness to for a while now, these are different skillsets. Writing is about crafting a story. It’s pulling something from your imagination, shaping it with words and phrases externally, and refining it over and over until the fully realized narrative from your mind is translatable into the hearts and minds of another reader. That’s writing, and it’s wonderful. I will always encourage everyone — including you — to write.

Making a career out of writing is different. You have to be willing and able to talk with other people, starting with your agent or editor. Those are the first people you have to sell your book to, and if you succeed, you’ll have to find readers and sell to them, too. Along those lines, you have to advocate for yourself, knowing and protecting your rights as you bind the product of your work into a contract for print, production, and distribution. You have to manage your online presence and your brand, whether you have a dozen readers or a hundred thousand.

I encourage everyone to write, but I don’t necessarily encourage everyone to become a full-time writer. When I look at my effectiveness as a professional writer, I question whether or not I have a future in this field. I’ll always write, but there is no guarantee that I’ll ever be able to sustain myself with this thing that I love.

“Don’t believe anyone that tells you that it is. They’re drawing from their failed dreams, not yours.”

You should protect your heart and maintain hope. And, you should look at the motivation of those that might discourage you.

On the other hand, for those people like me that are offering a warning, not all of us are doing so from a place of despair or jealousy. As far as I’m concerned, my dream isn’t failed. I’m still working on it, and I’m many, many years into this effort. And I think it is a kindness to prepare young writers for the long journey ahead.

If you’re dream is to put out one book and be an overnight success, with enough money to quit your job and work full time as a writer, then you’re probably being a little unrealistic and you might want to prepare for some disappointment. If, on the other hand, you’re ready to write the next book when the first one doesn’t catch, and then write the next one, and then the next, you might make it.

It takes a great deal of luck to hit it big. The numbers are not in your favor, and it has very little to do with the quality of your writing. Sometimes the timing is all wrong. Sometimes things take off. Sometimes it’s a mystery when they do. Hugh Howie talked about Wool becoming an unexpected hit, because he had a lot of different efforts books out at the time, and Wool wasn’t the one he was promoting the hardest.

It doesn’t take as much luck to hit it medium. I know several romance writers that make a living by just consistently and frequently putting out stories. Some of them are making more than I am. They don’t have names as recognizable as Stephen King, Danielle Steele, or Bandon Sanderson, but they have a core group of fans and they’re selling a lot of books.

In the end, I’m not disagreeing with C. Robert Cargill. This is more of a footnote to his necessary and correct encouragement. If I were to rephrase his advise, I would say something like:

Be audacious in your dreams of becoming a writer, because you can make it, and it is a worthwhile journey. But as you turn that dream into a goal, remember that the road is not always smooth, and the end is not always in sight. Keep going. And also remember that the only way to fail is to never take a step down the road in the first place.

It’s Monday, and here is #36.

I love a good story.

Whether it’s on the page or on the screen, I can’t get enough. Similarly, I’m fascinated with cons.

Tonight, Melissa and I watched The Sting, starring Robert Redford and Paul Neuman. The movie is literally as old as I am, and it holds up. It’s so, so good.

It’s like a magic trick. There is the setup, the push into action, the surprising twists and turns in the presentation, and then the final payoff at the end. Am I talking about the plot of the movie or the way a story is laid out? Yes. Yes, I am.

Stories come in different shapes and sizes, much like con jobs. The reader and the mark both need to be drawn in and sold on what is happening. If the reader isn’t buying it, they’ll put the book down. If the mark doesn’t believe the con artist, they’ll walk away.

In both cases, the author and the artists must show the stakes. Why should the mark go along with the con if they don’t believe there’s something in it for them? Why should the reader care about the story if they’re not invested in the characters?

And then there’s the twists and turns. All of the misdirection and theater. If the plot of the story is too straight-forward, the reader can grow bored no matter how fantastic the characters are. And if the mark doesn’t get fooled by the misdirection, the game is up, and they walk away, or worse.

The payoff is a little bit different, because it’s the artist that comes away ahead in the end, if everything goes according to their plan. If the writer does a good job bringing their story to a satisfying conclusion, everybody wins. The reader doesn’t lose anything, except possibly some tears, depending on the story.

If you haven’t watched The String in a while, it’s on Netflix, and it’s very good. It’s 2 hours well spent.

It’s Sunday evening, and the server is back up. More on that in a moment.

Upcoming Events and Such

Boskone rapidly approaches. There’s more stuff in March, but I’m not going to think about those things until after the Boston trip.

The main thing I’ll be doing at Boskone is managing two tables in the dealer’s room. The first is the Paper Angel Press table, of which Water Dragon Publishing is an imprint. The other table is the Small Publishing in a Big Universe, where we provide an opportunity for authors to sell their books when they don’t have a table of their own.

