Author: C. L. Harmon

In my quest to write this blog, I find myself all over the page, if you will. Like all lives, mine is connected from the prior day and so on.  However, for most, their lives are basically connected in short terms to their past. In other words, they are probably not that connected to their distant pasts as it pertains to their present. For me though, writing has been a constant thread needling through my life since I was a teen.

So my tapestry of blog creation may seem like as if I had a few stiff drinks before planting myself in front of the computer. My point being that it is difficult to write in a chronologically organized manner as it pertains to my pains and triumphs in the field of writing.

It is my objective to create an image of my experiences that you can relate to. In order for me to do this effectively, I will be rummaging through my mental attic, unpacking old memories and intertwining them with my life today.  Since we are already on the subject of a single thread extending the length of my life thus far, it seems like a good place to start unraveling.

Someone once told me that when a person wakes up thinking about something and goes to bed thinking about the same thing, then that is what that person should be doing in their life. Although I assume one can take this literally, I actually believe it to mean that which is most thought of in one’s life. Another person once told me that if something brings you peace and happiness, then why would you want to do anything else.

These are bits of information that sit on the back burner of my brain sometimes stewing, boiling at other times but at the very least simmering at any given time.

This means that today is intrinsically linked to a night when I was 19 and walking outside at night dreaming of becoming a writer someday like Stephen King. It is linked to a day ten years ago when I was a reporter for a weekly paper looking for my next story lead. It’s also linked to the day a few years ago when I started my own newspaper, to the day I finished a short story that didn’t get accepted for publication and to every other day of my existence since I was a teenager.

It’s the same thread. It never breaks and seems to be on a spool that lasts the length of this life on earth. There have been times I was so angry because of the difficulties of succeeding as a writer that I hacked at that thread with an ax. I would soon learn that the ax handle broke before I could hack through that thread. As I wrote in an earlier blog; it’s difficult to be the proverbial jack-ass always chasing the carrot but only rarely getting a nibble if even a bite at all.

Some of you may recognize the title of this blog segment as the title of a Neil Young song. I like the song because it elegantly expresses the desire of a junkie to chase the high at any cost…even unto death. It’s poetic and real. I equate the desire for me to write to the junkie longing for the high. Although I would not kill or steal to achieve the high I desire, I do certainly understand the chase to gain that high. The only difference I believe is that they and I experience different types of needles.

“I’ve seen the needle
and the damage done

A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie’s
like a settin’ sun.”

~Neil Young

In closing, I would like to emphasize that this entire blog series is a journey. It’s a journey where I have used faith and hope to guide me for over 30 years. It is not just a story of the negative and positive aspects of my experiences to becoming and being a writer and the outcomes which have resulted. This is about sharing a life experience with you involving both of these elements.

God has all the secrets and He’s not one to reveal them easily or gossip. However one receives this blog and what they get out of it, is one of those secrets. Sometimes what we need to hear the most is in the words of others. I believe this is why I am so passionate about writing. Have you ever considered how enlightened you have become because of the written word? How many times has the Bible, a poem or a story of triumph affected or even changed you? It is my hope that this blog series speaks to everyone who reads it. And if it does, it is not because of me, but because God gave me this opportunity to write about faith and hope and its importance in all of our journeys within this life.

 

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Maybe it’s part depression but I don’t believe it all stems from that. I am referring to feeling like a failure. I have felt like a failure for most of my life.

Someone told me once that anyone can call anything they are doing a job or career, but if it isn’t making money then it’s really only a hobby. If that is true then some would say I have chosen to be a hobbyist for a career.

As I wrote in an earlier blog, I have had a lot of jobs. Some of those were second jobs such as scrubbing floors at grocery stores in the evenings or painting utility trailers at night. I have always done what I must to make an honest living.  When I was younger those types of jobs didn’t bother me.

I am not too good to scrub floors or toilets or leave a shop grimy and grungy from working on cars all day.

In fact, I expected to do such things. After all, those actions build character and help keep the ego in check. God does require us to be humble and those type of jobs will certainly humble.

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The title of this blog is “Failure to Communicate”. This is because I believed what should happen with paying my dues in performing such jobs as mentioned above, having faith that at some point I would get noticed by someone for my writing abilities and moving up the ladder of success in life both financially and for recognition of my writing desire was always right around the corner.

I WAS WRONG!

The Lord and I were certainly not on the same page. And since He is writing the book of our lives, He can put me on any page He wishes at any time He wishes. There was obviously a failure to communicate between myself and the Creator.

