Welcome, and Happy New Year.I am glad that you've taken a moment to read this blog, which is a relatively new undertaking.To summarize,this is a sort of coming of age story, or perhaps the story of mid life crisis.I don't know as I've exactly decided on it's interpretation yet.In any event, I am essentially a memoirist, and this is my story, of life in Western Canada in the earliest years of the twenty-first century. Yet, because I'm actually an Atlantic Canadian living in a vast country, culturally different from place to place, it's also a story of living in exile, in my own country.I don't mean exile in the normal sense of the word, but rather in the sense that forces choices upon us for the sake of economic well being.
While Waking Up In Winter is a relatively new blog, the idea has been a long time in the making. I began writing in the early 1990's, and from that time onward, the idea of writing a memoir has always been at least in the back part of my mind.And it's not even that I consider my own life as being especially scintillating.After all, I'm just busy living it. But I've come to realize, for a number of reasons that there are others who may not agree with me.So, primarily my writing of memoir began for my family, and from my family, as a realization that some of them had lived wonderfully interesting lives, yet had chosen to say very little of it, especially in print. Hence, I'm amazed, and dismayed about what has to be said about them by a process of inference.The problem with inference is that in speculation, I might get things at least somewhat wrong. To me, that is the great intolerable: the need for others to infer my reality, or worse, the construction of an alternate reality about myself by others.So, such as they are, my blogs are my life in my words.
Waking Up In Winter is the second of two blogs that I write.The first, Only A Large Hill, came into being in summer of 2016, but again, is the product of much writing that went before it. Only A Large Hill starts at the beginning.In fact, it starts a little before the real beginning, by setting context, explaining who I am, and why I'm writing. Then it continues onward through my early life growing up in Atlantic Canada.As of this point, I've yet to get myself through the schoolhouse door for the first time. There is much more to come in 2018 and beyond, and I hope you will come along for the ride.
I'll need to take a moment to explain to you how both blogs are structured. Firstly, the two are parts of a whole, even though writing and presenting them concurrently sometimes seems a bit awkward to me.Waking Up In Winter is much less removed in time from the events being written about, so the memory is much clearer in my mind in most cases. It picks up the thread of my story around the turn of the Twenty First Century, when I'm living far from home, confronting some of the more profound things that all humans encounter, and experiencing a rather intense identity crisis. Although it is far removed in time from Only A Large Hill, and although the setting has shifted westward by several thousand miles, it is, and was intended to be a memoir about being an Atlantic Canadian. Identity is the whole essence of it's events.In part, it's propelled, and has moved forward as a result of having been identified by others as being "From Away", something that I've had to come to terms with through this century, and a contention I take issue with in the strongest possible way. Finally, I note that Waking Up In Winter is in every way post 9/11.It came out of, and belongs to the different world that was created in the late summer of 2001.In reading and editing it, I'm struck by it's grittiness, and loss of innocence, something that would not be justified by subject matter alone.
In closing, then, let me invite you to read and to share my world.In 2018, it's my goal to up my readership considerably, and to publish both of my memoirs every few days.I would also invite you, if you are one of the few people to whom I send out blog entries as they are published, to actually visit and follow my blogs, and to make comments as part of the record of those blogs. It's fine and good sending them out on Facebook, but I would really prefer that you were all more active participants. Also, if you are, or know of someone who is writing a memoir about living in Atlantic Canada, I would like to carry your blog on one or both of my own, and have you carry my blog as well.
So welcome.Come along and read, get to know me.Happy New Year.I'm looking forward to writing more for you as the year goes on.
While Waking Up In Winter is a relatively new blog, the idea has been a long time in the making. I began writing in the early 1990's, and from that time onward, the idea of writing a memoir has always been at least in the back part of my mind.And it's not even that I consider my own life as being especially scintillating.After all, I'm just busy living it. But I've come to realize, for a number of reasons that there are others who may not agree with me.So, primarily my writing of memoir began for my family, and from my family, as a realization that some of them had lived wonderfully interesting lives, yet had chosen to say very little of it, especially in print. Hence, I'm amazed, and dismayed about what has to be said about them by a process of inference.The problem with inference is that in speculation, I might get things at least somewhat wrong. To me, that is the great intolerable: the need for others to infer my reality, or worse, the construction of an alternate reality about myself by others.So, such as they are, my blogs are my life in my words.
Waking Up In Winter is the second of two blogs that I write.The first, Only A Large Hill, came into being in summer of 2016, but again, is the product of much writing that went before it. Only A Large Hill starts at the beginning.In fact, it starts a little before the real beginning, by setting context, explaining who I am, and why I'm writing. Then it continues onward through my early life growing up in Atlantic Canada.As of this point, I've yet to get myself through the schoolhouse door for the first time. There is much more to come in 2018 and beyond, and I hope you will come along for the ride.
I'll need to take a moment to explain to you how both blogs are structured. Firstly, the two are parts of a whole, even though writing and presenting them concurrently sometimes seems a bit awkward to me.Waking Up In Winter is much less removed in time from the events being written about, so the memory is much clearer in my mind in most cases. It picks up the thread of my story around the turn of the Twenty First Century, when I'm living far from home, confronting some of the more profound things that all humans encounter, and experiencing a rather intense identity crisis. Although it is far removed in time from Only A Large Hill, and although the setting has shifted westward by several thousand miles, it is, and was intended to be a memoir about being an Atlantic Canadian. Identity is the whole essence of it's events.In part, it's propelled, and has moved forward as a result of having been identified by others as being "From Away", something that I've had to come to terms with through this century, and a contention I take issue with in the strongest possible way. Finally, I note that Waking Up In Winter is in every way post 9/11.It came out of, and belongs to the different world that was created in the late summer of 2001.In reading and editing it, I'm struck by it's grittiness, and loss of innocence, something that would not be justified by subject matter alone.
In closing, then, let me invite you to read and to share my world.In 2018, it's my goal to up my readership considerably, and to publish both of my memoirs every few days.I would also invite you, if you are one of the few people to whom I send out blog entries as they are published, to actually visit and follow my blogs, and to make comments as part of the record of those blogs. It's fine and good sending them out on Facebook, but I would really prefer that you were all more active participants. Also, if you are, or know of someone who is writing a memoir about living in Atlantic Canada, I would like to carry your blog on one or both of my own, and have you carry my blog as well.
So welcome.Come along and read, get to know me.Happy New Year.I'm looking forward to writing more for you as the year goes on.
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