As a writer

Trying to get into the right state of mind to write something longer and dealing with real life at the same time can be quite a juggling act so to speak. I find writing usually very healing somehow in my life even though typing a lot and getting into the right frame of mind is a little like preparing to drive a car for 4 to 8 hours in a day. First you pack up your car and then load yourself and whoever is going into the car with you and then you are disciplined in how you are driving so everyone stays okay in your car and everyone outside of your car or truck. So, writing is a little like this in that you need to maintain a certain amount of focus that you take seriously. The main difference I guess is that when you drive you have to protect yourself and others physically from harm and when you write often you are trying to protect others from psychological harm by what you are writing.

I have to be careful because I can be very cynical as a writer about things like Suicide sort of like:

Been there done that Got the T-shirt when I was 18 to 25 and now I'm over all that now at 76.

But, often I can forget how raw some people's lives are at any age from traumas in their lives that they are trying to survive. So, writing in this sense for me is a two edged sword that I hope finds people in a helpful way that helps them choose to continue being alive in a good way for themselves.

For example, in my 20s I often Soul traveled as a way to escape from the horror of my life in my early 20s. In 1969 my life turned completely upside down in a way that many people would not survive. I don't have an addictive personality so my problem was never drugs. If I had a problem it would be I didn't want to be alive anymore because I couldn't do what I wanted to with my life then.

So, it didn't matter how beautiful or wonderful any of my girlfriends were or that I was handsome and tall around 6 foot 5 inches tall or that I was really healthy and buff and well built and intelligent because I didn't see any reason to stay alive at that point.

But, by the time I got married and had a son by age 26 I gave up selfish thoughts of suicide and realized it was an exercise in narcissism that could be fatal especially for males like myself who were too intelligent for their own good. I found I could think rings around most people and this wasn't good for my survival because it just showed me how ridiculous it was to be alive just for myself.

I had to learn that "No man is an island" even though many men fantasize that they are separate from everyone and everything else which is a part of a man's natural narcissism I guess.

But, as soon as I realized I had people depending upon me at age 26 when my wife and I broke up when I was 29 I realized she was really too young to be married when we married because she was pregnant when she was 21. I was only just barely old enough to make a marriage and family work at 25 when we got together and at 26 when my son was born.

So, I wound up being a single father at age 29 until I remarried at age 32 to a lady I met in Mt. Shasta who grew up in Altadena which is nearby Glendale where I also grew up mostly in the 1950s. Also, she was the same age as me so we had a lot of memories growing up in common then.

So, I had to get beyond my youthful narcissism and intelligence and cynicism in order to survive to 30 even because otherwise I easily could have been gone (dead and gone) by 25 or 26 otherwise just because I have always been a physical risk taker: :rock climbing, Surfing, Scuba diving, racing motorcycles across the deserts of California, being a glider pilot, plane pilot, hang glider pilot etc.

So, I had a panoply of ways to easily die up until I was 26 and got married and buckled down so my son wouldn't grow up and orphan without a Dad.

So, I have to be careful realizing that many young men and women haven't gone through what I have to get to the point where suicide isn't seen as a viable option.

So, this is one of the greatest hazards I find as a writer for me of being too callous regarding things to do with suicide in life.

However, reading what I write will also give people ways to stay alive the way I stayed alive.

I realized as an intelligent person how many members of a family often kill themselves when any other one person in that family dies. So, being intelligent enough to recognize this I stayed alive and SOLDIERED ON because I couldn't do this to my family. So, staying alive (AT FIRST) then for me wasn't what I wanted to do really it was what I HAD TO DO in LOVE and LOYALTY to my friends and family.

So, if I succeed in your lives by making you understand that what we do often affects everyone we know and love then I think I have succeeded as a writer in helping keep  you alive another day, another week, another year and then a whole lifetime.

By God's Grace