Carnival Freedom Day 3 (My Birthday)

December 21^st, 2015 (My 36^th Birthday)

Today, like most days, I woke up earlier than the rest and went to the Habana Club to write. After writing for about an hour, two little kids jumped out at me, yelling “Happy Birthday!” While I went to the room to change clothes, Leigha took the kids to get some breakfast. After I found them, I got some food as well. By the time that I had gone through the line to have an omelet made, it seemed like I missed my chance to have breakfast with my family. The worst part of a cruise is probably the lines. There are always hundreds of other people that want to do the same thing that you are planning on doing.

After breakfast, we left the ship for the first time. We were at Cozumel. The last time that we were on a cruise, it also ported in Cozumel, and it was my least favorite port. I thought of it as a port where everything was haggled for. “Hey, what’s your name? Hey pretty lady, would you like some jewelry? Hello family, let me show you something.” On top of that, the last time we were here, we left the port to walk the streets of commercialism in search of a free charm that was provided by being on the cruise.

Carnival Freedom Cruise Day 2

December 20, 2015

Today I woke up at 4:15 thinking that it was much later than it was. At the time, I put some clothes on, grabbed my laptop and went to the Leto deck to look outside and do some writing. It was great being on a ship filled with thousands of people but not seeing other tourists. So instead of immediately writing, I started walking around the ship, exploring and finding shortcuts.

I walked through the different dining areas. I found an arcade with games that were bolted to the ground. There were claw games that you could win electronics. I wondered how low the probability of winning these expensive items was to keep it profitable. There were a few flying games that were fully immersive. One of them, you sit inside a pod and have screens bend around you to make it visually impossible to see anything else. As I sat down watching the demo, I started to feel a bit queasy. It may have had something to do with the ship moving as well. 

Carnival Freedom Cruise Day 1

December 19, 2015

Although it was a Saturday, today started like any other school day. The whole house was up by 6:00 a.m. and going through the routine. Shower, breakfast, brush teeth and out the door by 7:30. Instead of getting backpacks ready, we had suitcases. The kennel that Dude (our dog) is staying at during our vacation didn’t open until 8:00, and we had a four-hour drive ahead of us. We pulled up at 7:59. Emery helped me bring Dude inside and held him while I filled out the regular paperwork. She told me that she missed him as soon as she left.

Leigha woke up anxious and nervous. She was afraid that we were going to arrive at the vet and they wouldn’t have our reservation on file or the down payment that I had made over the phone. When I got back in the car, Leigha was able to check off one more thing from a never-ending list of things that need to be done. As we started driving, I could see her looking up into her mind, scrolling through her checklist, worrying that she forgot to do something.

“We’re packed. Dude is dropped off. We’re on our way,” I said. The farther we got from home, the more she relaxed, either confident that we had done everything or appeased by the fact that it was too late to do something about the as-yet thing that we inevitably forgot to do.

The Writer: A Water Balloon That Plays With Fire

Being a writer is like being a water balloon with holes poked in it. For each hole, you can let a story escape. If you start too many stories without finishing, you’ll drain yourself.  If you don’t let the stories out, you may explode. A good writer can write about anything. They can be given a mundane topic and make it interesting. They can talk about what they know and make up what they don’t. A creative writer can make the story interesting in a way that you never expected.

Have you ever woke up from a dream and thought that it was a fascinating story? Then when you try to tell somebody else about the story, it ends up being uninteresting or confusing. This is what it’s like to be a writer. Every. Single. Time.

The Writer's Lease

Last week, I started my new job as a writer. By this, I mean that I get to sit at home and play pretend. I can make up anything that I want. I talk to myself to hear if written conversations sound real. I get to flesh out stories that have been lingering for more than a decade. I get to work my dream job. But how did this happen? What does it mean to turn a dream into a reality? This blog is meant to be a writer’s journal. Because I can’t post what I am working on, I will mostly be talking about the writing process. My hope is that people can follow me from being an unpublished writer to an author.

When my wife, Leigha agreed to let me pursue a career as a writer, it came with several stipulations. First,