Shared this morning with a correspondent:
. . . but you have kept yourself from becoming part of an . . . organization in which there would be many other social structures and "fish feeding" rewards (I'm thinking about how fish rise to the top of the tank when the owner scatters food on the water).
Perhaps taking a good step back from the field would be best.
I've noticed that instead of churning out prints, songs, and short stories, or their equivalent for our communicating environment, I've been (love this old word) "posterbating" all over the place and on myriad topics. Given my immediate circumstance, it's not really exhausting, but there gets to be a "what's the point" to it: my time on earth is passing; my cancer's not going away; I'm running down my reserves; and while I may be doing many things to attract interest, I'm not right now engaged in serving a paying client or audience. I'm just back in the barracks looking over the news, typing an opinion, reading a book, tidying up, and on some evenings going out to get out and thanking God I have a gift in music for doing that.
This must be mentioned: having gone through some initial "man-oh-pause" and the onset of the CLL/SLL leukemia, I've come to understand the meaning of "reduced drive" (that other category is working fine, but the career-climbing thing is definitely off its feed): I understand, as a man might, the retirement concept. There comes this day when we wish to put on nice clothes, go for a long drive, have a good supper our, and return home to a well kempt place with a den for serious hibernating.
I don't think I'm that far gone.
However, the urge to get a passport and fly out to Mogadishu to "witness" starvation and political chaos firsthand seems to me somebody else's property. It's past 10 a.m., I'm wearing a robe, a now just warm cup of coffee beside the mouse -- very cool! :) I just don't have the "jones" for the commute and office, the campus and the kiddies, or the pursuit of magazine fame.
What I would like to do is settle into some creative composition process -- writing, music, photography -- and let the world pass by while I create new material.
I want to go back ten years, or more, but in the environment and with the resources I have today and on the schedule dictated by whatever mix of biology and circumstance happen to contain me.
You might have a snappy quick response (or denial) that age has nothing to do with the perception of whatever mission or work we have put on our own plates, but I think it does.
Even transitioning in my forties, I felt the earth a thing reaching up to grab my ankles and slow me down.
If we follow that metaphor, the last things to go will be my mouth, my ears, and my eyes.
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