I can’t believe I am going to swallow something that used to look like this.

~*~

Because I’m a cynical asshole — and because you love me for it — don’t lie; I see my analytics — I thought I would pop in this morning with a proposal to do something different today.

See, Thanksgiving hasn’t even started yet, and I’m already being bombarded by Black Friday ads, which wouldn’t bother me so much if mainstream America would just get with the hipster program and do this ironically, but no, they’re serious. They really genuinely think there’s nothing funny about devoting a day to gratitude and then devoting the next to getting as much new crap as cheaply as they can. (Let’s be honest; you aren’t just buying Christmas gifts tomorrow.) So frankly, I see it as my civic duty to say something cynical today.

I call it Blamesgiving.

I mean, I propose that we change the holiday to Blamesgiving. No, really. Hear me out.

Here’s how shit will go down. Instead of gathering around the table with our family and friends to give thanks as we ravage the body of a beautiful bird, we will gather around the table with our family and friends to give blame as we ravage the body of a bird that is seriously gross-looking.

What do I mean by give blame? Well, on this special day, you can blame black people for ruining your city. You can blame gays for your heterosexual divorce. You can blame women who gets abortions for anything. You can even blame Republicans for the violence in the Middle East that our Democratic President is continuing of his own accord. Nobody has to be guilty of the alleged crime; in fact, responsibility for the problem might rest entirely on you. But no matter on Blamesgiving! Today is the one day of the year we come together to blame everyone else for everything we hate!

 Sounds great, right? I mean, it’s pretty much what happens anyway. Everyone goes around the table and says what they’re thankful for and then returns to bitching about Obamacare. So let’s just make it official. Today, shall heretofore be known as Blamesgiving Day.

There’s only one catch.

Tomorrow, you have to be thankful. And the day after that. Next Thursday and the next. June 17. March 4. August 22. February 10. May 1. September 11. Every day but today, the special day we now set apart to bitch.

Now this doesn’t mean we aren’t going to try to fix problems. We are. And it doesn’t mean we won’t seek justice for those who have truly done wrong. It just means we aren’t going to waste time playing finger-pointing games anymore. Starting tomorrow, we’re going to practice Graction. Gratitude in Action. Which means not just being grateful for what you have, but actively seeking to pay it forward to those who don’t have yet.

If you’re grateful for your home, share it with a stray cat. If you’re grateful for your marriage, fight to extend those rights to your gay friends. If you you’re grateful to be free, than practice abolition. There are a million ways to practice Graction every single day of the year. If you don’t know where to start, think about what makes you cry. Fix it.

But for today, you get a free pass. Go home. Hug your grandmas. Tell them you voted for Obama — or worse, a third party — and let the Blamesgiving begin!

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If you enjoyed this essay, keep in mind that the author is super, crazy poor most of the time and throw a dollar in the hat. Pretend there’s a monkey here who dances. This site is 100% reader supported. No affiliate links. No ads. No over-priced e-books about following your passion. But if you’ve only got one dollar to give this holiday season, I’d rather you donate it to the Rolling Jubilee. Thanks!

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If you ask the dictionary what it means to abolish, it will say something boring like “to do away with” or “to put an end to”.

But you wouldn’t say you abolished your old shoes or that you abolished your nose-picking habit, would you?

No, abolition has taken on a much deeper meaning than the dictionary would have you believe. It’s not a word a child is likely to hear until they reach a certain chapter in their history class. After that, the word is inexorably linked to the act of setting something free. We don’t abolish just any old thing we don’t want anymore.

We abolish systems that oppress.

This is why the Rolling Jubilee promises to abolish debt, not forgive it.

Forgiveness implies a moral failure on the victim’s part.

Abolition implies a moral failure on the abuser’s part.

And make no mistake about it, debt is a form of institutionalized abuse.

Like most abusers, it seduces you with promises it never intends to keep. Once it has you in bed, it hauls out the chains. And not the fun 50 Shades of Grey kind. The kind that a serial killer uses to bind his victims while he snubs out cigarettes on their sensitive bits.

And like most forms of abuse in this country, responsibility for the assault is foisted upon the victim and not the perpetrator. The victim asked for it, waltzing around campus with that virginal credit report. The perp couldn’t be expected to control himself around a temptress like that. He just had to loan her $2,000 at 27% interest.

My point isn’t that people shouldn’t be responsible for debts they voluntarily incurred; it is that our current financial system is designed so that debts are almost impossible to repay.

This is because repayment is not the point. If it were, than banks and other credit lenders would not sell their distressed debts to third-party collection agencies for pennies on the dollar. They would never settle for $100 of a $10,000 debt if they genuinely needed their money back. Every time they engage in this practice they are committing a remarkable act of honesty.

The truth is that they don’t need our money back.

They just need us to believe that they do.

Abuse thrives on dependence. An environment must be created in which the victim believes they have no other choice but to accept the terms of abuse. Why do battered women go home? They aren’t stupid; they’ve been brainwashed to believe they are somehow indebted to their husband. If she doesn’t go home and make his dinner, she is a bad person.

And we have been brainwashed to believe that we are indebted to the financial sector. If we don’t send a check to the collection agency, we are bad people.

