Charles R. Hutson

I think today, I hope, that I can have most of the day to do…what I…want to do.  And I want to do some writing.  I feel, like I’ve discovered, that this blog can fill a gap in my writing that I have been missing.  A chance to write small segments of stuff…that I like to write that has nothing to do with any stories or other projects that I might want to do, but feels to me, like I need to write it.

As I was thinking about how I might spend today, like usual I go over my list of things…to do…  Is there anything that I absolutely HAVE to do?  That I MUST do?  I don’t feel anything.  Things that have to be done include responding to work related concerns.  So far, no calls this weekend.  Another is to follow through on any kind of promises made, such as we are supposed to go and visit someone or do something, or have visitors, or a project that needs to be done because it will take more time than I have on an evening, or has an immediacy to it…like leaking plumbing, or a car that won’t go until I fix something.  Funerals, weddings, family events, etc.  Those kind of things.   Fortunately, can’t think of any of those either.

Then there’s things I SHOULD do, like mow the lawn, or fix something less urgent than leaking plumbing.  Yeh, the lawn needs mowed, but I can usually put it off, even if its three weeks past due.  Our grass doesn’t grow so fast that I can’t put it off another day or two…or even week or two.  I should also do a little cleaning and reorganizing after our last work project…but that also can wait.

Of course there are always things I OUGHT to do.  I ought to clean up my room and my workspace.  I ought to do some odd jobs that have been waiting around for me to get my motivation up to do them.  They will wait also.

There are things also that…I absolutely DON’T WANT to do.  I don’t want to piddle my day doing unimportant things until I’ve piddled the day away and haven’t gotten to do anything I want to do.

I’ve lost a lot of what I wanted to add into this post because it took me a while to get started from the time I thought about what I wanted to write until I actually got to my blog page.  And then there is the rest of the stuff going on around me that distracts me from what I am trying to do.  Such as my wife bustling around cleaning up stuff…asking me questions as she goes.  Many times, she will even want me to do stuff for her taking me away clearly from my limited time to write on my own.  But even just the bustling around in the same proximity, it distracting and discouraging.  I get to feeling that she would much rather have me up and going and working on something that she thinks I ought to do.

They are kind of in the ought to do column, but mostly there are in the HONEY-DO area.  We all know about honey-dos.  They are of course the things you do for your honey to let her know that you care.  Without asking, or even telling her, I feel like I’ve done my share of honey-dos this weekend.  Did not do any work type honey-do projects, rather just spent Friday evening and all of Saturday doing what she has been wanting to do for a long time.  “Let’s do something fun this weekend.”  Been saying it for months but we have been working on rental house projects that we HAD TO DO.  This weekend, we had no such projects, so we were able to take the time and do something fun.  I hope.  I think she had fun.

Today, I wanted to take some time for ME, to do something I WANTED TO DO.  And I didn’t want to have to ASK her to let me have the time.  I want her to WANT me to have some time…like a whole day…to do anything I WANT TO DO.  As I enjoy being able to take her places and do things for her that she wants to do, sometimes even when I’d rather be doing something else, my pleasure comes from doing something that makes her happier.  I want her to feel the same way and to feel that I deserve the time to do what I want to do.  I love it when she sees my need and tries not to impose on it.

A blog, especially when it is coming so freely, does not take a lot of time comparatively.  Maybe an hour or so as I carry through a line of thought.  And to tell, the truth, this line of thought hasn’t gone as smoothly as I would have liked it to.  Quite a bit of distraction.  The ideal setting is, I get that notion of what I want to write about, and I go sit down and write fro that hour unbothered by any distraction.  no one else around, no calls of nature, no barking dogs going crazy over who knows what, no troubles hooking up to my computer, no problems, concerns, distractions, interruptions or anything to disturb me from my train of thought.

Such times are rare in my life.

Now this is not intended to be a maudlin piece.  The title is more…a simple statement of fact.  We went to a visitation earlier this evening for my oldest sister-in-law.  She was 74.  Kind of young by a lot of standards these days, but still very common.  She lived a good long life, had seven kids, I don’t know how many grandkids and even great grandkids, and was married for more than 50 years.  A reasonable length of life.  Three score and ten plus four.