One has to remember from earlier posts that I never asked to be a writer or have such an overwhelming desire to write. This inclination to wrangle words was given to me by God.

So why keep dangling the carrot in front of me and not let me have a bite?

I really was the proverbial jack-ass that kept following the carrot always thinking that I was one step closer to a bite.

On the morning of the Oklahoma City bombing, I became a father. As a result, two things happened. The first was the discovery of a new type of hope for the future of my family.  The other was that for the first time since I heard the voice I began to tune it out… I wanted to do the right thing for my daughter and for my son who came 14 months later.

It was time to put away childish hobbies as it were and to stop chasing the carrot. I soon discovered that I could ignore the voice to a certain degree but desire would just use a new method of forcing me to write.

This new method had become apparent to me while I was failing in junior college as a young adult. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t concentrate on the objective of getting a higher education.

Not only was the voice ever present at that time, but there was now an unshakeable feeling that I needed to be somewhere else doing something else.

It was an overpowering feeling and I couldn’t shake it. It affected my job and my classes.

This would ultimately lead to quitting a good job and withdrawing from school.

As I mentioned, I ended up going back to work for my dad. It felt safe and allowed me to write in my spare time and pay my bills. For the next ten years, I worked for him, raised my two children and tried desperately to no avail to find work as a writer or get published.

As writing work continued to be elusive and due to my failing hope, I had begun to force the very desire from my being while taking a very serious interest in learning the trade of body work. I knew how to do the work, but nothing about running a business.

It is at this point when I chose the lesser of two evils; to stay at the only job that didn’t give me that horrible feeling that I should be somewhere else doing something else with my life. Looking back on it now, I know it was God giving me a type of sanctuary in which to exist and an environment in which allowed me to be with my children and earn a living while awaiting His timing.

I believe the timing is everything.

It’s not our timing though, it’s God’s. He placed me in the only place where I felt safe because the time to write for a career was not ready. Although I did feel like a failure for not having reached my goal of writing for a living, I began to understand that the acceptance of God’s will is a lesson that all of His children must learn.  Without that lesson, true faith can never be attained

It is not only the days of our lives that are numbered by God, but the seconds we experience happiness, sorrow, success, and failure as well. Within each of those seconds,  we are learning to laugh with love, cry with hope, succeed with humility and fail with grace.

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For my high school graduation, I got a big heaping pile of clinical depression. A life of fun, laughter and partying soon became one of misery, lost direction and loneliness.

There were specific events that catapulted me into that state, but even without them, I wouldn’t have escaped the throes of what I would eventually just call “my depression”. As I had written in my first blog, God had plans for me and to make sure I followed those plans, He wired them into my brain.

Depression for me was liking having a sixth sense. It was as though I could see the world differently than others or had access to layers of our existence that they did not. It was empowering although miserable at the same time.

However, within that darkness that consumed me, there were messages on dungeon walls that I began to decipher…

Late nights writing dark and foreshadowing poetry had begun. It became a tool that allowed me to discover that there was power in writing.

As I write this it occurs to me that some who read this might believe this to mean the power to change the world through words. You would be wrong…at least as to the meaning which I am writing about now.

It gave me the power to believe in something other than the world I had always known. In my world, work was the key to everything. As my father used to say, “if you want more than you got to do more.” When he referred to work it meant the work one does with the hands. Although the mind is certainly part of that work, the sweat comes from the actions of the hands and not the thoughts conjured in the mind.

So I worked

In other words, there were a few people out there who could write, act or sing and make money doing those artistic type of things but those people lived in some alien place like California and certainly not in rural Oklahoma. I still remember the day my dad told me the sentiments I just wrote.  I was 19 years old. My dad’s belief was not a criticism as much as it was the view point of a man who had never known anyone who had made a living that way. The people he knew and spent time with had regular jobs and used their hands to make a living. The other people, those aliens in California, were on his tv and radio but never in a shop or factory. His words were hard to take, but nothing really compared to the constant voice in my head screaming at me to write. Looking back on it now, I believe that he was telling me not to chase the wind because it’s always going nowhere even though it seems to be going everywhere. So I worked and made a living with my hands. I also continued listening to that voice. for the first time in my life, I began to learn what it really means to have hope and that hope and misery are two sides of the same coin.

So I worked and within three years of graduating high school, I worked on cars at my dad’s  shop. I worked at a tubing manufacturing plant. I built trash cans for Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. I worked at a machine shop and all of this I did while battling an ever growing depression that alienated from every happiness.

