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 All that remains: in afterlife as 'mainstream' blogger, with what little I know. 20k views |
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Obshchak Some torn to the ground ▼ Read here some old blog entries...  2018 Highlights ▼Brian K Compton   -- ![Merit Badge in Second Time Around Contest
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Congratulations on winning the Grand Overall Prize in [Link To Item #2164876] with your beautiful poem, [Link to Book Entry #933358]. This poem really moved me. Great writing!
Rachel *^*Heartv*^*](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Second_Time_Around_Contest-2164963_14.gif) Short answer, mostly relatable. |
| Hindsight is great and all, but without do-overs what's the point? Learn from our mistakes? How about bound to repeat them? You can have a positive outlook on life, but if you don't find the right situation(s) and surround yourself with the most suitable cast of characters, you're delusional scenarios for a happy life will not come to fruition. I'm not sad about that. I'm becoming a pragmatist and putting focus on the things that give back to me. Family, sports, a few hobbies, but not much else these days. As I get older, I look back at what I missed out on...what is in the past can never be. The shadow of time has lapsed into darkness. I'm spending less time thinking about what I don't have and what I have left to give. I could take up drawing and painting again. But, I have been mostly about instant gratification. Writing is my passion. But work ethic is low on my list. I have lots of great ideas and a lot of dust crowding out that chalkboard. I don't have friends in my everyday life and can't get enough time or attention from my wife to give me the kind of input, motivation, cheerleading that I desire. I need too much. Probably why I feel abandoned by friends. I accept that. It doesn't bother me. I'm a lifelong confessional writer...too real for most. Yet, not honest enough with myself...until now. Haven't been able to tone down my emotions enough in casual conversion. I turn to clowning around, a penchant for word play and observational humor to feel a connection with those willing to offer a laugh or smile. So, I do need human contact like medicine. I desire it more from those who can be like a drug. Like always, I start these blog posts with one thought and follow it with more words to see where it leads. No conclusion seems apropos, though I believe all these open conversations with myself are leading me somewhere. Though, like a dog, I tend to chase my tail. But, I'll eventually tire or need to eat or something else will distract me and I'll be down the street after a car, digging up the neighbors bushes or trying to bite a kid on his bike, because it's all a game. I'm a dog. I seldom think about consequences until I've been snouted with a newspaper enough times to know where I shouldn't pee. Okay, then...(humor, again) |
| Fun new tool I found on the Internet to help me with redundancy. I used it to see what words I use the most and get more analytical with my writing. Maybe this link can help others looking for a different way to improve their writing: http://www.writewords.org.uk/word_count.asp Have fun! |
| "...a not-so-accurate reality that is skewed toward butterflies and roses can actually be a solution to life stress and adversity...Optimism is not merely some kind of fantastical happiness bubble to hide within as reality crumbles all around. It can actually have concrete advantageous effects on reality. Optimism leads to hopefulness and engagement, which leads to greater social success and confidence, which, in turn, leads to happiness - real or perceived..." https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reel-therapy/200909/the-office-the-secret-m... On the other side of the coin, there are people who will get in your ear and tell you everything you long to hear. If you lack admiration from others because you lack it in yourself, you troll for anything that will help with affirmation. You need it like a drug. If you get too much of it, and doses aren't coming enough, daily, you start to act out. Maybe, feel you were lied to. Perhaps, you assume people of good intention were just snowing you. Maybe, they just drank the same koolaid as you. It has a bitter taste. You're running out of metaphors and examples. It's late and you're reaching. A person might be compelled into restraint and compliance when they long to hear a word or two to help keep the delusion going. But reality has stayed too long. This is an unedited look into the mind. |
| I want my head in a musty old tent on an Indian summer day reading old comic books until I have absorbed the last ray of light. I don't know how to say it better. I will keep trying, as long as I have a pen in my hand and a muse in my heart. This late in the year, the blooms don't need my help. I watch them grow with anticipation, each day hoping for some new, brilliant surprise. I planted those seeds and I moved the soil, supplied hydration and whatever else before letting the sun's rays direct it's energy to what I fathered. In my early years as a gardener, I was neglectful. Either I was ignorant of what I needed to do or too stubborn to try the proven methods. With the light dimming and briefer each day, I hope God will shed extra light and rain to extend this final season. I've seen the ravaged leaves from blight and pests that I must protect against. What could be perfect and beautiful becomes a marred and mangled mass with unruly vines and half covered blooms. The dedication and talent it took to spawn my creations from fertile soil makes this shameful gardener fence himself from the world, allowing a peek here and there of what will impress. I don't brag anymore. I don't boast of my potential. What I could have done is in the past. What I have left is only what little time and God's grace will give me. Some days, when I rise, I don't even venture out to see. I've become too distracted with the musings instead of appreciating what I have sown. Then something helps me remember and I take a gander. Usually I'm surprised. Sometimes