Flot – sam (flŏt'sum) noun – American Heritage Dictionary
a. Wreckage or cargo that remains afloat after a ship has sunk.
b. Floating refuse or debris.
c. Discarded odds and ends.
d. Vagrant, usually destitute people.
The brief definitions above are much more succinct than I could be at explaining the figurative reason I included the word flotsam in the title of my blog. Through my ups and downs I feel like I have accumulated a collection of odds and ends in my psyche that need to be discarded…or shared. I also like the word for commercial reasons because it’s catchy and full of angst and goes good with “forty” and it will still be catchy should this blog(ugh) last long enough to be changed to Flotsam at Fifty one day.
Through my previous posting of the two parts of my Blog Manifesto, I have given you the how and the why of my essays. Now let me tell you a little about the who and maybe it will all come together in the end and make my blog a must-read amongst the literati.
I’ve earned my hard-won experience through a divorce, a couple of live-ins, other failed relationships, failed business ownership, financial ups and downs and struggles with type II manic-depression (more on that in a later essay.) Oh and I have a chronic illness, Chron’s Disease, that has humbled me more times than I can count when compared to the physical suffering of others.
Due to a surgery I had seventeen years ago relating to Chron’s (rhymes with phones), my system doesn’t absorb the vitamin B-12 like it should and when that is deficient it literally causes the emotions of regret and remorse to be overwhelming at times in ones brain. Ironically, it took an episode of the hospital show, House, to teach me that fact and how important it is for me to give myself shots of said vitamin.
I didn’t try any illegal substances (emphasis on the past tense and please, please don’t say anything to my parents) until I was thirty-five but subsequently tried everything short of injecting anything into my body. Because I got married right out of college and was married throughout my twenties I’ve often said I lived my twenties in my thirties and it’s leaked over into my forties!
Thank God, I’m more prone to obsession and compulsion than I am to addiction because although I do feel that it has given me a practical education when it comes to the debate about illegal drugs in our city and in society (more on that in a later essay); when it’s said and done, it’s all just so much playing with fire.
Don’t read too much into it but here’s a Haiku that I wrote about that…
untitled (addiction)
my mind toys with it-
something that cannot be reigned
passing hand o’er flame
Although I was raised in the south and my parents are from rural Alabama, my sister and I were raised in a very un-prejudiced household and I think that seeming dichotomy is born of the strong faith our parents share.
My last girlfriend was a twenty-three year old Nigerian model and student and she is among a handful of African-American women that I have dated. They were all thirty or under save one and for a middle-aged male that can’t afford a Corvette, it was always about the age and not the ethnicity (more on that in a later essay too.) I’ve dated more women in their twenties than I can count and it’s all a grand confluence of my personal Peter Pan Syndrome crashing into their issues with daddy and everyone wins.
Look at the third definition for Flotsam above, “vagrant, usually destitute people.” Like so many in today’s America, I feel like I’ve been a paycheck or extended illness away from destitution almost constantly over the last umpteen years. There’s also a personal moral destitution I’ve felt at times or at least touched and it’s something that infuses the very relevant views I have on issues confronting all of us.
Perhaps more than anything though, as I go through what I generously hope is middle age for me, the emotional flotsam that has seemingly broken away from my very soul has made me feel truly mortal for perhaps the first time in my life.
To be precise, I think my broad experience makes me someone whose opinion is worth considering on a wide range of cultural and social issues. I humbly ask that you consider my viewpoint as that of a self-professed unnervingly human and capable everyman; a Jimmy Stewart or Tom Hanks if you will, for the blogosphere.
Tuesday: 25 Random Things About Me-A Facebook Exercise
a. Wreckage or cargo that remains afloat after a ship has sunk.
b. Floating refuse or debris.
c. Discarded odds and ends.
d. Vagrant, usually destitute people.
The brief definitions above are much more succinct than I could be at explaining the figurative reason I included the word flotsam in the title of my blog. Through my ups and downs I feel like I have accumulated a collection of odds and ends in my psyche that need to be discarded…or shared. I also like the word for commercial reasons because it’s catchy and full of angst and goes good with “forty” and it will still be catchy should this blog(ugh) last long enough to be changed to Flotsam at Fifty one day.
Through my previous posting of the two parts of my Blog Manifesto, I have given you the how and the why of my essays. Now let me tell you a little about the who and maybe it will all come together in the end and make my blog a must-read amongst the literati.
I’ve earned my hard-won experience through a divorce, a couple of live-ins, other failed relationships, failed business ownership, financial ups and downs and struggles with type II manic-depression (more on that in a later essay.) Oh and I have a chronic illness, Chron’s Disease, that has humbled me more times than I can count when compared to the physical suffering of others.
Due to a surgery I had seventeen years ago relating to Chron’s (rhymes with phones), my system doesn’t absorb the vitamin B-12 like it should and when that is deficient it literally causes the emotions of regret and remorse to be overwhelming at times in ones brain. Ironically, it took an episode of the hospital show, House, to teach me that fact and how important it is for me to give myself shots of said vitamin.
I didn’t try any illegal substances (emphasis on the past tense and please, please don’t say anything to my parents) until I was thirty-five but subsequently tried everything short of injecting anything into my body. Because I got married right out of college and was married throughout my twenties I’ve often said I lived my twenties in my thirties and it’s leaked over into my forties!
Thank God, I’m more prone to obsession and compulsion than I am to addiction because although I do feel that it has given me a practical education when it comes to the debate about illegal drugs in our city and in society (more on that in a later essay); when it’s said and done, it’s all just so much playing with fire.
Don’t read too much into it but here’s a Haiku that I wrote about that…
untitled (addiction)
my mind toys with it-
something that cannot be reigned
passing hand o’er flame
Although I was raised in the south and my parents are from rural Alabama, my sister and I were raised in a very un-prejudiced household and I think that seeming dichotomy is born of the strong faith our parents share.
My last girlfriend was a twenty-three year old Nigerian model and student and she is among a handful of African-American women that I have dated. They were all thirty or under save one and for a middle-aged male that can’t afford a Corvette, it was always about the age and not the ethnicity (more on that in a later essay too.) I’ve dated more women in their twenties than I can count and it’s all a grand confluence of my personal Peter Pan Syndrome crashing into their issues with daddy and everyone wins.
Look at the third definition for Flotsam above, “vagrant, usually destitute people.” Like so many in today’s America, I feel like I’ve been a paycheck or extended illness away from destitution almost constantly over the last umpteen years. There’s also a personal moral destitution I’ve felt at times or at least touched and it’s something that infuses the very relevant views I have on issues confronting all of us.
Perhaps more than anything though, as I go through what I generously hope is middle age for me, the emotional flotsam that has seemingly broken away from my very soul has made me feel truly mortal for perhaps the first time in my life.
To be precise, I think my broad experience makes me someone whose opinion is worth considering on a wide range of cultural and social issues. I humbly ask that you consider my viewpoint as that of a self-professed unnervingly human and capable everyman; a Jimmy Stewart or Tom Hanks if you will, for the blogosphere.
Tuesday: 25 Random Things About Me-A Facebook Exercise
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