Waffle House Vistas — THE BITTER SOUTHERNER

Micah Cash paired photos with an essay Waffle House Vistas for the Bitter Southerner. It’s excellent.
Waffle House Vistas — THE BITTER SOUTHERNER:

…nearly every Southerner feels a personal connection to Waffle House. How can a cookie-cutter restaurant chain win over the hearts of millions of people? My answer is inclusivity. In my experience, when you walk into a Waffle House, whether it is off a random exit in northern Alabama or downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, you are welcomed. At its best, Waffle House creates a sense of belonging unlike most other places.
Waffle House does not care how much you are worth, what you look like, where you are from, what your political beliefs are, or where you’ve been so long as you respect the unwritten rules of Waffle House: Be kind, be respectful, and don’t overstay when others are waiting for a table.

And I’m with Micah. Hash browns should be scattered and covered by default.

Waiting at Starbucks

My son was in a car wreck a couple of weeks ago. That’s why I am at Starbucks right now. My wife drove his busted car to the shop near where she works this morning. I am at the corporate coffeehouse down the road from her office waiting for 5 o’clock to happen here instead of somewhere else. As I type, it’s 3:52 p.m. I figured I would get to the neighborhood (read the mall), enjoy a fancy caffeinated beverage, and unplug for a bit.
Writing comes so much easier with no connection to the internet. Why can’t I just make a conscious decision not to open Twitter or Instagram every 45 seconds or so. The weird thing is I have my phone here next to me, but it seems shameful to pick it up. Even now it calls to me.
My precioussssss.
It feels good to putter through a few lines of prose with no real goal while the caffeine soaks into my brain.
A previous career required me to write several hundred words a day to fill the pages of the newspapers I worked for. The pace wasn’t so extreme at the weekly, but the daily paper could be challenging. There are always topics to write about because something is always happening. A typical article for those small publications was about 400 words long, and that only came after writing more and editing back down to condense all of that newsy goodness.
I enjoyed journalism, but I don’t really miss it. Because the papers were small a writer had to know about all areas of potential coverage from the kids who win the spelling bee to city and county government shenanigans and the effect of national politics on the local economy. Now that I am free I can be free to grouse about whatever irritates me at the moment and when it becomes too much I can simply ignore it. I don’t have to know what’s going on if I don’t want to.
Also, I now enjoy ending my sentences with prepositions. Also, Oxford commas. They’re pretty great, swell, and fun to use without an editor complaining about them.

Overcoming Anxiety

Anxiety and depression are lurkers.
For years, I suspected something was wrong with me and I just couldn't figure out what it was. Strike that. Nothing was wrong with me, but I did need help. It took me until May 2018—way too long—to sheepishly mention something to my doctor. Like everyone else I have talked to, he said I would be surprised how many people need some sort of help. He wrote me a prescription for Lexapro and told me to give it 30 days.
I am still taking it and life is so much better. Looking back, I can see the cycles of anxiety I would go through. I see now why I struggled with my previous job and why I finally moved on to other work after 11 years. The medicine doesn't make me weird or hyper or lethargic or anything like that. It just corrects the course of thoughts through my brain.
If you have a nagging feeling that things will never work out or you just can't handle it any more, please get help. Make an appointment. People are waiting to help you. If it's really bad, find help now at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

Breaking Digital Bonds

My habits have become terrible. All of my idle moments are filled with Twitter, Instagram, and endless mindless games of Microsoft Solitaire (which is the best handheld solitaire game I have found to date and please don't download it for your own sake and sanity just DON'T DO IT).
So it's time for some change. The easiest change is to read more, not in witty chunks of 240 characters or 500-word articles on, well, everything. I mean reading real books of fiction and non-fiction, and I mean reading for fun and not to learn anything. I mean reading like I did when I was a kid riding my bicycle to the public library between the polo field and elementary school to fill up my summer reading booklet with titles.
I've had a Kindle for years. It's the third-generation Kindle with the physical keyboard. It's slow, and I'm old and need lots of light to read now. As I was finally finishing American Gods by Neil Gaiman, a book I purchased two or three years ago and only finished Sunday night, I found myself leaning into the lamplight and squinting to make out the words. It was frustrating, so it didn't take me long to upgrade to the Kindle Paperwhite and I got it yesterday and it's wonderful.
Now I'm digging into the five-volume box set of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones saga, which may be too ambitious. Having watched the series on HBO (and eagerly anticipating the final season), reading the books is like watching it again in slow motion in my brain. The writing is great, but I'm not sure if it will hold my attention to the end. I wish I had read it before watching the series so I could kvetch about how they did so-and-so wrong and "No, it wasn't like that in the book!" with all of my fellow nerds.
Reading more will, hopefully, lead me to write more regularly. One plan to reframe my brain on the front is to simply move around a bit. Today I have holed up in a local coffeehouse. Cliché, I know, but it's working. I can see they have Wi-Fi, but I refuse to ask for access. That invisible Wi-Fi wire will bind my mind and I'll be stumbling through Twitter and reloading Reddit before I know it. If I really start jonesing for a connection, I have a paper notebook and pencil.
In case of emergency…unplug!
These grand plans for change are fresh on my mind. For now, it's working. I have written more today than I have in the past year. Much of it is rambling. Nobody would want to read it, but it's getting garbage out of my brain. I spent many years making a living as a writer, enough time to know that the words will start making sense if I just start giving them form outside of my brain. I remember someone saying something like "you can't think your way out of writer's block" and that is so true. Thinking is important, but spilling thoughts into a more physical medium is the only way to break a block. It seems like a contradiction, but you must write your way through writer's block.

A Change of Scenery

As part of the monthlong celebration of my birth, I got to enjoy a Scotch tasting session at our favorite bar in Chattanooga.
The session begins at 6 p.m. and I figured, “Hey, why not make a day of it?” I packed a small bag with all the necessities: MacBook Pro, notebook, pen, pencil, and my new Kindle Paperwhite. Armed with some extra time and a credit card, I was ready for anything!
Https farm8 staticflickr com 7871 33221219458 27523bce1a nNo, I’m not drinking all day. To start, I settled in with a latte around 2:30 at a great coffeehouse next door to the aforementioned speakeasy. After treating myself to one latte, I switched to black coffee roasted fresh all the time just six blocks down the road. I’ll be a twitchy mess at bedtime, but it sure was good coffee.
Two folks chatting nearby caught my attention and introduced themselves. Genesis is a local, an artist by the sound of it, with a guest named Daga. Genesis seems to know everyone; he greets almost all of the customers coming into the place. He introduced Daga as “a creative who just moved here from Boston.” I had been tapping away at the computer open in front of me. He asked if I am a writer. “Sometimes,” I said. “Same,” Daga said. Cool folks. We exchanged a few pleasantries about writing and living around Chattanooga before returning to our own little worlds at our tables.
Back on track, the Scotch experience was fascinating. Rick Edwards, one of four Masters of Scotch in the world (at the time of this writing), led us through an hourlong session tasting five servings of Glenlivet. I always knew I like Scotch whisky, but I never knew why I like it. Now I do!