How do you know if you love something?

I am lucky: my wife is my one true love. I knew I loved her quite soon after I met her: I knew because she made me feel as though my heart were swelling in my chest when I looked at her, when she smiled at me; when I held her, everything went still, and she was the only thing in the universe. A unique circumstance, considering my normal habit of overcontemplating everything; my mind is never, ever still. Except with her. That kind of physical and mental response seems pretty conclusive: anyone who can have that much power over you is someone you love.

Okay. So that’s what love feels like. But is it all that love feels like?

I just lost my first dog, Charlie, this past summer. He was the greatest dog in the world, and the finest pet, the finest companion, I’ve ever had. Losing him broke me down in a way that has not happened to me before, in my recollection — though again, I’ve been lucky, and have lost no one close to me to death; only my grandparents, and only at an advanced age and after long illness. I cried at my grandfather’s funeral, and I felt sad when my grandmother died, and still do when I think of her — sadness to me feels like a sort of bowing in the path, a dip in my thoughts: things slow down, and I have to pause and then work (wait) my way through it, come back up out of it. Going through the moment, my mind dwells on what made me sad — with my grandmother, I remember her presence, remember her taking care of me for a month the summer I was six or so; I remember her bun, her glasses, her smile, her housedresses, her coat. I think about this, and let the images run through my head; then, at some point, the pause ends, the thoughts run out, and I come out the other side: I usually take a deep breath, maybe run my hand through my hair; something to mark the change, to identify and solidify the moment. That’s sadness, and it passes in time; sometimes the dip, the pause, is long, and sometimes it’s very short. But the grief I felt, and still feel, for Charlie, is harder: a hole appears in my chest when I think of him, right at the base of my ribs where my diaphragm is, and it becomes harder to breathe. I want to do the same thing I do with sadness, and think of specific memories of him, but I don’t dare — I think because I don’t know how long that chasm would last, how many thoughts of him it would take to get to the other side, and just how low I would sink on the way across. When we got home, my wife and I, from having Charlie put to sleep (And that’s part of the grief, of course: it was sudden and unexpected, it happened in the middle of the night at the end of a five-day move across three states — literally the first night we spent in our new home in Tucson, Arizona — and his suffering was acute, and we had to make the decision, and then I held him in my arms, and he died. And thinking of that makes my jaw and lips tighten and my eyes prickle a little bit, even now.), I wept. I wept hard. It wasn’t the only time I wept for him.

That dog, I loved. I felt exactly the same way about Charlie that I feel about my wife (Well, not EXACTLY the same way), with the same physical sensations, the same narrowing of the universe, the same silence in my mind, the same sense of completion, of peace, when I held him in my arms. I loved my boy. I truly did. And still do: perhaps that’s the source of my hollow feeling inside, the longing to hold my dog, and the knowledge that I never will again.

So okay, that’s what love feels like. But that’s not the only way it feels. Is it?

We have a new dog. We adopted him from the shelter almost two months ago. He is very sweet: he wants to cuddle, and he likes to lay close to me when I am on the couch or in bed — actually, all the time, even when I am sitting in my desk chair, which is a little awkward. He is soft, and he is endlessly cute. He likes to play, and he gives kisses, and he drapes himself, cat-like, across my legs when I lay down, or in my lap, if he can fit.

I don’t feel about him the same way I feel, or the same way I felt, about Charlie. It feels close: I love to hold and hug him, and he brings me a moment of peace and quiet; it’s just not as heart-thumping, not as intense, and not as frequent. Sometimes, when I say I love him, I feel like I’m only saying it because I expect to love him, because I’m supposed to love him; not because I really do. I know I don’t dislove him, if you’ll forgive the awkward neologism (Hey, we have dislike, and it’s a common way to describe a certain fine gradation of feeling — I don’t dislike snakes, but I’d never have one as a pet — so why not “dislove?”), but I don’t feel the same thing I felt for the dog that I knew, without a doubt, that I loved.

Is that because I am still grieving for my best friend? Is it because I don’t love this dog as much, this dog doesn’t suit me quite as well as Charlie did? Is it because he’s only lived with us for less than two months? Will I grow to love him as much as I loved Charlie?

Or is love always different?