Yet the majority of the money these companies loaned us never existed in the first place. Even so, they expect us to pay back not only what they lent us, but two or three or ten times that amount in interest. They tell us this is their right; they tell us this is only fair. They tell us we are lucky to have them as they hold us down face first into our pillows so the neighbors can’t hear us scream.

Any economy is an illusion; an artifice originally created to minimize consumer inconvenience, but ultimately, inevitably used to maximize financial inequality.

Money is just a symbol of power earned, like calories are a symbol of energy gained. Neither money nor calories mean much by themselves; they represent potentials. And in the case of money owed, it represents only the potential to oppress.

So when the Rolling Jubilee says it is going to buy distressed debts and abolish them, it is not employing hyperbole. It is actively seeking to put an end to a system of oppression.

I am writing this Scroll at 3:07 pm on November 17, 2012. At this time, the Rolling Jubilee has raised $331,843 in donations, which they estimate is enough to buy $6,641,668 of distressed debts.

Right now, they are focusing on medical debts. So this isn’t six million dollars worth of unnecessary plasma TVs they’re paying for.

This is the five years of infertility treatments that ended in an emergency hysterectomy not a baby. This is the battle with cancer that cost a family their home. This is the pieces of a child sewn back together after a drunk driver mowed them down. This is the rape kit a women is charged for after she has already been violated in the most intimate way.

This is the abolition of debts that should never have been incurred because in a nation that reminds its citizens every chance it gets what a privilege it is to live in the land of the free, nobody should ever suffer or lose their life because they can’t pay.

Just imagine – if you aren’t already living this nightmare – that you receive a dozen phone calls a day, at home and at work, demanding that you pay for your late spouse’s ambulance ride, for the defibrillation that didn’t work, for the emergency room visit that ended with a doctor saying, “I’m sorry, but…”

Imagine that the people who call you tell you terrible things. Because they do. They have no morals, no boundaries. They will insult you. They will call you names. They will threaten to publicly humiliate you. They will promise to destroy what is left of your life. They will file liens and garnish your wages. They will take everything you own. I wish I were making these things up. But this is what they do. This is how the system works.

Now imagine you go to your mailbox one day – a chore you have come to fear and hate because every day brings another letter from your financial stalkers. You’re just waiting for the day you pull out a severed animal head with a note saying “You’re Next.”

But on this day, you get a different sort of a letter. It says there will be no more phone calls. No more threats. Your debt has been purchased and abolished. You have been set free.

It was not the government who did for you. Not a corporation nor any particular church. Though certainly many religious people were involved. The idea was borrowed from the Bible after all; modeled on the divine mandate that once every fifty years, the fields should lie fallow, property should be returned, and all debts should be removed from the slates. This was the Jubilee.

There have been many religious groups calling on the government to enact the Jubilee for years now, but the people have grown weary of waiting for the powerful to intervene. They have taken it upon themselves to bind up the broken-hearted and set the captives free. The hope – the reason that this is a Rolling Jubilee – is that as individuals discover those letters of freedom in the mail, they will pay it forward, giving back to the campaign so the Jubilee can continue.

This is an underground railroad for the twenty-first century, and everyone can ride. A $5 donation abolishes $100 worth of debt. $10 abolishes $200. $20 abolishes $400. $50 abolishes $1,000. And so on and so on. The holidays are a time of donations, and there are many worthy causes to choose from this year, but if you want to maximize your giving, consider donating a portion of the money you were planning to give to charity to the Rolling Jubilee.

But don’t mistake this for an act of charity. This is a calculated act of subversion. If you give, this is you joining the people as they rise up and say, “You can force us to play the game, but we don’t have to let you win.”

If you’re ready to hear the people sing, join them here. If you can’t give money right now, they understand. But you can give Tweets. You can give Facebook shares and Tumblr posts and Pins. You can tell your friends, your family, your campus, your co-workers, your church.

You can be an abolitionist wherever you are with whatever resources you have to give. Contrary to popular belief, that life path did not disappear with the Civil War. It is a calling that has been crying out to each of us, and for too long the system has been intentionally generating enough noise to drown out that voice.

No more. Throw open your window and scream, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Mean it. Then do what you can.

“Abolition is not some distant future but something we create in every moment when we say no to the traps of empire and yes to the nourishing possibilities dreamed of and practiced by our ancestors and friends. Every time we insist on accessible and affirming health care, safe and quality education, meaningful and secure employment, loving and healing relationships, and being our full and whole selves, we are doing abolition. Abolition is about breaking down things that oppress and building up things that nourish. Abolition is the practice of transformation in the here and now and the ever after.” ~ Eric A. Stanley

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On Monday afternoon, I put a promise in the mail.

A contract between myself and Asymmetrical Press. A book deal.

I’ll talk more about how this came about on my other blog Story Landing some other time. Suffice it to say here and now that I’ve agreed to complete three projects for Asymmetrical within a twenty-four month period of time. One of which will be my long-talked-about novel, The Natural State. Another of which will probably be a novella called Chicken – you can read a rough draft of its first chapter here. I’m not committed to any particular third project yet. I like leaving it up in the air for now.

I’ve got a lot of freedom under this deal – something I wouldn’t have at all if I were signing with a traditional press. Most importantly, my work will always belong to me. I’m not selling my books to a corporation and then settling for a fraction of the final price. I won’t have to watch my novel sold to a movie producer who just knows Kristen Stewart is right for the female lead. And best of all, I won’t have to worry about any of the incomprehensible business stuff I would have to deal with if I tried to publish by myself. All I have to do is write three good books.

