The harder you try, the harder life gets.  The longer you last, the more you are expected to endure.  It’s like the levels of a video game, or an action movie sequel—more stunts, more effects, more everything.  I’m quite sick of it, really.  All I want to do is sleep.  I really wish I could stop writing altogether.

I finally got fed up working in cafés, and went back to school.  What you have here, then, is the journal of my life leading up to our move to Los Angeles.  It covers our early marriage, a few vacations, the completion of Marci’s schooling and the beginning of mine.  The writing styles are often dramatically different, as I’ve included most of what I had to write for professors.  This is a statement, really, my way of suggesting that poetry is the superior writing genre because it ignores time in a way that prose cannot.  As far as I know, there are only two pieces that did not make this work—and I assure you the world is better off.

I sincerely hope you are able to enjoy this for what it is, an honest portrayal of my Nashville years.  They were mostly horrible to live through, but necessary in order to get on with life.  There were certainly moments that made it worthwhile.  I expect I’ll look back with some sort of fondness from time to time.