I met with Nick yesterday for our weekly meeting on our book projects. While we did not do any writing and it was a little shorter than usual, he and I came out of the meeting with several very important things to take away.
- We discussed ways of making references to each other's work.
- We read part of our books to each other and got feedback on them. Nick read to me a very emotionally raw and visceral experience he had that brought an upwelling of anger to him. He's an extremely expressive writer and it gave me a better understand of what he's gone through and what level his writing is on. It was also inspiring, because I have times when I just don't want to write at all, and knowing that I'm not the only one writing about painful times helps give me the kick in the pants (I don't normally wear pants) that I needed.
- We have a list of assignments to do. Admittedly, we've not been great at some of these, but we're both getting better about it.
Following up on this whole book subject, I came up with something interesting. Nick was talking about how in his ultramarathoning, he's pushing his body to the limits, getting as close to death as he can without actually being in much danger. I compared it to going to the limit of my body's endurance as well, albeit not very willingly. There's a high that Nick gets from it, a feeling of higher purpose when he's so close to hitting the wall and giving up. It's something that he strives for in his running, he wants to approximate death in some way. I came up with a term for it that I thought both very apropos and kinda catchy: manufactured mortality. I'm curious to get some opinions on the term and if you think it fits with Nick's attempts to push his body to the very limit so he can experience something along the lines that I did to a simultaneously lesser and greater extent. What do you think of the term? Appropriate? Stupid? Catchy? Please let me know, I would appreciate it. I would hate to release this vile, evil, destructive Attack Puppy on you...maybe.
Blog...I'm reaching the hardest part of writing my memoirs. It's going to be a very hard week or two while I shove my way through it. I fully expect a couple tears to be shed and a lot of anxiety and stress to flood into my brain. I finally got past the point when I was put into a medically induced coma (March 2008, six years ago. I was taken out of the common exactly six years ago yesterday), but the worst has yet to come. The very next part describes how I should have died and begins the part of the story that I find the most important: what happens after you survive. For me, trying to adjust to life again after all that has happened to me is almost harder than surviving in the first place. I know I'm not the only one who has these problems, it's a lot more common than most people realize. The whole point of my book is to raise awareness for the side effects of treatment and hopefully to both inspire and help others in similar situations get through it. I also have a very lofty goal of possibly influencing policy in some way to provide a more cohesive and unified survivor program that would help those coming out of radiation treatments or chemotherapy or transplants only to find their bodies radically altered and suffering the side effects of surviving. I feel it's a topic hardly discussed and want to bring it to the foreground so something can be done to make life better for people after they have survived, so that they can better enjoy their lives with the freedom they deserve after such a harrowing and unfair experience.
Do you know who was one of the greatest and most well respected heros of the American Revolution? George Washington, sure. The Marquis de Lafayette, yea okay. But you probably wouldn't have guessed...Benedict Arnold??? That's right, good ol' Benedict, before he turned traitor and pulled a him, was actually one of the most praised and well-liked of all of the Revolutionary figures. People loved him, his troops would follow him anywhere, and he was a brilliant tactician who was one of the most important for saving the Revolution in the critical early years. After being treated like crap, denied recognition by his superiors, wounded, bankrupted by giving almost all of his money to the cause of freedom, and having his honor impinged upon by politicians insulting his good name by falling him a Loyalist (to the British empire), he got fed up and defected. Luckily, America's first spy ring (Culper Ring, a very interesting group of civilians, read more about it here: The Culper Spy Ring) was able to discover his plans to sell West Point to the British (which would have almost certainly cost us the war) and although Arnold escaped, he would eventually die broke and mistrusted by even the British in England.
And now, I will not address the blog for a moment (sorry blog, I'll get back to you, I promise) and would like to talk to my readership. I've been trying to drum up more views and interest in my blog, as random as it is, and would love to reach a wider audience. So if you have read this blog and enjoy it, please share it with your friends or post it on your Twitter or Facebook. I will be extremely grateful, thank you! As an extra incentive to comment (shifting topic a smidge), I will start taking requests for short stories and plan to write a one thousand word short story every couple weeks based on some of those ideas and will give the person whose story idea I choose recognition for the idea! So if you've ever had a story idea that you thought was good but never got written, here's your chance to see that come to fruition!
Hello again blog! I told you I hadn't forgotten about you. As a show of appreciation for your patience, here's a pretty funny video that Nick made about small Mexican tacos. It's called...Ode to Small Mexican Tacos. I think you'll like it blog, I was cracking up the whole time he was showing it to me during our meeting yesterday. It helped me get through what would have been an otherwise difficult session by improving my mood and decreasing my anxiety.
Well that's it for this week blog. Hopefully you enjoyed my words, and if not, well, not much you can do it about.
Your master scribe, Andrew