A lot of authors would see this as an opportunity to follow their Passion, but not me.

My Passion (as represented by my dog Alice in the above photo) would drag me over the side of the bridge if I didn’t have it on a tight lead. I would never write a single thing.

This is because if Passion is based on things we love to do, writing is not on my list.

These are the things on my daily Passion list: Read. Take nature walks. Play with dogs. Talk condescendingly to my cat. Read some more. Eat organic chocolate chips. Spend time with Alex. Sleep.

I’m not trying to be a smart ass. This is for real. I love doing each and every one of those things more than I love writing. I actually hate writing a little bit. I’m doing it right now and I’m not very happy because I’d much rather be eating more chocolate chips and reading The Casual Vacancy. This, after the fact that I didn’t write this essay last night because I read The Age of Miracles instead. The whole thing, minus twenty pages I read earlier in the day. Come to think of it, even more than reading right now, I’d rather be asleep.

Being a writer who doesn’t like writing makes me a good candidate for the Island of Misfit Toys. Or one of the few honest members of my profession these days. I hear so many authors talking about how they just love to write and they can’t imagine doing anything else and how their blood is made of the juice of passion fruit and blah blah blah. Whatever. Writing sucks. Especially if you have to do it in a twenty-dollar fold-out scoop chair from Big Lots because you wasted your twenties following other passions that didn’t pan out and now you can’t afford a comfortable chair.

But I’ve started sitting in this stupid chair every day. It’s probably going to totally destroy my back before these books are done, but that’s the price published authors have to pay. A book deal doesn’t mean shit unless there’s at least one finished book.

My passion abandons me frequently if I let it. It slips outside while I’m staring into a plot hole. When this happens, I do follow it momentarily, but only for the purpose of leading it back to the goddamn chair.

A couple of people were worried after my last Scroll. They thought I was discounting or even demonizing passion.

Not so!

Passion is one of the most important emotions we ever experience. It helps us figure out where we want to go, what we want to do, and who we want to be.

But it can’t take us there on it’s own. We have to take the lead. Dreams don’t come true just because we really, really, really want them to.

When I was 13, my grandmother ordered me a subscription to Writer’s Digest. For Christmas that same year, I received a laptop. A clunky Fujitsu. That was 1996. I was the only kid I knew with a laptop until I went to college in 2001. My parents specifically bought it so that I could write. They would ask me every time I was on that laptop if I was working on my book. I absolutely hated them for it at the time. I was a motherfucking artist, man. You can’t cramp my style like that.

But my parents knew what I’ve only just now begun to realize. Following a passion is bound to take you nowhere. You have to be in control. So before I was old enough to do that for myself, my family did it for me. They cultivated my passion to a degree that made other parents think they were crazy. But I finished a 365 page novel about the Titanic when I was 15.

If I had been following my passion, I would have maybe finished a 365 page album full of Natalie Portman pictures.

If you’re experiencing any level of success with your passion, chances are you don’t need this advice. You’re already doing it. This is just a reminder to adjust the way you speak. Give credit where credit is due. Your passion isn’t a benevolent being bestowing good things upon you. It’s a strong emotion you’ve turned into a Hammer of Making Shit Happen. Passion isn’t paving the way; you’re breaking down the walls.

YOU are your Passion. Take it where you want to go.

I put a promise in the mail on Monday: Write three good books.

Passion won’t do that for me. I have to sit in this chair.

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Confession: Passionistas freak me out.

You know the type. The Internet is infested with them. You’ve probably even re-tweeted them a time or two. It’s easy to do.

They have this way of saying absolutely nothing in a way that makes absolute sense. You’re nodding your head, then you’re sharing with friends, and pretty soon you’ve rearranged your entire life around the Passionista’s Manifesto of Claiming your Flaming Freedom Fruit. Months or even years may pass before you wake up and say, “Wait. What the fuck is a flaming freedom fruit anyway?”

If the Internet is a hive of buzzwords, then Passion is the Queen Bee. We just can’t get enough of that word. I’ve heard rumors that some bloggers actually pee their pants every time they see it. Here, let’s try it: Passion.

Ahhh, instant relief.

That’s not far from how we act, is it?

Passion is preached as the cure for all that ails us. If we’re not happy, it’s because we haven’t accepted Passion into our hearts yet. A simple readjustment of priorities and we’ll be on our way to owning a thousand-acre orchard of Flaming Freedom Fruit. All we have to do is lay down our nets and follow Passion.

But wait, not just any Passion will do! Nobody ever speaks of following Passion itself. They talk about following their Passion. Incessantly. Until I develop a passion for punching them in the throat.

Passion has become the ultimate personal god. It has all the controlling characteristics of the old personal gods, but it’s like totally cool! Even hipsters do it!

Ever notice how new Christians like to brag about all the things they gave up to follow Jesus? Porn. Pot. Pre-marital sex. The list goes on. New Passionistas are much the same:

“I quit my job to follow my Passion.”

“I sold my things to follow my Passion.”

“I left my frigid wife to follow my Passion.”

