Blog 31 January 22, 2022

 

Already “at it” in a new year, I’d like to share some of the directions the journey we call life seems to be taking me. In discussing my thoughts early in 2022 and what I might likely pursue, I would prefer “challenges” to the more prosaic “resolutions.” I’m promising nothing as I lean into the year and its possibilities. Broadly speaking, my thoughts are imbued with and channeled by a sense of responsibility threading self, family, neighborhood, country, world. I hope to return to these challenges next time (and perhaps a time after that), but this time I’d like to focus on how early thinking is impacting my sense of self. More specifically, I’m considering the reality (to some extent) of age-determined aims, notably any activity partially affected by physical well-being. At this moment, to my knowledge, I’m in good health.

The move to Virginia from North Carolina in 2017, an age-related consideration, deracinated me from writing “roots,” e.g. clubs, associations, informal groups, kindred individuals at whose tables I found brain nourishment. The cost: at least some loss of ferment. The loss has been heightened by my hesitation to reinvest in similar contacts here. I tell myself the hesitation relates to the time and responsibility required to re-associate myself. Age related? Possibly. Awareness of time shapes decisions. Part of being responsible, a promise has to be kept.

All that said, I have noticed changes in my writing life that I suspect relate, somehow, to aging. I seem to be letting stories come to me more now whereas up to the last year of two, I actively sought them. I also spend more time than in the past on pre-writing thought, editing, revision, and research.

I still read selectively, interspersing fiction and non. Within fiction, I still mix genre with literary, probably on a ratio of two or three to one. Within non-fiction, while my interest still feels protean, I suspect the range has narrowed slightly. A factor of time left? I suspect so. Then too, it also appears there’s a quantitative lessening as well. For decades, I averaged reading eighty to ninety books per year, occasionally more. Now the average appears roughly to be sixty to seventy, possibly fewer. Am I enjoying reading less? Heck no! If anything, quite the opposite; I continue to treasure the endless pleasure a good book offers. Perhaps I’m less driven to pack away knowledge and more open to the rhythms of optimal absorption. That’s just a guess.

            Back to writing, please don’t misunderstand; I still write, engaging in some aspect of the writing process almost every day. I recently completed the first draft of the fourth novel in the Quarry crime series. I’ve also been reviewing earlier work that, for various reasons, I’ve allowed to lie dormant. The writing goes on! It’s what we do, right?