Steven Radecki won’t be able to make it to Boston, so I’m the point of contact. I’ve already heard from two of the authors. If you’re looking for books by Stephen R. Wilk or Colin Alexander, I will have their books at Boskone.

The Topic: Lost Power

The power is restored and I’m on my work laptop, in the dining room. It occurred to me that I could still get my work done tonight through my hotspot, and I was about 20 minutes into it when the lights came on behind me.

I have some herbal mint tea with honey steeping beside me. I’m using one the custom keyboards I built to type. The heater is blowing warm air down the back of my sweater. The glow of my screen is likely reflected in my glasses. I’m alive and comfortable in my home.

For a little while, we sat in the dark, listening to the wind whip through the trees. Occasionally, the metal gate along the side of the house would get picked up in the dance and clang against a fence post. Chris’s cat does not care for the stormy weather, and to be honest, I didn’t care for it much myself.

You appreciate the little things when you no longer have them. We haven’t been running the heater hard this winter, but we have been keeping the house from getting too cold. With the power out and no estimate for when it would be restored, the chill felt profound.

With the trip coming up this week, there are a number of things I need to do to prepare so that Day Job will be happy. It’s really hard to do those things without a working computer and internet. Even when I pulled the laptop from its docking station and setup on the kitchen table, I still have a screen a little larger than a postage stamp to operate on, and as a software engineer, I can tell you that isn’t a large enough workspace.

Then there’s all of the entertainment options. I rely on Spotify for music. Streaming services provide videos. I chat with my friends on Discord. I could do some of that on my phone, but with no estimate for the return of power, it did not seem wise to run the battery down.

Finally, there is this blog. I was already a couple of hours late with yesterday’s post. How would I feel if the lack of power kept me from writing this one? I could write something in Notepad or Word using one of my laptops, but the server itself runs in my garage, so it was down, too.

The power is back, and all is well. I still have a bunch to finish for work, but that can proceed, now.

Wish me luck!

This is getting posted technically on Sunday, but from my perspective, it’s still Saturday.

We’ve had hail, and rain, and sunshine the last couple of days. I’ve been cold and not feeling super awesome all day. Not feeling particularly sick, but I’ve had a headache and I’ve been tired all day. I tried napping and it didn’t work.

I wound up spending most of the day on my work laptop, thinking about work I need to do, but not really doing it. Without focus and energy, it’s hard for me to do anything, including writing these posts.

Still, here is something. I’ll post another on Sunday night. It’ll be… fine? I’m the arbiter of this contest, of which I’m the sole participant.

This is what writing is like, too. There are days where you wake up late, and you can’t put the words together, and you don’t achieve your goals. You have a choice on days like this, to either let it get to you, or take it in stride and keep going.

This is how you deal with rejection.

This is how you deal with unrealized dreams.

You figure out what happened, and then you keep going.

I’ll talk to you all again real soon.

It’s Friday night, and I’ve been feeling a little lazy for the last several hours. Unmotivated and low energy… how about I talk about something lighthearted and easy tonight?

The Topic: How Do We Fix the World?

So.

The first step in fixing a problem is admitting that a problem exists in the first place. The world is broken in some fundamental ways. How do we fix it?

What are some of the symptoms?

1. It’s extremely difficult for young people to get jobs that will sustain them.
2. It’s harder than it has ever been to buy homes, because it’s just so expensive. If people can’t buy homes, they can’t secure wealth, which means we’ll have an entire generation beholden to the previous, which is not sustainable.
3. We value money more than we value human life.
4. We have the means to feed, house, and educate everyone, but we don’t because of the previous point.
5. We have the greatest wealth gap we’ve ever had.
6. We have the greatest communication network we’ve ever had in history, giving access to the wealth of human knowledge and invention, yet we have a loud and motivated minority spreading anti-intellectualism and spawning things like anti-vaccination movements.
7. Racism, bigotry, ableism… all of the inequality that is still baked firmly into the infrastructure of our society.
8. The frailty of our political system. There’s a LOT more I can say on this subject, but that’s a rabbit hole for another day.

These are a handful of symptoms right off the top of my head. There is so much more. Goodness gracious. If you have a favorite flaw I failed to include in this list, let me know and maybe I’ll edit this and extend it.

So what do we do about it?

Individually? Almost nothing. We have to be the best versions of ourselves. We have to value people over substance. We have to lift each other up instead of tear each other down. We need to look at complicated issues with nuance and thought, rather than reduce it to bad/good.

Protest? Vote? Don’t vote? What does a person do?

