Welcome to my blog!

How I stopped worrying and learned how to become a blogger:

After years and years of dreaming about being a writer, I’ve decided it is time to either defecate or remove myself from the porcelain throne.  Writers write.  People who talk about being a “writer” without doing any actual writing are called “talkers” (or ‘bulls***ers”.  Take your pick).  I’ve started this blog as a small step towards actually being a writer.

To paraphrase Descartes: I write, therefor I am a writer.

Perhaps you are thinking “good for you for wanting to be a writer.  But what’s in this blog for me?  Why should I come back to your site?”.  Those are excellent questions.  Let me answer them by first giving a little background on how this blog came to be, and what you can expect from my writing in the future.

I began to seriously contemplate starting a blog in early 2016.  But I couldn’t decide what I was going to blog about.  Nearly all blogging experts state that a blogger should concentrate on one subject and one subject only.  This is the blogger’s “niche”.  The blogger should be passionate about that one subject so they will want to write about it on a regular basis.

After giving it a lot of thought, I decided that my blog was going to be about my love of bicycling and how I was going lose weight and get in shape by riding.  I was going to call my blog “Big Guy on a Bike”.  Almost immediately I hit a wall.  While I do enjoy bicycle riding immensely, I realized right away that I wouldn’t have enough material to write about on a regular basis.  I’m not a bicycle racer nor am I bike-riding across the USA or Europe.  So how could I find material to fill my blog?  There’s only so many ways you can write about a local bike ride and hold a reader’s interest.  My blogging plans went on hold for several months.

     I have been interested in craft beers for a while. So, when I discovered that there are sports medicine researchers who believe that beer is one of the best post-workout recovery fluids on the market, the lightbulb illuminated.  “Aha!” I exclaimed, “I like bicycling and I like beer, what a perfect combo for a blog!”.  I would review beers that I enjoy and that I think would make for good post-ride refreshments.  My plan was to focus mainly on local craft brews, and why I thought my readers might enjoy these beers whether they rode bikes or not.

“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy” -B. Franklin

Around the same time I hit upon the idea of doing reviews of bicycling books.  I’ve read a couple of books on bicycling that I found interesting, and that I thought other bicyclist might find enjoyable.

The first (and fatal) flaw with this idea is that there aren’t a whole lot of interesting books on bicycling available.  Most cycling books are either maintenance manuals or how to train to be a racer.  Not much for me to work with.

The second major flaw, in my opinion, is that there are so many other books that I enjoy reading and I would love to share them with my potential readers.  Focusing solely on bicycling books seemed too constricting and boring. But if I devoted part of my bicycling blog to books that had no relationship with cycling, I would be stepping outside of my blogging niche.  I feared my blog would become unfocused and unreadable.  Once again, the blogging process ground to a halt.

I gave this blogging thing a great deal of thought.  I wanted to use it to become a better writer, but I also wanted to have a blog that people would want to read on a regular basis.  You know, the whole point of writing?  How could I write about the wide variety of subjects I’m interested in, and yet hold the reader’s attention?  The smell of burning insulation permeated the house as I pushed my mental faculties to their limits.

Then an epiphany!  I would use as an overall theme the stages of a man’s life, and how I am dealing with my transition from one stage of my life to another.  This way I could link all my interests together as part of a bigger story.  My story.

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him Horatio, a man of infinite jest…” – W. Shakespeare

Let me clarify what I mean by stages of life.  I once read an article that there are five phases of an adult man’s life: Youth, Warrior, King, Sage and at the end comes Senescence.  By using the overarching theme of my life transition, I can write about the ways I find purpose and joy in the autumnal years of my life.  At last, my blog started to come together.

At this point I want to make clear to all that my relationship with wife and family, as well as my relationship with God gives me a sense of purpose.  But those subjects are private to me and I will not be including them (with occasional exceptions) in my blog. 

I’ve come to realization that I’m in the middle of a transition from King to Sage.  Transitions from one stage of life to another can be difficult and painful, as anybody who has gone through puberty can attest.  Here is my confession: I don’t want to give up being the King.  Being King was a pretty good period in my life, and I am terrified of leaving it behind.  It means I really and truly have face up to my mortality, and to accept the fact that I have more years behind me than I have in front of me.

“After a certain age every man is responsible for his face” – A. Camus

Both men and women have to come to terms with the passage from youth to middle age.  But for some reason this transition seems to be harder for men.  Mid-life crisis, empty-nest syndrome or no longer finding fulfilment at work can leave a vacuum in many men’s lives.  Many men, when they reach their 40’s and 50’s,  feel that they no longer are useful.  They lose their identity and their sense of purpose.  This hole in their lives can be downright deadly.

Here’s a few grim facts for you: did you know that, worldwide, the age group with the highest rate of suicides is 45 to 59-year-old men? That men in their 50s have the highest rate of suicides in the US and Canada?  And that men aged 35-65 commit suicide at higher rates in the western United States than in the rest of the country?  Scary stuff.

So, even though I am dealing with some serious subjects, my intent is to make my blog light-hearted and (hopefully) humorous.  After all, the best way to find happiness is to search for joy and gratitude each day.  So, I’ll write about the beers that I like, the books that I’m reading or have read, all my efforts at getting in shape, all the places I’ve traveled or the places I want to travel to, what’s going on in my garden and more.

You know, all the little things that make life worth living.

But sometimes I will write serious posts regarding aging and death.  I’m not doing so to bring people down.  But we cannot come to grips with our fear and pain until we admit that we are hurting.  We cannot accept a new stage of life until we grieve for the loss of our old life. I will share some of my darker moments, and the ways in which I am coping with them.

“There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.” – Napoleon

      I would love to get constructive feedback on both my writing and on the subjects that I am writing about.  By constructive, I mean on ways I can improve my writing.  Just telling me that “you’re great!” or “you suck!”, while both are undoubtedly true, isn’t really something I can build upon.  I’m looking for things like “not bad, but maybe you should focus more on ABC and less on XYZ”.

     So, let me have it with both barrels!  Feel free to leave comments to let me know what I am doing right, but also let me know what I am doing wrong.  I’ve got tough skin, I can handle it.  I think.  Just leave comments at the bottom of my posts.

      In the meantime, sit back and prop up your feet.  Make yourself at home.  Take a tour of my blog and tell me what you think.  I hope you enjoy your stay.

John Kevin Hickey, a.k.a “Mr. Vintage Man”