The Story
I want to apologize right away. If you opened this book looking for Nobel Prize-quality writings, they ain’t here. The writings in this book also do not strictly follow any poetic rules. While I did my best to stay on point with the 5-7-5 theme of traditional haiku, I am sure there are some I may have messed up on. Oh well. It is my book and I am leaving them that way. The same goes for capitalization and punctuation. Sometimes I just felt the need to leave “i” lower-cased versus “I”. “I” liked it that way, so it stayed.
So why did I not only start to write all the haikus but why publish them in a book? I remember the exact moment I decided to start writing the haikus. I was sitting on the ski lift, alone, for what I knew would be the last day of the season and I was guessing the last day before the state (and most of the country) would go into lockdowns for the COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously, most of us didn’t know how long the lockdowns would last but I felt confident it would be for a good while. My biggest concern was my mental health. I wanted to make sure I could support my family, especially my children, during this time. I was really worried that I would burn out. I decided I wanted something that was artistic, yet also a challenge. That is where the idea for doing the writings as haikus started. It would be my stress relief during the pandemic. I originally planned on writing one haiku a day. That then became an obsession and there were some days I wrote twenty of them.
Here is the real deal. Some of the haikus are really good (in my opinion). Some are Ok. There are a few that are just weird and may not make sense. That is ok. I leave it open to your interpretation. Some may have salty language, but nothing over the top. That leads me to “why publish”. I made the choice to publish to get myself out of my comfort zone. I know that is where most growth happens, so I figured why not? I am prepared for the “haters to hate”. I guess I also need to mention the drawings in the book. I REALLY wanted to have someone else do them, but my wife and friends talked me into creating them myself. I am a pretty bad artist, but I did enjoy the challenge. Some, I obviously took more time on. Feel free to make fun of those as well.