If that’s the answer — and I suppose it makes sense, though I also can see it the other way — then it answers the question that started me on this road, which was this: do I really love writing? Does writing complete me, give me something, some peace, some experience of entirety, that I cannot get somewhere else? Is that why I write? Or do I write because I don’t know what else to do with myself? Do I say I love writing because I expect that I should, but I don’t actually?

Here’s what writing does for me. It makes me feel focused, in a way that doesn’t often happen to me: I have a very busy and fairly disjointed manner of thinking, and while I may be raveling a particular thread, I am also usually distracted by things around me, and also often humming a song, or repeating a section of lyrics; I often find myself thinking, “Okay, so:” and then trying to recapture the train of my intended thoughts. But writing is the Ritalin for my attention-deficient brain: I focus on this. It slows my thoughts to the specific word that I am writing, and only a few words ahead of it; I go back and look at the words I just wrote whenever I pause, and I am able to flow directly into the next phrase without pausing to finish the chorus of “Take Me To Church” by Hozier, or “Take On Me” by A-Ha, or whatever the hell it is that got most recently stuck in the musical part of my brain. I can pause to drink coffee, and then go right back to it.

I like that. I find it incredibly helpful, since normally my thoughts tend to cycle around and around and around and get nowhere in particular. But I can accomplish the same thing with talking to my wife, or even my students, in the right circumstance; it makes me focus on what I’m saying, and I finish thoughts, and I figure stuff out, and I have many little epiphanies. I feel like I’m learning when I write. I often don’t know where a piece is going to go when I start it, but I almost always like where it ends up. Like this one. And that’s why I wanted to get back to blogging, I suppose, because it lets me follow a single thought, whereas my books force me to get back onto the same path I was on before, generally speaking. I like the short moments of focus that this allows.

But do I love it? I don’t love writing like I love my wife (And I’ve just realized that I was far more effusive with describing my love for my dog than I was my love for my wife, Toni [Also realized I hadn’t named her, only talking about her like a possession, which she is not]; this is because my love for her is for her, and not for public consumption, and because any specific descriptions of how she makes me feel would go places that would make me feel awkward.), and I don’t love writing like I love my dog. But it’s not because I’m grieving for some other lost vocation, and it’s not because some other vocation is my real soul mate.

So are there different kinds of love? Or is love what I feel for Toni, for Charlie; and what I feel for writing needs some other name?

You know what? It doesn’t matter. I was still thinking about why I do this, because that last post didn’t really resolve it for me. But I have an idea now about why I write: it makes my brain work better. It makes the noises in my head shut up. I suppose, then, that it fixes what might be my deepest flaw: I am a thinker who doesn’t usually think very well or very clearly; not in my own head. [Revelation: this is because I need leisure time, as Ray Bradbury said in Fahrenheit 451. I need to float down a river, like Montag, and look at the stars.] Writing makes me think right. And I even know why I prefer it to conversation: because the revelations I come to are permanent, are written down; I can go back and read them again, and remember the feeling of insight and understanding that came with them — my heart vibrates to that iron string, to quote Emerson. And I had some idea already about why I write novels: because I love novels.

But that’s a different love. And thus a different subject.

Oh — and sorry about the pun.

So I’m back, back online, back to the blog. Why, you might ask?

Who am I kidding? No one’s asking. No one’s reading this. I have thought about sharing this blog with my friends on Facebook, which is the only social media network connection I have, but so far, I have nothing on here worth looking at. The first post was entirely for me. This one is, too.

I suppose, then, that I’m asking myself. Why am I here?

The main reason is that I need to write. I have found that when I write every day, I get more written. Jesus, that’s profound.

That’s not what I’ve found. I’ve found that having ideas doesn’t make you write, and wanting to be a writer doesn’t make you write (Totally started writing “right” there — “Wanting to be a writer doesn’t make you right.” Also true. Also something I should address.), and having something you want to say doesn’t make you write, and even sitting down to write doesn’t make you write. You make yourself write.

Sorry: wrong pronouns. I make myself write. I make myself write because I like myself more when I write. I like looking back at what I have written, especially after a time has gone by; I find myself quite witty and often insightful. I get all my jokes. I agree with all of my observations about the world.

I don’t know if other people do.

I’ve been told that people enjoy my writing, and yet, at the age of 40 and having written fairly prolifically for the last fifteen years, I have never had my work accepted for publication or representation. I have been published, because I published myself; and though it didn’t make me much money, it did make me happy. I want to repeat the latter result, and improve the former.

