Taking Stock
Sometimes to move forward, we have to look back at what brought us here
This is the first photo I used for my first post of 2022. It seemed appropriate to end the year with it, too.
This is how you make yourself vanish into nothing
And this is how you make yourself worthy of the love
That she gave to you back when you didn't own a beautiful thing
— Jason Isbell, “24 Frames”
I should have known something was up when one of life’s great revelations occurred at 1 a.m. on a mid-1980s weeknight in a place named Jolly’s.
On that humid fall evening, at the tender age of 19, I found myself sitting at the bar, talking to a colleague from the newspaper where I worked. It was a typical late night, post-deadline conversation, fueled in part by the frenetic pace of writing multiple stories for the Texas City Sun and the fumes of knowing you’d have to get up the next day and do it all over again.
Jolly’s was in a converted convenience store halfway between the newspaper and the childhood home I had returned to after my first year of college. The owner, a man named Raymond, always greeted us with a $1 Budweiser and the warning that last call was coming sooner than we thought. Most nights, he left us to our own devices, but occasionally would ask us about marketing ideas to get more business. Cheaper beer was always our default, but that was persistently rejected out of hand.
Raymond was hard of hearing from years of working as an operator at one of the petrochemical plants, so you’d have to yell your response to his questions or get right in front of his face so he could read your lips. We arrived one late Saturday evening and discovered that he had not heard our objections to his plan to bring in an amplified mariachi band that played — loudly — within the four walls of the single-story cinderblock building in a section where the coolers had been.
On this night, however, Raymond was busy with other customers, a couple of his fellow plant workers who obviously had been there since much earlier in the day. One look around the place — the exact type of place my mom desperately did not want me to see the inside of — served as a stark reminder that I didn’t belong there. Especially at age 19.
The problem was I didn’t know where I belonged. As much as I wanted to move far, far away, I felt bound to the comfort of the familiar.
You thought God was an architect, now you know
He's something like a pipe bomb ready to blow
And everything you built it's all for show, goes up in flames
In 24 frames
High school was easy, academically if not socially. I didn’t open a book — at least none related to the subject I was supposed to be studying — and still finished in the top 10 percent of my class of 353. Journalism, speech and drama were my areas of interest — not exactly subjects that put you with the cool crowd, no matter how many football statistics you knew on the side.
I became a social chameleon, caught in a no man’s land between those who were the smartest of the smart and the ones who would or could never leave. By the time I graduated, I was burned out on education. It was no fault of my parents, but I spent my entire childhood in and around public school classrooms and, with my lack of study habits, had no desire to go into the family business. The thought of sitting through four years of college, especially when many of the people I grew up with were already working in the plants, seemed crazy to me.
This is where the fault in my logic becomes exposed. I had no desire to risk my life in a petrochemical plant — and given my clumsiness around all things mechanical, risk is an understatement. I wanted to be a journalist, and belatedly recognized that 70-hour weeks working for my hometown newspaper paid the same as any other minimum wage job.
I was fortunate to work for the Sun the summer after graduation, then filed my first front-page story for the University of Houston student newspaper on the first day of my freshman year. My grades — who knew you had to actually open and read college textbooks? — weren’t great, giving me another excuse to enter the workforce sooner rather than later.
So I returned to the Texas City Sun — not once, but twice over a nine-year period between ages 18 to 27. I fumbled my way through my 20s — moving to Dickinson, Clear Lake, Houston, Tyler, back to Houston, to Pearland — and finally graduated from college. That’s when I moved into management, running the editorial departments of two community newspapers. I learned that I enjoyed the role of the scrappy underdog, a persona I first adopted in Texas City.
I was learning a lot, but I needed something more.
This is how you see yourself floating on the ceiling
And this is how you help her when her heart stops beating
What happened to the part of you that noticed every changing wind
And this is how you talk to her when no one's else is listening
And this is how you help her when the muse goes missing
My creative muse has been AWOL recently. I’m not sure why, but it periodically goes off on its own and I have to find a way to get it back.
I went out to get something framed at Michael’s this morning and heard “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas,” part of the nonstop holiday music that has been piped throughout the store since Halloween. For some reason, it made me think back to that night long ago at the bar. Getting the poster framed and searching for some musical reference that would not bring out my inner Scrooge prompted the Isbell song and the line about the muse.
And a few hours later, now we have this.
Even though it has been almost 40 years, I vividly remember that night at Jolly’s. More important, I remember how I felt — trapped, not in charge of my life, lost and not knowing what the future would hold.
For the longest time, I tried my best not to look back at the past. I kept my head down and went from one job to the next, at each stop learning new skills that would serve me well even as my chosen profession was withering away. When I became bored, I looked for a new job, thinking there was no more learning to be had at the current one.
It wasn’t until I was 28 that I left Texas, returning to my roots on occasion to see my mom or to report a story. At 30, I decided that I no longer felt could pretend to be something or someone I was not, got a divorce, and soon after remarried and changed careers. That decision — to leave the comfort of the familiar — is when life took me in an unexpected, challenging and yet fulfilling direction — one that has given me more opportunities and responsibilities and joys than I feel like I deserve.
When 2023 arrives in a few days, it will start a year filled with milestones. It will be the year our first grandchild is born. It will mark my 40th year as a “professional” writer, 30 years since I left my home state, and a decade since I became a freelancer.
Where has the time gone? Where are all those frames?
I ask myself that question often, safe in the knowledge that I’m no longer afraid to look back, even as I still try to understand the things that brought me to this place in life, and the people I’ve been fortunate to meet along the way.
Thanks for reading about my journey.
Housekeeping
This is likely my last essay before the calendar turns. I vowed at the start of the year to write more often in this space and didn’t realize just how much I had done until I started looking back at 2022.
In all, I posted more than 70 entries to my Substack page, in addition to the 11 magazine articles and six columns I wrote as a freelancer. I spent at least one night in seven states — Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas — and that doesn’t count the numerous trips to various events in the DMV.
Earlier this week, I decided to do a better job of organizing my Substack website to make things easier to find. Now you can choose to read stories filed under six different tabs: “Visual Stories,” “Education and Culture,” “Parenting and Family,” “Stage Dad,” “The Music Diaries,” and “Concert Reviews.” I’ve also updated the “2022 Magazine Writing” section so it is current.
I realize this is a busy time, but I hope you’ll take a moment and check out some of the pieces you may have missed.
Here’s to a fun and safe holiday for all of us. Back in the new year.
Thanks for sharing your reflections