This Ain't No Picnic...

I've had a lot of requests for a new blog, which I find incredibly flattering. I have a few reasons I haven't been writing:

1) I'm always in the car running children back and forth.
2) I went on a vacation to Illinois and have been photo-shopping zits off my pictures for the last 48 hours.
3) I spend the majority of my day lying in the fetal position in an empty bathtub and my internet connection isn't very strong there.

I've been brainstorming ideas on a new blog entry. I'd like to write about my recent trip to the Midwest. I'd like to blog about the shooting competition I participated in. I even started a post about the time (years ago) that I was an account manager for a staffing agency, and I had to write up a woman for not wearing a bra. The idea is there but the words aren't flowing. I've been in a funk lately and can't seem to crawl out of it. It's like falling into a vat of warm milk chocolate. Smart people would climb out, but I'd rather eat my way down to the drain and then write about being bloated. I'm in no hurry to quit being moody.

In the mean time, I have sent my blog to two humor writers that I respect. The first was Tim Woodward at The Idaho Statesman. He was very complimentary, but because I'm neurotic, I can't take the compliment. He wrote something that I think is sort of cryptic, and it has actually discouraged me from writing. Here it is:

"Don’t hide any columns in the crawl space. You have a gift. Your columns remind me of some of the humor columns I wrote when I was younger. I do far fewer humor columns now, though I enjoy doing them when I do. I never consciously decided to cut back; it just happened. Maybe life just doesn’t seem as funny now as it did when I was a thirty-something."

This stopped me dead in my tracks for two reasons. The first is that, as I approach 30, I realize that I don't write these humorous little articles because I think life is funny, like Mr. Woodward. I started writing them because life was so un-funny. I have to paint humor into a situation to make it worthwhile, while most people tend to enjoy the moment as it is. But let's be realistic. It really IS depressing to have one foot in the door of bankruptcy court. It really IS disgusting that I have chicken poop coating every horizontal surface in my yard. It really IS pathetic that I'm too lazy to recycle a cereal box.

Recently, I met a beautiful 86 year old man by the name of Mike Vinich when I was at a family reunion in Wyoming. This man had seen the death of 5 of his 6 children, as well as his wife. He'd been active in the Democratic party, and helped put Senator John F. Kennedy on the presidential ballot. Mike was a Marine who fought in Iwojima and had a great sense of (naughty) Marine humor. One night and subsequent long afternoon we spent talking together while he made me drinks at the bar he owned in the tiny town of Hudson, Wyoming.

He thought I looked like old time country singer Brenda Lee, and told me what he'd do if he was a few decades younger. He was a proud serviceman. He made a hell of a margarita. He also told me that while one of his daughters was in the hospital, she looked at him and said, "Isn't is sad, Dad, that we're born dying?"

.

..

...

.... Life isn't funny. And sometimes I'm not in the mood to write it that way.

I also emailed my blog to a humor writer named Pat McManus. He replied back with the following:

"I read all of your column(s) and loved it (them)! I assume you have tried it on the Boise Statesman. When I first started freelancing features, the Statesman was on my list. I didn't do features then but "factual" pieces. Humor is terribly hard to sell. The hard part is finding an editor who has a sense of humor. One editor wrote me that he wanted me to writer for his magazine "but not humor. It's too dangerous!" He meant dangerous for him! What if he published a humor piece and it wasn't funny! My new one-man play will be in Nampa sometime this fall. Your column reminded me of it."

I am so appreciative that two authors whom I respect and enjoy took the time to write me and give me advice. But there is something else here that has really killed the desire to write anything - it's the second reason why these emails were so bizarre. Both people told me that I reminded them of themselves. This is terrible. It means I'm not doing anything unique. That is very un-funny to me.

There's nothing new about grocery shopping, attending a Weight Watchers meeting, being broke or even owning backyard chickens. There's nothing new about writing about these experiences with tongue-in-cheek sarcasm. I will admit, though, there is something inherently funny about the fact that my husband works at a tile distributor, and the tiles on our countertop are starting to pop off. Ha ha.

Every website I've been to that explains how to get published warns the reader that finding (even minimal) success is unbearably rare. Partner this with the fact that 99% of the post-Kindergarten population can throw a sentence together and the outcome doesn't look promising.

And now, just like Tim Woodward and Pat McManus wrote, I'm just like any other writer -having a good time and dreaming of catching a break. I could lie to you and tell you that I write purely for my own enjoyment, but that isn't entirely true. I've been writing trying to prove to myself that I have a unique talent that would garner some sort of recognition. A fat check wouldn't be bad, either.

I remember a conversation that I had with my Dad when I was about 15. He denies this happened, but I'm female so my memory is perfect. I was crying about something that I couldn't do well, and he said, "Kelsey, you're never going to be the very best at something, and you're never going to be the worst, so just enjoy being in the middle."

I spent the next 10 years thinking that was the worst piece of advice he ever could have given me. What kind of parent raised a kid in the 90's with the idea that they couldn't be the best? I've had enough experiences since then to realize that this is priceless wisdom, because it is TRUE. The reason it's easy to reject the idea in the first place is because it is unpleasant. Once you become used to the fact that life ain't no picnic, unpleasant things become more digestible. Which brings me back to the point of this bizarre and depressing blog, life is too often very un-funny.

So I'm not sure when I'll have anything new up. My husband and I are embarking on a brand new level of "getting through by the skin of our teeth" and I admit that the whole thing is pretty hilarious after we've been drinking. I also don't want to go to my grave without sharing my perspective on bra-less temp workers and traveling in style on Amtrak. So I guess there will be more in the future...eventually.
When life is less un-funny.

(c) 2009, Kelsey Robbins