Writing

 The First Day:

You write and write and write.

Then one or two days later you reread what you wrote.

You ask yourself the question: Does this inform or entertain or help mankind if and when they read it?

If the answer is: "Yes" then you keep it.

For me the problem has always been editing (not spell checking and context) but actually editing as a writer.

Because I'm not good at editing my own work I call myself a "Storyteller" which is what my father and Grandfather were very good at "telling the stories about their lives".

Before there were Radio and TV and things like Netflix and Amazon Prime there were storytellers and my father and grandfather followed this tradition. My grandfather was born in the 1870s and I knew him from my birth around 1950 until he passed away in fall of 1970 from his wheel bearing freezing up near Elk City, Idaho where he had a 1200 acre mining claim and his panel Truck(now we call them vans) going into a river there on a dirt road to his mining claim. Both he and my father were very intense and intelligent fellows but both great storytellers too.

Reading what you wrote a couple of days later is sort of like sleeping with a woman and then trying to figure out whether you want to marry her or not a few days later?

It's sort of like that. If you keep what you have written you have decided to marry what you are writing. It's very similar, at least it is for me.

Writing helps me face the world every day. It starts out each day undefined and confused for me and then I put some order to it through writing and I feel comforted by defining my reality. We each had a responsibility to define our reality.

Letting someone else define our reality for us is a good way to die before your time. Defining your own reality is a path to old age which appears to be the one I'm on because I already made it to 72.

I expected in my 20s to be dead by 25 because I was always a risk taker but somehow marrying my pregnant girlfriend and taking responsibility for my first child, a son kept me alive when others of my friends were dying in Viet Nam in the war or rock climbing or racing cars or motorcycles or surfing or sky diving or whatever in my life. I gave up rock climbing in Yosemite and other places and stopped free climbing sometimes without a rope and stayed alive to first raise my son and then my other children along the way.

Defining your own reality rather than letting someone else define if for you is one key to longevity here on earth.

By God's Grace