This, my 53rd consecutive weekly column, officially marks Uncommon Discourse’s one-year anniversary.

Thank you to the thousands of unique visitors who have visited the site and to the steadily increasing number of subscribers to my weekly articles combining creative nonfiction, memoir, and humor.

To celebrate I’ve put together a gallery of featured images where you can view all of my articles, which may be accessed here.

If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to review the past 52 columns to see any of interest you may have missed.

There are subject-matter and date filters on the sides (desktop) or bottom (cell phone) of each post for easier navigation. Clicking any of the featured images in my photo gallery will also take you to the corresponding article.

Many thanks to my wife, Jenny, who has taken several of the photos and to Pixabay.com for their massive library of royalty-free photos.

I started Uncommon Discourse as a platform to start building an audience in advance of approaching publishers about a memoir that I’m developing on my family life from childhood through cleaning out the family house after my mother’s death in 2013. I’ve workshopped many of the pieces from that memoir and am very encouraged by the reaction I’ve gotten so far.

As I near completing my first draft, this platform may help me convince timid publishers to take a chance on me by demonstrating my seriousness to the craft and that an audience exists for my work.

I write the weekly columns during lunch breaks and quiet points in my day as a way to keep my skills fresh during lulls in the work on my memoir. I look forward to sharing my more polished work in the near future as I begin pursuing a concrete publishing strategy.

An entirely unexpected joy from publishing these articles has been the generous encouragement I’ve received from so many readers. Connecting with you through this space has helped me grow as a writer and as a person.

Your constant encouragement provides me with considerable delight and a steady stream of eye-rolls from Jenny every time I mention getting “fan mail.”  

I release new columns at 7:56 PM on Sunday as an homage to Andy Rooney, who always loved sharing his mail. In that same spirit, here are just a few of the kind words subscribers have shared:

“Thank you for giving me something entertaining and meaningful…a reason to look forward to Sunday evenings.” – Christy C. from Oregon.

“Chris, your weekly discourse columns are a riot! I do enjoy them, Great work. It reminds me a little of Seinfeld but with the Chris Gaffney humor…. You do it perfectly! Lol, Love it dude.” – Chris B. from Connecticut.

“It makes me really happy to hear that you’re sharing yourself with the world, you’re way too interesting and talented to keep your light under a bushel.” – Stefany W. from Texas.

“Humorous, cranky, warm. Delightful.” – Jodi C. from Ithaca, New York.

“One of the best things I’ve ever done was to subscribe to your column!” – Linda S. from Connecticut.

As I started hearing from readers, I realized that for some people, this column provided a temporary relief from the tremendous social divisions facing our country. Even if our public discourse doesn’t often reflect it, we really do have more in common than not.

I am especially proud of the fact that my work here is appreciated by friends and loved ones on all sides of the political spectrum. There doesn’t seem to have been much else to do that this year. Or even much else that has tried to do so.

I’ve come to see that understanding our commonalities is just as important to active citizenship as understanding our politics. The way we handle ourselves at the grocery store is as significant to our quality of life as how we handle ourselves at the voting booth, but far less often analyzed or discussed.

Shortly after I started college it became a cliche to reference a hit new book called Bowling Alone, which painted a picture of a country on the verge of exhausting our social capital. It dominated the discourse for most of my time in college and always made me sad.

I thought about that book last month while passing my town’s freshly-shuttered bowling alley and wondering how much farther our social isolation might go.

I don’t expect these writings to change anybody’s life or even to stand the test of time; they’re just short comments on everyday life.

But for anyone who needs it, I help these columns make you feel a little more understood and a lot less alone.

While I’ve been writing these columns, my wife Jenny’s taken up quilting as a hobby. From her experience, I’ve learned the value of focusing on the stitching instead of just the seams. It’s beautiful when many different things come together in a complementary way.

Writing is a solitary activity, but discourse is a communicative act. I have dozens of future pieces in various stages of completion. While they may not all be as compelling as my thoughts on taking out the trash or on using headphones, they try to find some common ground to celebrate the relatable aspects of life, such as being unable to smoothly get out of a hammock, or routinely failing to open produce bags at the grocery store. If you’ve liked this past year, you’ll want to stay tuned.

What can you do to help?

Pick a favorite article and share it with your friends. The only timely reference I’ve made was a bad Stormy Daniels pun; these columns have a long shelf life.

There are social sharing buttons at the bottom of each piece. Or better yet, sign up for my email updates and forward it to a friend each time an article makes you think of them – especially if they work in publishing.

Join my official Facebook Page and leave a friendly review. I don’t think it’s important, but publishers might. If you’re coming here from my personal Facebook page, I don’t share my columns there every week (even though I might seem like I do), but I always share them on my author page.

Also, please visit, encourage, or support the content creators listed below who support this effort. We are a small community and can use the support.

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Acknowledgments

One of the most daunting things confronting me when I started writing was the awareness that most books begin with an acknowledgments section and I was doing it entirely on my own. I’ve consciously worked to build my network over the past three years and have grown considerably as a writer because of it.

While books may begin with an acknowledgments section, I’ve selfishly gone a full year writing here without acknowledging anyone. At this one-year mark, I would now like to recognize a few people and organizations that have been especially supportive:

• Content creators including badass author J. Manuel Writes and journalist/radio personality Jason Subik (also on Twitter at @subikgazette) for routinely sharing this content with their audiences.
• Author and artist Cathy Weiss for routinely including me in her conferences, workshops and events.
• Storytelling groups, in particular Speak Up and The Mouth Off at the Mark Twain House for featuring my stories on their stages.
• Writing groups around Connecticut including those in Wallingford, Durham, and Clinton for their generous encouragement.
• RJ Julia’s Voices in the Bookstore series for routinely allowing me a platform to promote this site while sharing essays I’m developing for my memoir.
• The Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop for featuring one of my first columns on their website and actively supporting humor column writing.
• The National Society of Newspaper Columnists for occasionally promoting my work and routinely offering encouragement and support.
• My spirit animal, Franklin Muth the Rooster, for watching over me while I type in my office.
• Co-workers at my wife’s job for not making it weird that she shares these with you like my co-workers would, especially her supervisors.
• So many friends from the past who have subscribed through this site or reconnected with kind notes. Sorry that I don’t pick up the phone to check in – I’ll never be that guy – but you’re still awesome.
• Everyone who sent me soup recipes. I haven’t actually made any of them, but the gesture warmed my heart.
• Feedspot for naming this a Top 100 Humor Blog.
• The total strangers who’ve stumbled onto this site or had it thrust upon you in one of my desperate bids for attention. May you grow in number and all be book publishers.
• My friends at Eagle Toastmasters – especially those who regularly read this column and are later forced to sit through a modified version performed a few weeks later.
• My family who’ve been the butt of so many jokes but always ones told with love.
• My wife, Jenny, who encourages this nonsense and will answer after reading this (for the 53rd consecutive week in a row) that it isn’t weird that I do this, even though we both know that it is.
• Andy Rooney for showing the way.

Thank you again for taking the time to read my writing. If you haven’t already done so, please subscribe below, Like my author page on Facebook, and share your favorite columns with your friends.

 

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You may notice that I’ve disabled commenting on this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts by email at [email protected].