Blogging for the Open to Hope Foundation

A couple months ago I was approached by the Open to Hope Foundation about writing a blog for those who had lost a spouse. (I was a guest on the foundation’s radio show last November. You can download the MP3 of the program by right-clicking here.) I was hesitant to accept. Between my widower blog (no longer updated) and Room for Two I didn’t think I had anything left to say on the matter. Besides, I’ve been happily married to Marathon Girl for five and a half years. I haven’t thought of myself as widower since the day she agreed to marry me. In a lot of ways, I’ve put that sad chapter of my behind me. Thought thoughts of the late wife and daughter occasionally enter my mind, 99.9% of my thoughts are on making a better life for me and the family I have now.

I also have a novel and other writing projects that take up most of my free time. Even if I had something to say, I was unsure I’d have the time to write regular blog posts.

Then I checked my email.

There were three new emails in my inbox. Two were from women dating widowers. One thanked me for writing an essay that helped her see that her widower boyfriend wasn’t ready to commit to a serious relationship and she was going to finally end it. The other was from a woman asking for advice about her widower boyfriend’s behavior and whether or not she should be concerned about it. The third was from a young widower who thanked me for my website and telling me it had given him hope that he could one day again be happy.

These kinds of emails flood my inbox every day. (I’m not complaining about them – just stating a fact. If you have something to say, you can contact me here.) In the back of my mind, I thought the number of widower related emails would stop after my book came out and this blog focused on other things than widower related issues. But every day there are new emails in my inbox similar to the ones above and I realized there are a lot of people that are hurting out there.

And I thought back to a wintry afternoon six years ago. I had just spent most of my Saturday afternoon searching for something – anything! – online that would make me feel that I wasn’t the only young widower in the world. Something that would give me hope that tomorrow would be a better day and if I just put one foot in front of the other and stuck with it.

I found nothing.

And in that brief moment of grief and anguish I vowed if there was some way I could help someone else from feeling the pain and loneliness I felt at that exact moment, I’d do it.

So I called to the foundation’s director and expressed my concerns about writing a blog and we came to mutual agreement. I will write an occasional blog post (three or four times a month as time allows). And instead of making it a traditional grief blog, I’m going to focus on putting your life back together and moving on instead of becoming bogged down with self pity and the “woe is me” attitude that infects so much of grief literature and makes it completely worthless – often hindering people from putting their lives back together.

It’s going to be very different from typical grief blogs. It’s going to have an attitude.

So be warned.

If you’re content wallowing in grief and self pity then the blog’s not for you.

If you don't want to think of yourself as anything other than a widow or widower, then find another grief blog to read.

If you don’t want straight up advice about learning to put your grief aside, making the most of your life, and becoming happy again, then do not read it because I’m not going to mince words.

Finally, though I have permission to do so, I won’t be reposting the content on this blog. However, I will post the first paragraph or two and link to the latest entry for those who are interest in reading it. (As soon as I complete some other projects, I will create a URL on this website for them, however.)

Also, I have about 30,000 words of material that I cut from Room for Two before it was published. Some that content will probably find a home there – in a slightly modified form. (My first entry is a part from my book that was cut from the book and tweaked for the blog.) For those who have read the book and want to read vignettes that were cut between the first draft and the published manuscript, I’ll let you know when those are posted too.

The website I'll be writing for can be found here.

You can read my first entry here and my second one here.

I’ll let you know when the third one is up.

Thank You Chris

Many thanks to Chris who gave me the fixes for the two issues mentioned in the previous post. It’s nice to know there are talented programmers who read my blog. Chris has also just started a blog about a subject that is close to my heart and many readers here. If you want, you can check it out here.

A New Look

If you can’t tell, I have a new template for my website. Many thanks to Trevor for the new design. I’m having some minor issues integrating the template with WordPress. For some reason the navigation bar goes to the left (it’s centered on the other pages) and my footer’s not working. If you happen to know CSS and what I’m doing wrong, leave a comment or send me an email. Hopefully, I’ll have those issues, and a few other minor ones, resolved soon.

I'm Alive

Yes, I am alive. Stay tuned.

A Good Online Visual Dictionary

Don't you hate it when you’re trying to describe something but don't know the name for it? As a writer, this really bugs me. The other night I was tying to find out what you call those pads that hold your glasses to your nose (they're called "nose pads" if must know) and stumbled across a really useful visual dictionary from the good people at Merriam-Webster. I haven't gone through their entire offering but it seems to be at least as good (maybe even slightly better) than my giant visual dictionary I've been refereeing to until I got too lazy to pick it up last night. And what's really cool is that they list the definitions to all the words on the bottom of the page.

One note when using visual dictionaries: Occasionally visual dictionaries use the technical word for or a part or piece of equipment instead of what the part is commonly referred to. If the word sounds to strange, ask someone who knows what it’s really called.

Check out Merriam-Webster's visual dictionary here.

What People Read

Some people blog about what their reading. Others update their GoodReads account.

Will, puts it in the header of his website. :-)

Thanks, Will.

Swimming: My Respite from Reality

When temperatures are routinely climbing past 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it makes me glad I’ve incorporated swimming into my gym routine once or twice a week – depending on my workout schedule. Yesterday after giving my abs and shoulders a good workout, I headed for the pool. The water was nice and cold compared to the hot sweaty gym. The water felt so good that after my 20 minute swim, I didn’t want to leave the pool. Just wanted to float in the water and pretend there wasn’t a crushing load of work to deal with back at the office or that I’d be sweating in the hot car again after heading back to the office.

Since there was no one else in the pool I closed my eyes and floated on my back letting my breathing and heart rate slow, enjoying the still water and the silence that comes with having your ears below water.

