Back to the Grind

Okay, I'm back for the first time since September; a lot of time and weather have gone under the bridge since I fell off the bike. Not literally. But my exercise and diet patterns have gone flat while my stomach has begun to swell again. No excuses for the total collapse -- I couldn't get out for any sort of long ride without a lot of commitment, due to out-of-town trips by my wife Mei, and a major surgery for son Daniel (which surgery BTW turned out very good, considering). But there's no real reason for not using the treadmill and bike trainer, or avoiding sweets. But here we are (using the royal we), and with a cardiology blood test coming up; last time the numbers were astoundingly good, this time. . . .

Part of the reason is/was the fact that I will not do the century before my 61st birthday, which comes in April. I do expect to do one this summer, ideally with pals Mark and Paul, and, if not then, in the annual Wright Stuff century in September. But the immediate drive is gone.

I also noticed that my writing has equally fallen off. Yesterday I was at the library, reading Writers Digest, an article about freelance writing. The author pointed out that the advantage to such a career is that you have no one to interfere with your schedule; but, he added, there is no one to blame but yourself for wasted time. It takes discipline, he said, and I agree -- and I see that it's been lacking. If I'm not careful, I might end up one of those senior citizens wandering between the library and McDonalds (62 cent senior coffee) and watching the world go by. I do start feeling old when the senior discount is automatically rung up; also, I've begun reading a 1970 novel, Jack Finney's Time and Again, about traveling in time back to the 1890s. Interestingly, the "current" scenes, when the protagonist is not "back in time," reads now like visions from a time machine -- he hopes for a salary of $12,000 a year, the ad agency where he works has typewriters and physically airbrushes photos, he uses a pay phone, and plays bridge once a week.

I was in those days, recalling when computerized writing was in its infancy, and it was life. Reminds of me of once when I was pre-teen, I was watching an old gangster movie on TV (black-and-white BTW) and I turned to my mother and asked her, "Did you know you were old-fashioned back then?" She rather curtly denied it. One of my favorite quotations, which I have on the wall of my cube at work, reads, "The past is a foreign county -- they speak differently there." Amen.

So I am getting up there, when my formative working reality is more than 40 years back, and most of my coworkers were born decades after the Beatles broke up. Still, a pair of 14-year old twins and an energetic wife with growing impatience, tend to keep me on focus -- or at least make me feel guilty about not being there.

Anyway, I'm back to the blog, and hoping to post daily again to keep my hand in writing. Which means the focus has changed a bit, from my journeys with Rocinante to my journey through this last quarter or so of my life.

I do know, and mostly believe, that I am a good writer. My book reviews, my past briefs and memoranda, my columns in the old Gering Courier, all suggest that -- as does my mother. I'm not sure what to do about the Cobb novels; I need to rewrite and strengthen them, but, having done more serious reading of good stuff, I wonder if they will ever be good enough.