The Beginning

Here is the first few pages of I Have Three Kinds of Hiccups.  I've recently been back at it with having conversations with publishers and thought why not throw it out here and let the universe have it for a bit. Enjoy! 

               A great example of the young adult I was before I was released into the world? Before I was released into the world, I was just a “make everyone happy” boy who wanted to learn and get involved with everything yet wasn’t quite prepared for the journey I was about to set out on.  This was before I blindly moved to Las Vegas, before I attended the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and before high school graduation.  It was my senior year of high school, when I still thought I was going to go to Hastfra University in Long Island, New York.    My favorite class my senior year was Anatomy and Physiology. It was my favorite for many reasons.  One was that it was full of advanced seniors who wanted to learn and were always in constant competition with each other.  To add to that there were two juniors in the class that wanted to fight right along with us.  There were only two men, me and Dane, that were always being given such a hard time;  Both of us extremely active and with great spirits that always kept the class in constant laughs when opportunities arose.  This extremely bright class was led by Ms. Barth, a woman who always challenged us and brought learning to the next level.  When we exclaimed we could teach simple biology to freshman, she challenged us to make an instructional video. This video was called Gregg Nye the Science Guy. When we said the dissection of the mink was under us, she found the class a calf to dissect together.  When we inquired the relativity of the calf to an actual human, she got us a bus and brought us to Madison in order to look at cadavers at the university. 

               These great challenges added to the excitement of going to class every day and the desire to learn everything we could.  With that said though, the life of an extremely busy high school senior can only stay organized for so long and once in a while, I would bring other activities into Anatomy and Physiology to sit in the back of class and work on besides the actual class workload.

               On one of these particular days I was sitting in the back of class working on a Key Club fundraiser, getting ready for our spring choir cabaret and sitting with everything else that is on a senior who’s about to graduate’s mind.  The class had gotten into an extreme conversation about the diaphragm and what exactly the hiccup is.  In this detailed conversation, that I was not at all paying close attention to, I announced, “I have three kinds of hiccups.”

               To my ignorance, I kept my head down working on other priorities while the entire class stopped the conversation and all turned around to gawk at my idiotic outburst.  After a moment of watching me continue to make the class conversation the less of my priorities, Ms. Barth asked, “Would you care to elaborate on your unique hiccup situation?”

               I feel that my memory is so clear of what happened next.  I set my pen down, raised my head, took a breath and went on to explain that yes, I do in fact have three kinds of hiccups.  “I have the quick little ones that can easily be resolved with some sort of focusing anecdote.  I have extremely deep ones that hurt the whole of my insides which usually pass after a short time and finally, I have the ones that effect your entire body for a moment, and then again, and again, and again, until I can only focus on my hiccups.”

               With that, the class just looked at me with blank faces until Ms Barth continued with, “OK then.” As everyone turned around and all the attention was taken away from me, I heard a whisper coming from across the aisle.

               “That should be the name of your book.”  The girl who whispered this phrase has just come back into my life.  She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her husband and children running a community fine arts center.  I was at Trader Joes a few months back when I looked down the line of checkout lanes and saw her familiar face.  I had went to our last two reunions hoping to see her and tell her what I had been holding with me for almost fifteen years because of her.  Almost fifteen years later and now, as I quickly approach age thirty two, I know that my voice is clear, and I am ready to share my three kinds of hiccups again: I Have 3 Kinds of Hiccups; the Modern Struggle through Our Post-Modern Twenties

               The most difficult thing about hiccups is that we are forced to stop and resolve that one issue; the hiccup.  Nothing else in our life can be taken care of until these hiccups have left our presence.  Sometimes hiccups can take all of the focus of our lives so bad that I think if I were on a plane, plummeting toward the ground, that the hiccups would still take precedent over getting the emergency door open, putting on my air breather, or finding my life cushion.  They can be just that bad.

