I used to have a deck.

I had great plans for my deck, so I had a big one built. Besides the deck I needed to install a sliding door where the windows used to be. Oh, and Mr. Deck Guy, as long as you’re here, do you do hardwood floors? Yeah, the dining room would look great with nice hardwood floors. How much? Geez. Oh well, go ahead. That’s why they invented lines of credit, right? It’s worth it. That deck is an investment. I’m going to be out there all the time, relaxing … having parties ….

(This post is really about my blog.)

For a while I kept to my word. Used that deck a lot. Sat out there on summer afternoons, protected from the sun by the thick trees that stretched high into the sky at the end of the yard that separated my property from the cornfield. The deck was working out just fine, and I shared it with family and friends — anyone who was interested in stopping by and hanging out. 

(I like writing, so I created a blog and wrote stuff and shared it with everyone I knew.)

I had some good parties out on that deck, and plenty of little get togethers. And like most decks, it gave me a chance to have some quiet time just for me if I wanted. Like Emperor Palpatine loved to say, everything was working out just as I had foreseen.

(The more I wrote in my blog the better and easier my writing got.)

There was one party I had out there that was huge. I invited all my hockey buddies and cooked a ton of food and bought a massive amount of beer and ended up with an overflow crowd. By that time I’d had the deck for a while, and I remember thinking that this party was the culmination of what I wanted my deck to be.

(Confidence in my writing led me to self-publish a book of short stories: Punk Party and Other Accounts of Mischief.)

Just before I held that big deck party, backhoes and bulldozers had claimed the cornfield just beyond my yard. A new housing development was going in. Along with the beloved quietness and the privacy the cornfield provided, the bulldozers took away one other item. The trees. Dark, tall, and thick during the summer, they were now gone. No longer blocking the unrelenting afternoon sun.

(I have no blog comparison here … unless you say that putting your creative work out there for all to see can feel like standing naked in a field with the sun beating down on you. Burning you. Judging you. Okay, so there is a comparison.)

(Two months after I published it, this is how I felt about my book. I had put myself out there, come what may (the sun), and I had hoped there would be more reaction. Except for stalwart family and friends, the silence was like ripping away the tree line. That feeling seeped in to how I felt about my blog … and all my writing.)

As soon as those trees were gone for good, the deck began the second half of its life as a useless hulk of 1,800 pounds of rotting wood. I tried to save it. Got an awning but it provided minimal protection. I knew. I stopped taking care of that deck because I had lost the will to make it work.

(In the year after I published by book, I wrote three blog posts. The year before that: forty-two.)

Say what you will. Maybe it’s a new attitude for a new year. Maybe it’s because I have a better plan this time. Maybe I’ve allowed enough space between me and Punk Party to realize it’s actually pretty good. (And what did I expect? That promotion would just magically happen on it’s own? How could I be so old and so naïve?) Maybe doing something different (completing my radio play and knowing it was good) has something to do with it. Maybe I’m beginning to kick this Imposter Syndrome I’ve been dealing with my entire life. Or at least I’m learning how to ignore it.

Last summer I finally tore down my deck, leaving an empty patch of land — itching for a new beginning. 

(I’m talking about my blog again.)