Colonel Smithers’s voice had taken on a new briskness. His eyes were alight. He had his lecture pat. Bond sat back. He was prepared to listen to anyone who was master of his subject, any subject.

Ian Fleming – Goldfinger

Children learn to speak through listening and play-imitating for some doting audience. Adults are people who seldom admit they still mostly learn this way. However, some people fully espouse and practice the habit of listening through the fog of the Master’s monologue, looking for patterns, piecing together caught glimmers of recognition, even when a full understanding is hopeless, all this purely for the fun of it.

It’s child-like, listening well. It’s full of wonder and necessitates a fully open mind, a mind willing to leave with more questions than straight answers.

It’s my birthday. A day of national celebration where we all think upon how great I am and pay tribute through gifts and attention.

For my birthday, I don’t ask for your donations or gifts. I don’t even want your hard-earned money for my Patreon. I just want your strict, undivided attention on one of my latest releases:

SCOTTCast just released it’s 85th episode, and it’s a doozy. I have too much sake with my friends and we all discuss how flawed we are. It’s a lot funnier than that description, and you should listen. It’s relatively explicit though, so if that’s not your cup of tea, do check out…

Detroit Songwriter Dispatch‘s latest episode & the updated website! It showcases photography and organizes all the episodes by artist, so you can check out 50+ interviews from the past year dedicated to Detroit’s songwriting scene. Not as funny as SCOTTCast but sometimes it is.

If you’re pressed for time this wintry November day, stream this beast right now: Ian’s Cult Kitchen! I.C.K. is a video series hosted by Fan Favorite Ian Dixon from SCOTTCast. Ian’s brainchild, we celebrate obscure movies with weird food and practical special effects.

The first road-sticking snow fell last night. Every year this happens, I wake up, lumber about my morning, and inevitably open a window-blind to dazzlingly offensive light. I rub my eyes and marvel at its softness. I mourn fall, an always too short season. I think about Dubliners, a book that ends in snow falling general all over the living and the dead.

It’s one of those days where everybody posts the same things on social media. If you commute, you’ll complain that people can’t drive. If you stayed in, you’ll post a photo of the snow through the same window that dazzled you. If you don’t do either, you’ll check social media and notice how everyone posts the same thing. You might feel pride or superiority for not posting anything about snow, and you might try to exercise your wit with a post about how everyone is posting about snow. You’ll be driven to remark, even if you don’t care to.

When I go out today, which I am blessed to only have to sparingly, I know I will have a conversation about not being ready for snow. Talking about the weather is as natural as dogs barking at strangers; no season announces itself harder for conversation fodder than winter on arrival.

I just paid ten bucks for a state park pass on my license plate. My cat still begs for me to open the window for him to enjoy fresh air. Are my tires even winter ready? You can call the snow pretty as long as you add ‘but not for long.’

For my part, I uploaded a video to the Stories feature on Instagram of my cat Kyle looking outside. I believe Instagram added a comedic brass stab denoting surprise, which Kyle only mildly expressed in truth. Then I thought about taking some online classes this winter, drinking warm beverages. Then I wrote this.

His gut was bleeding internally. Nobody gets hit by a car like that and just walks away. He must be a damn good actor though, tougher than he looks too. He just sprang up and said he’s fine.

You can tell he’s in pain by the slight grimace in his eyes and his refusal to bend his trunk. He’s leaning against the craft services table pretending to drink a Fiji water. Gaffers pass by and ask him if he’s alright and his costar’s stuntman eats chicken and eyes him down. The director’s yelling at the prop guy on set and lawyers for the union and the studio are flanking the arguers, knights of gray wool and sunglasses.

He still hasn’t cracked open his Fiji water. He tried a couple times but seems to have lost interest in favor of sweating a little harder. He coughs up a little real blood onto the corn syrup in his palms. Three minutes later, he falls to the floor. Both teams of lawyers think they can win the case. The director’s pissed. Everyone goes home.

I wrote a personal blog towards the end of college. I was learning how to build websites and fancied myself as a thoughtful person. A blog seemed like a natural project.

The writing was prolific for a short while; but after college I didn’t feel a strong pull to work on it, so I stopped. It’s about eight years later now, and I think it’s time to write again.

Back then, I wrote short reflections on what I saw in myself and the world I assumed I was going into. I felt disingenuous. I could barely see the world, let alone comment on it. I kept writing anyway, but always felt like an imposter.

Now that I’m almost a decade older than that person, I realize I still have no real right to speak to anything, but I don’t feel like an imposter for writing. Writing is the antidote for not having the right to speak to something, because it forces you to put your thoughts in a line, whatever they are, and as long as it’s crafted to express your truth, it’s got a right to exist.

So that’s the basic why and what of this blog. I don’t know what I’ll write until I write it, but it’s about exploring my thoughts and ordering them. The purpose is to grow, to keep myself accountable to what I think rather than what others think I should think, to meet myself again every time I write.

I don’t think social media is a a good place for this kind of writing because it doesn’t foster putting your truth in a line very well. Everything is a statement, no longer than that. And it’s read as a declaration of soul and intent, fodder for judgment displayed with a scorecard. While this is excellent for memes and promoting podcasts, it’s not nearly the same as writing in a deeper form, not selling anything, striving for a truthful moment.

It has to be written with the pressure of being shared, however. It’s not a journal or a diary. It’s an extended thought, approved for viewing, under my name, and on my own platform, far from standards others have set, for the express reason that life is worth examining on my own terms.