Two Years…

 

According to my Facebook flashback, today marks the two year anniversary since I first published Count Your Blessings.

Two years. That’s it.

That’s how long it has been since I started taking this writing thing seriously again. It feels like it has been so much longer ago than that. Ok, sure, there is a leap year day snuck in there that might be the reason for why it feels so much longer than just an ordinary (non-leap year day) two years… but I doubt it.

Time is weird like that I guess. For instance, it’s not until someone says something like…

Did you know Top Gun came out 30 years ago?

Source: IMDB

That I suddenly realize how much time has gone by. And yes, go check, this year marks the 30 year anniversary of the release of that epic Anthony Edwards movie. Only, they had to go and make it about Tom Cruise and kelly McGillis. We all know the real love story was Goose and Meg Ryan. Right?

But, anyway… digressing being what it is… It feels like that movie came out just a few years ago, not 30. Man, just typing that is making me feel really old… And yet, there it is. The cold, hard truth that all that time has passed since then.

And in the two years since I have started back to writing, I have gone back to college, finished my AA, started my Bachelor’s degree, switched over to WordPress (I started on Blogger), started a second blog (A Flash Of Fiction), joined up with the guys over at Epic Fantasy Writers, entered into a few writing contests (and won a couple.. yah me!), joined a writing workshop group, penned several hundred stories, poems and haiku (including my currently ongoing March Haiku A Day), and am currently trying to figure out how to outline a novel so I can actually (and finally) finish a book (wouldn’t that be nice?).

After typing all that, it’s no wonder two years seems much longer than it has been. That’s a lot of stuff. Oh, and I forgot to add, I turned 45 last month. So there’s that too.

 

Yep, I’m that many old…

I’d just like to thank those of you who I have connected with on here, who have become my online friends. Even those of you who just lurk in the shadow like you are Buffalo Bill, just waiting to see if you can wear me as a skin suit (too far?). This has been one heck of a ride.

So, here’s to two years of being back in this writing game. And to many more.

 

Hoo Yah!

Veteran’s Day, 2015…

I’m sitting in Panera, looking over my laptop at my wife and the dining area around us. This place is thriving with life as people gather and eat and drink and talk. When we arrived, there was an older gentleman wearing a Korea Veteran hat that was getting into his car, and right now, sitting across from me is another gentleman wearing an Air Force Vet hat. Another man just walked by sporting an Army Vet hat who passed a tall older gentleman in a Navy shirt.

Happy Veteran’s Day 2014

(First, this is not my post, but I felt it just needed to be re-posted, and yes, I know this is a day late, but it was too good not too. As I said, this is not mine, but I did find it hard to get through without feeling a bit choked up. Thank you to all my fellow veterans for standing the watch. HOO YAH!)

SALUTE!

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye. Others may carry the evidence inside them: A pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg–or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul’s ally forged in the refinery of adversity. Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem. You can’t tell a vet just by looking.

What is a vet?

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn’t run out of fuel.

He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.

She–or he–is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another–or didn’t come back at all.

He is the Quantico drill instructor that has never seen combat–but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other’s backs.

He is the parade-riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor die unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean’s sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket–palsied now and aggravatingly slow–who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being, a person who offered some of his life’s most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.

He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say, “Thank you.” That’s all most people need, and in most cases, it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.

Two little words that mean a lot: “THANK YOU.”

Let’s remember them on this Veteran’s Day observance.

All credit for this goes to Mikey’s Funnies. Check his site out, I can’t endorse what he does enough.