Writing – Regular Guy

I Did It!

brian — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 15:46:10 +0000

Finally! I have achieved my goal and blogged every single day of March. This silly little challenge was just a personal effort to see if I could get back into the routine of something I had kind of pushed to the background.

But I succeeded and now have 31 days of fantastic content for you to enjoy.

Oh, yeah, right. There’s something like 11 or 12 days worth of posts up there. I forget and don’t feel like going back and re-counting.

I still feel proud of that accomplishment given how sporadic I have posted over the past few years. I got a few thoughts out of my head and will hopefully find some sort of rhythm in the future.

There were a few things that contributed to me not making the goal:

Work has just been a bear for a while now. We have another person in my department so that helped some, but it’s still kind of crazy. That brings about mental fatigue that makes writing a chore since I write a lot all day, even if we’re just talking about e-mails.
I continue to throw myself into Football Manager content and question whether this should become a Football Manager blog or not. I love the game and have enjoyed making content, but am not sure whether I want to add writing about it to my plate. So I am focusing more on YouTube and streaming on Twitch for now.
Things started to peter out around March Madness. That is not a coincidence. Even once that big weekend is done, my mind is still reeling. I wouldn’t change a thing.
I am just plain lazy and would rather knock out a quick Tweet or Facebook post.
COVID fatigue is still real, y’all.

But I will probably fill this space with my words of nonsense more in the future. I have a personal challenge in mind for April. It will likely not result in something for public consumption, but it will cross something off the list of things I have in my brain and need to get out.

The Impetus

brian — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:17:16 +0000

Like so many other people, I remember the particulars of 9/11 very clearly. I remember hearing on the radio – I was streaming the BBC at work – about a commuter plane crashing. I remember an old boss talking about how we had to find experts (it was my first PR job) to go on TV, but I didn’t think it was that big deal. Then I remember hearing the real news and everything changing.

I remember :

… the look on the face of a law school professor who knew people working in the towers. Our office had the only TV and became a hub of activity.

… the hasty e-mail from another professor whom I had met only a few days before telling me he had a TV interview set up since he worked in terrorism under President Clinton.

… spending a bunch of time cancelling a press conference on 9/12 because we just knew it wasn’t right to go on.

… spending even more time getting info about the press conference topic to reporters who knew they would need something non-terrorism related at some point in the week.

… frantically trying to get a hold of my wife after hearing a plane went down in rural PA. They didn’t specify where in PA and we live within half an hour of Site R and Camp David so I was losing my mind. She had just taken our 1-year-old out to the playground to avoid all the bad news.

… the eerie feeling on the streets of Baltimore as I headed to catch the Metro to my car. I walked by the federal courthouse while dropping off documents related to the press conference and saw nothing bu heavily armed guards. I felt safe and terrified at the same instant.

Of course, there are many more memories, but one that happened gradually over the next few days was that I needed to get out of my funk. The attacks made all of us look at life a little differently. I didn’t like parts of my job that much. Being a parent was taxing. My commute was a pain. And my Mom had started to have some health problems. So I needed a way to kind of get things off my chest.

That’s how Regular Guy came to be. In October, we were at a cookout at a friend’s house. She still worked at the paper in Hanover as an editor. I said, very simply, “I think I want to write a column.” She agreed it would be a good idea and told me to start sending her something each week. She’d fit me in the Sunday paper.

Almost eight years later, now I have a site where I blog, I had done podcasts, I have written for other web sites, I am two jobs removed from that other job, and I’m still cranking out 500-ish words each week about everything and nothing whether you like it or not.

I’m a Weiner

brian — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:12:15 +0000

A fellow PR guy in Baltimore has started a web site called Weekly Writing Assignment. The premise is simple – he puts out a writing contest every week and shares five finalists before picking a winner. Piece of cake. No prizes, just an exercise for the writing muscles.

I did not get a chance to do the first assignment and almost missed the second deadline, but plopped myself down for a good 20 minutes or so and cranked out the 300-word assignment describing someone looking in a mirror.

I didn’t have much trouble because the character is one from a novel I have written and re-written over the past few years so he pretty much lives in my head (and will continue to do so until I get the damn thing published). This was totally new stuff, not anything lifted from work I had previously done.

And I was picked as a finalist. I’m pretty psyched because I always want people to see what I am writing. Why else would I go through all this. Plus, it’s fiction and as I hopefully prepare to enter a grad program in fiction this fall, I need every little boost I can get.

So go to the site and check out my story. Check out the other finalists too and take a look at the Week 3 assignment to see if you are game. It’s longer than the first two and something I might not have the time to tackle, but what do you have to lose?