And she was very ready to go.  She’d been battling several serious illnesses for years.  Her husband, my brother, died about 2 1/2 years ago, and she made the best of things.  But she was ready she said “to go be with him.”  Now, honestly, I don’t know if she really will go be with him.  I don’t know at all what happens after death.  but religious folks will tell you that its all hunky-dorey in heaven after you die.  And people believe it.  Who am i to say any different?  Like I said, I don’t know.

And actually, I’m kind of suspicious of anyone who says they do know, but…the idea brings great comfort to people who believe it, so, live and let live I say.  Let them believe what they will.  Me, I’m not so sure.  It would be nice to be so sure, but I do not have that comfort.  I’m not really sure what I believe, if anything, about after death.  I’m not even sure it matters what I believe, or what any of us believe, because whatever happens, will happen whether we believe it or not.

What does matter, it THIS side of death.  What do we believe on this side of death?  Actually, that’s a much better title.  I went back and changed the title from “Another Funeral”.  You would not have known that if I did not tell you, and I think that is pertinent.  Anyway…what does matter…is what we believe from THIS side of death.  That matters very much.  I’ve seen that for myself…many times.  There is empirical evidence, that what we believe, DOES matter to our lives.  And especially to how we face death.  My sister-in-law was just the most recent example I have seen.

We went to visit her a couple weeks ago as she was preparing to leave the hospital and go home with hospice services.  She was very clear and lucid, and we talked openly about it.  She was ready to…let go…I say.  I think that best describes it for me.   She was ready to let go of her struggle to stay alive and ready to give up on trying to keepd her life above the illnesses she was fighting with.  And most of all, she was ready to…go be with her husband of 50+ years.

She was smiling broadly the whole time we were there and talking with her.  She was pleasant and cheerful and happy that she had made the decision.  She was at peace with the world and with her life…and with her death.  I was happy for her.  And I’m still happy for her.

She had been a Registered Nurse in her adult life.  Cared for many I’m sure who were nearing death.  Not sure if that had anything to do with her outlook, but it always gave me a way to relate to her as she spent many of her working years as a nurse in nursing homes.  We talked frequently over the years about the business.  usually not about life and death matters.  It was mostly about the day to day challenges we dealt with in the business.  And our birthdays were a day and 11 years apart.  Some say people with similar birth dates have things in common.  Not sure what they were except the obvious birthdays, and oh, we did both have a variation of red hair, but I really don’t know a whole lot else.

Funny.  I’ve thought alot recently about getting a chance to write a blog post again, and what I might write about.  I always think its best when i just write what’s on my mind.  But I thought about a lot of things I wanted to write about recently.  A lot of different things even just today on the drive home.  None of it was what’s written above.  I actually don’t even remember all those things I thought about.  And even as I was getting ready to sit down and write…I didn’t know what would come out.  Now, I’ve written over 750 words about it, and i’m feeling like I should explain myself somehow.  So that was it.

Tomorrow we go to the funeral.  A couple of months ago we buried Cotton.  Haven’t really been able to let go of him.  He was a much bigger part of my life than Barb as he was around in my day to day a lot more.  He was a different family link, and lived in town.  We spent more time together over the years.  He was another one who had made peace with his coming death.  He wasn’t grinning like Barb, but maybe that was because he was leaving his wife of 40 years…behind him.  he was not going to join his spouse like Barb was.  But I don’t know that for sure.  Only know that he was as ready as he ever would be to die.

It seems like there ought to be some conclusion I could draw from this writing…but I’m not sure what it would be.  I suppose it has to do with the line where I got my title.  That…it matters what we believe…on this side of death…

Don’t remember when or how it got started, but somewhere along the line, listening to Patsy Cline has always been part of our Thanksgiving morning ritual of getting ready for the T-day meal.  Today for the first time in I don’t know how many years…we didn’t.