These people come with endless lists of sacrifices they made at the altar of their Passion. But – as any new Christian will tell you – these aren’t really sacrifices because they pale in comparison to the promise of eternal rewards. Who needs marijuana when you can have a mansion in Heaven? And who needs a steady income, a place to sleep, or a family when you can have … wait … what?

What exactly do Passionistas receive in return for their devotion? Besides the standard-issue sense of superiority, of course.

Happiness? Really?

Good luck with that.

Here’s the problem with treating Passion like a personal god: Gods are static creatures. Being the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow is part of their thing. This is why we can follow them. They always stay the same.

Passion? Not so much.

This is because Passion is not an entity separate from ourselves. It doesn’t deserve a capital P. Passion is just an emotion. In this case,  an emotion about a particular activity, career, or cause. A strong emotion, to be sure, but still susceptible to sudden change.

If you pin your hopes and dreams on a passion, you’re likely to wake up one morning to find that passion swept out to sea, and there’s nothing to do but wave good-bye to all those hopes and dreams.

This happened to my fiancee, Alex. When she was 18, she had a Passion for theater. She went to acting school in New York City. The kind that doesn’t accept financial aid. She couldn’t imagine anything else she wanted to do. She was good, too. She didn’t need to make other plans. But then one day, for no particular reason that she can name, it was gone. Just like that.  She hasn’t set foot on a stage in over five years.

Her parents were pretty upset for a while – they paid for that school out of pocket – and a lot of her old friends look down on her now. They think she gave up on her Passion. They don’t understand that as she grew up, her Passion spontaneously changed. There was no big reason behind it. It just did. This happens to a lot of people, but many are too embarrassed to walk away. They’ll follow their Passion to the grave, even if it they haven’t honestly felt that way in decades. I’ve always been proud of Alex for being brave enough to realize her Passion had led her astray before she was so far down the path she couldn’t easily cut a new one. Now, she takes beautiful photographs and makes nature-inspired art. She works tirelessly to hone her craft and studies lots of different things, knowing that at a moment’s notice her passion – like any other emotion – could do an about face.

When we turn our passion into Passion, it’s a sign we’ve made it our personal god. We expect it to open doors and move mountains and otherwise meet our every need. And who can blame us, really? We’ve been told by the Passionistas that if we can just harness it’s power, our Passion will lead us to success.

But in reality, it might just drag us to our death.

This is the moment when the music softens and the lights grow dim. I step down from the pulpit and open my arms, speaking so gently into my lapel mic. “Would anyone like to come to the altar and un-dedicate their lives to Passion? There you go. I see you. And you. Mmmhmm. Come on down. Don’t be afraid. Leave it at the blog. It’s time to take back control of your life. I see you, sister. That’s it, brother. Spit out that Flaming Freedom Fruit. There’s a better way.”

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We’ll be talking about that better way in my next Scroll: Leading Your Passion to a Three-Book Deal.

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There’s a phrase in television: jumping the shark. 

It refers to the moment when a beloved television show goes totally off the rails. It was named after the infamous moment on Happy Days when The Fonz literally jumped over a shark. On water skis. Wearing his leather jacket and short shorts. It is derided throughout all the known galaxies as the stupidest decision any group of writers and producers has ever made.

If you’ve ever loved a television show for more than three years, you can probably pinpoint the moment when they jumped the shark.

But don’t judge them too harshly. It’s hard to maintain a story over a long period of time without making some painfully stupid mistakes. You know that from experience, don’t you?

I certainly do. In the last five years alone, I think I’ve jumped over every shark left in the sea.

Here’s an example. In the summer of 2008, I used my truck as collateral for a debt consolidation loan and paid off all my credit cards. I went from owing about $500 a month in minimums to a $260 payment. I would be debt free in three years. It felt so fucking good. I promised myself I would never let that happen again. I swore I would cut up my cards.

I didn’t get around to it. I moved to Austin. I was alone. I was bored. I decided it would be okay if I just used my Bank of America card to buy a digital camera so I could start making short films. Then I bought some lights. I tried to make a short film. It was bad. I got discouraged. Decided what I really needed was a horse. So I pawned the camera and I bought a horse. You can read more about how that turned out here. Suffice it to say: Not Well.

Four years later and I still haven’t fully recovered from the stupid thing I did back then. I spent several years with Care One Credit, keeping things under control, but this past spring they kicked me off my plan because they can’t legally service residents of Arkansas. Oops. I haven’t been able to make a single payment since March. Most of my debts have now been charged off. My credit score is lower than Paul Ryan’s emotional IQ.

I jumped the shark, and it’s been following me ever since.

Sharks do not like to be jumped. 

This probably sounds familiar to you. Not the specifics. Just the ever-present shark waiting to swallow you whole.

My shark – okay, my shiver of sharks – has followed me through the five stages of grief. First, I denied that the sharks were even there. Then, I got angry with the sharks. When the sharks called, I would tell them to go to hell. Then, I tried to bargain with the sharks. Then, when it became obvious that the sharks were not going away, I became depressed.

The sharks shredded any and all attempts to develop a safety net. The sharks would keep me from ever owning a house. The sharks would keep me from replacing my car it it ever breaks down. As long as the sharks are circling, it’s not responsible for Alex and I to reproduce, which is something we had once planned to do before I turned 30 next year.

This is hard to live with.

