I’ve worked so many jobs over the years. Back in 1979 I worked in a nursing home when I was in college. I guess I’ve come full circle on that one. But in between then and now I worked as a summer camp counselor and horsemanship instructor, classroom aide with severely multiply impaired (SXI) children, I worked in commercial heating and cooling, managed a deli, waited tables, I was a Realtor, dispatcher/jailer and barista to name a few. Currently, I am a nurse, artist, photographer and minister.

I think everything I do impacts my writing. This includes my roles as father, grandfather, friend, brother, son… and my hobbies like roasting my own coffee beans and acting. All of those experiences go into the mix, augmenting what comes out.

I have an urge to create things, whether they are paintings, written stories, digital art or any other medium.

I create things first for myself. I love the act of creating something. I love to see a painting come together on a blank canvas, or a story or essay appear on a blank page. So the act, or process of making something is very enjoyable, and I like to look at or read what comes out.

That is a good thing, because when I look at the stats on my blog, I see that very few other people look at what I put there, and I’m sure even fewer read what I’ve written.

I’m ok with that! Of course I’d like to have a wider audience, and maybe that will come about in time. Sometimes I think people might discover my writings after I am dead. Better late than never!

I do like to get approval from others, but that, or the lack of it doesn’t make or break me.

What’s really fun, is when someone in the mainstream media picks up on what I’ve done. That is really validating for me.

Chris Casey from the Duluth News Tribune, Jason Davis from ABC Channel 5 in the Twin Cities, Will Moore from WTIP and others have covered my science fiction autobiography, which I’ve been working on for 18 years. I love that, but if approval from others was more important to me, I’d have given up long ago.

I share my work on the World Wide Web because it lets me easily self-publish. I like to share what I’ve done with friends, and it is an opportunity to widen my audience.

I didn’t grow up with social media. When I was in 5th or 6th grade, my teacher saw that my two best friends and I were making a little newspaper. He supported us by involving the rest of the class, and “publishing” our project by mimeographing it. I’m doing something similar today through my blogs and my Facebook page.

I don’t think I’m much different than other people. I think we’re all unique, and we’re all similar at the same time. We all have our different talents and motivations.

It seems that people think I’m different. I guess I like to focus on things we have in common.

We are all intrinsically spiritual. Our spirit is the real us… the invisible part of us that animates our bodies. It’s the part of us that dreams. The part that wonders and creates. We need the physical part to inform the intangible part, and also to express or translate our thoughts back out into the physical world.

If someone asks what I look like, I might send them a picture of my face. It looks a bit like my father’s face. And my grandfather’s face. But my body is not me. It’s just the vehicle I ride around in. It’s an incredibly complex tool I use to explore the world, and to express my feelings. The real me is unphotographable.

We get a limited time in these bodies… a limited time to use these fingers to hold a paintbrush, these vocal chords to tell a story. So the creative marks I leave on the world are spiritually driven.

I love the winter because it is here. The weather changes, like our moods. It’s just a fact of life. I always thought winter lasted so long here, but it seems to be zipping by.

Last spring I longed for the summer. It came, and it was wonderful. Then it was gone.

Ten night shifts in a row seems long, so I don’t think about it that way. I just try to live in the moment. Next thing I know, I have four nights off.

Seasons and work schedules pass quickly when you’re doing other things.

But these are the seasons of my life. Zipping by.

I have my favorite, but they all have their own beauty.

Maybe on my deathbed, I’ll wish for one more LOOOOOOOONG winter.

The ephemeral art of coffee. There’s something about knowing that I roasted these beans at 9 last night… with friends here… olfactory cells anticipating this morning as the chaff wafted up into my face… and brewed them when I woke up. It’s all for that moment when the molecules interface with the cells on your tongue. The taste message is sent to the brain. Yes. The taste is rich and delicious. But again, that knowing… it enhances cooking and makes it art.