We won’t be having our turkey day meal here, and we’re not expecting any kids or other family here either.  We are going to a meal, so I’m not feeling sorry for us…it’s just different.  And without Patsy…it seems to be the end of an era.  Oh sure, I could go play some, and pretend it’s kinda the same…but it isn’t and I don’t think I could begin to fool myself.  We do have a turkey in the oven, and pies on the counter, and we’ll be eating all the regular stuff…it’ll just be different.

After Mom and Dad died, and we had the kids at home, I decided unilaterally to having our Thanksgiving meal at home every year, and not have to be running all over the place to different places every year.  We could go to other places after we had our meal, but we were having a family Thanksgiving at our house.  Besides, we got to keep most of the leftovers that way, as well.  I did share of course and almost forced others to take them home because I knew if i didn’t we’d be throwing them away in a few days.  Don’t like to waste either.  While the kids lived at home, Thanksgiving would always be at home.  And when they went away to college, they’d always have a thanksgiving to come home to.   And for quite a few years after they all graduated from college, they were still close enough to come home for the holiday.  That seemed to be even better somehow than when they were all here anyway, to have them coming home.

Then it began, first one, then another moved out of state, and too far away to always get home for both Christmas and Thanksgiving with their jobs and travel time and such.  I knew it would come to this some day, and I hated to think about it, but I knew it would come.  For a while longer, we continued to try to have our Thanksgiving meal here at home, and invite whoever wanted to join us.  Our one daughter still lives close by, but they have in-laws to deal with who also want them to be there for their Thanksgiving meal.  So, it gets kind of messed up to have to work around it, and things change.  This year, the mother-in-law wanted to  have the meal at her house.  And, as I said, i knew this change would come some day…so I’m mostly all right with it.  except to say that I really miss having our kids with us and having the house full of family and food, and just good feelings.

At some point in those days, I was able to sit back in my chair and reflect on how much it all means to me, and how thankful I am for the blessings we have, and my great wife and children and grandchildren and other family…and I know I’ll still get to do that at Christmas, but I feel that Thanksgiving tradition…is gone now.  the absence of Patsy this morning just seemed to accent that.

It also signals to me that it’s time to get on with the rest of our life.  These transitions happen to everyone.  Knowing they will come doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, but what are you gonna do?  You have to, like it or not.  I guess maybe just that clear delineation of  today is what ‘slaps me in the face’.  Makes me wake up to the reality of it.

The thing is, I don’t know if this all sounds maudlin or like I said, whining and feeling sorry for myself.  I don’t intend that.  I don’t mean it to sound whiney.  I’m a little sad, but I know this is one of those necessary transitions of life…and I think, I guess, I’m as ready for it as I’ll ever be.  I didn’t try to fight it, by pulling out the Patsy music and making apoint of having it playing as we prepared the turkey this morning.  Some years I had to scramble for a tape or CD player and find the music just to keep the tradition going.  But I knew where it all was this morning.  I had the player and the music right where it needed to be…in case someone asked…

Funny…just as I think about wrapping this up…she comes flying around the corner…and says…we don’t have any Patsy Cline playing.  Vicki reminded me that we usually have it going.   I smile.  I know where it is I tell her.  Do you want me to get it out?  Yeh!

“I….fall…to pieces….

I went to my 44th High School Class Reunion last evening.  Lots of thoughts have gone thru my head since the reunion was set up, and while I was there.  I believe i could write for hours about these thoughts, if I am not interrupted by such things as having to eat something, having to use the restroom, or any of the millions of other things that are part of our everyday lives.  sometimes when I get interrupted, I totally lose my train of thought.  But I shall try to get some of these thoughts down, and hopefully, some of you will want to share them with me.

The main thing I noticed about actually being at he reunion, is that we are all a lot older that we once were.  I think I attended our 25 year reunion and now its almost 20 years past that.  As one of our mates mentioned, their class lost only 4 in their class in the first 40 years, but 8 more in the last five.  That said a lot to me.  We never know how much time any of us have left…especially as we get older.

