Writing, perhaps, has been somewhat of a pipe dream for me throughout the years. The itch, as it were, started early in my high school years. The original source, if I’m being honest (don’t get used to it), was a good family friend that used to visit us each winter to escape the unfriendly winters of New Hampshire. Terry would often come down with new drafts of books that my siblings and I would get to read, which was my primary introduction to science fiction in its written form, and led to long conversations about the future, environmentalism, religion, time, and everything in between. While his books to date have never found a primary publisher, he has been able to self publish many of the books on Amazon today – you can find them here if you are interested.
Of course, I was perfectly familiar with the idea of stories and how they were made, but somehow meeting someone actually creating them seemed like a revelation at the time. In what started out as a bit of hero worship, I proceeded to to start my own book, which, in what would become a very typical trend, made it about three chapters in.
What may have started as an attempt to emulate another’s prowess eventually translated as a means of expression, often in spectacularly angsty fashion. I should say here that those that know me well probably know that I’m not particularly adept at making new friends – more or less, most the friends I’ve made over time have tended to adopt me, and I’m generally horrible at keeping those friendships up to date.
Surprisingly (or not, for those more socially attuned) – this seemed to work perfectly fine for me through middle school. I was never one of the cool kids, but I didn’t particular aspire to be one, and I was content with the pack of friends I had at the time. As things happen, we all wound up going to different high schools and drifted apart for some time. This left me, for the most part, with hanging out with what I would consider “tertiary” friends at best at my new high school.
Much to my surprise, I was able to somehow make that work early in my freshman year – until, one day, it didn’t. That may be a post for another day. But, needless to say, I suddenly found myself very isolated, bullied (at least for a short period of time), and suddenly very withdrawn.
I might have remained in that state except for my English teacher (Mrs. Levine), who, in retrospect, I believe, made me one of her projects – and remains to this day my favorite teacher of all time (TOAT?). Over some period of months, she got me to be more interactive again, talked me into taking her drama class, and encouraged me to write more. So, my horrible attempt at a novel eventually turned to marginally catastrophic short stories and even a play (which won an award at the regional drama competition despite being only slightly less melodramatic than Cats). I participated heavily on Prodigy (look it up for those that don’t know what dial up was) on a board for one sentence stories, which was, at the time, a lot of fun. And my best friend Jason and I published a fanzine called “Raw Current” doing video game review, strategy, etc. before it was fully “a thing”.
Once I got to college, however, I did have to start thinking about “the long game”. Which meant, in layman’s terms, putting off declaring a major for at least one full year while I “knocked off” all the required courses. My next year, I finally decided to declare for Computer Science (computers having been a secondary passion of mine). This lasted for at least a semester, until I took the required “Physics with Calculus” course, which seemed akin to skydiving without a parachute while simultaneously taking the ice bucket challenge. This prompted an “epiphany” of sorts that I should follow my dream of pursuing a creative writing degree.
I did, during the remaining years of college, have some moderate success at writing – I wrote briefly for the school paper (but hated my editor, so stopped). I did some number of poetry readings, and work-shopped some number of slightly less bad short stories. It was the kind of time that, as a much older adult, you realize you completely under appreciated!
All this is a long way of saying that, I graduated and promptly entered the “working force”. I started as a data analyst and quickly learned how to enter data in Excel, then MS Access, then to write VB code with MS Access, then to write ASP code for websites, etc. During this time, I was “firmly committed” to keeping the writing dream alive, and founded an online literary magazine (Tilde), which was the “Geocities site of the day” (again, for those that don’t know what Geocities was, look it up). This lasted, again, about three issues, until the realities of being a young adult with a career and trying to have some social life out-paced the glamour of being an editor.
To make a long post slightly less long, there were some number of attempts over the years to keep the writing dream alive – various chapters of books, an attempt to write a romance novel with my now wife (girlfriend at the time) as a dare that actually made it a decent amount of the way through (and ended up as more of a thriller). As I got busier with my career, this became less and less of a thing, until my last attempt in 2009 to launch a blog.
Then a funny thing happened – everyone was getting on Facebook and social media, and you were able to connect with people that you hadn’t talked to in some time, or friends that lived in different cities that you normally would have emailed or written letters to or called, but suddenly you didn’t need to. And for a time, it was wonderful. And, in some small way, it scratched my itch to write and share my thoughts and have “meaningful” conversations about what we all had for lunch.
And then, along they way, the internet broke. You could suddenly share things on Facebook without having to have opinions of your own. It somehow became acceptable to say things to each other that we had all agreed were not the types of things we discussed when we got together as family or friends. In other words, social media became the equivalent of driving on the Jersey turnpike.
Over these past few years, I’ve become particularly withdrawn for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, just any number of family relationships, especially my two young sons. But, I think this has been a particularly toxic time for America in general. First, with the first truly “social media” president who seemed more at ease ranting on Twitter than walking next door to the press briefing room. And, of course, the completely toxic culture that arouse out of this (of which I’m completely guilty of often contributing to) which led to a number of “echo chambers” where everyone basically found people that shared their exact view points.
Then came the Covid pandemic, which has further served to isolate and divide us as we try and navigate a very difficult, once-in-a-generation crisis at a global level.
But now, with a changing of the guard, I feel, perhaps, for the first time in awhile, some modicum of hope. That is not to say that 2021, or even 2022 will be easy years, but I think we owe it to ourselves and each other to try and find our way back to one another in, if not truly meaningful ways, at least civil ways. And, much as I might like it to be otherwise, I realize my own children will eventually find their way online and to my own posts, and I am suddenly confronted with the type of person they may discover as such.
So, at least for now, I would like to try and create for a bit rather than regurgitate. And thus this attempt to restart this blog. Here’s to making it past the first three posts!
Kevin J Hohl
Nice, Leo.