For several years, I have been brewing my own espresso at home. I work the night shift, so I want my lattes at about 8 or 9 pm. This year, I am roasting my own coffee beans!

I’ve always loved coffee. I remember when I was little, my mom would have ladies from the church over from time to time, and when they left the table, I’d go around and drink the dribbles out of the bottom of all the cups.

Years ago, there was no espresso available in Grand Marais. I just wanted a cappuccino! So I bought a commercial espresso machine and opened a coffee shop/art gallery and housed it in my 1948 Great Northern Railway caboose.

My cafe is my own kitchen now.

I’m me again. Maybe more me than I ever was before.

I never thought I could be so connected to a place. But this is the one place my piece of the puzzle fits.

I actually ceased to be me when I left here (for a short visit to NC in the fall). I thought that move was permanent, and it terrified me. I kept telling my brother, “I want to be me again.”

People ask why I hated NC. At first, I gave long, convoluted answers, until I realized it was because NC is not Grand Marais.

I was traumatized. Still am, from the adventure. But there was a gift. It ripped me open, and since coming home I am oozing with creativity and joy.

As I told my friend today, “I am full of joy. The kind of joy that is always on the verge of tears. I feel very blessed (for lack of a better word). Humbled, grateful, content, fulfilled… HOME.”

I know I’ve been verbose over the past couple of months. I don’t apologize for that. However, I am feeling that it’s time to think about trading the pen for the paintbrush. For awhile.

Same thoughts and feelings. Different medium.

Around 1992 or 1993, I started mentoring high school students. I did art with some of them, web design or digital art with others, and music with others.

We had a mixer and cabinet speakers that had belonged to a cabaret singer from the Twin Cities, and I ran the sound out of that into a cd recorder.

I worked with a lot of local bands, producing their music. I also used that mixer to put my early Flash Meridian cds together. That system was set up in my 1948 Great Northern Railway caboose here in Grand Marais.

It still had signage on the doors warning passengers to “WATCH FOR SLACK ACTION”, and that is where I got the name for my production company.

All that equipment eventually got sold off, and today I was able to purchase “new” pieces to revive S.A.D.

The early compact discs included Episodes 1-30 of the Adventures Of Flash Meridian, and now the series goes through Episode 102.

I’m grateful to Pete K. for allowing this to happen, and to the generous universe.

Prior to starting The Adventures Of Flash Meridian, I had been taking pictures of myself as a character I called “Rocket Boy”, then the first couple episodes of Flash Meridian were simply captions to pictures I took of my friends wearing vintage flight suits that I had bought on eBay. It wasn’t too long before I realized that the theme of the story was actually my life.

In The Adventures Of Mr.Pumpkinhead, I deal with such underrepresented groups as those with dyslexia and dementia. These are issues that touch my daily life, so it is only natural that they would seep into my writing.

I’ve been given the gift of dyslexia, and it has forced me to compensate for difficulties in creative ways. I’ve actually taken negative things and turned them into strengths. I still have difficulty with directions, but language is something I have come to love.

I am a full time night nurse in a senior care facility.

The sci fi genre seemed cool to me, I guess. As a kid I loved watching Lost In Space. I particularly liked the space episodes of The Twilight Zone and other old space movies.

I think one misconception about my writing is characterized by the statement “I don’t like science fiction.” Stories are stories about people. The setting isn’t what it is about. In my case, The Adventures Of Flash Meridian is my sci-fi autobiography. It’s about neither science nor fiction, though there are elements of both embedded within it.

I chose the genre because it was fun.

I write another, more whimsical story about a jack-o-lantern. It’s pretty easy to balance the two, because both of them were unintentionally autobiographical.

Different parts of me come out in the different stories.

People seem to think that the story of Flash Meridian is just silly and random. Maybe they’ve seen me around town in my silver space suit. If you haven’t actually read it, which most people have not, then you’d probably assume it’s lacking intelligent thought or content.

I got my love of storytelling from my Mom. She used to read to us, and she did the voices. Later, I read to my kids every night.

