Slip-sliding away - my way

I am making ham stock, y'all. It smells good up in here. The house is warm, church is letting out across the street and later I am going to take myself out into this brilliant day for a ramble in the woods somewhere.

Oh....welcome to my blog. It's about time I got this thing off the ground and out of my head.

On Sundays, I listen to NPR - it is almost a religious observance, I am that faithful. I often find my favorite program, To the Best of Our Knowledge, eerily apt as regards what's going on in my own life. And on the last Sunday of 2012, the first segment of TTBOOK made me get up off my procrastinating, easily distracted, lazy ass and finally start this blog.

The segment was titled "Begin Again," and it was "a collection of stories about putting challenges behind us. About transformation. About coming through hard times into a new life." That's exactly what I hope to accomplish with this blog - find the courage to conquer challenges, document transformation and try to transmute the hard times of the past few years into a new life and a fresh understanding.

Which is not to say it's all going to be serious and hard-slogging. There will be plenty of silliness and pointless meandering. I expect I will talk about my garden and recipes and hikes in the woods and musical obsessions and books. My friends will make frequent appearances (unless they request anonymity). You will hear about Whitey the Fluffy Princess and other animals I adore. I will ramble and rant and sometimes I will actually get straight to whatever particular point I am trying to make.

This blog will be my bully pulpit, now that I no longer have the weekly music column I wrote for 15 years for the Tallahassee Democrat as a vehicle for my musings (which were not always musical). Leaving that job, which was my dream job and which I loved, and reinventing myself in a new and unfamiliar work arena is one of those challenges I mentioned.

It's hard to reinvent oneself at the age of 56. I'd rather be facing the challenge of what to do in retirement than what to do in a new job. As retirement is still an evanescent dream - a concept as mythical and alluring as a unicorn - I am rallying all my courage and what inner grit I still possess to rise to the occasion.

The blog title "Driving Sideways" comes from one of my favorite Aimee Mann songs. It pretty much sums up my stumbling, haphazard Pilgrim's Progress. Welcome aboard - I hope you enjoy the ride.