For a few minutes my mind wandered.

I thought about what a better swimmer I am now than I was when I started swimming last month. I’m still the slowest swimmer in the pool, but my time, technique, and endurance have improved tremendously. Michael Phelps may not have to worry about me in the 2008 Beijing Olympics but he and the rest of the American swimming team better look out in 2012.

I ruminated over a problem I was having with one of the characters in my novel and whether or not I should eliminate him from the story altogether.

I wondered what Marathon Girl was doing and hoped she was taking some time to rest. Between taking care of three young kids and have a fourth one on the way, she needed those afternoon breaks when the kids are down for naps.

I started to think of something else but there was a disturbance in the water. I looked up. In the next lane a swimmer was barreling down the lane, toward my end of the pool. I watched him flip as he reached the end of the pool and headed back to the other end.

My respite from reality was over.

It was time to get back to work.

Join the Dharma Initiative

Admit it. You’ve wanted to join the Dharma Initiative since you saw that first grainy movie back on the first season of LOST. Well, now you can.

Not sure what, exactly, ABC is doing with this, but I signed up anyway to fill that LOST void. If anyone else takes the recruitment test, you’ll have to let me know if some of the images and “answers” freak you out a little.

Join here.

Houston, My Kind of City II

A reader, who knows of Marathon Girl and my fondness for Houston, forwarded me a great article from The New York Sun that compares New York City to Houston.

New Yorkers are rightly proud of their city's renaissance over the last two decades, but when it comes to growth, Gotham pales beside Houston. Between 2000 and 2007, the New York region grew by just 2.7%, while greater Houston — the country's sixth-largest metropolitan area — grew by 19.4%, expanding to 5.6 million people from 4.7 million.

To East Coast urbanites, Houston's appeal must be mysterious: The city isn't all that economically productive — earnings per employee in Manhattan are almost double those in Houston — and its climate is unpleasant, with stultifying humidity and more days with temperatures exceeding 90 degrees than any other large American city. Since these two major factors in urban growth don't explain Houston's success, what does?

Houston's great advantage, it turns out, is its ability to provide affordable living for middle-income Americans, something that is increasingly hard to achieve in the Big Apple. That Houston is a middle-class city is mirrored in the nature of its economy. Both greater Houston and Manhattan have about 2 million employees.

When Marathon Girl and I visited four years ago, we were surprised at how inexpensive the city was yet still provided all the amenities and services that we’d want if we lived there. It was the last thing we expected from such a big city, but our time in Houston and the surrounding area was enough to make us seriously consider living there. (Honestly, it’s just a matter of time until we end up moving there.)

We were especially floored by the low housing prices. The reason for the low housing prices are addressed in the article

Houston… has always been gung ho about development. Houston's builders have managed — better than in any other American city — to make the case to the public that restrictions on development will make the city less affordable to the less successful.

Of course, Houston's development isn't costless. Like most growing places, it must struggle with water issues, sanitation, and congestion. For environmentalists who worry about carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, Houston's rapid growth is particularly worrisome, since Houstonians are among the biggest carbon emitters in the country — all those humid 90-degree days mean a lot of electricity to cool off, and all that driving gobbles plenty of gas.

But Houston's success shows that a relatively deregulated free-market city, with a powerful urban growth machine, can do a much better job of taking care of middle-income Americans than the more "progressive" big governments of the Northeast and the West Coast.

Taking the cost of living, salaries (they’re much higher in NYC), taxes, etc. residents of Houston come out with more money in their pockets and a higher quality of life. That’s not to say that the city’s perfect. Houston does have hot, muggy weather most of the year and higher property taxes than NYC (and Utah, for that matter). But overall, it’s impressive that a city as big as Houston can be such a middle class magnet and a good place to raise a family.

Since I’ve been more vocal about my desire to live there, it’s amazing how many friends, co-workers, and acquaintances have family members who have relocated from Utah to the Houston area in the last five years. All say that the friends/family who moved there really like it.

(It should be noted that I have about a half-dozen regular blog readers who live there or have lived there at some point and have nothing but positive things to say about the city and living there.)

Yeah, I think relocating to Houston is simply a matter of time.

Q&A About My New Running Shoes

The “box man” – what my four-year-old son calls the UPS delivery person – dropped off a new pair of running shoes last week. All the kids gathered around in anxious anticipation while I opened it and tried them on. Then the questions came. I swear the White House press corps has nothing on my kids when it comes to asking tough questions.

Q: Are you going to go running right now?

A: No. I just had dinner. I can’t run on a full stomach.

Q: Can I try them on?

A: Sure.

Q: Will these shoes help you run fast?

A: Yes, they’ll help me run fast.

Q: Will you be able to run fast like Mom [Marathon Girl]?

A: Probably not.

Q: Why does Mom run faster than you?

A: Because she’s a gifted athlete.

~blank stares from kids~

A: Let me rephrase. Mom is very a very fast runner. Not everyone can run fast like mom.

Q: Why?

A: Some people are fast runners while other people are good at baseball players. Everyone’s good at different things.

Q: Can I run fast like mom?

A: One day you probably will.

Q: You’re bigger than mom, why can’t you run faster?

A: That’s a good question.

Q: Can I have your old shoes?

A: No. Dad’s going to throw them away.

Q: Why?

A: Because they’re old and smelly.

Q: Why?

A: Because dad runs in them all the time.

Q: Can I throw them away?

A: Yes.

Q: Can I go running with you when you wear them [the new shoes]?

A: Of course.

Q: Can we go outside and run right now? The sun’s still up.

A: Good idea! Let’s go outside and run.

Q: Don’t forget your new shoes.

A: I won’t.