When I first found our ‘Class of 70’ site on Facebook, there was talk about a reunion, and someone said we would be planning one for our 50th.  In my mind, that is a long time away.  A LOT could happen in that time….again…especially because we are older now.  Teasingly, I reminded that I am old now, and that I might not make it that long and so may never get to see my classmates again.  I mean, I am not seriously ill or anything like that, and I do hope to live a good while longer…but who knows.  I prodded for a reunion at 45 years at least, only a year and a half away at that time.  The good news is that I made it…and so did all of those who attended, and all of those who did not attend.  I did not hear of any of our classmates having passed away in that intervening time.

People talk of a ‘bucket list’ before they die.  I’d like to do this or that, go skydiving, see the Great Wall of China, take a cruise, or maybe even simpler things, like see my grandkids graduate high school or anything much closer to our day to day lives.  I first heard of a bucket list in relation to…dying.  the movie with Nicholson and Freeman comes to mind.  But I don’t want to think of it that way…so I have in my mind what I just call….a ‘To Do’ list.  I’ve got a lot of things I’d like to do yet in my life…and most of it involves things I’ve more or less ‘put off’  because of all the demands of living the day to day life, getting married, having kids, and keeping a job to support the family and provide them with as a good as possible start in their own lives as I could.

I had plans when I started out of high school.  Didn’t really understand what they were at the time, but I know I had them.  Some of them worked out, some of them were changed by events.  I like the old lines from the song, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”  Yeah, that’s right.  So here I am 44 years later, and my kids are raised, and out of the house and have jobs and…they are on with their own lives.  The only thing left in my way of spending time on my To Do list…is my job.  I am so anxious to be done with it…but…life it seems has other plans for me.  I am stuck with it for at least the immediate future.  Everything I do still has to be done in my spare time.

I talked to many other people at the reunion who were retired and enjoying their retirement.  And everyday it seems someone else around me close to my age, retires.  I am very jealous.  But I do blame myself for the most part.  Perhaps i just didn’t plan as well as they did.  Or maybe, I think sometimes, that Life has just had other plans for me. Whatever the case may be, here I am, still working at a job that though I’ve done and done fairly well at for 30 plus years, I’m ready to be done with.  The pain of it seems to outweigh the psychological benefits of it these days.   And then there is simply my impatience…to get on with more of my To Do list.  That’s what bothers me the most.  So many things I still want to do…and my job keeps me from doing them.  On the other hand though, if I quit my job, my finances might keep me from doing a lot of them as well.  One of those things ‘damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.’

In the meantime, I try to do as many of the things on my To Do list as possible in my off work time.  One of the things that trumps working on my To Do list is spending time with my family.  But at the same time, spending time with my family is also very high on my To Do list, especially with the grandkids.  Shall I work on some of the other aspects of my list, or shall I go to see my grandkids, or go to another type of family gathering.  No question, family wins.  It’s just that darn pesky job that continues to get in the way.  That’s the one expendable thing in my life…if only I could find another way to pay for continuing my lifestyle…after my job.

You might think at this point that I am going off course from talking about my class reunion…but it all plays in to it.  I just take a long time to get to my points sometimes.  You might say I’m long-winded in my explanations.  Yes, i am, because simplicity does not say it all. For instance, if  were a witness in a legal trial, and they wanted a yes or no answer, I would find a hard time doing that.  “Your honor,” I would have to say.  “They said I should tell the whole truth, and a simple yes or no won’t do that.  Almost everything is much more complex than a short answer.”

When I think about things, my mind seems to spin a whole lot of information thru whatever I am processing.  And yes, we all know there are times when we offer a simple answer, a simple yes or no, when we understand that the answer does not do the situation justice.  That is one reason why I like writing, and more importantly, writing on a blog like this, because I really don’t have to answer to anyone or anything…except of course nature’s calls and so on.  Still, I have the control to go on trying to spell out exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it…without interruption.

I could go on for quite a while longer here, so if you want to leave now, I will understand.  And you can always come back to it later…if you wish.  You see, you still have control as well.