I’m sure your sharks are too. They might not be personified in the form of debt collectors; they might be bad friends who know things you’d rather keep secret; they might be addictions; they might be hungry ghosts. They could be anything. Each and every one of us has jumped the shark at some point in our life.

Disagree? Welcome to the denial stage. Everyone has made at least one major fucking mistake. Go ahead and get angry about it. It’ll move the healing process along.

While we’re at it, why don’t you go ahead and try bargaining? It won’t take long. It doesn’t work.

Done? Good. Take a minute and be depressed. No, really. Let it have you. It’s coming one way or another, and you might as well meet it here and now on your own terms before it catches you by surprise on a morning when you really do need to get out of bed.

Now snap out of it. It’s time for Stage 5. Turn around, look your shark in the eye, and say,”I accept you.” I’m serious. If you need help visualizing this, feel free to address the shark in the photo up above. Say, “You are my shark. I jumped over you, and according to ancient shark traditions, we are now a bonded pair. You are my responsibility. I accept you.”

Now give your shark a hug.

WAIT. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT JUST BECAUSE I TOLD YOU TO? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? I’M A SARCASTIC BLOGGER. PUNCH THAT FUCKER IN THE NOSE AND SWIM AWAY. IT’S A FUCKING SHARK FOR FUCK’S SAKE. MY GOD, MAN. SAVE YOURSELF. I CAN’T WATCH THIS.

……………………..

………………..

……………

Is it over? Are you still alive? I didn’t think you’d really try to give a shark a freakin’ hug. What kind of bullshit advice is that?

I mean, I stand by the bit about accepting responsibility for your shark, but give me a break. You don’t have to let it follow you around for the rest of your life!

Fonzie wrote the book on jumping the shark, yet still went on to be #4 on Bravo’s list of 100 Greatest TV Characters of All Time. And fourth place is nothing to scoff about when the only characters ranked higher than you were Archie Bunker, Ralph Kramden, and Lucy Ricardo. And if you ask Henry Winkler about jumping the shark? He’ll just point out that Happy Days continued to be the #1 show in America for six years post-shark.

The moral? Jumping the shark was completely stupid, but in the long run it didn’t matter. Fonzie put his jeans on, flipped his collar, slapped the jukebox, and the music played on. He is still, essentially, the coolest fictional person who ever lived.

If we can forgive the Fonz for something as idiotic as leaping over a shark, surely we can forgive ourselves for going into debt, marrying the wrong person, or taking the first hit of that drug. We fucked up, sure. But it’s our choice whether or not that moment of weakness defines the rest of our lives.

Me? I’ve lived in the shadow of my shark for my too long. Starting now, I’m choosing to punch that fucker in the nose and swim away.

I hope you will too.

For I do believe that everyone has one chance
To fuck up their lives
But like a cut down tree, I will rise again
And I’ll be bigger and stronger than ever before.

~ “The First Day of Spring” by Noah and the Whale

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“In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.” ~ John Muir

“I am glad I shall never be young without wilderness to be young in.” ~ Aldo Leopold

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These photos were taken last Tuesday by my fiancee, Alex, during a walk at the Two Rivers Park in Little Rock, AR. We caught a glimpse of their tawny shadows in a cedar grove, and approached cautiously, hoping Alex might be able to get a shot or two of their fleeing white tails before they disappeared. Much to our surprise, after initially bounding away, the young deer turned around and began walking straight toward us. We spent about twenty minutes hanging out with them in their woods, kneeling in the pine needles, letting the family wander around us, sometimes coming as close as twenty feet away.

It crossed our minds to frighten them away because we feared teaching them that humans can be trusted to sit quietly and shoot only pictures. But we were completely under their spell. We’e stumbled upon deer in the woods a hundred times, seen hundreds more dancing away from the edge of the road, stroked their velvet noses through fences at roadside zoos, and spent time last summer bottle-feeding abandoned fawns at a Wildlife Rehab Center in Texas. Deer are about as novel as birds and squirrels.

But to have not one, but three deer take such an unusual interest in us was something we could not walk away from, no matter how irresponsible we admit our actions might have been. But on the other hand, how patronizing it is to assume these creatures are not smart enough to know the difference between human friends and foes. What they may lack in reason, they make up for with powers of intuition of which we humans can only dream. So we gave them the benefit of the doubt and stayed until they finally walked away. It was their choice to study us, learning more about us with their noses than we could ever discern about them with our eyes and ears. When they were satisfied, they flipped their tails over their rumps and slipped into the woods. Within seconds, it was like they had never been there at all.

This is the part where I urge you to turn off your electronic devices and go outside because you’ll never have an experience like this indoors. I’m not going to try too hard to make that point because you’ve heard it before and I think the photos speak for themselves in that regard. But I would be remiss not to remind you that as we head into Autumn, deer are entering the Rut. (The only possibly human equivalent of this event would be Girls Gone Wild: Spring Break.)  Most bucks lose their mind during this season, which makes them easy to hunt, and ready to fight.  Always wear orange vests if walking or hiking in wilderness areas where hunting is allowed, and keep in mind that a territorial buck or protective mother doe may attack if they feel threatened. Certain instincts will override the aforementioned intuition. It’s best not to stick around too long, and if the animal does take off, don’t give chase.

This has been your Weekend Wildlife PSA. Thank you.

