Regarding The Grok Writer

My name is John, but pen names are more interesting to a kid from the wrong side of a rather well-to-do suburb near Detroit. [define grok link] It was more about the challenge of being myself regardless of school or home environments than getting in trouble. Thankfully a lack of criminal records supports such claims.

I’ve spent less than 20 days in that strange place since leaving some 30ish years ago, two out of four visits for funerals. Music and bicycles got me through that chapter and still satisfy cravings to this day.

Five decades have given me the time to:

• invest four years into aerospace engineering, ultimately abandoning a degree to instead-
• carve a career of 30+ fascinating years in the trades building, remodeling, and repairing more homes than I can count, most of that time working for myself
  
• trust my life to a parachute almost 1000 times, 600+ of them with various cameras strapped to my head
• learn to manipulate light through hundreds of thousands of pictures (still learning…)
• steadily consume 2-3 books per month since high school in topics ranging from biographies, space exploration, Eastern and Western philosophies both modern and classic, business and marketing principles, self-improvement, law, psychology, and piles of heavy science fiction when not researching other things
• explore endless catalogs of musicians current and historical, largely settling on anything touched or inspired by progressive rock masters like Neil Peart or Steve Hackett, full symphonies, and most anything my kids share with me where the musicians play their own instruments and sing without that fucking auto-tune
• establish a steady practice of Vipassana meditation
• recently adopt my second divinely appointed dog who seems a gift from my first out of the Great Beyond
• begin exploring the world straddled atop a Suzuki V-Strom, perhaps the greatest bang-for-the-buck machine for us gypsy types that prefer tents to hotels and the utility of pickup trucks with half the wheels

Oh yeah. I’ve been steadily writing the entire time for business and personal pursuits. Pen and paper are preferable, but the keyboard is undeniably quicker and the ultimate editing tool.

Our ability to apply knowledge in endless combinations suggests we’re (generally speaking) more intelligent than we give ourselves credit for, or at least stubbornly persistent. Our increased passivity as a species seems the result of indifference for even the extraordinary technologies we can now carry in our pockets. One might think we could use such things to create a kinder, gentler place should we ever abandon greed and return to the civility once taught in kindergarten.

Ain’t none of us are immune to egos run amok, and minds wide open to the possibility that we don’t know what we’re talking about is the only way we overcome willful ignorance regardless our personal dogmas. Parrots may parade a colorful song and dance, but their words are not their own even if what they say is true.

Wordsmithing is chief among the few things beyond my beloved and our dog that provide such enjoyment as we explore the world together. Wasting limited time on the banal makes no sense, hence my desire for quality in all things, particularly in our relationships as we work and play.

No matter how complex, most anything can be broken down into enough bite sized pieces for simple explanation to almost anyone. Simultaneously, it’s vital we understand that writing to an eight grade level does not require us to sound like one.

Worst case scenario, a brief frolic through the Mezzanine and Gazette offers a brief respite from a world thin on quality and we meet later rather than sooner.

Either way, be well, and I look forward to grokking you in fullness.