Everyone, Meet Obstructo

Patron Nemesis of Hoarse and Man

Good morning, my dear and beloved traveling companions in this new writer’s life.

It is a glorious morning and we have miles to go.

I wanted to introduce you to someone today. The Octavius to my Batman. The Darth to my Luke. He is a diabolical, nefarious bastard.

The Sioux call him “Stealer of Time”. In Aztec myth, he is depicted as “El Niño Malo” - the bad child - a devious toddler with the wings of a condor capable of carrying a grown man out to sea in its talons. (None of that is true. I just made that up. It really works with where I’m going with this though so just go with it.)

I call him “Obstructo”.

First though… it is truly a joy to sit down at the keyboard to peck out an entry here in this private journal made public knowing that you guys are on the other side.

I mean that. It is pretty damn special to be among a community who want to read what you write and who are rooting for you and wish you well.

Your presence here in this little circle of ours is a gift and I am thankful for it. To me, you are a treasure.

Now, the little writer-voice in my head is saying “Maybe cut everything you just wrote because while it’s nice and all, it is just getting in the way of getting to the actual subject of this entry and you kind of did something similar the other day in your other post and that wasn’t great and it probably lost people before you ever got to the meat and it has been nagging at you ever since because you are an unrelenting self-critic who writes your demerits in Sharpie and your credits in pencil and so let’s just Ctrl-A/delete and get back up to the top and go right into the Obstructo thing...”

And, yes, that is pretty much a straight dump of my internal dialogue.

The inner voice has a point though. I didn’t get to the narrative fast enough in earlier post(s) and I am very much not getting to it fast enough here either.

In my defense, that is because 1) I have all of the discipline and focus of a small child; and 2) I started to write what I knew was going to be a confessional, personal share about flaws, failures, and struggles and realized just how comfortable y’all have made that for me. It felt good and I wanted you to know that.

“If you appreciate someone, you should go ahead and tell ‘em
People never get the roses when they can still smell them”

(Sigh, Kanye wrote that back before he became an insufferable asshole and all-around terrible person. The author may be dead to me but I still love the thought.)

So, anyway, here we are... Already a page or two down after having circled the whole block and just now pulled up to the house.

If this were a book, that would be just fine because there would be fifty pages before this and a hundred after and I could just ramble on and keep going but these little internet entries seem to beg for only a single subject per though. So, I’m going to cap this one right here having written a grand total of zero sentences about what was intended to be the topic: Obstructo. And now I’ll go write the one this one was supposed to be…

In the meantime, take these flowers, please… To bring it all the way back around to something from my last post, y’all are the supportive faces in the crowd at my first concert. That both feels good and makes the drumming easier.

And now, I’m going to go post this with the title as originally written (“Everyone, Meet Obstructo”). That might not make much sense right now… but, ironically… comically… unintentionally… it will once you read the post this one was supposed to be.

You’ve met Obstructo. You just haven’t been formally introduced.

Give me an hour or two. I’ll get you acquainted.

(Note: This post is free to all. If you’d like to share it, feel free. Every share, every paid subscriber, helps chip away at what I need to make a go of this writer thing.)