[Listen]
[Sound of an ax chopping wood. Quirky music fades in…]
Christopher Gronlund:
I want to make one thing perfectly clear: this show is not about lumberjacks…
My name is Christopher Gronlund, and this is where I share my stories. Sometimes the stories contain truths, but most of the time, they’re made up. Sometimes the stories are funny—other times they’re serious. But you have my word about one thing: I will never—EVER—share a story about lumberjacks.
This time, it’s a tale about an author trying to finish construction on her recently-deceased mother’s home while writing her second novel—the follow up to a New York Times Best Seller.
And now, the usual content advisory…
This is where I normally warn you about a story’s rougher edges, but “Revisions” is pretty tame compared to most Not About Lumberjacks stories. It deals with the death of a loved one and the narrator’s self-doubts, but that’s about it. There’s not even swearing in this one. I’d go as far as calling “Revisions” an all-ages story, but it would probably bore most kids.
Speaking of wholesome things, I want to chat a moment about The Farm Micro Sanctuary. Based in Larwill, Indiana, this 501(c)3 non-profit sanctuary provides a safe haven for at risk farmed animals, educates the public about the repercussions of animal farming, and strives to promote compassion for a healthier planet.
My wife and I sponsor one of their goats, the impish Arlo Goathrie, who’s currently in training to serve as an animal ambassador for public education.
Learn more about the sanctuary at patreon.com/theFarmMicroSanctuary, or do a search on Facebook or Instagram for Lopin’ Along at the Farm Micro Sanctuary to follow what they’re up to.
And one more quick thing before getting to the latest story…
If you listen to Not About Lumberjacks and have thought, “I like Christopher’s short fiction, but it would be cool to listen to something longer,” well: I have you covered! New to the menu on nolumberjacks.com is a section for novels. Right now, the only thing there is my first novel, Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors. Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors is a humorous coming-of-age story about a family traveling cross country in a possessed station wagon. But I plan to release a novella and more novels soon-ish.
All longer works shared from the Novels menu option will have their own subscription feed, so the main story feed will remain solely for the short fiction I’ve been sharing for years. I hope you enjoy my longer stories as much as the shorter tales…
All right—let’s get to work…
* * *
REVISIONS
FEBRUARY 17, 2021
This house is the book of my mother’s life, and I am lost within its pages. It is here, beneath a spiral staircase, where my mother decided to bring all its curves together—a point of stability in an otherwise chaotic world. Three stories above me, exposed beams in the ceiling form a starburst from the glow of the huge skylight holding me in its gaze. This house is an unfinished cathedral, a testament to my mother and her perfectly tangled life. As I listen to the north wind blow outside the safety of her dream home, I think about all the work ahead.
I have no idea what I’m doing—no idea why I believe I can finish what a brighter mind started. I don’t even know how to clear hair from the drain in the bathroom sink, but I’ve now convinced myself I have it in me to manage contractors, to even do much of the work myself and finish the house my mother saw only in some imagined glory.
I know that feeling, seeing a perfect thing in your head waiting to be shaped, a vision so strong you want to make it whole and take its place in the world. I wonder if my mother viewed this house like I view the books I write: a thing beyond the imaginations of many people, but also, something never seeming to live up to the perfect versions in our minds. Somehow my mother found a shortcut to creating a physical masterpiece of a home, but I’m sure she saw flaws where I see perfection. How I wish I carried a fraction of her confidence.
When I finished and sold Standstill, my mother said, “See? I told you you’d written something beautiful.” And when I protested, mentioning all I still wanted to fix, she compared it to this house and said, “Every perfect thing has its flaws if you’re intimate with its construction. What matters is what others see…and that it’s no longer taking up space in your head.”
She was right—she was always right. I need to get this house, and this book, out of my head.
* * *
It’s never been lost on me how fortunate I am: raised by a mother who encouraged me to be myself, while other parents insisted their children pursued futures already decided for them. In those demands came a security I didn’t have for much of my life. I watched friends marry, have children, and accumulate funds in 401Ks while I worked odd jobs so I had more time to write. We grew apart, our differences amplified by the passage of time and the paths we walked. I’d be lying if I said I never felt like a failure. I worried about a future devoid of savings and security, stuck working a mishmash of jobs until one day I could work no more. By my mid 20s, I’d already sold myself on a bleak end in which the very thing I loved—writing—became my undoing.
