Going up

This is a retrospect of the last two and a half weeks of my writing life thus far; after all this blog is a chronicle of the writer's life, though it seems to get lost in dreams of my beautiful wife: whom I guess is no longer a mystery to this page.

I have written 12 local news articles for three different online news sources, 4 articles for ehow.com and livestrong.com, and have kept this blog going full steam ahead, which has peaked a interest beyond what I thought possible in this short time.

I continue today to send letters out to editors and find more work, more places to write.

So why update this blog in this way? Because more than anything this morning I want to tell you to do what you want. It is beyond cliche to say follow your dream in life. So I add some expletives and a revised addition: Get out of your funk, wake the fuck and be who you are, what you know you are, stop being what you think other people want you to be, and roll......to your destination with your name in shining lights. Ask yourself where you are going in life? Up, down, or nowhere? Somehow nowhere seems worse than down.

I'm going up. I'm seeing the whole world in a new way...up close and personal. Last month I would have cringed about going to an old people's home or a ribbon cutting ceremony for a new town building. Covering those stories though opened my eyes to sacrifice, humility, graciousness, and pride in making this life around us a better place than it was yesterday.

Writing about John Deere Toys or Baseball gloves for ehow and livestrong.com added to my resume/portfolio, but it also added to my bag of writing tools and personal perspective. I had to think like me the consumer, not me the writer, writing about shit I don't care about. I had to care about the people buying those things, so the article would hit the money.

And my family, well we're not rich yet at all, and I'm no perfect dad or husband, but Holly and I are closer, as we take this ride together. My biggest fan and critic of this blog is my best friend, my wife. When I start writing in the morning she will tell me with brutal honesty what she thinks. I don't always take a different course, but when I have it was worth it.

In seeing things differently, with an eye of humanity, I believe I am fully learning human. It is so easy to center my own thoughts and actions around a selfish pattern, but in breaking out of that mode of being, I am bending the iron bars that have kept me locked up inside Matthew David Campbell since, wow, a long time now, and I'm walking out of that cell and into your world, and it's such a great wonderful world to be walking into.

I now feel like I'm carrying my world on my shoulders, but it seems much lighter, not like a ton-weight, but like a big jolly world, with a fat smile on it's face: and I'm smiling too. I'm trying harder to be closer to the people in my life I should have been open to for so long. I'm a craftsman of the written word. I am so happy and proud to write that. I am beyond excited about the readership of this blog, and that you are with me on this journey. I am working hard to keep your interest, so I will venture often within myself and out into the world.

This morning my biggest concern is that everyone reading this blog is living your dream. I wasn't happy till stepped on a colorful balloon that advertised Joy Ride: Your Life is Waiting. I stepped out of my shoes and into my life saying up please!

So up is where I am headed. Today I want to share this poem below. I wrote it for my Holly girl and read it at our wedding. She gave me life, I give her the world.

          Family Tree

Autumn birds fly like waves, like an ocean on a blue sky,

Bare trees like lichen…I’m driving to see you

and the boys, my girl in your belly, all of them ours…

Your belly rising like a mountain, like life your belly

Curves so lovely, and your curves are the curves of the world…

When you shake you shake my world, when you quake

I crack at the seam…when I talk I talk of love, when I talk

Of love I talk of you…when my speech and my hands freeze,

my feet encased in blocks of ice,

When my fire glows dim, I burn for you…  

Driving like Jersey fish through the ocean of my life,

In a sea of cars, our lives come thundering like waves

To each other’s shore…I move Earth for you, lay water

At your feet, blow cinnamon in the air around you,

plant my foot in the ground…I love you with the shovel…

Bury my heart in dirt…I give you the tree…