Collector’s Item: Issue 1 — Becoming Super Rog!
December 1, 2024
Prepare to be amused (or annoyed; your choice)!
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Wrong – And Loving It!
If you are anything like me, and it’s probably best if you’re not, you love being wrong.
Wait – What?
I said what I said.
Why?
I’m glad you asked.
Of course, being wrong is not always pleasant. I hated living on a dairy farm – the stench, the filth, the endless toil, the monotony, the dangers – so when I learned people could leave farming for other forms of business, I expected my father would experience an epiphany (though I did not yet know that word – I was only 5), and start packing our belongings.
I was wrong. He loved farming.
Disappointment haunted all my dreams.
Later my father triggered an epiphany of my own. Confused as to why I cheered when a movie depicted the cavalry charging Indigenous Peoples attacking a wagon train, I called the Natives “the bad guys.”
He vetoed my verdict.
“No,” he said. “They’re the good guys.”
I thought it was a Dad Joke.
He explained Indigenous Peoples survived living on their land for thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of years until White men invaded, stole their land, and took their lives.
I was stunned.
Being wrong about who were the good guys changed my life. Forever.
It forced a new perspective, a reframing, that could not be limited to that one particular example. It forced my need to assess, evaluate, question all my assumptions, premises, beliefs, paradigms. Again, at 5, I didn’t use those words, but the consequences were the same.
Everything needed to be examined.
It can be painful, physically painful, to realize I’m wrong. My stomach lurches in discomfort, my nerves twang and jitter, my body desperately tries to force my brain away from admitting my error and stay the more comfortable course of rejecting the new ruling.
But every time I override the resistance, every admittance of ignorance and wrong thinking, every time I steer myself toward a new belief, empowers me to question more.
Facing the brutal truth that I am wrong allows a new truth to bloom. All the while realizing my newly acquired “truth” may, in time, be revealed as wrong.
I developed a system. A system of letting go. A system of defeating attachment to the familiar, the accepted, the assumed. And choosing a less orthodox reality.
That system of questioning, examining, defining, stretching beyond accepted certitude, ultimately permitted my Becoming Super Rog.
As I work out details of how I developed that system, along with some of its results in my own life, through a collection of essays, I will share my progress with you, starting with, Where am I now and how’d I get here?
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You Call That Progress?
Where am I now and how’d I get here?
I was born and raised on a Vermont dairy farm – wait, that’s too far back.
WAY. Too far.
On October 17, 2023, I joined Anne Helmstadter’s The Story Immersion Project’s Inner Circle. Bit of a mouthful.
Put simply, it’s a group of writers working on various books. We share drafts, news, excitements, and disappointments. It’s a community.
Is it any good?
Yes. For me.
Thanks to these folks, our Facebook group, our camaraderie, our mutual support and encouragement, plus – last but certainly not least – our twice-a-month Group Coaching sessions, during which we share writing and receive articulate, practical, and valuable feedback from Anne and one another, I’ve been writing, and writing, and planning writing, and rewriting, and replanning, and changing small things, and changing everything, and rewriting and – well, you get the idea.
Is that progress?
You bet!
At times progress seems doubtful, elusive, hopeless, but then a brain wave crashes and a clearer, sharper, better, and – most critically – shorter version is born. Shitty? Sure. But shorter.
Understand that currently I am in what is known in the trade as “the shitty draft” phase, meaning completing an imperfect rough first draft of a bunch of essays so I can rake in riches and bask in the fame and glory of authorship!
OR start rewriting a – hopefully – less shitty draft.
Whichever.
The point is, I may not know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.
Thanks for sharing the ride.
Oh, and when I say I’m currently writing a “shitty” first draft, remember this: I’m a Vermont dairy farm boy, so I know shit.
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