Through it all, my mother believed in me. But that’s a mother’s job if you’re lucky. Still, on my thirtieth birthday, I sold a story to Tin House. Other literary journals followed: Granta, Ploughshares, and The Kenyon Review. I somehow turned that string of successes into a part-time instructor of English position at Ohio Wesleyan University—where I taught creative writing until my first novel found its way onto the New York Times Best Seller list for half a year. I would have loved sharing that success with my mother, but by then she was gone, reduced like so many others who one day found a lump that never stopped side-stepping the best efforts of modern medicine. She would have loved my rocket-ride to the top.
I’ve read that astronauts have a hard time coming back from space after long missions. I don’t know if I can compare my successes to that, but coming down from the rush of a successful book feels empty without my mom being there with her reassurances that everything will be okay. Now I’m stuck with the daunting task of doing it again with another book—this time, under the scrutiny of critics waiting to feed.
I’ve considered paying back the advance on the second book and living in this house as-is, a silent existence until I am no more.
* * *
My mother and I couldn’t have been more different. Where she was outgoing, I was reserved. Where I was cautious, she took every chance that crossed her mind, savoring the experience no matter how things turned out. Her independence shined like the sun, its warmth one of her traits I absorbed. She once told me we were lucky my father ran when he found out she was pregnant because he’d have only gotten in our way. I have no reason to doubt that; I cannot imagine any life but the one my mother and I lived.
She fell somewhere between beatnik and hippie, a free-spirit content to meander where the winds of her life blew. That didn’t stop with my arrival—I was raised on the road, living in campgrounds and national parks, communes and squatted buildings. She carried me like a backpack across Europe and South America, let me roam free in Alaska and the Caribbean. At some point along the way—whether it was her belief that I needed a proper education or that she hoped in it I’d see a regimented life mandated by others might not be to my liking, she settled down and put me in school. One day I was living on Saint John in the Virgin Islands, and then in what I later found out was a house my mother inherited from the grandparents I never knew, in Columbus, Ohio. She funded our adventures through odd jobs along the way and rent collected on that old house, until we moved in.
While I toiled away in school, exposed to the ways of rote learning, my mother landed a job as a keypunch operator for an insurance company. A high school dropout, my mother was given the opportunity to attend night school at a community college—paid for by her job. Soon, the novels she loved reading gave way to books about programming languages: COBOL, Pascal, and BASIC. By the time I was in junior high school, she’d started a small software company with a work friend. Shortly before I graduated high school, they sold the company to IBM, and I was told we’d never have to worry about money again.
With me on my own, I figured my mother would return to a life of traveling, but she found a new obsession: building a house with her hands. She had a simple plan: construct a cob home that was large enough for her and a guest or two, and then take what she learned and build a bigger place—more space for more guests. But as we all know, sometimes things don’t go as planned.
* * *
This house and my novel-in-progress are not good companions. They have conspired against me, one serving as an excuse to not devote time to the other. When I should be writing, I’m reading books and websites about tiling, flooring, and basic plumbing—tasks I’ve convinced myself I can do on my own. When I should be working on the house, I reread fragments of my broken manuscript, making tiny changes instead of progress. It’s amazing how little one can accomplish pursuing small tasks: tracking the house’s to-dos in a spreadsheet, fixing typos in the manuscript, and insignificant pursuits giving me a sense of completion, even though I begin my days in the same place as the day before. I could spend the rest of my life piddling about and never finish either.
When I taught, I always told my students to finish what was on their desk before starting something new. While some people do well moving between two projects, most people I know—myself included—end up giving neither project appropriate attention. Everything suffers—especially the artist.
As driven as my mother was, she made few demands on me. She seemed to recognize that forcing me to do something was a sure-fire way to get me to not do it. I always admired the speed at which she accomplished things. My mother was a targeted shopper, never content to linger unless window shopping was the goal. If we were there for something specific—whether it was new school year clothes shopping for me or picking up groceries—we moved with a plan, dividing and conquering the aisles like commandos. She seemed to cook Thanksgiving dinner in half the time as others, but with better results. It was like she could stop time when needed, and come out on the other side ready to do more.
I plod along, procrastinating and stressing until running out of time. I wake up in the middle of the night with a racing mind that remembers everything I need to do at three a.m., but jettison those waking to-do lists like lost dreams when it’s time to get up. I only finished Standstill’s edits because it had a deadline attached to money. That motivation doesn’t seem to be helping this time around. When I sit down to write, I think about all the things left undone in this house. I let the sound of contractors allow me an out: “How can I write with all this noise and commotion?” Then, when I give in to the house, my mind wanders to the book.