I guess another of the things one my list is to discover whenever I get a chance, what has happened to all the other parts of my life…the people and the places and the times that brought me to where I am today.  I resisted Facebook for a long time, but finally my kids pushed me into it by giving me the Christmas gift of a lap top all to myself with Facebook and blog and other stuff, already set up on it.  It still took a while, but eventually I got into it, and learned, among other things, that I could FIND OUT a lot of answers to whatever happened to some of those people, places and times.  I found, I find,  great pleasure in seeing, in the pictures of my classmates, and other old friends, exactly what they are up to these days.  Many have stayed married to their high school sweethearts, they have kids and grandkids, and on and on and on.  Sure, there is a lot of BS on the Facebook as well as on the rest of the internet in general…BUT…one does not have to buy into all of that.  It may take a little sorting at times, but I think it’s worth it.

For those of you on Facebook, I have really enjoyed seeing those pictures of your families and your travels, and whatever the hell else you are doing in your lives, be it traveling the world or working on a craft project, or announcing the birth of your tenth grandchild, or the award your grandkid got for particitpation in a 6th grade art project.  I am a curious sort, and it answers a lot of wondering I do.  And maybe that’s what its all about for me  Curiosity.

We all know that curiosity killed the cat.  I’m no cat but I am curious.  I talk to people who want to have nothing to do with class reunions or Facebook, or just other people in general for that matter.  And I wonder…how could you not be at least curious.  Some people feel that high school was a horrible place and they want to have nothing to do with it.  hello, its just a microcosim of the world at large.  No better no worse.  Except that…the is something about coming of age together.  experiences that we all shared one way or another that have some effect in shaping our lives whether we want to acknowledge them or not.  High school was not the worst time of our lives and it was not the best time no matter who you are.  there is so much more to life than high school…but again…it was part of the world that shaped who and what we are.  Are we not curious to maybe just make some connection to that past that played such a big part in the person we have become?  I am curious how we are today versus what we were in that other lifetime so long ago.  Is there even still a connection?

I am happy to report that there IS.  I enjoyed the hell out of visiting with people I knew well, or even not so well, so long ago.  I feel connections to those I find on Facebook, and I feel connections to those I was able to speak to last night.  And I’d like to reconnect, if only for a minute now and then with so many other people from my past.  The kids I went to kindergarten with.  Where are they now?  I did not have the benefit of living only in one town for my whole life.  And some may not think that a benefit at all.  One person told me “I didn’t get too far from home.”  To me that seemed like a wonderful thing to have always had that “home”, that one place to always know that whether you consider it a positive or not…its home.  I like home.  Fairfield and Geff was home tome for several years and I am always curious how that played in to who and what I am.

Man, he does go on.  Ahh, but you would only know that if you’ve read this far.  Not too much more today, I promise.  But there is that train of thought and I have not yet reached the caboose.

You can’t have enough friends, old friends, new friends, high school friends, facebook friends, and so on.  What is the little girl scout ditty I think.  Something about meeting new friends and keeping the old, some are silver and the others gold.  Something like that.  There are friends that we are closer too, and friends we may never see except at such reunions.  Same with families and family reunions.  always there are people we are closer to than others.  but that does not mean we need to throw away any of them.  All of our friends and families and acquaintances are part of what has made us the way we are.  To be curious about others is to be curious about ourselves.  Stop being curious and it may well be the beginning of dying.  I’m not ready to die.  I hope I’ll always be curious.

I am even curious who I missed at the reunion last night.  I am certain there were some there who I would have liked to talk to even for a minute….if only I knew who they were.  I’m sure I’ll look at the pictures and see someone who I should have known, should have talked to…however I didn’t recognize them or something.  We have all changed quite a bit you know.  Without the name tags it would have been a jungle. I would have liked to spend a lazy day wandering around and taking time to talk to every single soul who was there in that time when we were in high school.  Many times an old friend has brought up a event or incident…that I had not thought of since then.  But when they mentioned it, yep, there it came from the bottom of my memory floating again to the surface.  Yeh, I remember that.  but I may never have remembered if they had not brought it to surface.   Memories are good fun to think about, to share, not to live in, but to revisit now and then.  I am curious…what the future holds for me…for all of us.  And curious still of what brought us to this place in our lives.  Working on my own To Do List…and hoping there will be another reunion someday to share a little bit more of our lives and our memories.

time to get on with the rest of my To Do List.  thanks for reading.  Send me a note some time.

