Tag: success

observe, listen, and record

February 26th, 2017

Good morning. It’s bright, sunny—another day ripe with possibility and opportunity—as long as we embrace what we have and are willing to push on into the unknown. There’s a lot of good to be put into the world and I can do it, but today, all I really want to do is hole up in my writing room with a heater, some booze, and ideas. That’s where the real work will get done. That’s where I’ll feel the most success. That’s the place I’ll emerge from feeling weightless and happy. There’s nothing like being alone with everything that’s been piling up in your head and picking through it. Saving the good. Pitching the bad.

Actually, that’s what I probably should do—pitch the bad. If I worked harder on creating awful stuff and plastering it all over the world, I’d probably more successful as a writer. But, like some dope, I am hanging on to that personal code bullshit I picked up in college. Trying to create words that have weight, so that they stick and remain not for a day, a week, a year, but for at least a few decades. My goal is to write enough good stuff so that one day my kids are left with it and they can sit alone in some old big attic of a big house and read pages and pages of what I’ve done so they can fall in love with life again.

I know, I know…sounds weird. How do I know that my kids won’t love life? What’s with the attic and the window? We don’t have that now. And what makes me think my kids would get more out of my writing than reading Hemingway, hooks, or Atwood? And what about biographies or history books, or TV? I’m not sure, I guess. But I’ve always had this image of my kids all grown up going through boxes of writing. Pages of it. But that would mean I’d have to print it out and I don’t do that. Maybe that’s something I ought to start doing. And I should also start writing in a more disciplined manner. This half-assing it “when I have time” is bullshit. If I really wanted it and if I truly thought it was something I could do well enough to pay the bills, I’d do it. Instead, I spend my days making ends meet by helping a team of people sell conveyors. This is not a bad thing. Everyone needs to do the work necessary to support their family, and I do like my job. The only thing is, I see the end coming. And it’s coming quicker than I had ever imagined it would and I just want to be happy. Deep, at the core, happy.

So, it’s a bright, beautiful day. I’m trying to write, clear my head, strike a bit of balance before I turn into WE and we start this day. My daughter is right next to me playing Pictionary by herself and is perfectly happy drawing and guessing all on her own. One of our cats, Chedder, is helping her. My wife is filling the house with the wonderful smell of bacon. And I can hear my son—just a week into being 11—groaning and talking to himself as he stretches in bed. He’s probably not happy that we are all up and noisy at 9:21 am on Sunday. And with all of this life so alive and brewing, I’ll step aside to do some silent writing in my head. The type I’ve trained myself to do over the past few years. Observe, listen, record. Observe and listen and record.

~ K.J.
a little lift

October 27th, 2016

I remember being six and standing in the cheese line at the fairgrounds with my Mom and brothers. It was a beautiful, bright day. There was so much light around. I remember the light so well.

All of us were wearing hand-me-downs or Salvation Army specials. There was more than cheese, of course—“provisions” is what they called it, and I remember powdered milk, cereal, and other necessities and my belly grumbling with hunger and excitement as we received the plainly labeled packages that would be rationed for weeks—but it was the cheese line, no doubt, because that’s what kids called it at school. Their Moms and Dads apparently hadn’t ever hit a bad patch for long enough to make them swallow their pride and stand in line to feed their kids. Nearly every day, I heard all about the lazy, good-for-nuthins that stood in line for food they did not earn or deserve. Kids learn a lot from their parents, I guess, so I got to hear firsthand from my classmates how lazy, stupid, and selfish we were—especially my old man. It ate me up to hear how awful we were for taking handouts and no matter what I said nobody gave a good shit that my Dad worked his ass off. When he got laid off, he did everything he could to provide. He worked odd jobs for those in our rural town that could afford to hire a helper. He fixed things for family and friends. He picked bottles and cans to cash in on the deposit money. And when things got tight in the fall and winter, he shot deer so we had meat on the table and waiting in the freezer. Dad applied for jobs, spent lots of time at the unemployment office, and was always busy never giving up. Eventually, he got hired back at the factory and made a very good living. One that gave us everything we would ever need. We weren’t rich by any means, but he worked for decades not because he liked ruining his lungs with shop air, and not because he wanted to lose his hearing to shop machines, but because he wanted to give his wife and kids a good life. And because he got a little lift in the form of a social welfare program. Hell, that little boost coupled with his tenacity and devotion carries on into today.

For the most part, I don’t fuck around. My wife and kids come first. And I do everything I can to make sure that ends meet and overlap so that there’s at least a little left over to give. But still, on a night like this—kids just put to bed in their cozy rooms, my wife sipping wine watching high def TV, and me at these keys sipping vodka and Sprite as nine bells call out from the church down the street—I know I’m not doing enough. None of us are.