Lost in the fog of competing projects, I sit and wait for the sun to burn it all away, but it only gets darker each day.
* * *
While my mother and I struggled, I was always happy—well, as happy as happy is for me. Before settling into school, I had few other children with which to compare my life to. Living in tents, shared spaces, and an old VW Bus seems normal when it’s all you know. When we settled into my grandparents’ old house, I remained a loner, turning away friends because I found books easier to understand. If I wanted something, my mother provided—so in my mind, we had it as good as everyone else. It wasn’t until high school that I realized what a strange life I had lived.
Somewhere along the way—most likely from one of my mother’s many friends and the varied jobs they worked—she brought home a pair of sneakers with the American Airlines logo on them. A group of “popular” kids teased me about it, trying to shame me for not wearing brand name shoes. The weird thing is their taunting didn’t hurt: I felt sorry for them, and I told them as much. Out came what I now know was a defense of my mother, talking about how I’d traveled all over the world, while I guessed some of them would never leave their hometown. I mentioned the artists, musicians, and actors I knew—friends my mother accumulated along the way. My mother and I could go anywhere, and people would help us—I asked those taunting me if they were so fortunate.
I won’t say that day led to me becoming popular, but I mentioned enough about my life in my rare moment of speaking up that I was at least viewed as the quiet cool kid who knew famous people and had adventures none of them would have in their lifetimes. With that new visibility, though, came attention to my writing.
I always carried a notebook and a pen. Before classes, and throughout lunch, my face was in those pages. When classmates found out I was trying to write a book, my reputation as the “interesting” girl everyone seemed afraid to talk to grew. In time, a braver soul among my peers asked me when I’d be done.
“I don’t know,” I said.
They all looked disappointed.
With that classmate’s question and my answer, doubt pushed its way before confidence. Trying not to think about it only made matters worse. I asked my mom what she thought about the slow pace at which I wrote.
“All things take their own time…depending on the times.”
I didn’t understand.
She continued: “I’ve never written a book, but I imagine a good book takes time on its own terms. Maybe you can hurry things along, but I imagine it would result in not writing the book you want to write. You know I love how much you think about things, but right now, just enjoy writing for its own sake. If you’re lucky, the day will come when you’ll miss working at this pace, with no expectations but your own.”
I still can’t explain why I was such an unhappy child when I had all I needed and a mother who was always there for me. If I had to analyze my younger self, I suppose my problem was expectations exceeding my abilities. I was well-read enough to know what was possible, but those words were out of reach.
I grew up believing introspection was a curse…and as I sit here today with a late manuscript, I’m not so sure I was wrong.
* * *
Somewhere along the way, the thought of writing books became more practical than a passion. When I saw my mother sell her company, and the money she had to live on without a care, that’s what I wanted—even though my mother’s money was also mine. It was important to do something on my own—not just take what was given to me. Maybe I’d not have a long career as a writer, but I wanted something big I could point to that allowed me to say, “I did that.” I knew what I was writing would not be that thing.
It was freeing when I finally came up with the idea for Standstill. No longer did I obsess over every word being perfect, building to each new sentence that followed. It’s a nice thought, but one not steeped in reality. I had a basic idea: a woman stops time with a magic watch so she can spend more time with her gravely ill husband. It allowed me to write the literary passages I dreamed of writing, but also have fun along the way. I was so fixated on being accepted by the “serious” writing community that I’d forgotten why I wrote in the first place.
I wrote Standstill when my mother was sick, and the parallels of the story are not lost on me. How I wished I could stop time and kept it just the two of us, like when I was little and we had nothing but time to wander. I was in a race against every second writing that book, and that allowed me to break through all that previously stifled me.
My mother was the second person besides me to read Standstill. I was in her hospital room when she finished reading; I watched her weep when she was done. I felt bad, like I’d driven home that soon she’d be gone and I’d be alone.
She smiled and said, “I’m not crying about my time coming to an end. I’m crying because I’m happy for you. Finishing a book was a long time coming, and I’m glad this is the book you wrote right now.”
I wonder what she’d think about my latest book, Ellie’s Second Chances—a story about a woman who gets to travel back in time and change three moments in her life.
I’m sure she’d say it’s a silly notion—that we should accept there are things we’d always change no matter how many do-overs we’d get. She’d say, “The moments we’d change are likely the moments that define us. What matters is what we do in their wake.”