It’s been awhile since I made a post on my blog.  Not that I haven’t had anything to say, it’s just that we always have to set priorities.  Seems like everything in life is about priorities.  And so many times, at home, when I try to do something, I’ll get called away for something else…that is a priority around there.  And prioritizing is not so much about doing what you like as opposed to something that you’d like to do more at home.  No.  It’s more about realizing that there are things in your life that HAVE to be done, versus things you’d prefer to do.  It’s only when I get somewhere like this…away from home…and away from all those nagging little irritations of things that need to be done…that I can really relax and enjoy doing something that I’d really much prefer to do over so many other things.  If only one could make a living at something s/he really enjoyed…

Like a computer when I first started using one, there are so many things on this blog site that I have no idea what they are for.  Still a lot of things on the computer in general that I don’t know what are for either, but I use a lot more than I did 5 or 10 years ago.  And of course, very few of us, if any will ever know what most of the stuff is for anyway…but its there if we ever need it…and can figure it out.

My priorities while I am waiting on Jo are to make the best use of this time that I know how.  Because I’m not at all sure when such an opportunity like this will come again.  So far, I think I’ve done well in using my time. Just doing whatever feels the best at any given time.  When I’ve got a block of time like this, I don’t feel so pressured to get the most bang for my buck so to speak.  If I get a spare hour at home, I have to decide if I’m going to do a home project, like fix something.  Or do a chore, like mow the lawn or do some laundry.  Or if I really ought to just take a breather and try to unwind a bit, read a book or something on the recreation end of life.  I always have to prioritize my time at home.

Here at Wash U.  Oh, I didn’t mention that did I.  I noted it on Facebook in a shared post there, but I haven’t included it here yet.  I am at Washington University in St. Louis and have been for 4 or 5 hours everyday since Friday.  I’ve had some time to really…breathe.  I can even get out and take some exercise when I feel like it.  I’m sitting in a library, just having a big old time…esp compared to work, and even to my day to day life at home where all those things are always waiting to be done.  As I hang around here, my toughest decision is how am I going to best enjoy my time at each moment of the day while I’m here.  I don’t even have any classes to go to.  No homework to get done.  Just hours of time that I can spend doing what I most enjoy at any given time.  Reading.  Writing.  Laying back and relaxing.  Watching people pass by.  Or even just staring at the trees or the sky as the wind moves the leaves or the clouds.  Ahhh.  These are the kind of priorities I like to choose from.

The song from Mark-Almond plays in my head.  It is a Monday, but I don’t really feel so blue.  Feel almost good for a Monday evening.  The way Mark -Almond makes me feel when I listen to most of their music.  Its an old group.  Don’t even know if  they’re alive anymore.

Seems like a long time ago since my birthday.  I did make it to 62.  Now it feels like I ought to be so much older…but its only been weeks.  Read a little bit of my last blog, and noted that I still feel like that fortunate man.  Just sitting here feeling good…and feeling grateful for all the good things that I have in my life.  Been working on the final details of my next ebook, and also hoping to make it print on demand thru create space, but I’ve not done that before, so I’m going slow with it.  Don’t want to mess it up and put out a substandard product of a book.  But I feel good about that too.  Confident that I can pull it off.

Distracted.  Pulled out of my groove.  I hate it when that happens, but I know I can get my groove back.  I think they even did a movie about it.  Still…it is distracting.