Less than a mile away, there’s a third grade boy dreading going to school tomorrow because he’ll be teased for wearing hand-me-downs.

Down 2^nd Avenue, just north of the bridge, there’s a little girl that just wants a warm bath.

Somewhere in this sleepy lakeshore town coined as a “warm and friendly port,” there’s a man that’s made some bad decisions, but doesn’t deserve to be sleeping on a concrete slab.

Everywhere at every moment there’s a spirit that needs a lift and yet we choose to walk away. We judge quickly and embrace cynicism because it’s easy. We don’t want to think. We don’t want to feel. We just want to live our own little lives and don’t want to be bothered. And when we do this, we die a little. Oh, it’s imperceptible. It can be ignored. Shrugged off. After all, it’s our money and our own life we’re looking out for. We do a fine job of distracting ourselves from what’s really important quite easily. We buy shit we don’t need. We’re afraid to believe. And we follow like sheep. Donating to political campaigns and scrolling through Facebook all along the way. Little do we know, those little deaths all add up and eventually the light is pulled away.

~ K.J.
Bullshit, as Grandma would say.

May 16th, 2015

I want to write what we feel. For the millions. I want to talk about writing, analyze life, and be known as the best. I want you and you and you to read my blog. To buy my books. Post on my wall. I want to receive your questions, comments, and concerns. I want you to know that even though things seem okay on the surface—just plain words strung together so simply—there’s plenty beneath the surface that waits. Some of it is unsettling and confusing, ugly and dark. The kind of stuff your parents, teachers, and your good common sense have warned you about. But all of it is true and feeling it will get you closer to what you’ve always wanted and needed—just to be you.

I want to be successful by helping others succeed. What you see, hear, and experience as a result of reading my words should change you. Make you recognize some of what you’ve lost along the way. Help you get through the day. In my words, you will find the very best kind of friend. One that doesn’t care where you’ve been or what you’re about to do. One that’s always here, a thought away, and if you ask me, I’ll judge you.

I never admitted to wanting these things before. It was selfish and pretentious to want success, fame, money, and glory. But now I see that all of the bells and whistles are simply byproducts of doing good, honest work—of doing what I love.

“Life is too short for bullshit.”

I like to credit that to my late Grandma Wieschowski. I’m not sure now if she ever actually said that to me, but I hear her saying it now.

She and I sit together sometimes, share a Milwaukee’s Best—or six—and dream. She shows me canaries and chickadees at the feeder outside her trailer window. She makes paczkis and speaks to me in Polish, and I understand. I show her pictures of my kids and my wife. She says my son has the same “dark, feisty eyes” as my uncles. That my daughter is a “blue-eyed, tow-headed księżniczka.” She says my wife is “a helluva lot better than those other ones.” And she likes her especially because of her art. “The birds,” she says. “The birds she paints are amazing.” And all of this makes me happy and sappy and warm and I thank God for this gift of imagination, or vision, or insanity that I have.

I show her another rejection letter. This one, a true defeat, from Oberlin College Press.

“If you want it bad enough, you’ll go after it,” she says. And that is all, and we sip our beer, and we watch the birds and everything else she says to me is in silence that I feel.

If we go through life lying to ourselves, denying our motives, intentions, and desires, then we stifle our creativity. We dampen our drive. We live a life of little white lies that build and build and build so that finally there are walls around us so tall and familiar that we don’t have the will to climb them or break through. Our failure is always someone else’s fault. Our lack of success is because of this or that or the other thing. We make excuse after excuse and reason our way to convincing ourselves that the life we live is the one we want and deserve. That we are happy and that we could never want for more.

This is bullshit, as Grandma would say.

The biggest thing we do to destroy our potential every day is to succumb to guilt. We are afraid to question because we are afraid to grow. If we truly wanted to improve our lives and make the spirit stronger, we would question everything—our career path, religion, marriage, choice of friends, and even our efforts at raising kids. When we question, we get closer to knowledge, strengthening the spirit, and Love.

God or magic, the Big Bang, or a very dynamic computer program has put us on this earth—“Believe whatever you want,” that’s what Grandma Wieschowski would say—but know this…you have the power to change the world. To do and have whatever you want and the biggest mistake you make is convincing yourself you’re satisfied. That it is wrong to admit that you want more. And that it is selfish to finally admit why.

I want to write what we feel. For the millions. To be the best. To be your friend and take your hand so that finally, I can pull you beneath the surface and help you see, a little at a time, your everything—the fears, hopes, repressed memories, and dead Grandmas. Your losses and loves. Your strengths and weaknesses.

I want you to go down.

To get uncomfortable.

Be on your hands and knees.

To see and feel where it all comes from, so that finally you remember what it’s like to be you—which is all we ever need.

~ K.J.

Tag: success

observe, listen, and record

a little lift

Bullshit, as Grandma would say.