* * *
I keep two photos on the desk where I write. The first is a photo a friend took of me at the release party for Standstill. It’s an image of me lost in the middle of a room full of smiling people. When I was given the photo, my friend said, “I love how everybody is turned toward you. That was your moment. I know you wished your mother could be there, but you had quite a turnout of other loved ones celebrating your success.”
I looked at the photo, admiring the blur of hands and smiles, a tunnel of souls with me standing at the end in perfect, still focus as though I were on the outside looking in at my own party.
I thanked my friend and said, “Yes, it would have been nice if my mom could have been there. I didn’t miss her that evening, though—at least not in that moment. I remember what I was thinking when this was taken. I looked around at everyone gathered in celebration of what I’d written and thought, ‘This is as good as it will ever get…’”
The other photo on my desk is an image of my mother standing in front of the piles of mud that would later become her first cob house. When you hear “cob house,” you probably think, “quirky hippie hut,” or maybe something resembling an adobe home in New Mexico. But the first house my mom built was neither or those things.
If a stranger were to break through the hedges and trees and wander onto the property today, they might convince themselves they stepped through a portal and into an old English garden—her first home serving as a quaint thatched guest house for those visiting the main estate. But the day the second photo on my desk was taken, all those things only existed in my mother’s mind’s eye. She stands among friends, all smiling and covered in mud and straw from mixing cob all day. There was so much laughter—and not a soul present who doubted my mother’s ambitions. She stands in the center of the group, smiling and holding a glass of cheap jug wine, her smile brighter and more beautiful than the blazing sunset behind her.
* * *
Somebody reading this might think my mom was a perfect person, but she was not without her faults. She ran away from many of her problems and, sometimes, people. Those trips to national parks were moments she loved, but it was also an easy way to hide. The amount of times life seemed anchored, but we ended up moving abruptly, would make a military brat feel settled.
I’d never call her an alcoholic, but there were times she hid in the bottoms of bottles. Sometimes she chewed through men. And while she never so much as raised her voice at me—let alone hit me—there were times I knew to leave her alone…sometimes for weeks.
Near the end of her life, she apologized for the bubble of instability in which she raised me. I told her I didn’t mind—and I meant it. Left with time to myself, I read and wrote. I’d not be who I am today had I been raised by someone more involved in their child’s life. She was always there when I needed her. The trust extended to me did not go unnoticed—I recognized how fortunate I was in many ways.
Still, she insisted she could have done a better job as a parent, but I imagine all parents feel that way. I’m sure we can all have done more with the time we’re given—and even the days ahead for those of us fortunate enough to wake up tomorrow.
* * *
I’ve found myself relying more on contractors than doing the work on the house I set out to do on my own. I suppose, much like everyone seems to believe they have a book inside them ready to come out, many of us also think we can do the work of people more skilled than us. I don’t know anyone who believes they can sit before a piano and play a concerto on their first try, but I’ve met so many people who have told me they plan to sit down one day when they have the time and write a book. As though it were that easy. But here I am, doing something similar.
It’s not lost on me how ridiculous it is to think I can pull this off. I tell myself building a house is not entirely unlike writing a book. Words form sentences that form paragraphs; nails and screws and boards form walls. Enough paragraphs, and you have a chapter; enough walls, and you have a room. Enough chapters, and you’ve written a book; enough rooms, and you’ve built a house. But there’s an art to putting 100,000 words in enough order to become a book, and even more effort to have a polished story. I may have gleaned some building tricks through osmosis, simply from helping my mother over the years, but I know a simple oversight could mean a leak that destroys a room. Something not wired right can reduce a house to ashes.
I don’t reread my stories when they’re published because I always notice things I want to change. It’s one thing to change a word or two—even a paragraph here and there, but that’s not so easy to do with a house. Adding or removing a door is not like highlighting it and pressing delete. And so, I’ve only been doing updates to the house I’m comfortable doing; I’m no longer spending my days researching bigger tasks better left to more capable hands.
I don’t know if this means I’m resigned to finish Ellie’s Second Chances, but it feels like something’s about to give…
* * *
Today is the three-year anniversary of my mother’s death. My mother died a month before Standstill was released. I wanted the world to stop—I wanted time to get my head around the year and a half that had passed: edits on the book, a cancer diagnosis, and then my mother fading more each week as anticipation for my first novel grew. She never got to hold the hardback in her hands, but the printout I gave her—and then the advanced reading copy—was never out of her reach. She apologized profusely for getting sick during such an important part of my life. (As though she did it by design.) She reminded me the world stops for no one and that she hoped I’d be able to enjoys Standstill’s release despite the circumstances.