What was I thinking about?  I noticed some comments on my blog site.  Where did they come from I wonder?  I don’t think anyone even knows I’m here.  I’m thinking this site is kind of for later when I get to figuring out things more.  At this point, I’m doing good to type out what I’m thinking about.  And i always wonder why other people would have any interest in that.  But on the other hand, I’m kind of a curious fellow myself, and if i stumbled across someone’s thoughts, I’d be curious to read them.  I always wonder what people are really thinking.  And that’s the only thing I can imagine that other people would be curious about too.  What someone else REALLY thinks.  Not some mindless blather about what they did all day and what they had for supper and who they talked to…unless there was some serious thought involved.

I wonder too how this blog thing is going to work out in the long run.  Like how can I use it most effectively?  To communicate with others.  I’ve written a few times on Facebook, and I enjoy the response s to what I write.  I think there is some desire in me to entertain and amuse other people.  And maybe I’m a little bit of a showoff…if thats the word I’m looking for.  I was going to say a ham, but i’m not sure if people even use that phrase anymore.  Doesn’t really matter, I think the drift is there.

I’m really glad that my daughter set this blog up for me…for Christmas I think.  Its kind of weird.  I’ve never really cared about …things…for b-days and Christmas and father’s Day and stuff.  But I think my family might finally be starting to understand that.  all i want anymore are just more means and ways to reach my goals of communicating to others thru my writing.  Hard to believe that I have three ebooks out there already.  Of course I’d like to have 30 or 50 or a hundred and adding to them all the time.  But three is a good start and I’m proud of that.  The next part of it is getting those books out to where people can see them…and most importantly…read them.  And maybe even let me know what they think.  that’s one more thing Ineed to add to the back of my book.  Let me know.

Less than a month before my 62nd birthday.  A few weeks.  I’ve been writing about my birthday every year since I was in college.  If I looked back in my notebooks from the month or two before my birthday each year, I would find how I felt about my birthday coming up that year, for that age.  At 62(soon to be), I am feeling my age.  Or at least feeling older.  I obvioussly don’t know what it feel like to be 62 since I’ve never been there before.  I am rapidly approaching the day when I can tell you my feelings on what it’s like to be 62.   For now, i can only tell you how i feel about getting closer to it.

I feel like, the older I get, the more I want to spend my time on more things that really enjoy doing, and less time on things I don’t enjoy so much…like work…that keeps me from writing and sharing my time with family.  Even if I get to write more, and if I call it work, it won’t seem as much like work as…say going to my job at the nursing home every day…or even working on the rental houses.  I’m just especially happy that we’ve been able to keep the other houses rented while we’re working on this one.  And I’m happy also to have a good job to go to…a job that pays me a reasonable amount of money for the work I do.  No doubt about it, I am a very fortunate man.

I am even more blessed to be able to do the things I am capable of doing, though I wonder for how much longer I will be able to do them.  I think arthritis and other things like that are creeping up on me.  As i type, my fingers hurt.  Even at that, I am fortunate.  I always try to keep things in perspective.  There are always many people better off than me…and I’d like to be better off as well, but there are also many people who are much worse off than me, so I always feel very fortunate to have whatever I have in terms of good health, and a decent job, and a beautiful family, and on and on about so many things.  I just want more.

And I want to be clear about it.  /There is nothing wrong about wanting more.  We are born wanting more, and most of us will get to the end of our life wanting more.  My father-in-law has mentioned it often in his later years.  He always says that he don’t really need anything except more time.  More.

More.  That is a whole other story.

I started writing, I think seriously, in my first year at college.  One of the things about writing, I believe, is that I can get all my thou8ghts outside of my head and somehow arrange them into some kind of order in sentences and paragraphs and pages.  When I’m just thinking, my mind can go through all kinds of thought processes, and it will arrange things at the time, but when I come back to the same concepts later, I essentially, look at things differently. We are always evolving in our thoughts, in our observations, in our perceptions…and at least for me…things don’t always look the same when I come at it in a different time or from a different perspective.  What I write today, I would write differently tomorrow if I came back and tried to write about the same subject.  And I actually don’t remember how I thought of it the last time…because its another day, and I’m in another place in my life…yes, even from day to day.