disappointed. But it's always an adventure. So, when I see the fragmented sentences and the untended words, I realize I could've done more. When I see an unedited poem that could've used more inspection, I realize I could've done more. And that doesn't mean they're still isn't time for me. But I have wasted most of it. I have mused about what I could do and what I could be more than putting those talents to use. I am still happy with me. I don't have to be filled with regret. They say we are supposed to look beyond our own horizons and see what we can find for ourselves beyond where we stand. I have looked for a long time without ever moving. I know there could have been more for me but I do not have the tools to achieve and become accustomed to only seeing my shortcomings. There have been my cheerleaders along the way. I disappointed most, if not all of them. When I look around I feel as though I standalone. That was my own choosing. Does not mean that people abandoned me, but rather I abandoned my dreams. Or ran around aimlessly trying to figure out how to find them until I had to give up and noticed no one else was around. People have written books on how to be successful as a writer among other things. If I have to live by other people's books, then I am not living truly to my own needs. Who should I be like? I should be myself. There are role models that inspire us to try new things, but after the testing we should know who we want to be. I could set goals for another year and say that this is going to be the year. But I would be fooling myself. I think as long as I am seeking what I truly desire to be, I am on a path. If I take myself off the path, I fail. I will go round and round trying to figure out what it is I should be doing instead of just doing. Do I digress now from my rambling? Or should I continue to search in my heart and head where these thoughts take me? More later... |
I don't want to overthink a poem while editing to make it more meaningful. This poem wound up in this week's spiritual newsletter and got me to revisit the phrasing and form of the poem. It lacks little structure, has its symmetry, but used the word 'pass' twice I noticed. I gave it a more themed spin, referencing faith and the rapture. I don't consider myself deeply religious, but find some poems want to send a message as this....
Thanks to those that recently took time to read and point out I had another featured poem. I would have to read each newsletter in anticipation, surprised that my offerings are so frequently noticed. Very humbling and pleasant that others would take the time to make my writing known to others here. Brian |
| The only thing I ever wanted from anyone was their love and admiration and I would give wholly the same. I have felt rejection, the denial, the scorn and more all my life for my mistakes, failures and misunderstandings. Too ashamed and hurt to own up to my human condition or try navigate uncertain conversations, I've sealed myself off from a lot of the world instead of seeking kindness or forgiveness. I do not come equipped with the ability to open doors to the past, but live in the present and look to the future holding dearly to the loves I have now and hope that I do not fail again. That doesn't mean I don't waste time wondering what would have been if I had been a more fully functional being in my past. |
I imagined being challenged by someone to get their attention because they didn't want to go by a name. How would you talk to someone who didn't want a moniker? At first, a college professor or some accomplished writer might choose not to acknowledge me unless I was descriptive enough to say something that would hold their attention like a professor who would get me to talk about the weather without using the standard terms or the word 'nice'. The poem immediately took a turn as I started out by trying to address someone (completely fictional) using senses like smell. I googled fragrances and got ideas for future odes that use methods of identifying fragrances like wine and how scents are described like music. I enjoyed this fifteen minute effort. I think I could write fifty poems a day. Where is my novel? So easily distracted with notions like a child, leaving projects out before picking up another and another until the room inside my head is cluttered and I have no desire to clean and go out to play. Hmm. 😒 |
| I struggle because I am not a good person. I'm told many are not, but I cannot tell who they are. I am humble in your presence, but carry a knife behind my back just in case. Not the kind of words you want to hear from someone, but it's honest. Over time, we all seem to lower our guard to others. I've seen some people who can just open up and talk without a care and I envy them. I question why I am not brave and can find many examples from my past where I have been hurt. I lie and say I feel no pain, know no shame, because I do not want to seem weak, even to myself. I know fear. But, I need love. I want to share it, guarded as I may be. But, when the words tumble out: restrained, tentative. I don't make a good first impression. So, I lie. I create a personality, a honed wit that doesn't have to get too personal. I leave rooms quick and seldom show up when the pressure to perform returns. This makes me a bad person. My intention is to get you to like a shallow, hollow man. To leave the impression I'm knowledgeable, competent. I'll take a laugh, dominate a conversation and leave on top. I win? I'm fooling myself. I know I have no friends, I just pretend. I want to love and can, but am afraid of rejection. I know it's because I never got past those days in high school and what happened to me as a teen. Yet, I have a loving wife and kids. I feel like I created this little community of four and dread each day that goes by that I might let one or all of them down. I don't want to wear a veil, conceal weapons. I want the relief of knowing I can walk around warts and all and either give love or accept there is none to receive. It might be brave to post this, but I'll just go back in my shell and hide until my imposter has the nerve to come out. Know that I love you all. Now I shall lurk and fade out.
