This Is My Fight Song

It's been exactly two years since I moved to California. Yes, I miss my home, I've lost some friends and I'm definitely chasing sleep. And yes, some have worried about me, wondering if I was in too deep, in too deep.
No, this is not a Rachel Platten song. This is my life.


In the video of the song sharing a title with this post, the artist spends the opening moments sitting in the dark by herself. A frustrated writer, she wads up her half-written manuscripts, sings to empty concert halls, and some days, can't even manage to get out of bed. She finally gets frustrated and leaves her dreary and isolated life to move to California, where she finds joy dancing in the redwoods, meeting new friends, and driving down the oceanside cliffs of the Pacific Coast Highway in the bright sun.


It's enough to make you want to move to California, if you hadn't already. 




It's beautiful here.


But real joy--the kind that goes deeper than Hollywood happy endings--takes more than just a change of scenery.
I stopped blogging back in January in an attempt to find it.


There was that fire burning in my soul that was book idea that I'm still working towards. Or at least that I intend to get back to working towards eventually. You see, I wrote all that was in my head and it wasn't enough for a book. So I need to burrow a little deeper into my head when I can find the free time and energy. Or possibly just get a new head that has better ideas. I'll let you know when I decide.



I had other life goals when I stopped blogging too. For years I've wanted to finish a half marathon in under an hour and forty-five minutes, so I could consider myself a serious athlete. I've kept trying and falling short, but I'm taking another shot next week. I've trained harder for this one than any race ever, but my times keep going up instead of down, so I'm not entirely optimistic. But however the race ends up, it should make for a great blog come race day. And maybe that's what really matters.




I also wanted to explore my new world out West. Since I live in wine country, I wanted to see how the wine industry worked up close, how it went from grapes to bottles, and why one year's vintage can taste nothing like grapes from the same vines the next. I've gotten to do that here, and to meet some really amazing people involved in the process. It's been wonderful, and I highly recommend having a glass if you don't find this blog very entertaining. Like the cheapest bottle at Walmart, it might not be very good at first, but it gets better the more you drink.




Taking a break from the blog also meant that I had more time to revive my church acting career in skits meant to introduce the conflict at issue in that day's message. I'm telling you, if there were an Oscar award for Supporting Actor in a 5-Minute Drama, I would come nowhere close to being nominated for any of my work. But it's fun, and I even get to write them sometimes. But these opportunities don't come up every week, so they're not a good reason to keep the blog on hold.



More than anything, my break from blogging was meant to give me some time to clear my head. When I wrote for my paper back school, I was the guy known for making enemies by writing controversial satires challenging people in power. I used to get dirty looks from my school administration and threats of personal injury from the student special interests I targeted. My law school dean called me into his office once to have a meeting. I loved it because it meant that people saw I had a point.


Now, I mostly go for non-offensive mindless laughs and uplifting spiritual messages here--the writing equivalent of posting pictures of cats on Facebook.
Where did I go soft?  Was it when I got a cat?




Anyway, since I've accomplished almost none of the personal goals for which I stopped blogging, I figure I might as well start Just Thinking again. Clearly, it wasn't the blog that was holding me back from my life's ambitions, so it's time to pick a new inaccurate scapegoat.  I suppose I'll pick Donald Trump for that job, since he's already picked everyone else. Or if he's not available, I'll settle for the mom who brought six screaming kids into the library coffee shop where I'm sitting, who have declared an unholy war on my chance of having a quiet working atmosphere.


But the point is that blog is back, and no amount of screaming children (or screaming politicians, which is pretty much the same thing) can stop me. I'm not sure how often things will appear, and it probably won't look exactly the same as it used to, but hey, you probably don't look the same as you used to either.






I blogged about the process of moving out here with two cats on a cross-country flight, but I never, in this space, explained why. Those words I didn't say are still wrecking balls inside my brain, so I won't scream them out tonight.
There'll be plenty of time for that later, just as there's more time for random thoughts (Seriously, I understand why there is a New Mexico and a New England, but what about New Zealand? Is there an Old Zealand?), time for more Bad Ideas Presented As Really Serious Propositions, and silly pictures of me with inanimate objects.  I even get six weeks to complain about the election, where most everyone hates the top two candidates, but not enough to actually vote for someone else.




So why is the blog back?
My life's biggest fear has long been that my life wouldn't matter, that I wouldn't spend it accomplishing its purpose or create any lasting benefit for my having been here. And if I don't ever get around to writing a best-selling book, or any book at all, I want to at least do something. That's sometimes all we can do.


Rachel Platten's song never reveals whether or not the main character's career does any better in California that it did before she moved, it just shows her having more fun and feeling more alive as she tries.


Maybe you can relate. I don't know if your story, or mine, will have a Hollywood ending. I just know we'll never find out sitting on the sidelines with the book closed.


So the blog is back, with the new stories to tell, new mindless conversations to recount, new memes to run into the ground, and new battles to fight.
Because this my fight song.
And I've still got a lot of fight left in me.