Robert Lee Brewer's April Platform Challenge for writers has kicked off. I’m a little late to the fray and I’m actually having a hard time with the first challenge:  define yourself. I’m not sure why it’s so difficult. Perhaps I don’t want to feel constricted or confined by definition.  It’s more likely that I’m not a here-and-now kinda guy; I’d rather talk about what I’d like to do.

No dice, the instructions for this challenge are clear. I’m not to worry about where I’d like to be or anything in the future. I’m to take a look at who I am, what I’ve done and what I’m currently doing. Surprisingly enough, once I got started, I realized that I’m not nearly as lame as my children make me out to be.

You really don’t know what effect you have on people, especially people you barely know.

Let me get this out in the open; I have a compulsive personality. It's a quirk, to be sure, but it's one I fully embrace and own. So, when presented a new and shiny toy, there is a great likelihood that I will wear it out; for instance, my current infatuation with Twitter. That's really a half truth, I've become somewhat enamored with all social media, from the cotton candy favored confection that is Facebook to the more sophisticated and professional LinkedIn.

Competing with this overwhelming need to comment on everything is a secret love that I have hidden away, lo these many years. That love is air-time. I'm not talking grabbing some sky on a half-pipe. No, I'm talking about talking; platters spinning, cans on and mic hot. You see, for the first thirteen years of my professional career, I was a broadcaster.

Life has been intruding a lot lately, the way it always does when you’re not paying it any attention. I’ve been guilty of starting several projects at once and not finishing any of them. I want to finish them, I just lack the focus. I believe I have discovered a way to fix that.

November is National Novel Writer’s Month, NaNoWriMo for short. Check out the link for the low down. The short version is: 30 days, 50,000 words, a lifetime of therapy. Well, perhaps not the last part. I attempted NaNoWriMo two years ago and did not succeed. Of course, I didn’t have a plan.  Now, I have what resembles, on a dark night, in the rain, and fog, a plan: Project Mjölnir.

Welcome to the relaunch of “A Dark & Stormy Night”. It was time to give the place a makeover. It’s been over a year since I posted an entry, so I figured I’d better repurpose the page or return the storage so someone else could make better use of it.

I’m going to be adding bits and pieces as I go along in addition to (at least) weekly posts. A buddy of mine got to give me an “I told you so” after my initial effort petered out. I think that was in large part due to the lack of anything remotely resembling a plan. To prevent him from being able to snicker up his sleeve at me again, I’m going to try something a little bit different.

I’ve had a project languishing in the weeds for about two years now. It’s been a challenge trying to find motivation, inspiration and plain old perspiration to complete the work. I think I’ve found my muse or rather, a helpful convergence of things that have rekindled and sparked my interest.