Author Archives: Brian B Baker

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About Brian B Baker

I write horror stories, review books, and talk about depression, and how I get through all of it.

Migraine

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It started behind my right ear, dug in deep to the inner cortex and moved towards my frontal lobe, stopping, pushing and holding until I released the pain in a torrent of liquid.

My hearing heightened as if I living in Hell’s Kitchen.

But it didn’t stop, I felt punished and devoid of my thought processes.

My brain, pulsed, ached and pounded within my skull. The force felt like it was splitting through the tissue covering my grey matter, but it didn’t desist, it kept coming, striking and throttling my head .

I lay motionless. My body worn and pushed beneath the surface of who I was.

Each throttling threw my head into my hands as I curled into a fetal position.

I’d regressed until I felt the suddenness of the chemical hit the blood stream.

My hands fell to my sides, my head resting softly against the pillow until my eyes closed and I blacked out.

Living up to your own expectations.

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as a child growing up in Utah, my father was overbearing.

He was a big man, at least to me growing up.

When I was a teenager I was thin and constantly was called skinny by bullies and my father.

I always wanted to live up to his expectations so I drank protein drinks which killed my stomach, lifted weights all because I wanted my father to love me.
What I discovered afterward is that he was thin in school and maybe he didn’t want me to be that way.

Later, I joined the military only to be discharged soon after arriving at boot camp.

I felt like I let him down by not being able to finish boot.

In the last year I discovered all the times I was trying to make him love me, I wasn’t loving myself.

I gave up on myself as a child because I wanted my father to love me, but in the last year I discovered I should love myself over anyone else.

Now that I’ve put this in practice for a year I’m finding that my life is better caring about myself and not those around me.

I love my father though I don’t talk to him anymore, but he taught me that the love I have for myself is more important than the love anyone else will have for me.

I no longer worry about living up to his expectations, only my own.

Writing, Visions and Story

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Our dreams are often eclipsed by what we assume is the life we’re supposed have rather than life we actually have.

Our actuality is different from the way we see the world, the way we read the world and the way we write the world.

Our writing describes the way we see the things around us. The river we fished as kids, the smell of the smoke in morning when the farmers would burn weeds and the way our grandparents house always smelled of fresh cookies regardless of whether there were actual cookies available.

These words are the way we see the laughable things we see in the painting before us. The way the light hits the top of trees outside our house, the way the dirt smells when we’re planting the garden and how things we see may be differ from the way others see it.

Each day we write and engage the world around us informs our thoughts about our writing and whether we trust that our writing is on the correct track and not being disturbed by the things we don’t see around us, like the negative thoughts running through our heads.

Our negative thoughts about our writing should be silenced when we finish a new book, but they often get louder.

We chase our writing, when it should be trying to keep up with what we want to write and not us keeping up with the story coming out.

Keeping up with the words is our motivation, and it’s a worthy one.

Going Home, Writing and Another Step Closer

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Life is about struggle, but with each day we find the passage through and we learn that we’re headed in the right or wrong direction, but that direction is ultimately our choice.

In the next couple months I’ll be making a big change to increase how much time I’m able to spend on writing.

My wife and I have decided to move away from the life we’ve made in Las Vegas and go home.

Both of us were raised in Utah and growing up there we learned to fish, camp and discover the outdoors.

My favorite times as an adult have been when I took my son fishing, camping in my aunt’s backyard with my wife and kids and showing my son the lake where I learned to fish.

I want to give my son the childhood I had, while he’s still young enough to enjoy it but old enough to appreciate it.

We’ve planned this out and, well maybe I’ve planned it out more than she has, but going home will be a great exercise in persistence, fortitude and realizing our strengths as a family.

My wife is nervous, I’m excited as are our kids, but with this move we’ve planned for me to work a minimum of days so I can focus on writing, but as with any plan there may be detours.

I know that life will change, but without change life everything is less fun and more predictable.

Being predictable doesn’t help us grow. Staying in one place doesn’t make us change.

Leaving the only place our kids have known as home will open their eyes to the wonders of the outdoors and the life of living in Utah, which is far better for kids than Las Vegas.

Be it choice or intervention, we’re changing places for the good of our kids, ourselves and it’s one step closer to my dream reality.

Six Things I’ve Done to Create my Dream Reality.

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We venture in to the world, our hearts full of dreams, our minds full of doubts, but there’s always that one dream.

The one we have that pushes us to go farther, try harder and not accept anything other than the dream as our reality.

These dreams make us question who we are, what we truly want out of our lives, whether we want to continue on our current path and the decisions we must make to create the dream as our reality.

One year ago I began searching for who I was and discovered him in the dreams I was having, and continue to have.

He was stronger, more disciplined, more loving of his family, helped people in need and he was a writer.

There are things I’ve done in the last year to be that person.

  1. I spend more time with my family than I ever have.
  2. I started keeping track of things I’ve done during the day to make myself and those around me better people.
  3. I made a list of where I wanted to be in 10 years and started working towards it.
  4. I realized how much I truly loved my wife and began to prove to her I’d changed.
  5. I knew what I wanted to write and started creating the world for my characters.
  6. I stopped listening to the haters and began listening to like-minded people who wanted to change their world and help others.

Each of these 6 things have changed the way I think about who I am, what I do with my life on a daily basis, but that dream I had, well…it’s one of those you wake up from stare at the world around us and know that you can change things.

Change brings about angst and fear, but by meeting fear head on we’re able to create the world we want for ourselves our partners and those around us.