Another tinkle in the wind

Seventeen years ago today, I think I did my first paid gig for Charlottesville Tomorrow. That organization was created to report up close on local government.

I quit about five years ago because the new director was hired to oversee a plan to stop covering local government. One day I'm going to write out the full story, but it's too small a town to do that now.

As a sign of how little the new director cared about what came before almost all of my stories are now "Uncategorized" and many are formatted poorly. That person is gone now, and I'm glad of this, because I hope to rebuild a connection to the people there.

But the thing is: I know why the organization wanted to be less of a watchdog and more of a hill-shouter. There was a sense that there was more money to be made leaning in on stories. And gosh, what if one of their Board members also stood to make a lot of money off of the zoning rewrite currently underway?

That person told me I would never get the job of director. I believed him. He took away my power and took away my platform.

Good thing I've built my own and the story is right there waiting to be reported. But I'm not petty. But I am a bringer of truth and one day I'll tell this story plainly.

For now, though, I bring you the 2006 candidate forum from 17 years ago today, still up at Charlottesville Tomorrow even though the organization you see now is only five years old.

Check out this link.

One hundred and eleven days left

Today I finally returned to Smith Aquatic and Fitness Center after an over three year absence. The immediate reason to go today is an inability to shower at my house. My house is old and the pipe that takes used water, as well as the solids in that used water, has collapsed. It needs to be replaced.

Nothing lasts forever, but many of those items are components. Components can be swapped out as they wear down, but the logistics of replacement can be trying or tedious. I've been trying to figure this out.

Somehow, I've been ignoring my body and its physical health. I signed up for the Ten Miler but ran three times before getting out of the habit. Work consumes me and I am working on that. My life needs more components. 

As I got out of my car, a kid about 150 feet away by the entrance immediately laughed. I was wearing an athletic shirt way too small for me, and my lower belly was exposed. I could feel it. I felt fat. I didn't feel gross. I didn't have any shame about this time in my life. I'm the way I am now, and I know I can change.

As I got closer to the door, he confronts me.

"Hey! Excuse me!"

I stop. He's over 10, younger than 14, but I don't really know ages like that anymore.

"Did you know that your gut is hanging out?"

I'm not offended. I'm amused in a way.

"Yes, I did. Thanks for pointing it out."

"You should cover that up. It's going to get in your way if you swim!"

"Thanks for pointing it out. I'm well aware of it. It's why I'm here, in fact. But it's none of your business."

"I don't want to see it."

"Do you think I give a shit what you think?"

He nodded, and I walked in. 

It's not my habit to curse in front of a kid, and I wasn't offended. I might have been in the past. I admire his confidence to ask. I don't know what his life is like, or what it's going to be. I feel no need to admonish him or punish him. He's just a person in front of two other people, and he's amused at this old man in a tight athletic shirt that is clearly the wrong size. 

Then I renewed my membership for $28, got on the treadmill. 

It felt so good on the treadmill. One reason I don't run is because there are too many decisions to make in terms of where to run. I also don't like being seen running outside at the moment. I am aware I am not in shape like I was fourteen years ago. 

Back then I devoured my pain by turning it into miles and miles first at the gym and then out on the road.

I need to get back in shape. My ability to enjoy life will increase if I can get back in shape, and find balance in my body.

I don't like that I let myself go again, but I did. I know I feel much better when I look better. I also know there is a joy in the physical activity and the feeling of accomplishment that comes with it. I've not prioritized that feeling and it's time to begin that now. 

So, this blog becomes the account of this journey.  

In Defense of April Fool's Day stupidity

We live in whatever times we live in. There's no sense in making a statement that the times we are in any worse or any better than any other. How can we know? We're in the now, and it's perhaps confusing to make comparisons to other time periods.

So, I cannot make a judgement if this time in the form of a statement such as "people don't have critical thinking skills anymore!" because how could I prove that? What measurements would I need? 

Yet I did receive quite a few puzzling comments after I put out an April Fool's edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. For the second year of the row, I wrote about a different community that happens to have a namesake with one of the ones I write about regularly.

In this case, I chose Albemarle, North Carolina. That's a city I know nothing about, and one that has nothing to do with the Albemarle Sound. Just like I knew nothing about Charlottesville, Indiana that I used for the 2022 silly edition. 

I looked at the April 3 agenda for the City Council in Albemarle, and wrote a very quick sketch at a time when I was pretty stressed out about a lot of things. I wrote up something that would suffice, and then had no idea when my brain would free up enough capacity to produce it.  The writing was so much fun because I wanted to play with people's expectations about what they've come to expect from the work I do writing down the mundane with passion. April Fool's provided me with this freedom. 

Months before, I had hoped to do a very elaborate edition complete with reaching out to press in the other Albemarle, and maybe interviewing people. But that would have taken a lot of work. And I didn't have time in much of March to do anything fun and extracurricular. 

I didn't record the script immediately. No idea why, but I can say this was on a day where I didn't feel motivated to work. I've had a lot going on. I went out with friends on Friday as usual, and came home and fell asleep around 8 p.m. About three hours later, a friend asked if they could stay at my house overnight and I agreed. And then woke up to prepare the second bedroom for a guest.

And I then decided to record the script and post it to get it out of the way. I had fun with the podcast version, employing creativity I often don't share in the full podcast. Yet this is an example of the newsletter and podcast deviating. It still amazes me I produce these things. Five hundred and nineteen of them as of today. 

But the April 1, 2023 edition goes out at around 1:30 that morning. My guest hasn't arrived and I suspect that's not going to happen. She eventually does moments after I finished work, and we talked for two hours before retiring for the night in our separate rooms. 

Flash forward to the responses. 

• Several people write me to say that I did in fact get them with the joke. Their expectations were subverted by my once-a-year celebration of April Fool's Day. 
• One person writes me to straight up in a nice way that he thinks I got the information wrong. I've not yet responded to this one.
• The Albemarle County spokeswoman writes to say she's had an actual inquiry from a local reporter about the replacement of sewer lines in the City of Albemarle's public housing stock. Albemarle County in Virginia doesn't have an entity that has public housing.  
  
• On a Facebook post related to UVA's own April Fool's endeavor, one woman refers to the post about Albemarle declaring itself as a city. Nothing in the text I wrote suggested that was a possibility. Someone else said what I did was bullshit. They said BS. But they're right. It was bullshit. Fun bullshit.   

But honestly, no one really paid attention or cared. For me, the April Fool's post was a fun lark that was a gift of sorts. A well-accepted practice allowed me to break my formula and play around with it creatively. The ability to do so was worth risking that some people might not appreciate or who might get confused by something out of the ordinary.

I just know that I try to write as clearly as I can and be as clear as I can about what I am writing. This isn't always easy writing about complex things that have so much jargon. I try to be as clear as possible in the functional portion of each script I write for the podcast, a script that doubles as a post. 

I want so much to have a venue for my creativity that doesn't fit the boundaries of my professional work. I make music all of the time for my own therapeutic purposes and want to share it. As I near 50, I hope I can get up the courage to just be myself. 

Until then, I'll make jokes in the podcast when I can. Tune in!