Paul's gifts

“The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory.” (Gary Zukav)

Paul is dying.

In the month since Thanksgiving, when he wasn’t feeling well, doctors removed his colon and diagnosed him with stage 4 cancer. And the cancer had spread.

Paul 1974

I learned this Monday.

On Tuesday, Paul chose to enter hospice. According to his niece, Shannon, Paul was “at peace with his decision.” She added that he “stated that he has lived a good life and that God allowed him to live a much longer life than he should have after beating cancer the first time.”

What fiction writers can learn from technical writers

Originally published July 23, 2013

The first draft of anything is shit. (Ernest Hemingway)

Every job has its challenges. Early in my technical writing career, I had an R&D manager whose idea of reviewing the documentation was to weigh my inch-and-a-half ream of manual in his hand for a moment, and then give it back to me saying, ‘it needs more beef.’

Mind you, in those days, I didn’t yet know how to write short, clear sentences.

Now I do.

Scenes in the making

Weddings are wonderful events, but much like the arrival of a new baby, nobody wants to hear about it every day. I like to think I’ve done a good job of holding myself back from making it the central part of any conversation. (As they say, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

Though we had originally thought of just eloping, Mark decided that we should at least extend the invitation to a few friends and family who might want to join us. We sent out about 20 invitations. It should be said that DC is not a place either of us have been to. We have no friends or family there, and it’s not an easy trip for most of the people we know. Our expectation, then, was that it would be

Going to the chapel – who, me?

Originally published June 5, 2014 

I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind. (Nelson Mandela)

No one believes me when I tell them I’m so gay I dated two girls at the same time in high school, and they both knew it—and each other. Oh, people believe the first part…I’m so gay…just not the last part.

But no matter how much I ‘experimented’ with the heterosexual model, it was always going to be minus the sexual part. No one would believe it anyway.