Freaking Tired of Last Year
Glad the new academic year is here!

Welcome back to another addition of the Concrete Abstract.  Some of you know I have not kept my original promise concerning this space and other artistic endeavors I have undertaken. 

I will explain what happened and what you can expect from me in the future.  As you know I work at a new community college where I am currently the department chair.  The work has been barely manageable at best and unrelenting at worse.  To make matters worse, the department suffered from personality problems which made supposedly easy decisions difficult.  I was ready to quit being the chair last year, but ended up becoming the chair in a series of events that split the department from English-ESL-Reading to straight English.

I began this year with shellshock from last year's hellish personality conflict and just hoped to survive this academic year. 

Now the unexpected part, once it was only English professors, the department suddenly became a fun, enjoyable experience.  It was as if a cloud had been lifted.  The department became a sunny, light place where jokes were appreciated and nits were not picked constantly. Neither were backs stabbed nor faces dual sides.

And the whole nature of my job changed.  I felt appreciated and understood.  The burden became a gift.

Today I am not exhausted by the constant problems and the people who created them--those my mother called "crazy-makers."   Now I am able to lead and follow, listen and talk.  I have energy for more projects.

It just goes to show you what happens when the wrong people are involved in the wrong level of your life. 

That's the lesson I learned.  Some people suck the energy from you.   Get away, run and start again.  Trust me. I know.  I couldn't write or run this site--no energy.

So that's the prime reason for my absence--a relentlessly horrible work experience, work overload and exhaustion related to it. 

I feel so much better now.  Thank you for understanding. 

I have a nasty habit--actually I have many nasty habits, most of which I will not share with you, but here's one I will:

  I sometimes go for weeks and months without writing.

This causes me problems and I bet I'm not the only one who experiences this problem.  The truth is I don't value my creativity the way I should.  I place the mundane matters of the day over my creativity.  And my creativity knows it. It knows when I'm giving it jive.

I bet yours does, too.  I'm going to try to avoid that and work consistently.  I know I will probably fail in that--truthfully I have made the pledge before and failed.  But here is another try.  I will treat this endeavor as a creative experience.  Expect more from me here.  I will give it as I do the time to writing.

If I fall down, I may need help.  And you may, too.  I encourage you to submit here.  I will take you seriously and be kind--even if I don't publish your work.

Please submit.  Write something and see what happens.  I will not ridicule you.  I may tell you what I like and what I think will make a poem better.

I will post a poem of my own here every week in a special section so that you can see what I am working on.

I will set up a bulletin board for you to comment on the poems.  Give me a read and tell me what you think.  I believe this situation is fair.  After all, I'm giving you comments.

So welcome me back and I look forward to your participation and submissions.

I enjoy reading and writing.   I like football, kung fu movies, basketball, hardware stores, fixing stuff around the house, and   laughing my ass off. 

I'm a verbal dadaist, an intellectual contrarian and prankster.Things that are too earnest and self-assured bug me.  I like wit, humor and a lightness of heart as well as a certain stance of exploration.

I want this site to encompass the many sides of life--the fun, wit and a humor that seems so lacking in much of what I read.

Don't misconstrue the message here.  I love depth of thought, feeling and art.   Still, I want an almost indescribable element to the work here. Consider it as some do pornography--I know it when I see it.  I know works that contain what I'm looking for, but I cannot always find it--even in my own.

So what's the point of this?  I want to write and read works about this world--the great physical world that we can know and explore.  We live in an exciting place.   Our writing needs to reflect that world and explore how it sits on us.

I guess I'm trying to get to this point--I'd rather see smart poems about NASCAR, bikini wax, blenders, cable television, cut worms, fescue, stick shifts, jaywalking, baseball caps, sludge, grease traps, sandboxes, swimming pools, malt liquor and gas instead of  terrible, typical "poetic" poetry.

I like this world and  poetry.  I like concrete things.  I like objects--they show me the abstracts--that's why I named this site Concrete Abstract.   Concrete first, then Abstract second.  That's my point.

Write about what you like and go deep into it.  Success is there.