It’s easy to get disillusioned with voting when there is gerrymandering, two-parties, and electoral colleges. The fascist party is unified behind their villain, even while he’s in court (poorly) defending himself for libeling his rape victim. The other party is feckless and mostly in support of their geriatric incumbent that was known for gaffes as a young man.

I think Biden is a good man. I also look at him and feel like it’s very difficult to ignore his age.

That’s enough on that subject from me tonight. I’m trying to succinctly state facts and be honest. We’re trying to fix the world, not alienate everyone.

I don’t have an answer for the political problems. I’m not sure I have an answer for the capitalist problems, either. We’re cool with pooling our resources to pay for police and firefighters. Police in some places are buying armored personnel carriers, body armor, and weapons of war, while firefighters can often be found once a year on the street, passing the boot in order to raise funds. Maybe we haven’t solved that problem, after all.

A lot of the solutions to some of our capitalism problems wind up looking like socialism. It’s very difficult to privatize socialism without being someone as wealthy as Elon Musk, but to get as rich as someone like Elon Musk, you have to value money more than people. It’s not going to happen.

That leads back to politics, and there are too many people that get in a twist over trivial matters at a football game. No kneeling. No Taylor Swift. The priorities of some of our population do not appear to be in alignment with the Christian values they proclaim to support.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m getting old and my perspective is skewing towards pessimism with age, but I don’t see how we untangle this knot. The 2020s have shown me a side of humanity I thought was much, much smaller. Problems I thought we, as a society, had fairly well solved are not solved at all.

So how do we fix the world?

There must be an answer.

Welcome to February 1st, and the 32nd blog post in a row.

Personal News

With this, I’m feeling accomplished and a little bit tired. I’ve done 31 posts in a row multiple times before, usually in October. Completing the challenge in January with very little prep time fills me with pride. I still wonder at the wisdom of this. But let’s re-evaluate at the end of February.

There’s a pile of Day Job work I still need to do tonight, not because I was overloaded, but because I lacked focus during the day. I’m going to put on some music, maybe louder than required, and see what I can get done.

Upcoming Events and Such

This time next week, Melissa and I will be in Boston. It will be our first Boskone and our second writing event this year. I expect my time will be taken with manning the table in the dealer’s room again. I’m not on any programming, and I probably won’t witness any of the programming because of my obligation to the table. I will have the opportunity to meet other writers and talk craft, though, which is what I enjoy the most at these events.

Some of the hard covers for One for the Road should be in transit now. We will have tons of soft covers of both it and The Repossessed Ghost available in Boston. It would be amazing if it sold well, but I’m going to keep my expectations low. From what I’m told, Boskone is smaller than Arisia.

The Topic: What Are You Not Doing?

We often define ourselves by what we do. I’m a writer. I’m a gamer. I’m a musician. We ask each other, “What do you do for a living?” when we’re trying to get to know each other.

In that context, what does it mean when we aren’t doing the things that define us?

I’m not gaming as much as I would like. I play video games with some of my friends on Wednesday evenings, but that’s not the same, and not the kind of gaming I am referring to. Roleplaying games. Tabletop, social games, where you and some people you get along with get together and play make believe, but with dice, character sheets, and some sort of rules to keep it from devolving into complete chaos. Ostensibly, I’ll be playing in a Pathfinder game this Sunday with Richard and friends, but that game has been canceled and postponed more times than we’ve actually gotten together, and I am not holding my breath it’ll happen Sunday.

Music. I haven’t played my sax in a long time, now. I don’t really have a place to play right now, and I’m not playing with any bands so the motivation to work on something is nonexistent. I’m always thinking it might be nice to work on some covers for a YouTube video or something, but all of that takes time. I also don’t have any reeds right now, but that’s a poor excuse. I could order more reeds. I just haven’t been moved to play.

Some of my friends know I like to build keyboards. There’s a split redox I started a while ago that is not done yet. I need to remove the controller boards and replace them, probably with Teensies. With Chris in the garage now, my space for that kind of tinkering doesn’t exist. I had plans to work on some RC planes and tinker with that, too, but with no builder space, I can’t see that activity taking off.

Finally, there’s writing. On that front, I’m trying to do something, though blogging doesn’t delight me the way writing and revising does. There is no story here. There’s just the topic of the night. Sometimes I try to dress up the words here so that they please me, but that’s not really what this space is about.

Soon, I’ll work on a story here. The more I think about it, the better an idea it seems. I like talking about writing. I like passing on what I’ve learned so far. Writing a story publicly might be one of the best things I can do with my time.

It beats playing solitaire, waiting for the clock to run out.