I spent my Junior year of high school in Jos, Nigeria, where I took a typing class. I was very homesick that year, and that was when I first discovered that writing could be an outlet for my feelings. I wrote about myself in the third person back then. So I’ve been writing for about 42 years.

Storytelling is an ancient way of communicating who we are. It’s an informative art form. Some storytelling is verbal or acted, some is written and some is pictorial. Our history gets passed down to us through myths and legends. We can be part of this tradition by offering our stories to the collective expression of humanity.

I believe that being creative is a spiritual act. Through writing, I search for meaning and beauty.

I want to inspire people. I want to encourage people, and give them permission to have fun and tap into their own story. Flash Meridian is less about space exploration than it is about self exploration. Through writing, I am able to organize my thoughts and present them not only to the public, but to myself in a way that is manageable. It’s a focused look at life events and the ramifications and feelings that are associated with them. Life zips by us so fast. The events happen in real time, but leave a lasting impression on us that actually makes us who we are. We’re not stagnant, but we have routines and habits. Writing helps me see below the veneer of daily tasks.

I got to be where I am in my life today by making it through all the days that preceded today. In every life, we experience great joys and great challenges. The joys are what we strive for, but the challenges are where we learn and grow.

My goals for writing my stories were to have fun, so from that standpoint I’ve been pretty successful.

I live in a remote town on Lake Superior, surrounded by the natural beauty of the boreal forest. That’s what artists and writers usually depict. And I do that, too. But I’m not aware of anyone else going the sci-fi route from here before. That kind of makes my story stand out.

Writing is fun for me, so it’s not hard to motivate myself to write. I don’t labor over outlines and plans. I just write. There’s something that takes over, or maybe it’s a shift in my thinking that happens, and the story flows out. Like opening the bank of a river to irrigate a field.

All I really have to do is find a quiet spot where I’m not distracted, and have the writing tools at hand.

I live alone, so it’s easy to find a spot that is conducive to writing.

Lately, I’ve been writing every day. Maybe it’s because I feel I have a lot to say. Maybe it’s because we’ve been having snowstorms so it’s nice to stay in. Whatever the reason, this has been a time for writing. When the pen starts moving, I hold on tight, because it doesn’t always do that. Other times, the paintbrush gets antsy, and I need to hold it for a while. Sometimes, the objects in the house are still, but my brain is not.

My writing style is definitely more intuitive than logical, though I hope it is a combination of the two. I have a message, or a point to my writing, but I’m an artist. I like to paint a picture with words.

I wanted to play the saxophone.

Toward the end of 4th grade, we brought slips home to choose an instrument if we wanted to join band.

I was told that in order to play the saxophone, I would have to start on the clarinet in 5th grade and then switch to sax in 7th.

My parents told me that if I wanted to be in band, I had to play the trombone. After all, dad already had an extra one.

I’ve told this story many times in my life, but just now it dawns on me that I didn’t use dad’s old trombone. The one in the rectangular brown case that always sat against the wall under the piano. They got me a new one in a green case that was rounded on one end.

I didn’t want to play the trombone. I wanted to play the clarinet. I wasn’t any good on the trombone. I hated practicing. But I was in band through 5th and 6th grade.

Mom hired a teacher and I had to take trombone lessons. Even during the summer.

So, the summer between 6th and 7th grade, my brother’s friend from the high school band came out to the house to give me trombone lessons. One day, I put the instrument together, but refused to put it to my lips. Eventually, hearing no music coming from the room, my mom stuck her head in the doorway and asked whether everything was ok.

The poor kid said “He won’t play anything.”

My mom said “ I guess that will be the end of the trombone lessons.”

On the first day of 7th grade, I took a note to school informing the band director that I would not be in band as originally planned.

There are many important things about this story, but the most important to me is that it was the first time I ever stood up for myself.

There was nothing that was going to make me play a single note on that horn that day. AND to this day I hate despise hate the trombone.