You can see more of Alex’s work at Wildfledged.

You can see more of my work at my new blog: Story Landing at ChaseNight.com. But don’t worry, I’ll still be writing here too.

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Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: We’ll never know because  he got ran over by a bandwagon.

________________________________

Filed under: Scrolls by chase 6 Comments »

“The modern picture of the artist began to form: The poor, but free spirit, plebeian but aspiring only to be classless, to cut himself forever free from the bonds of the greedy bourgeoisie, to be whatever the fat burghers feared most, to cross the line wherever they drew it, to look at the world in a way they couldn’t see, to be high, live low, stay young forever — in short to be the bohemian.”  ~ Thomas Wolfe

________________________

A Field Guide for Free Spirits

After a couple of months on hiatus, I’ve decided to start writing Scrolls again. While writing them has often proven to be a distraction from my fiction work, not writing them has also proven to be a distraction from my fiction work.

Basically, the lesson I’ve learned is that anything and everything is a distraction from my fiction work, and that the only true cure for my puppy-sized attention span would be the complete and utter destruction of the Internet.

So if I’m going to have my head in the Cloud anyway, I might as well be gathering my 1,000 true fans so I can charge them $100 a year for my e-mails and thus make a $100,000 a year without ever leaving my home…

Just kidding. Y’all know I wouldn’t do that. I’m only going to charge them $90, of course. A steal!

But seriously. My summer vacation is almost over. My third or fourth — I’ve lost count — senior year of college starts in less than three weeks, and that tingly, back-to-school, see-your-syllabus-for-the-first-time feeling is infecting every area of my life. So welcome to Unbridled Existence 3.0: A Field Guide for Free Spirits.

Occasionally, my mom will be telling me about a quirky, new kid at her school, and inevitably her description will trail off as she struggles to make sense of this non-conventional entity and finally she’ll say, “You know, just someone who’s like a free spirit. Like you and Alex.”

Alex’s mother has made that same statement almost verbatim. So there you have it. Straight from the horses’ mouths. The official word. Alex and I are free spirits. You can’t argue with the wombs in which we were knitted.

Now that we’ve established my authority on the subject, let’s talk about what it means. Just what is a free spirit anyway?

Nobody knows. Not anymore. Maybe the term carried a lot of weight in the past, but it’s been so watered down by overuse and misapplication that your guess is as good as my mother’s. To her, it basically means anyone who votes Democrat, has ever worn an article of clothing emblazoned with a peace sign, and doesn’t regularly brush their hair. To others, it means anyone who smokes pot and listens to folk music. To still others, it’s just another euphemism for a girl who sleeps around.

Well, I’m here to tell you they’re all wrong. None of those things are inherently connected to a person’s spirit. (And by spirit, let’s go ahead and come to the understanding that I’m using this word in the most symbolic of senses since part of my own free spiritedness is an uncertainty that human beings actually have spirits in any sort of spiritual sense.) A person can have all the traditional trappings of a free spirit, yet still be hopelessly restrained.

Bridled, if you will.

In fact, some of the least free spirited people I’ve ever met looked the part the very most. This always makes me sad because generally these people really do want to be free spirits, but they’re afraid of what that really means so they pile on the appropriate accoutrements, cross their fingers, and hope for the best. They don’t want to do the necessary work of thinking. Or perhaps more accurately, they just don’t know how. They’ve been taught everywhere they’ve ever been to do anything but that.

But to truly be a free spirit is to be a free thinker, and to be a free thinker is to be engaged in a life-long wrestling match with anything that any institution expects you to accept at face value. It’s hard work and it never ends. Free spirits are often portrayed in the media as child-like, as hopelessly naive. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Children don’t accept things at face value. They want to know how things work. They want to know why anything is the way that it is.

To be a a free spirit or a free thinker then is really to go back to that childish state before you learned to shut up and accept that “this is just the way that it is.” Finding out the truth can be scary. But until you earnestly start searching for it, it won’t matter how many peace signs you sew onto your backpack, how many music festivals you sneak pot into, or how many people you sleep with under the guise of being polyamorous. Your spirit – whatever that even is – can’t be free until your brain shakes off its bridles.

And believe me, they have to be shaken. They don’t just fall off on their own.

That’s why this site exists: To help people free their minds so that their spirits – whatever those are – can follow.

This site does not exist to tell you that I’ve already made it to Free-Thinking Spirit Level 10. I haven’t. There is no such thing. I’m just a guy at the tail-end of my twenties, looking back on a lot of mistakes that were made because I wasn’t asking enough questions about why things are the way that they are. This site and the Scrolls I publish here are my attempt to share some of the things I’ve learned since I started asking questions. In the future, you can expect far less self-indulgent philosophizing here and a more sincere effort to add value to other people’s lives. Even if it does put me dangerously close to the much-mocked lifestyle design line.

But one thing that will always remain the same around here is my inability to write on any sort of schedule. I write when I feel like I have something that’s actually worth writing, and if I decide after a little while that something I wrote wasn’t worth writing after all, I remove it. So if you want to keep up with my work, it’s a good idea to subscribe or follow me on Facebook because we all know how tweets can get lost in the crowd.