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| I was going to add more to this, set it up better. Maybe, another time... If my life were fiction, my name would be Alice. I watch my daughter day after day begin an adventure only to be led down the rabbit hole and leave her half-finished projects everywhere like her dad. She has us to make her clean up after herself, but I can't help wonder what she's meant for if she has a daydreaming father who still can't get his act together to this day. There are too many distractions on our cul-de-sac, with an adjacent pond and park where she returns with her turtles, toads, frogs, and an occasional grass snake. She will pull up every rock looking for bugs, try to trap butterflies, birds, and yes, the little bunnies that eat our plants. She leaves her gear, toys, half-eaten food everywhere. I admit, I help her. I admire her catch of the day before we make her set them free, because we cannot raise a baby bird, especially hatch the ones that were tossed from the high nest. There are lessons to learn, growing up to do, but do people like Maddie and I ever grow up? When is it time to be practical and do what's right and stop fawning at nature and all of its distractions and find a balance in our life that will allow us to be more functional, dependable human beings? There are so many things to awe at. Shouldn't I have learned by now about the trappings of chasing the white rabbit? I have learned a lot in my life but routinely get trapped into notions of what I can ideate without putting in the effort to create at least my Frankenstein, a flawed but complete novel. I am the inventor/creator of musings that I alone can understand but cannot relate, even in context. I dialogue conversations real and fictional in my head, never to see them put to use other than to impose my fiction or version of the truth on another. I'll admit, existentialism confuses me, yet I'm in that mix even now as I write. I want to be grounded. I want to be free. What gravitational forces force me from floating beyond my mind? Fear? The unknown? Don't we already know the harsh realities of failure without trying to explore some place dark and mysterious? Perhaps, if we had that one spirit/life guide. I would guide Maddie anywhere she fears to go, but I am afraid. I don't want to fail her as a parent, like the day-dreaming child in me who never found a true career path. Time to climb back to the surface before I am trapped. I will explore these notions another day, though I may tire of trying. I'm overthinking it, I know. Can't I have a little drama before I rest?
...and no  , I'm not on drugs! I said I was Alice, not Lewis Carrol...(read more)http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rabbit+Hole |
| That guy at work who has better things to do, but... ...causes me to write... Just as there are humble braggers, there are innocent alertists--people who draw attention to someone or something as if they don't know what they're saying could cause doubt or raise concern. An attempt to illicit conclusions that can cause possible outcomes that are designed to distract from real issues (subterfuge) or instigates actions against something that is either something or nothing. |
"At The Hands Of My Creator"  [E] We aim for perfection and fall short in life. Everything is incompletion until we die, though we keep trying. Without aspirations, what would life be? To me, the beauty of this poem is that I don't force a rhyme in the final verse.
