Taking a deep breath

My family and some friends recently spent our week of spring break in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Julie and I led a group six kids to a cabin in the mountains. Jordan, Meg, and Kat each invited a friend with parents crazy enough to let us bring one of their kids. All told, there were eight of us sharing a three-story cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Pool. Hot tub. The whole deal.
We left a knot of anxiety and work tension behind and were able to relax. After my GPS announced we arrived at our destination I sighed a deep breath. Then I took another. And another. Huge lungfuls of simple, relaxing breathing made me realize that I had been suffocating and it felt good.
This week off with nothing to do gave all of us time to breath. I relaxed on the veranda. I relaxed while we cooked S’Mores over a campfire. I relaxed in the hot tub. I relaxed while we grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. I listened to lots of music. We hit the tourist traps and drove around the countryside watching to properties blur from trailer to horse farm to shanty to mansion and round and round she goes. We had a blast.
Two promised amenities were missing: WiFi access and the heated pool. Julie and I were more upset than the kids. This limited our access to our respective office networks to a weak 3G signal. This blessing in disguise meant less work and more time on our hands than we expected.
Here’s the secret sauce though. The most therapeutic and cathartic aspect of this vacation for me was carving out a large amount of time to write.

Breathing again

I can’t remember a more concentrated writing session than this week of reflection. With a day remaining I had written more than 10,000 words. It wasn’t Shakespeare, but a found a few pearls in the sand alongside a few themes:

  • Work – yeah, the wheels kept turning the first day or two and I cranked out some writing for work
  • Vacation diary – a journal of what we did during vacation
  • Fiction – just the tiniest little smidgen
  • Blog – revisioning my blog

This blog is dead, long live this blog

That last bullet, the one about my blog, that’s the one that should have your attention because it absorbed most of mine. Carrying Stones has been festering online in one form or another for eons, all the way back when modems cranked out a noisy 28.8k. My blog has been a dumping ground for whatever was most immediately on my mind. That isn’t always a bad thing, but most of the time it’s not a great idea. There is a reason writers talk about first drafts, and editing, and (ugh!) revisions.
This is a revision of my blog, and my goal is to share something valuable with you. Everything you read here is provided gratis. I hope to provide content of the same high-quality craftsmanship that discerning readers such as yourself would expect from the books and magazines you buy.
I’ve invested my time designing a useful site for you and welcome your suggestions or requests to help me improve it for you.