Because I plan to self-publish my work, I need to get deeper into social media. I need to promote myself. I need to advertise, I need to network. I don’t like that I need to do this. I don’t want to do this: I am an introvert. I hate meeting people. Which is funny, because I went into a very people-centric career, as a high school English teacher, and though my writing has so far been largely echoes in an empty room, still the intent of the endeavor is to communicate. It is to speak to other people, and to have them speak back. So really, the networking? It’s just more writing.

So that’s why I’m here. Because I intend to write every day, 500 words at least; more frequently that will be my fiction, but not today. Today I am here.

I still don’t know why. I mean, I know why, but I don’t — I don’t have a reason why anyone else would want to read this. So while I have a reason to write, I don’t have any reason to be read. Seems like I need that.

What I don’t want to do is become yet another one of these people that use social media in order to be social. They call themselves writers, but it seems like all they write is self-help instructions on how to be a writer. I don’t want to write writing about how to write about writing writing. I don’t want to sell people my system of making a living as a writer when my system of making a living as a writer is selling people my system. I do want to make a living as a writer, but that’s my concern, not anyone else’s.

I also want to be alone: a state that does not exist often enough in my life because I absolutely love being with my family, and given the choice to be alone or to spend time with them, I choose them, every time. And then I suffer (which in turn makes them suffer as I get snappish and pissy) because I don’t choose me-time. But writing is a solitary act: it’s just me and the page (the screen), me and the words, and nobody else until I choose to let them in — which, if I have any actual advice to give, is what I would tell people to do: do it, and do it quickly. Don’t think about it. Don’t worry about how they will take what you have to say; it is easier to apologize than to ask permission. As soon as you finish writing, publish. Don’t think twice.

Of course, that’s coming from a guy whose thoughtless publication of unpleasant sentiments very nearly got him fired and banned from his profession. But I always thought that would probably be a good thing.

Anyway: I am here so that I can be alone, and so that I can find a way to share what I have to say — and I really do have things to say — with the world at large, with as many people as I can connect to through words. I am here to be alone with other people who are alone. I will be very happy if I can figure out what will make you all come here and share my space and my mind, but I don’t have any problem with being told what I should say. Because I don’t have any idea if this is the right place for me to be, and the right way to go about accomplishing what I want to accomplish.

But the only way to write is to make yourself write. I have to make myself write. And I do it to communicate with others, and that means that I need to make it available to others. And I have found that I shouldn’t think too deeply about it before I go ahead and throw my words out into the world. Though I have realized that I probably shouldn’t do it when I’m angry. Writing? Good. Publishing? Good. Calling people assholes? Probably should be avoided. Like assholes.

I wish I knew what to say.

I’m back.

It’s been a long time, and I think it will be a long time still before I am comfortable doing this, again. But I need to.

I wrote hardly at all, in 2014. I wrote a book in each of the two prior years — but almost nothing, last year.  I can’t let that happen again.

I wrote a blog several years ago mocking the idea of New Year’s Resolutions; because what makes this day so special? It’s cold and sunny here in Tucson, where yesterday it was cold and rainy. (It actually snowed last night — more about that later.) Now I have to remember to write 2015 on checks and forms, where yesterday I had to think to remember to write 2014. I’ll struggle just as hard to remember the month and the day — though today will be pretty easy, I think. Then again, I won’t have to fill out any forms today. Irony: the only way to start the new year.

Speaking of which. There may be nothing special about January 1st as a day to make promises, or to step onto a new path; but then again, it’s no better or worse than any other day. Seven years ago I quit smoking on December 28th; a little over a year ago I started writing a novel on November 1st; today, I’m going to start this.

I will write every day. Every single day. Not just for the year: forever. Or at least for all the ever I have. Sometimes that writing will be online. I plan to start Twitting (@theodenhumphrey), and I will be linking my longer works to this page, as well. I plan to include some teacher materials, at some point, and anything else I can find to put on here. I don’t know what to call this blog, or how to describe it; I want to use it to market myself, and to communicate, and to connect to other people, particularly to other artists and other pirates. Whenever I think about this website I plan to build over time, I think of it as “Dusty Takes Over The Internet.” Though I don’t expect that. I don’t expect to conquer anything other than my own inertia, my own introverted avoidance of joining the global community. I expect that this will continue to develop and change as I go forward. The important thing is: every day. Every. Day.

Here goes.