The big plunge

Okay, I'm three beers in and I'm starting a blog. For me a blog has to be about something, I'd rather not subject myself or anyone else to whimsical ramblings of my mind. Cruel, painful, and most likely pathetic. I've been giving this a lot of thought and here is the conclusion I've come to: my blog is about where I'm at and where I'm going.

My family and I have come to a junction in life. Faced with an impending lay-off due to the stuttering economic recovery and realizing that what I'm doing now (swingn' a hammer as a carpenter) is not the vocation that stirs my passion and motivates me push through one day after another, we can choose to pursue something, anything, that is what we--this family--are meant to be pursuing, or acquiesce to the status-quo of what we have been doing. We have, by the way, been struggling, week-in-week-out to get by on side work and some steady employment but steady employment as a carpenter in Bellingham is, well, not so steady. For me anyways.

The ultimate problem is I don't know what to do. A good friend told me once that he felt that I managed to keep my family afloat from one place to the next but we were drifting and reacting to the circumstances of life and rarely had control over where we were and what we were doing. I want to change that. I'm ready to grow up i guess. Finally. But I need to figure out what I want to do. I'm going to figure it out. I guess this is what my blog is all about. Us figuring it out. The big...it. I guess this blog is about the process, how I proceed, what happens along the way, if anything does happen. Also, I've got thoughts and opinions about what I see going on around me, lets open a dialoge on what i right, observe, experience. I can't promise I'll agree with you and I'm most certian you'll disagree with me a great majority of the time.

King St. Industries, where does this come from. I was coming home from work thinking about blogging, what the future holds, and good business names and this came to me. King St. Industries. It is so appropriate for me right now, i feel. King St. is the name of our street and in this small house we have had a formative year. Welcoming our second child into the world, in and out of work, learning to be humble, learning to accept the help offered us. Learning to get by. I feel that we've learned to make what we have work for us. Some how in months of unemployment and the uncertainty of collecting unemployment we found rent. I found little jobs, we survived. We discovered how to love wine (just drink what you fucking like and shut up about how to store it and when to buy it what goes with what, ok? shut up). We discovered our true friends, our real family, a church home. We've suffered together and with others over the loss of children, the loss of jobs, the loss of security, the uncertainty of life... In the novel Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry, the one of the characters says, somewhere in the sorrow and pain that comes in that novel: "This is a fine life, though rich in hardships at times." And I have taken that quote to heart. I am constantly blown away at the creativity of my older boy, the peace of my younger, the beauty of my wife, the goodness of God, the vastness of the ocean, the support of friends, good books, good beer, good coffee, mt. biking, soccer. But, in a rambling sort of way, is where King St Industries comes from, where i live and the potential to move forward, be industries, use my damn boot straps.

Finally, I'm a writer. Rather, I've a BA in Creative Writing/English. So, I'm an aspiring writer. I'm unpublished save this blog and I have a problem finding motivation to write. I spend the time i could be writing reading or watching TV or surfing the net or what ever. But Not Writing. This is, ultimately, a way to right. To practice getting thoughts into words and words onto paper and paper into the hands of someone who'll read it.

So, here we go.