Sometime back in the early 80’s, a smiling, young and foolish version of myself would gather with his friends on New Year’s Day, where we would proceed to all make smiling, young and foolish New Year’s resolutions.  Whether or not anyone kept any of them, I don’t know.  It’s doubtful.  I don’t even remember any of them - with the exception of one.

Each year I would make the same bold statement that 19** (whatever the year) would be my year of Economic Recovery.  It seemed like such a hopeful resolution.  I could imagine the feeling of no longer chasing after the money, working two, sometimes three part-time jobs, going to school, and attempting to manage love.  Economic Recovery, it seemed to me back then, was the one key that would unlock any door.

The resolution was always made in jest.  Better to laugh and lose then grow serious and fail, I thought to myself.  But behind the years of stating that each and every year would be my year of Economic Recovery lived the tiny hope that the jest would become real.  Imagine what life would be like if resolutions came true.  Imagine how happy things could be.

I have always found ways to keep hope alive in my mind, and Economic Recovery was no exception.  The jestful resolution and multiple jobs were one way back then.  I wrote stories, where Economic Recovery personified into some mystical person, who somehow avoided all my searches.  I think I even imagined that time and age alone would take care of things.  Economic Recovery would ride into my life on the most mythical beasts of all - the American Dream, which I naturally assumed back in those smiling, young and foolish days was the logical end result of time and age. 

Of course, time and age, I have come to realize, have nothing to do with Economic Recovery.  Life is more like a storm then a straight line, with us in the center and life spinning all around us.  For me, the idea of Economic Recovery is just one of those things, twirling around, just out of reach.  I still keep an eye out from time to time, but I don’t think much about chasing after him.

Besides, only the fool dreams of writing and economics at the same time.  The writer, however much they deny it, likes to imagine their head as the center of the universe.  I have come to view my debt as just one of my many galaxies.

In the particular valley I live in, snow is a rarity.  Once, maybe twice every few years it’ll come down, bringing life to a halt.  No one is prepared for snow here.  It’s like the end of the world when it happens, but in a nice way.

Born and raised in the midwest, this is of course, funny to me.  Let’s say someone from Florida moved somewhere far, far north, and one day the temperature soared to a record high 80 degrees.  Everyone would step outside their doors, jaws slack in wonder, as they sweated and watched the historic event.  Everyone, I guess, except our imagined Florida transplant, who might step outside and think . . . finally.

Oregonians are sometimes like that.  They get all funny when it snows too much or even, get this, it rains too much.  The news stations will even name the storms sometimes, giving a whopping 5 or 6 inches of snow the prestige of a hurricane.

Me, I stepped outside and shoveled the walk, remembering the time my 78 year old grandpa made me join him in shoveling a foot of snow off of our one mile long driveway.  I kid you not.

If I’d stuck with the original plan, this blog would have been born back around February or March of 2002.  That was just about the time I was being introduced to my wife’s new boyfriend and life was beginning to feel a little too tight.  But then, for me the words wife’s new boyfriend seem proof enough that original plans don’t always work out.

In hindsight, the original plan had its flaws.  For one, I would have had to actually do some thinking during a time that I seemed capable of only one thought.  Writing, at least good writing, usually requires the mind to breathe, and I don’t think my brain took a good deep breath of air until just a couple of months ago.  The only thing I can think of, is that my lungs must have taken pity on the poor, beaten up brain, slipping it a drop or two of oxygen when it wasn’t looking. 

Someone asked me once why I didn’t write it all down, all of that original plan gone awry stuff.  It was jodi I think, who seems to have that incredible talent of writing everything down.  I don’t know.  It just seemed too hard.  Or maybe I thought if I didn’t write it down I would be able to someday forget everything that happened.

But some of it made it down.  A tiny taste of that suffocating emotion and pain, and even some funny stuff, like the time I discovered I made a lousy detective.  For everyone’s information, in matters very little how many millions of minivans are on the roads, they’re just no good for sneaking around in.

I can see already that things just aren’t right.  “Come on, do it! do it!” I can still hear your words in my head.  “Just do it,” everyone said, “You’re a born blogger.” Well where are you now, my friends.  Years ago it was your foolish crowd mentality, chanting “chug, chug, chug,” which slowly mellowed into a softer, friendlier sounding, “blog, blog, blog.” So, like then, I have given in.  Heeded the call.  I did it.

Yes, I did it, a couple of years later, in my procrastinating full speed ahead kind of way.  But even waiting that long suddenly doesn’t seem quite long enough, as I’m thinking now that Word Shadows shouldn’t have been the name at all, but maybe Procrastination’s Shadow.  I would like to imagine, at least, that it’s procrastination that follows me, and not the other way around.  But we all know that’s wishful thinking.  I am procrastination’s slave.  Which isn’t always such a bad thing, being the lazy taskmaster that he is. 

But this is no time for procrastination!  The beginning of a new year is no time for that!  We must be bold and resolute and proclaim unreachable goals.  Which, of course, I am getting to.

But my point (I think) was supposed to be that nobody told me to do any planning before I started this thing.  I wrestled around with that damn mysterious html code until I ran out of energy, and now I see that I should have put in some categories and maybe multiple favorite blog lists, because while I like a lot of blogs, I certainly don’t read every single one of them every single day.  So what do I do, make a favorites list and an almost favorites list?  Almost reminds me of the time some girl called up my little brother when he was in about the fourth grade and asked him if he liked her. 

“Just a minute,” he said, put down the phone, walked off, but returned a few seconds later with a scrap of paper, which I later found out was a list.  “Yes,” he told the little girl.  “You’re number 6 on the list.  Okay.  Goodbye.”

I guess I just need to get busy with a little more creating.  I need to be as straight forward and blunt as a nine year old boy.

You know, if the world was in fact created by God, then we’re all lucky it was done in miracles and not html, or we’d all still be sitting here, waiting to get tweaked.  On the other hand, that would explain . . . .