Did I mention that I flunked out of junior college too during this period?

The voice that I spoke of in the first blog was screaming in my head so loudly that I couldn’t even concentrate. All I wanted to do was melt away in the dark world in which was my life. I knew there was no escape from it.

I could have used drugs or alcohol, but I knew they were only vacations away from the misery and not a permanent destination for happiness.

I am about to tell why God does not allow us to see our futures. I chose faith and patience. Had I known then how each of those choices would be tested in the years to come, I probably would have chosen the alcohol. I would guess if He did show us, we would all just become drunks and junkies. That may not be a rewarding way to go, but one has to admit that it’s a helluva lot more fun.

What God did give me though was another escape. He gave me writing. And without it, I would have gone insane.

Although it was dark and gloomy poetry, it was something. It was what I needed to believe that there was something beyond the depression and the sadness. There was hope that writing could set me free from all of it.

And the voice never lets me forget it.

Over 30 years later as I come home each day from making my living with my hands, that voice is still there with all the fervor that it first spoke to when I was still just a teenager.

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For over 30 years I have wanted to be a writer. It has been the most frustrating and rewarding journey I have ever known. A friend of mine suggested I start writing a blog about my experiences because it might help other people who feel as I do. He thought that it might encourage others to never give up and to continue following their hearts when all they want to do is kill the beat that can make any dreamer feel lost and alone. I hope that readers will follow along as I continue to add posts about my journey, my frustrations, and my triumphs. This first blog is entitled The Voice.

I’m C.L. Harmon.

THE VOICE

I was one of those kids in school who dreaded math class. It was a real bitch for me. Try as I may, the dots in my brain just would not connect to create an image of understanding. However, English and grammar were the complete opposite. I could sleep in class and still, miraculously it seemed, soak up that information effortlessly.

Years later, I would come to understand that it was by no an accident that my brain functioned that way.  It was by design. My Creator had a specific purpose in mind when he wired those neurons together inside my head. What He didn’t give me was an instructional manual to operate that well-oiled machine that rests on my shoulders. Instead, He gave me a desire that was no less potent than an animal in heat.

We call it writing. Really such a simple word for having such a major impact on my life. And when I say ‘impact’ I don’t always mean a positive one. In fact, I would venture to say that in many ways it has been a negative one. Allow me to elaborate. Imagine, if you will, a nagging little voice in the back of your mind that is ever present and rarely quiet. The voice is constantly reminding you that you need to be doing something else.

Since i was 18 years old I have heard that voice. It has never abated or been silenced for very long. Every job I have ever had (And there have been a lot of them in the past 30 years) that did not pertain to writing in some manner, has been what many might call stepping stones to get me where I wanted to be. To me though, they didn’t feel like stepping stones but throwing stones that were being hurled at me in an effort to follow that voice.

I do not want it to sound as though I had a choice. In fact, I have never had a choice. Trust me when I tell you that after enough rocks hit me, I was going to listen to that voice and get out of the strike zone. I simply couldn’t stand it anymore. Guess what happened next. Yes, I would make a choice that others must have thought crazy or at least unwise. But I couldn’t help it. I would quit a job and take one for less money in order to have time to write or invest in myself to have a career in writing. As the weeks turned into months though and responsibilities of family and bills would tighten, off to another job I would go.

“This time nothing is going to stop me! I am going to make this job work this time. Positive attitude? Check! A new perspective?  Check! The aftertaste of pride in my throat? Check! I am going to be like everyone else here. I am going to work hard, put in my time and be normal. Maybe buy a boat and start going to the lake on the weekends like my co-workers. I am going to focus on being a regular guy who puts in his time at the payroll production plant and then just enjoy my time off until retirement. A steady paycheck, 401K, paid vacations, advancement opportunities. Oh yeah, this is going to be great!”

“Hey! Wake up! You know this isn’t right for you. “What? Oh no! Damn! There it is again. That pesky and annoying voice is back!” With everything I could muster, I would order it to go away, to shut-up, and to leave me alone. I have a good thing going here and you are not going to mess it up, I would tell it. Sure it would quiet down for a little while. But back into my conscious thoughts it slowly crept creating conflict as the weeks would slip by. As though under some alien control, my thoughts would begin looking for a way out.  The positive attitude toward my job, the hopes of being normal without the pipe dream of being some writer who can change the world for the better by being a writer were again becoming overwhelming. However, the voice had spoken…and again I listened.

To Be Continued!

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