Weekly Short Story Project & “Longer” Project

It’s time. Beginning June 9th I’ve decided to post one short story every week on Mondays. I have a larger format project that I’ve been circling for quite some time, that might make an appearance or two in “short story”/chapter form. But I decided that I need to get going on whatever project I intend to work on or else I’ll spend the rest of my life reviewing movies and commenting on current events (which I love), but not do the bigger thing that I want to do. Funny how that works.

So, while I set up things to work on the larger project, I’ve been mining my archives, which I’ve been generating for decades now, to find potential short stories, and it’s been a bit of an emotional journey to re-experience whatever it was that I was going through when I penned said stories and narratives. I just spent the last few days re-experiencing my thoughts as I was going through the beginning of my divorce and leaving a work friendship that probably meant more to me emotionally than I was willing or able to acknowledge. Last week it was reliving the dating frustrations of disconnected connections from 1987. All of this in service to tell a good story and make a human connection based on thoughts and experiences from forty years ago.

Going through my old journals, there is so much that I am so embarrassed about. And equally embarrassing is the stuff that I did over and over and over again, that I never seemed to be able to learn from. I just read a passage from 1985 where I contemplated whether I should work on my PhD and/or writing projects but could never quite get past stupid little responsibilities like troubleshooting X or Y computer problem. Sound familiar? Ugh. Maybe I am stuck on a fucking loop!

So here I am forty years later working on short story projects in hopes of putting together a longer format project, just like I did back then. Well, I guess I’m on the right track if reading my old stuff mostly embarrasses me, but I still manage to find stories worth retelling and updating. Enjoy. New one coming out tomorrow, Monday. 😎

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