What are activities that you feel like you should be doing, but you don’t either because of time, money, or space?

It’s the final day of January, the 31st post in a row, and I want to talk about the benefits of reducing social media.

But first, the downsides.

I miss some of my friends I interacted with on Twitter. That’s the biggest problem I’ve had since deleting my Tweets and reducing my time on all social media platforms. Some of those relationships are true friendships, and I look forward to seeing those people in other ways.

Another potential downside: I’m not as on top of news and trends. I fell out of the habit of checking my news aggregator every morning. I’m no longer seeing the Trending Topics, so some things I might like to know about are flying under my radar. For example, the horrendous murder in Pennsylvania, where a son cut off his father’s head, broadcast it, and called for a revolution against Biden.

For some reason, that story didn’t get a ton of coverage. I happened to see something about it on Bluesky, and I found it on some paywalled news sites, but then it’s like the story just vanished. Apparently, the gruesome video was up for hours, and people saw some things they really didn’t want to see. The Pennsylvania murder never showed up on my news aggregator.

That leads nicely into the main benefit: I don’t have to partake in the online drama.

For example, Taylor Swift. Apparently, some people are upset about her dating a football player or something. I’m being vague and light on details here because I don’t know what the beef is, and I really, really don’t care. I hope she has a good time. I think her boyfriend is on the Chiefs, playing against the 49ers in The Big Game so I hope he loses, but really, I hope they make the most of the time they have.

There is a lot of nonsense and bullshit that flows through the social media rivers, and while I still get a big whiff when I visit, I’m no longer drowning in it like I had been. People I will never meet, with opinions I will never agree with, may be saying some absolute nonsense. Chances are, I won’t see it and my life is better for it.

But what about the discourse?

There is no real discourse on social media. No one is scrolling through Twitter looking to expand their horizons or explore the nuance of a topic. On Twitter, you will find memes, advertisements, arguments, threats, blasphemy, nonsense, and war crimes. You know what? I can find memes on Discord.

I sort of like Bluesky, but I’m not as into it as I had been. I like the people I engage with on Facebook, but I can’t stand Zuckerberg. Instagram is kind of fun, but again, Zuckerberg.

There’s probably some political schadenfreude I’ll be missing this year. Actually, social media in the two thousand twenty-fourth year of our Lord is likely to be a radioactive war zone, so maybe I’m not missing anything on that front.

I’m sure you know me by now, and while I’m not going to get into politics that much in this space (for now), I will say: I’m ridin’ with Biden, though not nearly as enthusiastically as some. If the other guy is re-elected, we will probably lose our Republic. That is not hyperbole.

So in summary, while there are things I miss from social media, the main benefit — avoiding the bullshit — outweighs everything else.

Talk to you all tomorrow.

It’s Day 30. This count will get much more interesting in a couple days.

Personal News

I woke up rough and considered calling in sick. I made it through most of the day, but then a headache hit me around lunch time and didn’t subside. After SCRUM, I took a nap and slept until almost 5PM. I feel better. I must not be getting enough sleep.

The Topic: Bringing Back the Dead on Screen

There is a new Ghost Busters movie coming out, and the trailer looks pretty good to me. On YouTube, I watch a bunch of videos on New Rockstars, and today they posted a breakdown of the trailer. At the end of the video, Erik Voss gave his opinion on the SAG rules and what he thought of recreating Harold Ramis.

Here is that video, hopefully right where Erik talks about this:

If you don’t want to or can’t watch that clip, Erik is basically saying:

1. The SAG rules don’t go far enough in protecting actors from being necromanced by greedy studios
2. Consent from the living relatives isn’t enough, because who can say what the relationship is between the deceased and their kin?
3. Instead of using VFX to recreate deceased actors, recast with actors that look similar, and maybe don’t show their face

Naturally, I have some thoughts.

I’ll start with the second point. I’m not sure that it’s a great idea to assume the worst with regards to familial relationships. If there is no evidence of estrangement, why would we assume estrangement exists? Are we trying to protect the deceased? If so, paying their families what the actor would normally be paid seems like it would be a kindness.

If that point is muddled, maybe this one is better: if an actor’s living relatives are allowed to say whether they live or die when they’re in a vegetative state, I think those same living relatives should be able to say whether or not the actor’s likeness can be used after they’re gone.

Let’s tie this in with the first point: the greed of the studios. If you want to address the greed, then use the point I just suggested, which is the actor’s estate should be paid just as much for using the likeness as the actor would be paid if they were still alive. When you factor in the cost of VFX and the potential backlash the studios will face for resurrecting beloved actors in this way, the greedy studios will have to think long and hard as to whether or not their necromancy is worth it.

