Announcing a Project

New stuff is happening in my life almost faster than I can process it, and I'm Taking Action to help myself with that. I'm starting two new blogs and asking for your help to keep me going (no $ involved). I've got two things that I've got to get out; one as in "out of my system" and the other as in "out and into the world." I'm going to try to pull off the process without coming off like any of the following:

• a pompous asshole
• an out-of-control crank
• a disaffected scholar with a wacky pet theory
• that red-faced old man with the cardboard sign covered with multi-colored, hand-scribbled lines from the Bible who used to hang out around the Illinois state house in Springfield.
• Donald Duck

Here's what's going on:

I've been going through some of what the Chinese call Interesting Times in my interior life. As I wrote to a younger friend the other day, at 62 I've reached a point where I no longer have the stamina to continue to ignore the pain and the grief that I've carried around all my life about what was done to me as a child and the grief I feel about the loss of the entire life I didn't live as a result of it.

At the same time, and on a totally different subject, I've got what I think is a really important "message" that I'm going to try to write about (with your help) as clearly and concisely as I can say it -- to the point that it actually becomes a publishable book (or something). Wow, "message" is a heavy word. Very portentous. But the message itself isn't. The message itself is incredibly simple; so simple that in the history of mankind it's been universally ignored by nearly everyone except "crazy people."

We're at a point in the world, and in America specifically, where if we continue to ignore this simple fact, we have the ability to screw this poochie to a point beyond repair. There really are two Americas* and they exist in very different realities, and between those realities exist critical irreconcilable differences.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. That's a paragraph from the foreword to the book. First I'll expose the simple reality, and then I'll explain how to use it to save the world (starting with America). But this post is about revealing the project(s), the difficulties that stand in my way of pulling the whole thing off, and the kinds of things I'd like you to do to help me do that if you're interested in coming along for a crazy ride.

Mechanics

I'm not going to try to do all that in this space. The Grumblebear is going to keep grumbling and posting occasional current stuff here. To facilitate The Project, I'm going to start two new blogs: one that will be a mix of dumping the shit about my childhood trauma and how it's impacted my entire life and also some writings about the process of writing the second blog. Most of the readers here are personal friends and many have similarly screwed up family backgrounds. You're invited/encouraged to participate in this blog (working name: Blog P1). I'm pretty sure parts of my story (both my autobiographical shit and the part about writing the book) will resonate with parts of yours, and if that happens, please join in. The second blog (Blog P2) will be the book itself in working-draft form and your participation via the comments section there would be equally welcome.

Help!

Something you can do right now to help is to share any information/experience you've got about a good place to host this stuff. I'm looking for a space with tools a whole lot less basic than what I've been able to figure out on Blogger -- or at least any of the blogger templates I've been able to find. I've got a blog tool on my personal web site and I'll fool around with it a little bit and also dig a little deeper into blogger while I'm waiting for feedback in comments or email. When I've got the right host and/or template, I'll post the URLs here.

I don't intend to go into a big deal about my ADD in this post, but I've written a bit about how it trips me up elsewhere on this blog, and ADD is the reason I'm asking for your help. I've learned to accomplish stuff in spite of the roadblocks it throws up, and an essential part of what's necessary for me to do that is interaction with friends (or friendly strangers). So if any of this sounds like it might be interesting to be a part of (or you just love me enough to give it a try) I'd be honored to have you along for the ride. I promise you can get off the wagon at any time, but I can't promise to return you to where you started. ;-)

(More when the blog sites are up.)