🎥 Go Ask Daddy About Movie Casting, Data Blasting, and Bald Britney

That’s me in that picture, getting ready to take on the short-track at Hickory Motor Speedway, back in the day.

I’ve fallen behind on all the Star Wars movies.

It pains me to say that but also doesn’t. Camdyn didn’t give the most glowing review of Solo: A Star Wars Story. What we have feared for years seems to have come true: Disney might just be stinking up our story.

I didn’t ask for details.

We’ll see, though. When Disney first got ahold of Star Wars, I was apprehensive. I ended up crying in the theater! (My girls noted that all the other old dudes in there also cried.) I don’t want to cry sad tears again for the loss of the story I grew up with.

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👴🏽 5 Reasons You Should Fall In Love With Aging

Writing’s been a bit of a struggle of late.

Not the writing that pays the bills. Although, that’s been a slough too, to be honest. I read lots of cool newsletters and emails about writing newsletters and emails. They help. They add skills or ideas or just gumption.

You can do stuff with gumption.

I have a secret writing process I’ll never fully disclose. It involved random choices and brainstorming and generally thinking within rules I set for myself so that I can think outside the box. Well, it probably wouldn’t make much sense to describe anyway.

10 things grateful, plus a coupla graduations 🎓 | #gratitudeandshit

We’ve got two graduations in three days.

I’m not talking those horseshit half-graduations for third graders, either. Full-blown, leaving this school, taking my game to the next level graduations. Hayden’s done with high school and on to college at Piedmont International University.

Camdyn’s coming to Queen’s Grant High, where I can’t wait to get her on the field.

They’ve both overcome adversity and adverse conditions but found ways to shine in big ways. There’ve been tests of will and tests of character and just a butt load of tests – like, on subjects. We’re ready to get this summer on.

👨🏿‍🏫 Mindful Monday | How do I even … sharpen my focus?

Holiday weekends are hell on a to-do list.

And they should be! Who wants to tick off things on a list when others are busy getting sunburned at the racetrack/festival/lake? Yet, for me, there’s always stuff. And I love that. If it’s not fathering stuff or soccer stuff, it’s stuff I must do as a writer and freelancer.

I’m so much better at this than I was just months ago. Weeks, even.

I didn’t get this lightning-bolt moment of the mindful upgrade. It came slow and steady, boring, really. A tweak here to the routine. Catching up on email. Setting rules, such as scrapping non-personalized email after it sits two days in the inbox.

#GirlsRock: An interview with Special Events and Volunteer Manager Emily Portal 🎫

Emily Portal just needed more power.

Or, power at all. She was on the way to an event and her laptop charger konked out. I hooked her up with a universal power supply. She didn’t miss a beat. The event was a smash. All part of a day’s work as special events and volunteer manager.

She’s a Gator and a go-getter; career development is important to her.

She grew up a writer, so this was a good interview. She’s lived the kind of “up late, up early” schedule I know way too well. She’s one of those rare #GirlsRock interviews from right here in Charlotte, so if you’re from here, you’ll get the regional references.

10 things grateful, plus adios #AtoZ! 🦚

Man – I’m glad the #AtoZChallenge is over.

It’s fun. It’s just … extra. I love going to other blogs I’d not normally see. But the engagement is wonky, and I miss conversing with the regulars here. And visiting their blogs. And having time to post on social media and find your links there, too.

When you’re in the challenge, man, it feels like you’re kind of a narcissist.

Not to mention what it does to your non-blog life. I struggled to keep up, and sacrificed progress toward other deadlines. And sleep. Not snacks. I found time for snacks. But the rest of life was kind of a blur. Next time I do this, I’ll work ahead.

#AtoZChallenge | Z is for zigzag 📩

Some days zig when you think they’ll zag.

Tuesday was such a day. If you’d told me I’d cry some of my happiest and saddest tears in the same day – some in the same hour – I’d have, well, been eager to see how. I’d have never guessed. It began with a soccer match, on a senior day.

It ended with tears in silence as I learned all I could about a shooting at my alma mater.

In between, the day’s events intertwined and intersected. This is what I meant by my Y post yesterday. Time spent away from writing is time spent creating the writing through living. I can’t say it was a bad day and I can’t say it was a good one, either.

#AtoZChallenge | Y is for yippee! 👩‍🎨

Yippee!

We’re almost to the end of the #AtoZChallenge. Actually, the rest of the world has finished. They’re in the clubhouse. I’m still putzing around out here. Makes me nostalgic for yesteryear, when a guy like me was able to finish a challenge like this on time.

It’s not apathy – I still have this yearning to write, every day.

It’s the time that lacks, the need to yield to life in other ways. I want to keep learning about writing, about words. I also want to learn to talk like an auctioneer. This is a true story. I ask my kids if they’d rather I spoke like an auctioneer or learned to yodel.

#AtoZChallenge | W is for What Remains (#gratitudeandshit)

These pockets of in-overbookedness don’t happen often.

Rather than get a jumpstart on 53 things that needed jump-starting, I didn’t jump. And I sure as hell didn’t start. Not right away. A day brimming with a promise to put me ahead in everything where I was behind curtained sharply into a back-to-the-pillow nosedive.

The car got washed, the chicken, cooked (not grilled.)

And it’s 1:21 on Sunday morning, sleep time for another day of possibility, but I’m instead forging ahead to maybe close at least one gap – this A to Z Challenge. W, X, Y, and Z remain. One day remains in this weekend.

#AtoZChallenge: V is for Virtually anything

It’s going to be tough to claim victory in this one.

I’m days behind, trying in vain to catch up for the A to Z challenge. I wanted to write about vulnerability today, harkening back to some meditation fog observation I’d made about stepping in from the vestibule of life and really opening yourself up.

Me preaching the virtues of vulnerability would be like me spelling out the benefits of Valerian Root for menopausal symptoms.

I haven’t ventured out of the vortex of my comfort zone like that in ages. I’d be a villain to write that post. I wrote about valentine’s day once, the day after valentine’s day. This wasn’t long after Madison decided not to play for the Converse College Valkyries.