C is for Change (#AtoZChallenge)

Hello WORLD!!

The truth about connections.

Smokkee here. As a blogger trying to make reach an audience, you try to make as many connections as you can. Some will be more meaningful than others, for sure, but all are important especially in the age of social media. For example, you may have a Twitter follower who may have 10x fewer followers than you yet if he reTweets your link to his followers, even if only one of those followers reTweets it, you've already reached a person who most likely would have never even seen your post if it wasn't for the follower of yours who reTweeted the post.

 That's why I felt connections was a perfect post for the A to Z Challenge.



Then I changed my mind.

A Bizzee Pick, for sure!

 I thought I'd write about one of my favorite movies instead: 2003's Confidence starring Edward Burns, Rachel Weisz, and Dustin Hoffman about a couple of con artists led by Burns who get in hot water with a guy nicknamed The King (Hoffman) after they con one of his flunkies out of some money, money which just happened to belong to The King. Intriguing story, a romantic side-plot that doesn't hurt nor hinder the movie (a rarity these days), and a pretty good twist ending, there's a lot to like about this movie.



And, as you may have already guessed, I changed mind.

Not about the film itself but about writing about it right now. There's a few other movies, including the equally good but often overlooked Lucky Number Slevin and the great til it's implausibly stupid ending Smoking Aces, I wanted to address in that post as well and since those films don't all start with C, it didn't make sense to post it. It's coming though. 




So what did I decide to write on then? I had decided on writing about Chicago. Why not? Not only is it my kinda town, Chicago is, it's also my home, probably for the rest of my life even though I've made several attempts at leaving it only to be inexplicably drawn back to my birth city. Then I gave it further thought.. what could I write about Chicago that I haven't already? Next week's mayoral runoff election between the incumbent mayor Rahm Emanuel and the underdog who forced this surprising turn of events Jesus 'Chuy' Garcia?










On second thought... Nah.


Politics bore me.

Seriously. Of all the services that's meant to be for the greater good of mankind, politics are the weakest and they often do more harm than good. Chicago is a prime example of seeing some or the most seemingly noblest people wind up not at all as noble as they appear to be. How many of the half dozen or so last governors of the state of Illinois wound up doing prison time after serving in the office? And do any of yall remember Jesse Jackson Jr, who as it stands just got released from prision for his own misdeeds that occured when he was in office? All the king's men, indeed. Well, not all. Governor Jim Edgar was ok, I suppose, and of course Obama is Obama, but did I want to dedicate a whole post to this?

Again, nah.

The only thing I can think of to say about Chicago at that point was about it being the known as the Second City. Why is Chicago known as the Second City? Because if you ask any other city in the USA, they'll tell you Chicago is the 2nd best city and the only city that's better is their own.
Sorta true story. But could I turn this into a whole post?

Again, nah. 

That's when I realized Chicago gave me too many options as far as posting. That was my whole problem to begin with in the first place, not being able to choose a great C topic. Chicago being the topic just amplified the problem.


Then I thought about cannabis...
At least I thought I thought about cannabis.
I must have done a little bit more than that though.
It seems like that idea went up in flames cause I had completely forgot what I was gonna say about it.....
 
 




It was at this point that I had chose to stop ignoring the fact that change was just BEGGING for me to write about. I mean it couldn't all just be a coincidence, could it? Plus not to mention that during this A to Z Challenge, I've rediscovered why, as important to me as finishing my first book is, these blogs I write (especially this one in particular) are more for my benefit then for any other purpose. It's a huge change of pace for me to go from inventing people, inventing their worlds, inventing their daily routines, inventing their secrets, inventing their heroics or their misdeeds, etc, to go to just freestyle writing my perpetually entangled thoughts into some kind of clear, cohesive blog post. I forgot how much I missed it and even more than missing it, how much I needed to do this. It's almost therapeutic how much better it is to finish a blog post as opposed to finishing a story which, after I reread, I'm almost certain to go back and do some editing to.

This is somewhat of a mini vacation for me.

Anyway, what about change? Not much, actually. I kinda used up this post talking about other things. But this one pic sums up change for me. Thinking about who I was before versus who I am now, I've come to realize this quote as the absolute truth. It is for me at least.

Later, WORLD.
Smokkee