Writing is fun!

There is nothing I enjoy more than writing. Okay, maybe sex, but writing does give me a high. I can sit for hours pounding away at the keys and when I finally run out of steam I feel exhausted and fulfilled.

How about our president going to Vietnam and making a speech about Iraq. Somebody on his staff has a screw loose. The older I get the more cynical I become on the subject of politics. I am currently reading Between Worlds by Upton Sinclair. This is the second in a series of eleven books dealing with World War I politics and going forward to the cold war. The main character, Lanny Budd, is an interesting youth and I look forward to reading about his further adventures.

Work is not fun anymore. Who am I kidding? It never was fun. Try working in a nuclear power plant, the money is excellent, the people intelligent, and the politics bizarre. Even intelligent people act stupid when they put their own agendas first and ignore everyone else. The longer I work the more Dilbertish situations I see. Believe it or not, my sojourn in the Navy was more enjoyable. Most of the people in the Navy looked out for each other. For sure there were backstabbers, I think that is the worlds third oldest profession after prostitution and politics. But most of the time in the navy I worked with a good crew, we worked hard and we partied hard.

Enough pontification and rambling for tonight. Time to polish up a story for my writers group.

This is my first ramble in my blog. I chose the name Insular Tahiti from a quote by Melville. "For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return."

So what is my half-known life? Where is my, Insular Tahiti, confined inside this not so verdant body of flesh? I have endured the fully known horrors of life: death of loved ones, destruction of Hurricane Andrew, Open-Heart Surgery with a near death experience, divorce, depression, and more. The half-known is more insidious. I was born with a vivid imagination, a wandering daydreaming mind that for some years has served me well. I wrote my first story in 1970 and then quit. I wrote again in 1996 and then quit. Finally after my heart surgery I decided to do something for myself and I enrolled in a Master of Liberal Studies as Indiana University. During the next four years I took many English classes and for my Master's Thesis I wrote a novel that earned me an A. I tried to get it published and after many a rejection letter I put my marketing efforts on hiatus--2005. Now I have joined a writers group and I am slowly getting the resolve to write again.

The ideas I have kept locked up inside my cranial cavity have served the purpose of keeping me sane. Or maybe that is my bane--the fantasy in my head seems so much more pleasant than the outside world. Perhaps that is where the soul rests and seeks comfort.

I must warn any readers who might have stumbled into this blog. I plan on rambling philosophical from my opinion of our Military Industrial--Cheney Driven--World Dominating--Greed and it's conflict with our Christian "love thy neighbor," religious philosophy. I will wax poetical on the difficulty of getting published, the fun and excitement of a first draft, and the emotional turmoil of raising a teenage daughter that does not like school.

There is nothing I enjoy more than writing and nothing I abhor more that criticism. But, alas, that is life.