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While always having had in the back of my mind a desire to write, and having had a certain affinity for it in that I am able to clearly express the point I am trying to make, which is a good start if you wish to write well, it has only been recently that I have taken up the pen. Now, that is a bit silly to say, since what I have actually done is crank up the laptop, open the word processor, and start typing. But you get my meaning: after many years of living, I have finally started writing. Mostly, I write about personal stuff or about current events. None of it is probably of great import or will be very widely read, and those facts don't make one iota's difference to me. The reason I have begun writing is that, at this stage in life (I'm the father of four beautiful daughters, all grown or getting close to grown), it is becoming more apparent each day that, for me, I need to write. It is the juice in my life now, so the compulsion is rewarded when I read what I wrote. The joy of getting it down just the way that will make it a rewarding read is replicated over and over again. Yes, as goofy as it sounds, I read my own stuff, and more often than just for proofing or editing purposes. I wrote an article about my eldest child and an adventure we had when she was a toddler which I can read any time I like, and I am right there again, in the middle of that moment in our lives. So, the satisfaction I garner from expressing something well is then side by side with the emotions I relive when I dive back into that scene by reading it. I have discovered that the inner life becomes more and more a focal point as one reaches well into the middle part of life. And there is no better window to that inner life than to write. Today, my writing is all over the map, from the view of the subject matter. I don't seek to write long articles because I don't seem to have enough to say to justify thousands of words on one single event or topic. A few hundred, though, I can write easily about lots of things. This morning (it is before dawn here in Denver), I was inspired to write this piece, the self-reflection and self-reference a bit odd, but just what I am guided to do right this moment. You see, writing is no less living than being out in the world gathering your experiences. Or, as someone else might put it, "living your life." At some point, the focus will shift for you, too, from gathering experience and enjoying action to quiet reflection. Not all at once, and not to the exclusion of action, let's hope...yet it is part of this journey for most of us to have a period before we choose to leave this reality when we can review what we accomplished. For some, it will be a time to relish success. For others, regret may be filling their days. For me, it's all about the life I chose, and the learning I have done, and the education I continue to enjoy. Success and failure are just markers along the path; neither are defining nearly as much as how we come through them and use them to our own advantage or how we learn from those markers along the path. Today, I am defining this moment as my fingers create these words on the page. I am beginning a day that will be much like thousands of other days in my life, yet I know there will be something about today that will be special. Who knows? Maybe years from now, what I will realize is that it was these few minutes of typing time that have come to represent this day's great adventure. That's for that day in the future, though. Right now, I'm the player, not the judge. Another beauty about writing is that it becomes part of what I can leave those I love. When the time comes for me to depart for points unknown in another part of the cosmos, what I have written will be available for my children and their children...for my wife and siblings...for people who never knew me, thanks to the advent of the internet. So, while I may have shuffled off to Buffalo, years later someone can stumble upon something I wrote, read it, and in a way know me better than thousands of people with whom I had contact throughout my life. Why? Because I leave a private part of me, a personal energetic touch, in each bit of writing. They are not just reading words, these imagined folks well in the future. They are, in fact, meeting me. The real me. To write is to be. To write is to be immortal. writing service
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