In a strange way, my mother’s passing took an edge off the anxiety I’d have likely faced if the release were my only consideration. I cannot imagine all my thoughts directed at the book finally seeing its place on shelves. While my mom felt terrible about dying just then, it allowed me an excuse to withdraw from some of my responsibilities. My publicist did a great job nudging me toward the book while still giving me space to grieve. By then, I’d prepared for my mother’s passing. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t use it as an excuse to avoid things I should have attended to.
I know there will be a day the next book is out there, and I won’t have such a readily available excuse to retreat when I want. Perhaps I can fire the contractors and return to trying to finish up the house myself. Anything for a distraction.
* * *
It’s a new year, and I saw one of those, “I’m gonna be the best version of me!” posts on social media. It’s a weird world when people talk about re-branding their identities. I’ve always had a hard time trusting people like that; to me, it says, “I have been trying to be something I am not all along. I didn’t get the results I wanted, so now I will attempt to be someone else.” And they keep at it until something sticks and they end up several degrees removed from who they really were. Who they really are, deep down. They become stuck pretending to be someone they are not. It sounds exhausting.
But I suppose we all pretend. We say we’re okay when we are not. We pretend to like jobs we hate. We bite our tongues to make peace. We are social creatures struggling to fit in.
When Standstill was nearing publication, my publicist presented a list of things that worked for other authors: dinners with booksellers, speaking opportunities at conferences, and plans for the types of essays in publications that help sell novels. Even starting a podcast. Can you imagine—a podcast?!
Still…by choosing to write the kind of book I wrote, I knew what I had signed up for. While Standstill may not be a beach read, it was written with commercial aspirations. By writing such a story, and ending up with a two-book deal, I understood what came with it. And so, I dined with booksellers, talked to packed rooms at conferences, and saw my essays about grief and moving on with life published online and in print. I even agreed to be interviewed on several podcasts.
While the thought of being a brand turns my stomach, I’ll soon be dusting off my smile and practiced poise. I’m seeing an end to these revisions, and my house is in order. There’s still work to be done, but maybe there’s something to the new year/new me thing after all…
* * *
I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever hear from my father. I’m not famous, like a celebrity abandoned by a parent who later returns, offering to catch up—when what they really want is money. With few exceptions, best-selling novelists are not household names. Say the name Anthony Doerr to most people in the U.S., and they’ll say “Who?” despite him winning the Pulitzer Prize a handful of years ago and a book that sat on the New York Times Best Seller list for one-hundred and thirty consecutive weeks.
I suppose it’s natural to think about the man you’ve never met who is responsible for one half of your existence. Hell, John Irving has made a career writing about missing fathers. Not knowing mine has never bothered me. There’s no void in my life; perhaps because my mother did a good job explaining to me his actions were not our fault. Leaving was on him.
I used to think about being famous, back when we had literary paperbacks as impulse buys at grocery store checkout stands. I remember my mother picking up The World According to Garp at a Jewel grocery store when we were knocking around northern Illinois one year. I wanted that: my book right there next to candy bars and gum and magazines. Back then, if you broke in, you were almost guaranteed an audience. Now, it’s all so splintered.
When I used to imagine my books being on display with John Irving, Alice Walker, Amy Tan, and Tom Wolfe, I also imagined my father seeing my books in stores and tracking me down. In those fantasies, I told him to go to hell and leave my mother and me alone. Now, when I imagine meeting him, it already feels like a sad memory. I can only imagine him appearing with the hope of me giving him money or to be absolved of some guilt he’s carried with him for years.
I don’t care to meet him, but if he ever shows up, I’d not close my door to him.
At the same time, I can’t imagine leaving it open…
* * *
I got the idea to start this journal when I found several notebooks my mother kept. She had one for the house, one for the software she continued writing, even after selling her company, a travel journal, and a general notebook chronicling her thoughts and moments in life worthy of capturing. Her notebooks rarely deviated from their intended purposes.
I set out to make this journal solely about the process of writing Ellie’s Second Chances. I figured I’d be able to go back through it and pull bits for essays or interviews. I even thought, if I ever did do a podcast, I could chronicle the process of following up a bestselling book with ease. But much like the stories I’ve written, this journal has changed as I’ve filled its pages. It’s now mostly about my mother and this house; about me and this latest book.