Another thing that will always remain the same around here is my commitment to running an ad-free, affiliate-free site. This site is 100% reader-supported so if you like what I do here, feel free to leave a small tip via the PayPal button below. In return, you will receive more Scrolls and my eternal gratitude.

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Let me tell you a little bit about my writing process.

I have an idea. It can be anything. A point I want to make in an essay. A scene to fix a hole in a story.

I think about while I’m doing other things. Washing the dishes. Driving to the store. Walking around the block.

I get really excited about it.

I sit down to write. One of two things happens now.

Either nothing. Or 3,000 words of incoherent dribble.

I get upset. I erase everything. If there was anything to be erased.

I sulk.

I get a new idea.

Rinse and repeat.

~*~*~

Writing is the only thing I’ve ever been good at, which is alarming because I’m not even very good at that.

Oh, I mean, I’m good. I fucking know that. No false humility here. I am very talented. I’m just not good at doing what I’m good at. I talked about this a little more in depth back here, but I’m going to talk about it again today.

While I’ve seen a steady decline in my ability to feel strong, personal emotions since I finished puberty, I think it’s gotten a lot worse in the last few years. I’m sure a shrink could have a lot of fun figuring out why this is and a pharmacist could have a lot of fun doling out pills to make it better. But I think there might be a pretty simple explanation.

Blogging.

Writing an essay and writing a story are two very different things. Narrative essays don’t get much play in the blogosphere. It’s informational and persuasive essays that make the rounds. If people want to read a story, they crack open a book. They read blogs to get advice or learn something new or interact with like-minded people. All of those things are lovely, but they require a different part of the brain that writing stories to touch people’s hearts. (I don’t know if that’s literally true, but you know what I mean.)

I err on the side of the cerebral anyway, and I’ve come to the conclusion that trying to be a blogger and a fiction author is not the best combination for me. Even being a blogger and a creative non-fiction author hasn’t worked that well for me; I’ve had a list of nature essays-to-write in a box in my closet for the last five months. My novel is lurching along like Frankenstein’s monster, unwieldy in it’s inability to communicate emotions rather than lofty ideas.

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of meeting Tom Franklin. He gave a craft talk at my school, in which he talked about he can’t write fiction about his religious upbringing because he is still too angry. He said that you can’t be angry when you write fiction. Non-fiction, yes, be as angry as you need. But if you’re angry writing fiction it’s going to show through and be a distraction from the story at hand. You’re going to create caricatures rather than characters.

When I blog, I often write about things that make me angry. But rather than being cathartic this often just riles me up. I can’t transition smoothly from a blogging tasking to a novel-ing task because I’m just too agitated. Even when I’m not that angry though, I can’t make the leap. Once the logical side of my brain is switched on, it won’t switch off. It keeps from going to the quiet places where good fiction bubbles up from.

If fiction is so hard for me, then why don’t I just give up? I’m good at writing things that get people riled up; why not just do that? Well, I enjoy doing that and there is a time and a place for writing like that, but it’s not my dream. Telling stories is my dream, not making points. So all of this has been to say that I think I need to take a summer break. School is out and I don’t need that critical part of my brain. It’s a good time to dive deep.

I’m not saying I won’t write at all. If something really moves me, then I will. But I need to take the pressure off myself to be a blogger. It’s not what I want. I want to be a novelist and screenwriter who has a blog to connect with his readers. I know I don’t write very much anyway so it’s not like I even need to make this announcement for you. But I have to make it for me so that I’ll know that I’m serious about taking this break. So I won’t feel bad tomorrow that another day has gone by without a new Scroll. I only want to feel bad if another day has gone by without progress on my novel or my screenplay or my short story collection.

In the future, I want to orient my site more toward that goal of being an author platform. But I don’t want to worry about it right now. No point in having a platform if you don’t have a fucking book. So that’s where I’m at right now. If I feel the urge to write I need to put it toward my fiction, and this blog is just too good of an excuse to put that energy toward something else, something easier for me, something that requires more thought than instinct. Alex has been telling me for a long time that I think too much to be a werewolf anyway, so I need to get away from that. Need to go into the wilds of my own heart and see what I can find. I’ll still be around the Internet. This isn’t the dreaded digi-sab.

Another factor in this decision is money. I don’t have any. $1.34 last time I checked. After reading this post from Niall Doherty about why he killed paid access, I’ve given up on blogging for money. It’s just too smarmy for me. I had an idea I was going to try to launch this summer, but I’ve scrapped it for the time being. It would just be another distraction from the work I really need to do. If I’m going to make it as a writer, it will be as a novelist or screenwriter. Not as a lifestyle design blogger. So now that I’m on the verge of going back to a job, my time for writing is going to be cramped and every second I can muster needs to go towards my book.

But because things are so dire – because I really only have $1.34 right now – I am also going to follow Niall’s lead and put a Paypal Tip Jar at the end of this Scroll. I’m not asking for large handouts. I’m just asking for tips. If a break-dancer on the subway can do it, so can we. If you’ve enjoyed my writing here thus far, leave a tip. If you’d like to see me continue to write here in the future, leave a tip. You don’t have to, of course. I understand that you might have $1.34 to your name today too. But it’s there if you feel so inclined, and will be at the bottom of any future posts I might make. I really encourage you to read Niall’s post if you don’t understand why.

That’s it for now, folks. I’ve got work to do.

Thanks for every time your eyes have graced this page.