               Well, as I ventured through my twenties, and became this person who somewhat has an idea who he is, what his voice wants to say and understands the world a tiny bit better than at age nineteen, I have had my share of hiccups.  I’ve had the tiny ones that just need a small anecdote to give me relief.  I have had the great ones that hurt the whole of my insides and we think that it may be all over.  I have had the ones that just sit, and take all of our energy and concentration to get them to pass.  We don’t know how long they will take up our lives and we don’t know the state we’ll be in once they have passed, but while these repetitive, annoying hiccups are present in our lives, all we can do is put focus on them. 

               Finishing this book and allowing it to finally be read is for me, the final hiccup to hit the reset button on my life, take inventory on what I’ve learned, who I’ve become, and figure out what I do with that?  So many people in my age group are going through this same process.  We entered our twenties with the values of our parents and their parents, and left our twenties with different ideals and brand new global problems.  Our twenties brought us nowhere to take the education, high school to post graduate, we received and find a good paying job with it. The fanfare of our twenties, need us not forget, is the cellular devise; this technological appendage that is now fixed to our hands that really appeared out of thin air.

                 Some may call these newly developed twenties the “Quarter Life Crisis” and some just call it evolution.  I call it life without consequence because no matter the different kinds of hiccups our generation is having, many of these hiccups can probably all be found in the realm of decisions made without consequences.  Our twenties were about discovering ourselves in a newly re-invented world that had no consequence.  We saw that when people were selling us credit cards door to door in the dorms at universities across the country.  With those credit cards, we purchased our first cell phones, trips for spring break, and our fake I.D.s because it was in our twenties that carding became effective absolutely everywhere. 

               I also reference life without consequence to me because I made decisions for me, on what I thought was best for me, in order to conquer my dreams.  I moved to Las Vegas without thinking about what that would do to my little brother.  I bought things and did things that I had no idea how it would affect my credit.  I ran crazy in Los Angeles and lived freely not realizing how the impact would change how I believed I could fall in love, what I deserved from others, and what I really needed to be happy.  The quarter life crisis, evolution, life without consequences, or how ever you want to term it, affected so many of us in different situations.  I saw it festering as well in friends all around me.  Some had children early and some waited after their careers to have children and are now finding it difficult to conceive.  Some set off for graduate school following their undergraduate and some switched schools and majors and dropped out.  Some became single parents and some lost their parents.  Some left home immediately and found themselves in sparkling new environments that formed the adults who they became.  All of these amazing beings I call my loved ones and have seen them also struggle at times in our twenties because of our unique position in history. 

               For me, my twenties come off as a magical time that I feel I watched in a movie theatre somewhere.  Of course there were obstacles but this is a movie about a naive boy becoming an extremely loved and well rounded man. When I leave this movie, I am moved because I do not believe it was me in the leading role.  I feel it was someone else and this main character is so lucky to be touched by all of the supporting characters. It is them who assisted the lead in how he handled his hiccups and it is them who ultimately created him into who he is now with their kindness, compassion, selflessness and direction.  I find this movie that plays in my head unbelievable to have happened to me and it becomes clear why sharing this book is so important.

                Sharing this is for one, a symbol of gratitude to everyone who has been involved in my life. Even if a certain memory or great entertaining moment isn’t included in this group of essays, I am still grateful.  It’s not that our story wasn’t good enough; there is unfortunately only so much room.  With all of my favorite memories, I could write a series of books but those stories might only be enjoyable to the specific people involved. Know that everyone who has come into my life in the past decade is in here.  I am me because of you all.

               For everyone who hasn’t been in my life, I hope you can relate to what I am sharing.  I hope that in reading this, you laugh because you remember a similar incident or laugh because you would never do that. I hope when reading this, you remember how insanely difficult it can be to start on your own or if you are just getting out into the world, find relief that others went through it too.  Our environment is changing so quickly and evolving at such a pace that the urgency of us connecting to each other is more important than ever. If sharing some of my stories can help motivate and inspire this necessary connect in our lives with common ground, they are worth putting out into the universe.  Along with many of you, I somehow got through my twenties and because of these hiccups, I have the tools necessary to accomplish all the goals I’ve made and the ones I have yet not even conjured up. 

