{"id":6823,"date":"2016-11-03T15:32:56","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T20:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=6823"},"modified":"2016-11-03T15:32:56","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T20:32:56","slug":"is-that-all-there-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2016\/11\/03\/is-that-all-there-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Is That All There Is"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6826\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/is-that-all-there-is.jpg\" alt=\"Gloomy landscape with umbrella\" width=\"800\" height=\"461\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/is-that-all-there-is.jpg 800w, http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/is-that-all-there-is-300x173.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/is-that-all-there-is-768x443.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/>Last night the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.<\/p>\n<p>I was born less than three miles from Wrigley Field. The north side of Chicago is Cubs territory, through and through. Even people who don&#8217;t particularly like sports on the north side (yes, a handful of people like that <em>do<\/em> exist), still believed that every year would be the inevitable &#8220;Next Year&#8221; that the Cubbies would <em>finally<\/em> win!<\/p>\n<p>And finally win, they did. It went down like this:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HOp8w2PgHlM\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I stayed up late and watched the win. I was happy to see the Cubs finally do it.<\/p>\n<p>But&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Now a team that&#8217;s loved because they have come close&#8230;or not close at all, are finally on top. A team of loveable losers will now be expected to win. If they lose, no more will another year be added to over a century of not winning.<\/p>\n<p>And in a weird way, I&#8217;m left with a feeling of, &#8220;The big thing is done. Now what?&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>Is That All There Is?<\/h2>\n<p>In the year that I was born (1969), Peggy Lee had a hit with the song, &#8220;Is That All There Is?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a rather melancholy song about big events in life hitting and then&#8230;being left with a feeling of, &#8220;That&#8217;s it? That&#8217;s all there is to that?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I was hit with that feeling this morning while thinking about the Cubs&#8217; win last night. This big thing will soon be a good memory at best. Life moves on; one cannot rest on their laurels.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the same with writing.<\/p>\n<h2>Finishing Big Things<\/h2>\n<p>An even better feeling for me than the Cubs finally winning the World Series is the feeling of printing out a completed draft of a novel. Page after page comes out, and soon there&#8217;s a pile of paper that you spent all this time making. It&#8217;s one of the biggest things a writer will experience; that is, next to selling a novel, receiving galleys, and ultimately seeing their book on shelves.<\/p>\n<p>But after all the excitement, the world moves on. Time does not stop at that moment; you are not praised for your accomplishment for the rest of your life. Hell, it&#8217;s possible to finish a big book and only have a handful of people ever see it. (Trust me on this one!)<\/p>\n<p>In a very strange way, there&#8217;s a certain sadness in the act of completing something.<\/p>\n<h2>Keep On Dancing&#8230;<\/h2>\n<p>Part of the chorus of &#8220;Is That All There Is?&#8221; goes like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Is that all there is?<br \/>\nIs that all there is?<br \/>\nIf that&#8217;s all there is my friends<br \/>\nThen let&#8217;s keep dancing<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I find a certain comfort in that thought. Expectations are not always what they seem; much of the pleasure is in the movement &#8212; not the completion.<\/p>\n<p>Stories come and go, but what matters is that one keeps moving and finding something to love in those steps.<\/p>\n<h2>One Year of Short Fiction<\/h2>\n<p>This month marks one year of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nolumberjacks.com\"><em>Not About Lumberjacks<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In September, I finished one of my <a href=\"http:\/\/nolumberjacks.com\/purvis\/\">all-time favorite stories I&#8217;ve written<\/a>. It&#8217;s already just a memory &#8212; this thing that had its moment of attention, only to become yet another memory on a pile. It sounds dismal to think about it that way, but it&#8217;s the truth. And while I love the way the one-year-anniversary story I&#8217;ll release later this month came out, it, too, will soon be virtually forgotten.<\/p>\n<p>Finishing stories is what writers do. If you don&#8217;t finish, you&#8217;re not a writer. But finishing isn&#8217;t the most important thing a writer does. The most important thing is that when something is done and just a memory that you keep going.<\/p>\n<h2>Next Year<\/h2>\n<p>The &#8220;Next Year&#8221; rallying cry for the Cubs takes on a new meaning after last night. No longer does &#8220;Next Year&#8221; mean the hope of winning it all. That was done last night, and now the team <em>does<\/em> kind of lose something.<\/p>\n<p>But in listening to people talk about memories of so many losing seasons, even people found good in the bad years. Myself, I have fond memories of a sick day from school in which I watched the Cubs lose to the Phillies (22-23). A handful of years later, they lost a game that went 22 innings. And last night they won it all.<\/p>\n<p>Next year, they will win some and lose some.<\/p>\n<p>Next year I will write and finish things&#8230;and see those things become memories.<\/p>\n<p>The best we can do is keep at it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Is that all there is?<br \/>\nIs that all there is?<br \/>\nIf that&#8217;s all there is my friends<br \/>\nThen let&#8217;s keep dancing&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. I was born less than three miles from Wrigley Field. The north side of Chicago is Cubs territory, through and through. Even people who don&#8217;t particularly like sports on the north side (yes, a handful of people like that do exist), still believed that every year [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6823"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6828,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823\/revisions\/6828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}