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| Perhaps, I write because I need an alibi... https://twitter.com/glaedrfly/status/589848688018731012 https://twitter.com/glaedrfly/status/589714445171064832 Am I in your head, yet? Let me know when you get inside, because I'm locked in here. Brian K Compton |
| Everything starts with good intention, but we lose ourselves along the way... set private 4.2015, from late 2014 re-opened 2020 |
| Though I love them, feel like telling my family as I walk out the door, "I feel my work here is done." Feels like they don't need me unless it is to have someone to dump on. I feel like I would be more productive as a writer if I had more than five minutes alone at a time in my head when inspiration to pick up a pen or keyboard strikes me again. So much negativity. Glad there's a break in weather. Couldn't come sooner. Of course, I say, 'I feel like' because I cannot grasp this situation. Too many details to dissect but it is the same old stories about parenting growing children with a spouse who does not think like me, not on same page. And I don't rule in my roost without her final say. Mix in my idiosyncrasies that put me at a disadvantage and you've got the makings for another run-of-the-mill unfunny sitcom. Blah. Don't feel like blogging more. Want 2014 back when I was full of hope like the plough horse after that dangled carrot. Field plowed, nothing sown. What could have gone wrong begs the reaper? Is there a magic bag of seeds somewhere with the label, 'Never plant these' ?? |
“Hope” is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm - I’ve heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me. EMILY DICKINSON Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999){/times} |
| A wise friend recently imparted some logic that I now pause to remember, when needed: Memories are often flawed, but they do help keep us going during difficult times. To separate fact from fiction, one may never be sure where the truth lies. I have so many fond memories that I look back on whistfully. Perhaps, kind acts that nourished this soul fade from faulty memory. I hold on to moments and reconstruct the associated feelings. Living a lie? Blissful ignorance? What else do I have to hold on to but to think she could have loved me? More than a generation later, we still don't know. I just want to keep these memories alive to fool me to my grave. Perhaps, my life is perpetually in crisis, because the projections in my head feel like they're on a non-stop loop. |
| Surrounding Myself Instead of surrounding myself with others who could lift me up, encourage me, I've surrounded myself with me. Everyone is at arm's length in my personal and internet life. I'll laugh and joke, but won't open up about my personal goals and dreams. So, I create a false persona to insulate myself from prying eyes, surrounded by walls of faceless names and one-dimensional sorts who are only good enough for a few moments discussion of the weather. I met someone beautiful who I could get to know on a deeper, more personal level and let them slip through my fingers because I let myself get in the way. I desire companionship on the most unaffected, unconditional level to purge these demons that tear apart the rooms inside. The daily damage makes it more difficult to rise and search for the sun out my window. I am only compelled by commitment to family. Nothing left for myself but regret that I don't just walk out that door and journey to look for me. I'm candid now. Fifteen minutes later and I might find distraction in a repetitive video game, latest Netflix or Hulu series, or reveries of a boy that dreamed a much better life for the man I am. I regret that I never approached you, reached for your hand and begged your eyes to look deep inside where I hide something beautiful that doesn't dare to come out without your skillful, nourishing light. I'll flail some more in this darkness hoping I'll find you without effort. God, I don't want any more rejection. The little boy has had enough from the man. Quiet, seek softness, while time wrinkles any hope for a future now becoming past. My midpoint, January, 2014. Sorry, for being obtuse. I'm slipping away again. 15 minutes...up. |
| It's not like the old days anymore. Not like we can meet for lunch at the Szechuan place on Third Street, where you educated me on Asian cuisine. And, not far from the University where we spent most of our hours either in class or working at the public radio and television studios, keeping in touch through the campus phone system. It seemed like not a day would go by without a word for one another. And then you found somebody to "date." And when he would travel for his job, which was frequent, then we found time for each other again. When he was around, I was out of sight. But, one day I failed and it all came apart. I needed help and you brought him along to rescue me. And I did not offer my thanks. The words got stuck in my throat. He pointed it out to you, as you said. And I realized I was a threat, in his eyes. So you were upset and I stayed away. Eventually we became friends again. But it was never the same. And then I had to move away and then you had to move away and we grew farther and further apart. I sent the last unresponded letters. I sent the last unresponded emails. I saw something in you. You left me hanging. For years I have not been able to put together the puzzle of the last time we were together and I thought you had extended your hand touching mine on your daybed on accident. But now I wonder, was there a purpose? You did not let me know if you were still in a relationship. I sensed something in you I hadn't seen since the first time I thought there was an attraction and you managed to confuse me. So I did not respond. And now I have regrets to this day that I did not find out. Over 20 years later, I found you and contacted you. And from the emails it seems like you're still the girl I used to know. You are married now. I am married now. And yet, the thing dogs me still, stuck in my brain. It should be harmless to ask. I cannot, should not, open that door, even though I stare at it every day wondering what lies beyond, wondering what I left inside. Just know, whenever I dreamed of you, I felt I could be or do anything I wanted. Without you, I wonder if I'll ever realize my potential. Goodbye again, LuAnne Brian Written long ago, though I could not share with you, he said wistfully, alone to the sky...
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| Been taking personality tests at Psychcentral.com to learn if suspected traits exist and not liking some results. Self diagnosis is cheap, painful and just as subjective, but not overseen by a paid professional who can drag out sessions for years, feeling no wiser for the experience. I'm just going to tweet insights, adding whatever passes for wisdom here and in Notebook, as the psyche turns over each stone obsessively, finding no discernible clue to explain this vain existence. |
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