               “Turning twenty isn’t for everyone” is what I remember telling myself as I was driving from Madison, past Eau Claire where I was going to college, and the additional thirty minutes to Menominee where I had an audition to work at Disney for the summer.  I had got it in my head that I was actually going to be talented enough to work at Disney at age twenty with the limited experience and training that I had. 

               It was my sophomore year of college and I had decided to do something far away for the summer and get into a new experience.  Earlier in January of that year, I had traveled abroad for the first time.  I wanted more adventure and thought Disney might be the vehicle for that.  So, unprepared and tired because I had been three hours away in a hospital for two days, I was going to audition for Mickey Mouse……..

Just watched and really enjoyed it. Just spreading the word.


 

Facebook Present: Yes, I Was In 4-H

Today I got to working, but not until I did my routine: Check Rachel Maddow, look over the New York Times, and then of course check facebook.  Well I didn't have a ton of my own work to do so I spent a little extra time on facebook.  While I was perusing people's posts and taking notice to what everyone was thinking about what had happened with the recall Scott Walker election, I then noticed that I had been added to a new group on facebook, the Wisconsin 4-H Showcase Singers page. 

We all have moments in our lives that will just stay ours.  A moment where we enjoy time spent, learn a ton, have life changing relationships and we inevitably grow as a person.  I have two moments in which I was forever changed but the events that happened were with people that just came in and out of my life for those specific moments.  Yes, I was able to keep one or two of those connections, but for the most part, these are spots in my life that I keep close to my heart and don't get the opportunity to reminisce with others.  One of those times for me was the summer I studied in Cuba and the other was the two summers I spent with the Wisconsin 4-H Showcase Singers.

I was in high school and had no clue about anything.  I mean no clue, not of the world, not of who I was, not of what I could accomplish and not of how people could impact my life.  I remember getting to our two week workshop on the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh campus and thinking, "does this director know that I have no dance experience at all?"  It was all up from there and turned out to be one of the best experiences from my teenage years.

Other memories that pop out are when I was driving to our first performance in Manitiwoc and the ostriches loose, running across the highway at an ostrich farm outside of Fon Du Lac, WI.  I remember sneaking out one night with others to get peroxide to bleach our hair.  I remember getting a group j-walking ticket on the Madison campus at seven in the morning with no traffic at all.  I also remember being the first people to stay in the dorms at the State Fair Grounds and thinking how great college would be.  I will cherish the moment when in a dance routine, a girl half my size was suppose to pull me off the floor and in order to do so, I had to get my foot directly under me.  I was so uncoordinated that learning the move took me forever to get, but after a couple extremely loud knee pops, I got it.  I'm pretty sure she remembers that too.

Above all though, I remember learning the love of applause from groups larger than my high school could provide and getting in the muck of balancing a job and touring career at age seventeen while taking comfort that everyone with me was doing the same thing.  I get angry at technology and can lecture on how it is taking away from our one-on-one connections but then a gift like this happens and I can only put my foot in my mouth and say "Yank Yoo"

Neil Young Kind of Day

Just having a wonderful day and wanting to listen to a little Neil Young.  Have a wonderful day.

 

Writing Exercise

One of my close friends who has this wonderful blog, Beyondthegreendoor,were talking about how there are so many characteristic that each one of us fall under and how sometimes, it's difficult to acknowledge that we are all of these things, not just one of them.  Not one person I know can be categorized as just one adjective. We are mothers and sons and outgoing and interpersonal and loving and straight and so on and so on.

This conversation though was the catalyst for us to create a writing exercise out of it and I am inviting my readers to join in.  You can send me(gregg@projectkinect.com) your writing or leave it as a comment or comment on what you get out of it.  The purpose of inviting people to do this isn't necessarily that you want a writing exercise, but it was a great task for some self-seeking research.  Both me and my friend got some great things out of doing this.  It is open ending free writing that allows you to put some labels on yourself.  Here is how we did it.

First make a list:  Write down an entire list of every label, adjective or self-identifying word that describes who you think you are.  I was typing mine so I just did a page full but I really think keep going until you feel is good. 