With the written thoughts, I can go back and re read them, and even though I may agree with what I’ve written, I usually want to expand or clarify some aspects of those thoughts.  Sometimes, the thoughts are good the way they are, but usually I would add to them.  I have noticed when I’m writing a story, that many times when i come back and do a re write, I will change words or phrases or even bigger sections because it seems like I should.  But, when I come back and do a re write again of the same areas, many times I will change the thoughts again, and find that they more closely reflect the way I had it in the first place.

Sometimes I do forget all about what I’ve written.  I started journaling when I started writing.  Most of what I did was journaling with things put in about subjects I thought I might write about later.  Sometimes I got on binges and wrote pages and pages, and other times just a page or two.  I wrote every chance I had when I wasn’t doing things with friends or studying or stuff like that.  My favorite times were when I could sit back up somewhere on campus against a tree or building and watch the world going on around me.  I have boxes and boxes of my writing that I probably have never re read.  I think some day, maybe I will make a story of my life from the pages.  It is after all, the story of my life…from 1970 thru now.  I also began putting some of it on word processors and disks and such.  As machines crashed and technology changed, a lot of that is lost forever.  The paper notebooks however, are  still there.  something like this could be put out in to the net world, and though it may exist…it may never be heard of again.  The paper notebooks are stored away.   And though they may never see the light of day, they seem more real and accessible to me.

Still, I enjoy writing in any form.  But I have always wanted my writing to get out where it can be read…even if its not read.  A book in print form would be an example.  But I never really wanted to pay to have my work published in book form.  I always felt i would find a way some day without having to pay.  Its kind of like that with ebooks.  I can put my work out there for basically nothing… and its there to be read.  I do realize that I still have to find a way to reach a wider audience if I am ever to really gratify my desire for more people to read what I write, but I think I will get there some day…if I live long enough.

I have lots of material that I would like to get placed in to ebook form, and much of it that I would like to have available thru written book form like the print on demand formats such as Create Space.  I’m working on that too.  Got a long way to go there as well.  And I go thru periods of not being able to either write or work on getting my stuff in print.  Like now, we’re working on a rental house, also part of my retirement income plan, and it takes up pretty much all of my time during which I might have written.  I do feel the need to have some blocks of time to immerse myself in my thoughts or stories.  I find it incredibly hard for me to write a paragraph or two or even a page or two unless I have some block of time to get in to it.  If I try to write and get interrupted several times within trying to write a few paragraphs, my train of thought gets totally derailed…and I give up in frustration.  Sometimes I will try to come back and work it, but that usually doesn’t work for me.  Perhaps I don’t have the ability to focus on things like I should.  Perhaps I have no discipline.  Perhaps I just have a lot on my mind that keep crowding out what I’d really like to be doing.  Like now, I took a lunch break, but its time for it to be over.  Time for me to get back to other things.  Sure, nothing pressing for me to do.  Sometimes it is enough for my job is just to be here and available.  I get those other things done when they need to be done.

But for now, I think I need to stop.  Maybe I’ll get back to some more later…maybe not.

Gotta start somewhere.  Not even a bit sure about how all of this works.  Hard telling what will come out of it.  So here goes.

It’s kind of intimidating staring at a blank piece of paper or even a new file when you begin to write something.  This is like that.  But I have to establish for myself from the beginning that this is all somehow, somewhere down the road at least, about finding a way to connect with other people.  And putting myself…out there for all to see.  After being a relatively private person for all of my life, especially about writing…now I need to figure out how to connect with people thru writing…and let them see what I’m doing at the time I’m doing it.

I’ve always hated having someone look over my shoulder whether writing, drawing, or painting, or anything creative.  It feels like that’s what I’m doing here…all in the name of somehow making connections with people that will make them want to read more.  And of course I know that it takes a long time to build any kind of a following who would search out in order to find my stuff to read, but like I said.  Gotta start somewhere.  I think maybe here…I’ll start with just this…that I’ve written above.  A first post on my website/blog.  In the meantime, I’ll be working on some other stuff…stories, books, blogs, etc., that will come out along the way.