How do I begin. No, seriously! How do I begin?

How do I begin. No, seriously! How do I begin?

As I begin, it is early November and one of the 10 nice weather days a year that we have in Sarasota. Wife/gina has left for work and I am beginning this Blog. So... here we go.

My name is L.M. Little. You may call me Mike - Michael - Mikey or any other derivation thereof. The kids at storytime where I work call me Mr. Mike. Please don't call me Leslie. Not even in a "hey, he said he hates it, but I'm going to test the water and be a funny guy and try a wholly unique joke that he probably has never heard before in his life and call him "Lez - leeeee."

I am an unpublished writer. Much of my work lately has to do with emasculation. (Please, don't call me Leslie) Okay, let's deal with this whole "Leslie" thing. My father's name was Leslie. Big surprise! He told me that when he was in school nobody gave him a hard time about it, which is odd, because EVERYBODY gave me a hard time about it. His friends called him Lester or Les-turd. Not a good option for me.

Teachers, clerks and telemarketers all "naturally" assume that Leslie is a female name. I have tried in the past - and now have completely given up trying to make the distinction between male = Les - ssss - lie, and female = Lez - zzz  - lie. I once renewed my driver's license at the Jacksonville Beach DMV (one of the 9 circles of hell) and they registered me a big fat F in the gender space - AND I WAS STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM! For years I laughed it off with the statement "it will probably get me out of a ticket." - It didn't!

So the most progress I've been able to make in reconciling that name is to acknowledge it as a single letter in my pen name - L.M. Little. Oh, btw, if you feel emasculated by your first name - it doesn't help that your last name is "Little".

Okay, enough with that. If I had to pick one picture that would summarize where I'm at now - mentally, and spiritually, it would be this one...

This was taken by wife/gina on a dead part of Route 66 outside of Chicago, Illinois. If I were an analyst or an art critic, I would say in a pretentious foreign accent... "L.M. eez standing on ze road which shows his wandering, restless spirit. It eez a road separated from the how you say? ...main road. It eez also an empty road which hints at feelings of isolation and loneliness. There is also a strong amount of penis env..." OKAY, enough of that.

I was born in John C. Lincoln Hospital in Phoenix, Az on October 21, 1973. The same day John Paul Getty III’s ear was cut off by his kidnappers and sent to a newspaper in Rome. However, it didn't technically arrive until November 8.

That makes me the big Four Zero. This is the age that I have always had the thought - if you are not an astronaut by now, you probably aren't going to be one. So I have been evaluating my life leading up to the new year which is less than two months away. So let's bullet point this mother, shall we?

• I'm married - soooo, that's a good thing.
• I work in a bookstore which is for me, also a good thing.
• We have a small home and vehicles that work.
• I have written a novella, a poetry book, and I am working on a novel.
• Never been published (frowny face).
• Unless you count the internet scam pay-to-publish black market Russian mafia scam. (I said scam twice)
• I have trouble focusing - for instance, last night I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to retrieve my Battlestar Galactica (original series) boxed set from behind the giant stereo cabinet when I should have been (as wife/gina says) "winding down".
• I am a hoarder - when it comes to books. 
• In an effort to actually read more of these books, I plan on spending 2014 concentrating on science fiction, which I hope to chronicle on this blog.
• I have never played The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, which I also plan to remedy in 2014.
• I have been stuck on chapter 5. of my novel for about 2 years now. I will conquer chapter 5 if I have to round the Horn of Africa - face the tempest - find myself washed up on the Skeleton Coast - and march to the gates of hell itself.

This is what is going through my head as I settle in to 40 and prepare for a new year. I want to be like Phil Connors in "Groundhog Day" - achieving some kind of balance through spiritual refinement...

Or like Jules in "Pulp Fiction", I long to wander the earth "like Caine in Kung Fu."

But until then, I guess I'll see where this blog takes me.

Oh, if I had to pick one quote that would sum me up, it would be...

"The dual substance of Christ-the yearning, so human, so superhuman,

of man to attain God or, more exactly, to return to God and identify

himself with him-has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me.

This nostalgia for God, at once so mysterious and so real, has opened

in me large wounds and also flowing springs. My principal anguish and

the source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been

the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh...and my

soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met."
                                                -Nikos Kazantzakis

So I guess I'll end with the statement, "Enough for now."

Besides, I have to start getting ready for work.