Second, choose three: Look at the list and take moment to think about each word.  How does each one make you feel?  What thoughts do you have? What memories do these words make you think of?  Choose three to focus on

Third, write: Write about what each of the three words mean to you.  It can be a memory, what you see in others, a news article that you read about it..... Anything.  We decided a paragraph or two would be good for each word but once we started writing, it opened up into much larger topics and ideas. 

Have fun with it!  Here is mine because I wanted to share it.  I like to share when I learn a little more about myself.  I also would really love to hear what you get out of it.

Open minded

Flexible
Gay
Well Spoken
Fun
Confused
Parental
Leader
Psychologist
Actor
Uncle
Friend
Confidant
Son
Brother
Decision Maker
Over Thinker
Listener
Correspondent
Host
Soul Searcher
Loved One
Writer
Peace Keeper
Entrepreneur
Hippie
Aimless Wanderer
Ambitious Dreamer
Blind
Naïve
Partier
Monogamous
Philanthropist
Hopeful
Good Seeker
Life Lover
Horror Film Junkie
Road Trip Lover
Radio Host
Communicator
Connector
People Person
Eater
Food Junkie
Thespian

 Well Spoken.

Growing up I always admired my grandmother for being so well spoken.  It wasn’t that she was just well spoken, but that she was able to change her tone, purpose and delivery with the different people that she came across.   I always just was in aww and hoped that I too, one day would have this gift.  As I grew through my teens, I realized that it was not as common as I once thought. 

I came across two remarkable young women when I got to my first front of the house restaurant job.  The first summer at Houlihan’s I had the hardest time talking to Abigail and Jacqueline because I felt years behind them because of their ability to speak to everyone and always be so extremely articulate and precise.  I watched them, listened to them and began to see what it looked like as a younger person to have the same gift my grandmother had.  This gift my grandmother had wasn’t just a gift, it was a muscle that needed to be flexed and worked out.  The gift is a balance of interpersonal skills, intuition and observation skills that once added with a vocabulary and ability to listen, becomes a power more than a gift.

Years later, now that I have attempted to flex and work out this muscle, I hear it in my voice at times and it shocks me to think that I have acquired this thing that I so admired in my grandmother.  I hear it when I go from talking to my boss to a nineteen year old employee and I hear it when I go from talking to my friends at dinner and then to the nervous waitress.  I have picked up my grandma’s gift.

Host.

Host is such a versatile hat to wear.  I see it in a friend who is having a dinner party and I see it in my staff at the restaurant.  I guess it takes a moment to really think about what the definition is and really thing about how we host in our everyday lives.  A host is someone or something that lets another being into their own space.  A person can be the host to influenza.  I can host people at my restaurant.  A person can be the master of ceremonies and in result be the host of that particular event. I guess a host is someone who makes another feel comfortable in a new environment.  That environment doesn’t have to be owned or property of the host, but just somewhere that the host is able to find comfort on a level of self in order to make everyone else feel that level of comfortability or ease. I see why I would have written it on my list of characteristics. 

 Hippie.  

I have always been friends with what we consider hippies in this post-modern world and they excite me.  For a long time I was unable to breath and be calm and I would see my more hippie-ish friends and just revel in their ability to brush it off. 

The last two years I have embraced my inner hippie and realize that I am a hippie in my own way.  I now let life go with ease, for the most part.  We can’t control everything and I can now really understand that.  Sometimes the plan is much different than we plan and we have to have a calm about ourselves in order to get through the “new” plan.  I remember my roommate in college, Katie, telling me, “Sometime we have to sit in a room and wait for what our plans will be.”  She was usually talking about plans to go out but it is relatable.

Hippie for me also makes me think about how envious I was of Sandra Oh’s character in Sideways.  She was just living in wine country in Northern California in a trailer with her child:  Nothing glamorous, just simple and humble.  I always think how a part of me could just do that very thing.  The hippie in me is strong but not quite strong enough yet for me to say do it.