UNIQ: Good morning Vietnam: Dreams, families, the power of myth.

              If Robin Williams can say it why can't I?  At least I can dream of saying it.  I can definitely type it, because I just did.  I can do it again, too.  Look.  Good morning, Vietnam.  See I did it again.  I can imagine my dad reading this and thinking what's my crazy son going on about now.  Well, just this:  My dream is for my blog to reach a worldwide audience.  But I'm going to need your support. 

If you like my stuff or think of someone who might, please pass along a link to a friend.  As a writer what I would like to feel is that I'm reaching a growing audience.  It might just be me, but I think I write with a little bit of power.  Not a lot, just a little bit.  I believe in my gifts.  I can sit on my balcony, and see an old cardboard box that says "gift".  Now, I only have such a box because of the thoughtfulness and kindness of Helen and Ben Neale, who sent my lovely wife some flowers and chocolates all the way from Australia.  Just to thank her for supporting me during what are for me right now some pretty difficult times.  Now that's love, people, expressed in a very concrete way.  But this world full of stuff, and language, and labels, seems charged with meaning for me.  What was the gift?  Was it just the flowers, and the chocolates?  I mean, my wife loves flowers, and those flowers are for me,and my family, the most beautiful elements of our small apartment, and I love chocolate (I ate most of them, just to show a bit of solidarity with my brother Luke who once snuck into our fridge and ate the Mother's Day chocolates I bought).  But, getting back to my original point.  The real gifts Ben and Helen gave to us were Love, Thoughtfulness, Caring and Kindness.  So I ask myself, what are your gifts, Grant?  What are you trying to give back to this world?  What are my flowers?  My flowers, as I am trying to embody in my writing and the way I live my life generally, are small things like Hope, Resilience, Quiet Strength, Courage, Bravery, Fearlessness and Openness, with just a little bit of Creativty.  My greatest gift, what I want to give back to this world is this- a very real lesson in the power of Self Belief.  So I'm trying to write a book about my life, and about its meaning. 

Now those are some pretty big claims for any unpublished, aspiring writer to make.  But here's the thing you don't have to believe in me, I have to believe in me.  I don't have to believe in your dream, either.  But I made a choice a long time ago, that wherever you are, whatever you're trying to do, I will choose   to believe in your visions and your dreams.  Why not?  It just helps people, you know.  A little bit of support never hurt anyone.  So if you like what I'm writing, or just that I'm writing, or just that I believe that dreams are for all of us, not just Martin Luther King, Jr.  I believe this.  There is a hero inside of every single human heart.  There you are.  We're all Superheroes, Supermen and Superwomen. Our families, in essence, are all the Incredibles.  And we didn't even know it.  That's what I believe.  You know what I want?  I want to live a life a little less ordinary, and a lot better than the crap movie of the same title. 

Or maybe we're not heroes.  Maybe you don't want to be a hero.  Maybe you identify with someone or something else.  That's okay, too.  When we were growing up my family were regular church goers, but, I think it's safe to say, a pretty weird little unit anyway.  My sister Stacey grew up Goth, my brother Luke believes, as far as I can tell, in the human mind and the modern god of science, and I am a pretty weird kind of guy, who kind of believes in everything.  My little sister still goes to Church, though and I think that's great.  Our best friends growing up were called the Jutsums.  Bruce and Janine Jutsum were lovely people and like my own parents rgular members of the same church.  Like us, they had two sons and two daughters, who were very close to us in age.  But they always seemed to have it together, while our family sometimes looked like it was falling apart.  But we didn't.  And I'm very proud of that.  Everyone in our family is able to say they love each and every other member.  We can all sit around the Xmas table, and eat a nice dinner together, and play a game of cards or Carcasen or Cluedo, that usually ends in some kind of argument, Luke winning and everyone else being kind of pissed off.  But we'll do it again, because we're good at it.  That's who we are.  For me, growing up I always felt like our family was the Simpsons and our friends the Jutsums were a bit more like the Flanders- just more normal than us.  That was okay for me.  I believe in self-acceptance and, well, accepting other people for who they are or at least trying to.

So that's some of me, some of my stuff.  If you believe in these kinds of notions- showing people that you care, supporting people, accepting oneself and others, having dreams and visions, never giving up- if you believe in me because I choose to believe in you- show it.  Write a comment, or send a link, or just Like me on fricking Facebook for crying out loud.  Do something concrete just to show that you believe in  the right of ordinary people to aspire, to dream, to hope, to believe.

That's a challenge.  Because, you know what?  I'd do it for you.  I think?