THE BULLY BEARD

I’ve been writing and telling stories for a good part of my life. When I reflect on that life and its intersection with my writing, I picture an old Victorian home. Through the years I’ve moved from room to room, discovering their contents, finding secrets, learning what they can teach me, and then telling tales from that space. It seems only yesterday I started in the nursery, telling silly and child-like yarns. Now I find that countless rooms have come and gone under my feet. The most recent room has been the most unique. It contains experiences and lessons that no story I ever wrote could have held. I have been challenged more than I ever thought possible because this room, for better or for worse, contains debilitating anxiety and panic. It has kept me from holding any sort of “steady work,” as the rest of the world calls it, for the past ten years. If you, or anyone you know, has entered this section of the house, with its misaligned walls and sharp dark corners, hopefully you’ve found a way to navigate, and maybe even step free into the sweet sunlight of the veranda. If you haven’t, be encouraged. The light that you sometimes see coming in under the door is hope, keep crawling towards it. Writing from this room has been part of my therapy, and now, that therapy has come to be a means of reaching out. I’ve figured out how to jimmy the window open and let the fresh air in. Through that same portal, I’ve learned that I can also pass a few things back out into the world. So, once a month I plan to hand out a tale on a few scraps; born not just from this room, but from the house as a whole. If you happen to walk by and see the pages on the windowsill and are curious to read them, all I ask is that you leave a simple dollar bill behind for each story taken. In return, I will leave another tale the next month, and the next, and the next. Perhaps together, we can create a form of “steady work” to help keep the lights of the house lit, and the encouragement to continue to explore new rooms.