David's Boring Blog

  I have not asked him, but I genuinely wonder if Dad even saw that sign as he rode past it. I saw it. The damn sign produced a profound amount of anxiety for the first few minutes of my ride up Parsons Branch Road on my motorcycle. Why? Because Parsons branch has been closed since 2016. It is a primitive, eight mile, one way road that connects Cades Cove with a point on the Tail of the Dragon which just a few miles from North Carolina.  Tail of the Dragon screams challenging motorcycle road. I am going say that it doesn't have a damned thing on Parsons Branch Road for challenge. Granted, most sane people wouldn't even consider taking a motorcycle, much less a street bike with slick street tires up a road that some four wheel drive vehicles struggle... and that is why they fail.  I would be willing to bet that Dad and I are the only two riders that took on Parsons Branch this weekend. I don't know if that says we are short on brains or heavy on balls. I mostly just thought

I remember feeling lonely in the same way that I vaguely recall being a hormone driven teenage boy. That is to say, at some point in time in my life,  I had a deep longing for companionship. I remember feeling incomplete without my friends or girlfriend there with me. I even remember being depressed and feeling unliked, unloved, and unworthy sitting alone in my bedroom messing around on my computer as a means to fill long, lonely hours when I would have preferred almost any type of social interaction.  Those memories are strongest between age 12 and 14. I blame it on hormones and a lack of self esteem. My parents moved us out of the inner city to the country. I went from wandering around the neighborhood with friends to swimming alone in the pool or running alone in the woods. I resented this change which likely added to my angst and a temporary need for external validation.  Even being able to slip into those memories feels silly and a little embarrassing. I put a high value on my sol

 I started this five hundred mile journey on Thursday. If I were actually walking to a place five hundred miles away my progress would be considered laughable. Cleveland Ohio is 495 miles from my house. To put my initial progress in perspective, I wouldn't not have even made it to I-75 N which is 15.1 miles away. I would be discouraged if I had committed four days worth of effort into that travel and not quite cleared nine miles.  That is the thing about perspective. Put in terms of trying to arrive at a destination like Cleveland Ohio I am getting no where. When I think about the fact that I have had a sedentary lifestyle for the better part of three years, walking nine miles in five days feels pretty awesome. The way you look at your progress makes all the difference in the world.  It also really helps to make things as accessible as possible. I have been circling my property. I own a 2.2 acre lot. The path I walk around the perimeter is not quite a quarter mile. I start my walks

 I lack motivation and discipline. I keep circling the idea of improving my health by improving my fitness, but I am struggling to be consistent. The smallest excuse allows me to fall off the band wagon and stop exercising. Meanwhile, my fitness level is a source of shame, frustration, and demotivation. I am not feeling great about myself. It is becoming easier and easier to stay at the house the majority of the time.  I know enough about what has not worked for me in the past to make some smart choices. I cannot run for any length of time currently. I am out of breath in a few steps. I cannot make my exercise regiment complicated. I also cannot allow myself to avoid cardio. I need to walk.  Yes, a song from the Proclaimers in 1989 has become a personal goal for me. I am going to walk 500 miles. I probably will walk 500 more. Why 500 miles? Well, I could say the song is the pure inspiration for the number. That simply wouldn't be true.  I need a goal I can be focused on. I need to

Honestly, I am not feeling a blog post tonight. I am a bit uninspired. I have had a weekend of rest after a couple weeks of dealing with a stupid cold. I haven't had the energy to get my steps in. Though I did get a couple of hours outside yesterday and today.  I spent about an hour each day throwing axes. Today I added a few minutes of firing arrows. I shouldn't be out of breath in the few hundred steps I take back and forth to the target to retrieve axes, knives, and arrows but I do. Two weeks without exercise and with chest congestion is partially to blame. Being grossly out of shape is the proximate cause.   I have done quite a bit of reading. I have been working my way through Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. I switch off between Pratchett novels so that it doesn't get boring. For the past two rotations I have been working my way back through Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series. This has two advantages. First, Hearne is a brilliant writer. Second, I already own

 In 2012 I bought a brand new Nissan Frontier. I had purchased several vehicles before and since, but that would be my first new car. It had six miles on it when I drove it off the lot. I was in love with that truck. It was exactly the type of vehicle I wanted.  It was a 4-cylinder though I would find out it got about the same gas mileage as a V6 averaging around 19 miles-per-gallon. It was rear wheel drive. It was a six speed manual. It had crank windows and the most modern piece of technology was the CD player. This was intentional on my part. I wanted basic. I wanted simple. I got exactly what I wanted.  A few weeks after I got my new truck I pulled into my parents yard and parked in the front yard. The grass was a bit wet at the time. We visited for a time. I got in to leave. My lightweight and underpowered truck could not pull itself off the wet grass. The new was wearing off rapidly.  A bit later I stared backing up in the drive way. The truck lost traction and slid backwards dow

 I had a cool Mother. Since it is Mother's Day weekend I thought I would direct my posting energy at unfolding a few tales about her. Three stories came to mind quickly. I make no promises that I will not stumble across others worth telling in the course of my writing.  *** The first story takes place in my seventh grade year at Whittles Middle School. I do not recall the particulars of what class I was in or how this came about, but I got myself in trouble for pushing a girl. The girl in question had just kicked me in the shin. It was a fairly common thing to have happen. I got detention from the guidance counselor. When I got in the car, I was nearly in tears having to hand that detention slip to my Mom.  She got the story out of me quickly. She put our station wagon (or maybe it was the Honda Civic) in park and told me in no uncertain terms to stay put. I would find out later that she went to the guidance counselors office. Mom attempted to reason with him. When they failed she

When I turned sixteen I had already been driving on a hardship license for two years. The milestone of coming of legal driving age was not lost on me. Appropriately, I wanted to drive. When I turned eighteen I didn't have that may ambitions for milestone to dos. I had a baby on the way. My nod to adulthood was a trip into an adult book store where I bought a nudie magazine. I still have this souvenir. I was married for the first time not long before my nineteenth birthday. I started to understand depression for the first time in my life. I had been married for twenty seven days. I knew without a doubt that we would not last a year. I had almost no hope that I could do anything to stop it. Looking back, I wonder if I had put my faith to work if the outcome would have been any differently. I have felt other people give up and I wonder if I telegraphed my misery.  Our marriage barely got us into the new year and the turn of the century. The divorce and custody cases carried on four ye

 The contents of my bookshelf have changed a lot over the years. If we could travel back to my living room in 2001, you could find yourself browsing through a fine selection of Stephen King, Anne Rice, Jim Butcher, Kelly Armstrong, Terry Pratchett, Terry Goodkind, Robert Jordan, and a smattering of other authors in the fiction, science fiction, and fantasy genres.  I had a lot of books. My collection started in my preteen years and carried into my late twenties. You can amass quite a collection even as a casual hobby. I was never casual in my reading. Between books being borrowed and some getting lost in various moves, I lost quite a bit of pride in collecting physical media. It does not hurt that being able to carry around an entire library in your pocket has been made reality with eBooks. My Kindle had replaced all but a few treasured books.  Until a few months ago I only had one bookshelf in the house. That shelf holds my trade paperback and graphic novels collection. It also houses