_______________________

TIP JAR:

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Generally speaking, it’s poor form to tell someone how to do something you haven’t done yourself.

For instance, I would never dream of sneaking into a medical school and teaching a class on colonoscopies. I have no idea how to insert a camera into someone’s anus and wiggle it around their large intestine. It would be very poor form, indeed, if I were to do that.

But this is the Internet not medical school; when has form ever mattered? Telling people how to do things you’ve never actually done is pretty much that status quo. So although I’ve never been an A-List Blogger, I feel confident that I can teach you how to become one by the end of this Scroll.

It’s really very simple.

All you have to do to become an A-List Blogger is be somebody that other people wish they could be.

That’s it. That’s all you have to do.

“What about writing?” you ask. “Don’t you have to be a great writer?”

No. You don’t. Spelling and basic grammar will help you out, but blogs aren’t about poetry or lyrical prose. That’s why they’re called blogs. Blahgs. Blaghahahahgs. Blobs, I once called them and it caught on for a few weeks. Nothing called a blog can be pretty.

Blogs are about information. And information doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to be clear. “It” being how awesome your life is.

I’m not making this shit up. Think about all the bloggers you know who have readerships the size of small big cities and who genuinely make a living off the money those readers give them for e-books with lots of white space between the very simple lines.

I used to want to be Everett Bogue. Back in the fall of 2010 when Far Beyond the Stars was alive and well. I was sitting at work one day, surfing the net for things to read while I pretended to work, and I came across this scruffy guy with shaggy hair who didn’t have to work anymore because he sold e-books online. I wanted his life. So I became a minimalist and started a blog and continued to be scruffy and have shaggy hair. I quit my job. Stupidest thing I ever did. I’m still paying for that mistake a year later financially. I was doing fine. Paying my bills. Digging out of debt. Up for a small raise. But I quit because I didn’t want to live my life; I wanted to live his.

This is the reason any blogger gets famous. They know how to make their life look better than yours. Ev Bogue would say this flat out. Still does. His Upgraded Minimalist Business guide is not for you if you “want to move to a suburb and get a mini-van.” All the cool kids are living out of bags, working from cafes anywhere in the world. If you’re not doing that, you’re not really living.

I’m not trying to pick on Ev in particular. I’m just being honest about the reason I started blogging. His spiel was convincing. He made his life look a thousand times better than mine. And I’m not judging him for it because that’s what bloggers do. That’s the work. When they ask you if you’re “doing the work” that’s what they’re talking about. Are you making your life look better than anyone else’s?

Are you somebody that strangers want to be?

You might be. It isn’t that hard to do considering how difficult daily life is for most people on this planet. Tell people you’re always Zen. Tell them you have time to do Yoga every day. Tell them you have a really organized desk. Tell them you don’t anything you can’t carry in a bag. Tell them you travel the world. Anything looks better than the life most people are living.

The Bible says thou shall not covet, but the Bloggers say “Yes, you shall. Otherwise we’ll have to go back to working minimum wage like you.”

Even minimalism – which purports to be about being happy with what you already have – plants these seeds of jealousy in the reader’s minds. But rather than things, they covet the lifestyle. They covet the freedom implied in living out of a bag. That was me. A year later, I regret my fling with minimalism. I miss a lot of the things I let go. Because I did it for the wrong reasons. Because I did it so I could feel like I was as cool and free as somebody else.

I paid $99 during a 72 hour Sale for a bunch of e-books that would teach me how to be a businessman. But I never wanted to be a businessman and I never read the books. I made it a couple of pages into Guillebeau’s guide before I fell asleep. I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m just saying it wasn’t for me. I don’t care about that stuff. I didn’t then, but I thought I had to if I wanted to be like them. And I wanted to be like them because they were better than me. They told me so all the time. “Quit your stupid job and work online like us! Be cool!”

I once went to an Art of Non-Conformity Meet-up where all I could do was laugh at all the people trying to be like each other. I don’t mean that in a mean way because I was there trying to be like them too. I just mean it was literally fucking hilarious. “You’re going to Chang Mai? Me too!” “Me too!” “Me too!” Everyone was trying so hard to be like somebody else they read about online that they had all become the same. I couldn’t tell anyone apart. Someone asked me if I was Everett Bogue. I might as well have said yes. I certainly wasn’t me.

A lot of A-List Bloggers out there will tell you that the secret to success is just being yourself. Of course, they tell you that! Because they need you to think that they’re just being themselves so you’ll want to be like them! That’s how they make their money! Their voice is saying “Be yourself” but if you read their lips they’re saying “Try to be like me!” Your desire to do so is their bread and butter, baby. There’s no way around it. Inciting you to covet is the great and noble work.

If you can incite people to covet your life, you will most likely make it big.

But if you can’t, you will most likely fail.

If people read about you and think “Oh, this person is just like me right now!” instead of “Oh! This person is everything I dream of being!” then you are most likely going to fail. If your only goal is to create an A-List Blog, that is. But if you want to make new friends, you’ll probably succeed. If you want to develop your craft as a writer by sharing your words with the public, then you’ll probably succeed. If you want to touch people through your stories, then you’ll probably succeed.

You’ll probably never make a shit-ton of money or have enough subscribers to brag about it on your front page. But you’ll probably succeed.

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