I’ve had this blog for five years. I’ve done very little with it. A few amusing (I hope) personal anecdotes. Some other personal stories, remembrances of Ben. And then nothing. I haven’t added anything in going on two years.

So what’s this then? I don’t know. But I recently got away from Facebook and need some means of maintaining an online presence. Some outlet for things I want to share. My Facebook profile still exists; I just won’t be updating it henceforth. Some part of my reasoning for this is no longer wanting to have my information farmed and used without my explicit knowledge. Zuckerberg won’t be getting anything else out of me that he can share with Godknowswho. But still, I don’t want to delete it. Everything I put there is *me*, for better or worse.

A lot of what I put on that Facebook page alienated a lot of people, I’m sure. Friends don’t talk politics or religion. Well, I talked politics. A lot. Often with no small amount of anger. I’m sure I’ve offended and/or alienated my of my Facebook contacts. Friends and family. I offer no regrets for that. A lot of what’s going on in the world should make people angry. A lot of that stuff will start appearing here instead.

I have a lot of writing that I never put on Facebook or anywhere, for various reasons. Some of it I deemed too personal, or that it just didn’t fit this particular venue or that one. Some fiction, some non-fiction. Some opinion. Some vitriol. More of that will begin appearing here, along with (hopefully) new stuff as events unfold. My intent, and we’ll see how long I keep at it, is to better curate this site, beginning with this rebranding exercise.

The original title to this blog was “I Should’ve Been a Musician”. At the time, I thought it was kind of cheeky, and my very first post attempted to explain what I was going for with that title. But it’s also kind of negative. Almost 47 is too old to worry about the things you aren’t. Life’s too short to dwell on should’ves.

My name is Scott. Friends call me Moo.

April is not my favorite month. Although in the four years since I moved to Virginia, it’s moving up the list.

For my first 37-some years, I lived in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts: states where April did not truly yield spring weather until it was practically May. In Massachusetts especially, April was just as likely to produce a day of 38-degree drizzle as it was 63-degree sunshine. That’s not the case in Virginia. Here, on only the first day of the month, we were treated to a lovely 65 degrees. I look forward to what the next few weeks will bring.

April is a metaphor. Springtime. New beginnings. Stuff like that. For baseball fans, it is the annual rite of unbridled optimism.

April is when I became a father. And while the occasion was unexpected (Ben and Nora weren’t due until June), and while the early arrivals of my children led to countless hours in the unpleasant environment of the NICU, and while all of this led inevitably to Ben’s death a scant 31 days later, I cannot keep from smiling at that initial memory. At that wave of emotion the first time I put eyes on my son, the first time my daughter opened her eyes.

April is planting seeds in the little starter pots purchased at Lowe’s, watching Nora try to fit the little trowel from her gardening kit into a seed pot that’s maybe one or two inches in diameter. April is tilling the garden, pulling winter’s overgrowth, shoveling compost, and transplanting the sprouts after they’ve germinated. That my tomato crop tends to feed the local deer more than it feeds my family is not a concern in April.  In April, in my head, we are just a few months away from a bountiful harvest, from Carolyn making and storing jar upon jar of roasted marinara, from fresh salsa (assuming the peppers and onions grow), from caprese salad appetizers two or three nights a week (assuming the basil doesn’t get dug up by the dog or some other critter). Oh, well. As Rick once told Ilsa: “We’ll always have cucumbers.”

April is the Independent Film Festival Boston, still going strong — stronger than ever — four years after my last direct involvement. Two of the last four Aprils, that has meant a return trip to Boston, to see movies and friends. We’re still up in the air over our ability to make the trip this year. But whether I’m there or not, the news of opening night and its annual success always reaches me, always leaves me feeling happy.

April is promising myself this year I’ll get back out on the golf course at some point this summer (last round of golf played: July 28, 2007). This year I’ll dig out those rotted landscaping timbers near the shed in the back yard. This year I’ll get the lawn re-seeded. This year, I’ll repair the cracks in the driveway.

No, no, no, and no. And besides, if I did all (or any) of those things, what would I have to promise myself next year? What would I have to look forward to? No, let me be content to simply make those promises, and leave the keeping of them for another April.

First off, let me be clear: I quite possibly could have been a musician. I did, after all, play music for several years: piano in elementary school, drums in middle and high school, plus ten years of service in the various incarnations of the children’s and youth choir at our church.

So, yeah. I probably could have been a musician. Although the onset of essential tremor in my mid 20’s would have certainly been quite a damper on any potential piano playing. And boy, I would have been right peeved if events had transpired in that fashion. But regardless how those events transpired, here I am, not a musician. My creative outlet, such as it is, is stringing words together. ‘Nuther words, I write.

Anyway, the reason I should have been a musician is because I’m lazy.

There, I said it. I’m lazy. And I don’t say that to impugn musicians. I’ve known many musicians, and lazy is not a designation I would ever assign them. But still…

If I were a musician, if I had stuck with the piano for all these years, and had become a competent-to-good pianist, I could, every evening or so, adjourn myself to my piano* and spend 10 or 20 or 30 minutes playing a little Brahms, or Thelonious Monk, or Jerry Lee Lewis, or Ben Folds, or, well… you get the idea. I might even occasionally indulge myself and play the composition I doubtlessly would have written my junior year of college in a vain effort to win the affections of a girl who was miles out of my league**. I could do any of that and feel like I had satisfactorily exercised a creative impulse.

(*in addition to my hypothetical piano, this scenario requires a hypothetical house with hypothetical space to hold said piano. I’m not sure how hypothetical kids – or even real ones – fit into the equation. I digress.)

(**this is all hypothetical, honey. You’re the only girl who was ever miles out of my league.)

The point is, as I indicated earlier, I’m not a musician. I’m a guy who puts words in order. I can’t adjourn myself to my laptop and crank out a few paragraphs of Joyce or Hemingway and feel like I’ve accomplished anything. While there is a thriving cottage industry for musicians who perform other artists’ material, no such thing exists for those of us who write. Every sentence I write has to be a new one, including this one.

And this one.

And this one.

(Okay, that last one wasn’t really original.)

So that’s what I’m getting at when I mention being lazy. I can’t just sit down and do something that’s been done before. Whatever I write, for good or bad, hasn’t been written before. It’s all mine.

So that’s what I’ll be doing here, when time permits. If I particularly like a series of words I’ve typed, I’ll go ahead and post them here for the world to see.

Have a nice day.