I needed a good title before I could start writing today, and after looking at a bunch of CDs for inspiration, I picked up Paul Westerberg’s Eventually. It’s playing now and felt like a good soundtrack to work to.
It’s been a while since my last post, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. The last two months found me accomplishing another dream job of sorts, one in which I got paid to write stories about small town America! From Maine to Kentucky, Nebraska, Iowa and even part of North Dakota, I crafted stories about dozens of small towns (one town has just 16 people), and in theory people will hear these stories as they drive around the country. The company, HearHere, is a road trip app for iPhones (no Android version yet), and it’s connected to GPS to bring you narrated stories as you drive past towns and points of interest. If you’ve ever wondered what’s the story behind such-and-such a spot, this app might have the answer. I think the first five stories are free, so please give it a try as you drive around this summer!
The other site I occasionally write for is Vocal, which has been around for a few years, and offers writing challenges that have monetary prizes for the winners. Of course I’d love to win a thousand dollars or more for something that I write, but I also see the benefit of being given a prompt or theme to write on. The most recent challenge was about “crafting your happiness,” and I wrote about my favorite pair of scissors.
Getting back to the album, the song “Love Untold” was the single and probably the first song I ever heard by Paul Westerberg. It was 1996 and the radio DJ very enthusiastically introduced the song as being a new one, and I thought to myself, “Paul Westerberg, I like this guy.” Never heard the song again until many years later, after I became a die hard Replacements fan in 2012. But I feel like 17-year-old me knew enough about music to not forget hearing that song; I just filed it away until the stars aligned.
I look back at all that’s happened since this time last year, or even further back to graduating high school 25 years ago, and for every day that seemed to drag on with uncertainty, there were weeks that flew by without a pause. Time flies tomorrow indeed.
Rock and Routes 