This probably doesn't end well. I hate to make the Pandamoon group blog readers' introduction to Matt Coleman read like a declaration of laziness, but I'm not here to peddle you false hope either. I can remember one year (I might have been thirteen, or, sadly, seventeen) when my best friend, Kurt, and I decided to go balls in with our summer jobs. We were determined to have some serious cake when school started back up in August. We mowed yards, we cleaned office buildings, we washed cars. It was too much. The culminating point was when we realized that we were upside-down in our car washing business. We had purchased waxes and washes and wheel scrubs (may not be a real thing) which all went mostly unused. Our customer flow, at ten dollars a pop, had accounted for about 94% of our overhead (see chart). Kurt and I spent several hours on a balmy August evening mixing liquids of the proper color and consistency to replace what little we used from each of those bottles. I would like to report that our swindle failed and we learned our lesson. But Walmart took it all back without so much as a sideways glance. And, let's be honest, if we had learned the lesson then, this post wouldn't be happening.
And this blog post comes with an honest confession: I would rather be binge watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (again) than writing this. This is the simple fact that concerns me. Don't get me wrong, I don't consider myself to be lazy (at least, not by some definitions of the term). I have, after all, completed a couple of novels (one of which will be published by Pandamoon later this year). I have worked in education for fourteen years--nine of those in a public school classroom (which is hard ... hard job ... no two ways about it). I have two kids, and I'm an active dad (to BOTH of them, mind you). But the bottom line is that the writer quote which has always spoken most clearly to me is the Dorothy Parker quote: "I hate writing. I love having written."
So here I am, committing to a blog on top of my own blog. And it all pains me. In honesty, I actually do love writing. But I love the creation of worlds. I love the building of things. I will openly admit to struggling with blogging and tweeting and commenting and Facebooking and whatever else there is to do on the Interwebs. I fall into what I believe is a pretty wide sampling of writers who create fictional worlds because we have no faith in building interest in our actual lives. We never plan to write memoirs. I, like I'm sure many of those writers, struggle to find material to keep up with one blog, much less two. This post is nothing more or less than the beginnings of my efforts to pivot.
In a recent episode of Silicon Valley, when the Pied Piper crew is faced with the possibility of utter failure, Jared tries to sell the team on the theory of pivoting: taking what you are currently doing, which is not working, and pivoting to something adjacent which may actually work better than the originally intended purpose. The promise of my commitments as a writer is partially that I may, in fact, end up as sleep deprived and bat shit crazy as Jared in that very moment. But another possibility is actually finding the proper way to pivot. I have taken stock of my life (I don't recommend it), and I have discovered that I have very few skills and talents. I: 1.) know more about pop culture than any grown man should; 2.) I can catch quarters off my elbow like that guy did in Happy Days; 3.) I am an above average educator; and, 4.) I can write a little.
My plan, then, is to pivot. I will take what little I know about and I will write about it. My plan is to leverage the same material I use to write irreverent text messages to what few friends I do have. I wish I could say that is going to be beautiful essays about the challenges of writing or important <world news events> (I know so little about <world news events> that I was unable to replace the words <world news events> with an actual example). My plan,rather, is to fill your blog feed with my takes on the use of comedy in the verse of Chance the Rapper and Fetty Wap; comparisons between Agatha Christie and Pretty Little Liars; diatribes about female comic book characters who deserve their own shows (Zatanna!). I might make fun of the current state of public education every now and then (might not ... too easy ... it's like sitting outside the hair salon at J.C. Penny's). Maybe (maybe) some of that will strike your fancy. Just as likely though, is that you will get to watch the train wreck of me trying to do too many things at once. Either way, it should be pure entertainment. If any of that sounds like something you'd like to watch unfold, watch this space, check out my own blog (www.saybird.com), and follow me on Twitter (@coleman_matt).