"The Storm. By Norm"

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Hello, everyone. Welcome to “The Storm. By Norm”. I’m Norm. This is my first offering on Substack. I’m hopeful it is not the last. To start, I thought it might be useful to express my vision as to what this is going to be. Then I realized my vision is kind of hazy. I can only see this as being . . . something.

I imagine my writings will be difficult to categorize. Possible subjects could include politics, religion, sports, current events, books, music, maybe even a short story once in a while, whatever, the words are out there, all I have to do is gather them up and write them down. Every essay begins with a blank page and I want to fill that page with sentences worth reading each time. Sometimes, it’s easy. Sometimes, it’s like trying to catch a leaf in a storm. It can be quite an adventure.

I believe the written word is my friend. The spoken word? Eh, not so much. I am often uncomfortable expressing myself verbally, or through my mannerisms or body language. This might be my best chance at true self-expression.

Leaping aboard the Substack train will challenge me to organize the storm (there’s that word again) of random thoughts bouncing around in my head into coherent, interesting essays. Will there be an audience for this? That remains to be seen. While I would love to have thousands of subscribers basking in the glow of my brilliance, my actual, more realistic goal is to please myself with what I write. That would be my definition of success.

What makes me think I can do this? I have never written anything professionally. The only stuff I’ve ever written that other people have seen are commentaries on books I have read, submitted to the local library’s website. I received some positive feedback for those commentaries, and for the most part, I enjoyed doing them. I had to stop, though. The library, that bastion of free speech and inclusion, censored one of my submissions, for no good reason, in my mind. (I know what you’re thinking. No, it had nothing to do with obscenity or profanity.) Anyway, they took all the fun out of it for me (guess I sound like a big baby there).

Although opening up to others doesn’t come naturally to me, now might be a good time to reveal a few things about myself. I am politically liberal (Yes, that’s right, liberal. L-i-b-e-r-a-l. Yeah, I said it.). Unashamedly so. The arithmetic would say I am in the latter half of my life. I am not embarrassed to say I am white, but I am not particularly proud of it, either. To me, it is kind of a meaningless factoid that shouldn’t make a difference to anyone. However, living in the real world, I know it does.

I consider myself reasonably woke. I do believe wokeness can go too far, sometimes straying into the realm of political correctness. This occasionally puts me at odds with other woke folk. I believe I can be supportive of this group or that group without accepting everything they say or do as gospel. I chafe at having to agree 100% with a particular point of view or risk being thought of as an enemy to the cause. I could not possibly care less how consenting adults choose to live their lives, as long as no one is being hurt. Go ahead, do your thing, what business is it of mine? Just leave enough room for me to do my thing.

As I reflect back on my life, I know at various points I’ve been a bad son, a bad brother, a bad friend, and a bad employee, among other things. I would like to think I have evolved into a decent human being, but who’s to say? I have tried to be a good husband, but I realize I often fall short. It is a fact that being with my wife has helped me be a better person than I really am.

Okay, what else? H’mm . . . let’s see . . . well, I don’t drink alcohol or do illegal drugs, but I don’t care if you do, all I ask is don’t put me or my loved ones at risk. My favorite sports teams are the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Golden State Warriors. I go for a walk every day, and as of the day of this posting, I had walked 5500 consecutive days. My favorite food is fish from Long John Silvers. My favorite band is The Who. My shoe size is 11½.

Probably that is enough sharing for now. I may be just an average guy, but now I’m on Substack. It’s like being invited to sit with the cool kids.

Thanks for coming along on this journey with me. I intend to make  “The Storm. By Norm” worth your time.