Third point… they already wind up using other actors to stand in for the deceased. Whether it is make-up, VFX, or clever camera angles, the new actor isn’t really getting great exposure or the opportunity to shine. I think that’s ultimately what Erik Voss is angling for with that point. Let the dead lie, and celebrate the living. Let new actors have a chance to take the stage.

I do think we should be looking to tell new stories and make new things. One of the reasons the years seem funny, that 1995 feels like it was 10 years ago and not nearly 30, is because I’m old. But another reason is that movies and music have sort of stalled out. The digital media doesn’t degrade. With streaming services, all of the old content is available in perpetuity. Before The Internet, we had tapes and CDs, but we also listened to the radio for new things. Now you can create a playlist in 2011 and still be listening to it 13 years later, without losing fidelity.

It feels harder to find new things these days. Movies are in a similar rut, in that the studios mostly just keep revisiting existing franchises and banking on nostalgia. We get a couple of morsels of something new every year, like Barbie and Oppenheimer, but then a glut of remakes, rebrands, and retreads. Kind of like the Ghost Busters movie that’s getting ready to come out, that spawned this post in the first place.

Anyway. I’ll stop shouting at the clouds. Let me know if I’m way off base, here.

Personal News

I’ve been out of it today, for some reason. I woke up poorly, and then I had trouble focusing on just about everything. I got some work done, but not enough. We’ll see if I can have a more productive day tomorrow.

Upcoming Events and Such

We leave for Boskone a week from Thursday. We’ll have quite a few books available at the table. About 20 soft copies of The Repossessed Ghost and around 20 of One for the Road.

The Topic: Melissa

I might have failed to write my post today, but Melissa saved me. She found me sitting in front of my work laptop, not working but just doing nothing with intense purpose. I was listening and partially watching someone play Lethal Company on Twitch while also mindlessly playing solitaire over and over. There’s something very soothing about taking the chaos of the cards and rearranging them into order.

Chaos. If I am a champion of order, Melissa is an agent of chaos. If she were a cat, she’d be the sort that walks on the tables, knocking over glasses and anything left too close to the edge. On more than one occasion, I’ve seen Melissa reach over and disrupt whatever neat piles I may have assembled, because it’s too orderly and chaos must reign. She gives my minor O.C.D. quite a bit to contend with.

She just brought me a cup of hot, cinnamon apple spice herbal tea. Of the all the tea options, this is my favorite. It’s good enough that I question if it is really tea. This drink reminds me of the drink I first gave to Melissa while we both lived in dorm 518. She was sitting in the hall, complaining with her friend Smith about their hot chocolate being a bit chalky. We were in New Mexico, and it was cold, and I had a care package from my Mom which included some powdered bags of cinnamon apple cider. I ran some water through my coffee maker, took her a cup, and she loved it. That’s when we became friends.

Some time later, she found me practicing pool in the day room and asked if I had a car. I did. An ’87 Mustang GT I bought from someone else in dorm 518. One might look at the situation as her asking me out, but I figured she was just looking for a ride. We went to the Alamogordo theater and watched Dumb and Dumber. Smith accompanied us.

She borrowed my VCR once so she could watch some spicy movies. I remember swinging by her room after I’d gone to the commissary. I showed her this short sleave silk shirt I’d just picked up, and she borrowed that, too. I didn’t get the VCR back, nor the shirt, until after we were married.

I loved her before she loved me. I was devoted to her before she saw me the same way, but I had something going for me that no else did: I was honest with her. I wasn’t trying to use her. I called her out on her bullshit, which wasn’t hard because we were both young and absolutely full of it.

Twice during the time before we got married, she threw her hairbrush at me. Hard. Both times I caught it just a couple of inches in front of my face. I don’t think she ever meant to actually hurt me with those throws, and I also think that if I hadn’t caught it the way I did, we probably wouldn’t have wound up together.

I listen to her. She used to be angry with me, that I could listen as deeply as I did, sometimes without appearing to pay her any attention at all.

There’s a tiny version of her in my head. It’s basically all of the memories I have of her put together, creating a version of her in my mind that lets me figure out what she wants and needs. Sometimes, Melissa gets upset with the little version of her that lives in my head.

To know a person is to love them, or maybe it’s the other way around. When Melissa reminded me that I needed to write my post tonight, I asked her, “What should I write about?”

She jokingly said, “Me!”

There are lots of ways to describe someone, but I think my description of Melissa tonight can only be created through sturdy, unassuming love. The kind of love that looks weathered and beaten, but is strong enough to support a relationship for decades. The world will press against us, and I may despair from time to time, but I know Melissa, probably better than she knows herself. And this is my love language.