Sometimes inspiration can strike out of the blue. Sometimes you have a great idea that needs work. Sometimes you worry an idea in your mind until it is finally smooth and shiny and ready to be put on display. Sometimes an idea will just arrive fully formed and ready to be acted upon. Mostly importantly, you never know which type you will receive or when they will show up. There are weeks I am writing the blog in my mind on Tuesday and there are weeks where I am staring at a blank page on Sunday evening. This week falls somewhere in the middle.
I used my blog’s Facebook page to help me decide if I should go to my 20th High School reunion. I could probably write a post about letting the internet decide life choices for you and the possible results another week. I did end up following the internet’s advice and I went to my reunion. It was fascinating in many ways and it was much like high school itself.
Katie and I arrived early and met up with a great friend from my childhood. Chris is actually one of those people that I really wish I kept in touch with. We had known each other since sixth grade. We rode bikes together as kids. When I ended up at my high school late in my senior year we reconnected, but we weren’t as close as we had been. Most of that was my fault as I was hanging out with a different crowd than he did, though we did share some friends. How I ended up changing schools in my senior year is also a story for another day. Perhaps we could have a couple of weeks dedicated to poor life choices. That might give me time to tell the stories. The important thing is that I was able to reconnect with Chris at the reunion. Whatever had come between us was long lost to the past. The other important part of that story is that Chris has a great website (www.thefirstrun.com). It is an amazing entertainment site and podcast. Chris was always into movies and entertainment and he does an outstanding job on the website and podcast. It’s completely worth ten minutes, or ten hours, of your time. You will be sucked in if you like music, movies, and a bunch of pop culture.
We didn’t stay too long at the reunion. I realized that when you show up late and don’t spend too much time at a school it is amazingly difficult to remember too many people twenty years later. There were a few people that it was great to see again, but much like Chris, I knew then from other parts of my life. Bowling, college, work, or some other activity that existed outside of school jogged the memories. Katie and I did end up having a great night out and dinner.
What does all of this have to do with inspiration? Well, after the internet told me to go to the reunion I felt like I owed the reunion wrap up story. While I was at the reunion and catching up with Chris he asked me about writing for The First Run. He had asked me previously but I had trouble coming up with any good ideas about what to write about. I tend to stick to writing about cycling or weight loss or pseudo philosophical navel gazing. I was incredibly honored to be asked to contribute but I was drawing a blank. On the way to the reunion that changed. I was telling Katie about the site and how there are movie and music reviews and commentary as well as some classic reviews. We also talked about the type of people Chris and I were in high school and classes in general. I complained about something that always bothered me, reading lists. I was always in AP English Lit and I had the worst reading lists imaginable. I am sure that all of the books were classics, but I hardly remember any of them. They were classics in the worst sense of the term, old, dusty and slightly irrelevant in the modern era. I was always jealous of lower level reading lists because they got to swap out The Scarlet Letter with Huckleberry Finn or Of Mice and Men. I remember reading my friends English books in Math classes, which explains a lot about me and my math grades.
Once I got to the reunion and saw Chris I instantly had the thought of what I could write for his site. Books you should have read. I can read and review source material for movies as well as writing about books that you should have read in school instead of the ones you were probably forced to read. I can even throw in a few modern favorites for fun and a blatant attempt to find more readers for favorite authors. It was a great feeling to have a fully formed idea pop into my head ready for use. I can even think of a few books to start with, among them T.H. White’s classic The Once and Future King. It’s a little sad that I decided the best thing I could do was write book reports on my way to my high school reunion.
The other inspiration that stuck was what do to with my blog after the 52 Posts in 52 Weeks Challenge is finally over. It turns out that I love writing a weekly piece. I want to keep that going but I am struggling for topics. I am sure that all writers go through this phase. I think we all write until we find the thing that we should write about. I think I want to tell mostly true stories about my life. I realized that even my wife doesn’t know a lot of my stories and I want to preserve them on the web. Maybe if it all comes together and is interesting to people I can self-publish a book. Either way I find myself wanting to tell some of the stories to capture them before I can’t really remember them anymore. I think I might want to change a few names and dates to respect other people’s privacy as well, but I do want to get them mostly right. I would like them to still be around for my son so he can learn from my mistakes or just laugh with me. A lot. This idea still needs work. I am still going to be playing with the execution for a while and trying to see how it fits in short story form. It’s one of those ideas that needs a lot of refinement.
Inspiration is a funny thing. I’m going to go for a walk and think about these ideas but will probably get distracted and hopefully come up with next week’s blog instead.