Maybe there’s a story worthy of writing in there somewhere…
* * *
It’s been a while since I’ve written here…
I finally turned in Ellie’s Second Chances!
There is still plenty of work to be done, but the hardest part is now behind me.
I don’t know why I complicated things so much. I had a list of things to fix from my editor—in some sections, she practically wrote what I needed to swap out. But there’s something about revisions and me.
I know other writers crave revisions. And I cannot deny that it is in those later passes that everything comes together. But, like so many other things, just getting to that point is such an effort, and all I want to do is hand over a rough draft and call it done.
I always told my students to learn to love revisions. I went as far as comparing the act of revising stories to life—whether working on a book, or yourself, always striving to improve things. But as I’ve gotten older, I know there comes a point at which you’ve become a better person if you’ve done things right, and you deserve to go easier on yourself. Even let some things fall through the cracks.
My mother used to talk about the importance of breathing, how there is so much power in a simple breath. I learned to appreciate simple things when I was young, and perhaps I came to resent that it’s not enough to just be. To make it in this world, you have to keep moving. And we move so fast that our breathing often ends up shallow and rapid. There’s always so much more to do.
For now, though, I can sit back and enjoy what I’ve done. I can put some final effort into this house. I can decide if this book will be my last. Not the last novel I will write—I can never stop writing—but the last one I’ll work to see published…
* * *
I am writing this from a backcountry campsite in the Great Smoky Mountains. While I was never as into nature as my mother, this is the first place I remember camping. It was with a large group of her friends in the frontcountry during a Fourth of July weekend. I remember thinking how enchanting it was to sleep outside. Little did I know how much of my childhood would be spent in camping tents and yurts; inside huts and hand-made cabins. The novelty wore off quickly; or rather, it became a normal way of life that eventually lost its charm. This is my first time camping in years.
The house is almost finished. I did all I could, and now it’s like a final episode of This Old House, where tradesmen run through their punch lists, wrapping everything up. I wanted to step away from it all and return to something that felt new again. In the past three and-then-some years, I’ve come to know that house and my second book all-too-well. I want those things to once-more seem as magical as sleeping in a tent beneath the stars. I want to revel in the rewards of monotony.
When I was younger, I believed every moment spent on my dreams would feel like living on another plane of existence. At the very least, to write novels and inhabit a beautiful home would be like living in the clouds. How quickly I realized it’s all still work. (But in the end, isn’t everything?)
If my younger self could see me now, she’d be impressed. To balance the dreams of youth with the responsibilities of adulthood is, perhaps, life’s greatest accomplishment.
* * *
I stand in the heart of my house with another book behind me. And what is a book, but a tangle of stories unwound and laid out in something resembling order. This house is no different, a place where my mother’s stories echo—where so many of my stories are yet to be written. I don’t know what it is about the wooden spiral staircase in the center of it all, rising up several stories to a window to the sky, that captivates me. Were I to ever write a book brought together to such a perfect conclusion like the house my mother started—that I helped finish—it’s possible I’d never write again. That thought crossed my mind many times in recent years: if not giving up on my second book, at least never writing a third. But each time I sit on these stairs and look up, nothing seems impossible.
The first house my mother built stands solid on the other side of the garden, but this home is her masterpiece. My first two books are solid, but my obligations to others are done. What comes next may not be my masterpiece, but something changed while writing Ellie’s Second Chances and finishing the house. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I carry the spirit of my mother inside me. To not challenge myself would waste that energy.
Today, as I listen to the north wind blow outside the safety of my home—at least for some time—I can finally rest. But when warmer breezes find their way back home, I will draw a deep breath, slowly let it out, and begin again…
* * *
[Quirky music fades in…]
Christopher Gronlund:
Thank you for listening to Not About Lumberjacks…Theme music, as always, is by Ergo Phizmiz. Story music this time is by Johannes Bornlöf, all licensed through Epidemic Sound.
Even though I opted for no sounds this time around, sound effects are usually made in-house or from Epidemic Sound and freesound.org. Visit nolumberjacks.com for information about the show, the voice talent, and the music.
In April, it’s a story about a geek who, while knocking around an antique shop with his grandmother, finds something that changes his life in a most curious way…
[Quirky music fades out…]
[The sound of a chopping ax.]
Until next time: be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!
[…] Episode Transcript >> […]