Welcome

I’ll have to admit that one of my biggest regrets of my latest bout with cancer is that I was unable to go to Denver to spend time with Logan Riley and my new granddaughter Zoe Ann:

I’d originally planned on spending a week or two taking caring of Riley while mom and daughter recuperated, but I’ll just have to hope that delaying my introduction to Zoe will mean in the long run that I will have more time to spend spoiling her.

Even in a dark time
a beautiful girl child
was born unto Them.

Trying to Make Today Count

One of the good things about being a cancer survivor is that you’re more apt to appreciate each and every day than those who imagine they’re going to live forever. Hopefully that doesn’t mean living in fear, or self-indulgence, but, rather, living with the realization that each and every day is precious.

For me, at least, it has meant doing what needs to be done now and narrowing down the many things I’ve always wanted to do to the things I really can do. As a natural dabbler, someone more interested in learning how to do things than in actually doing them, I’ve long collected books and tools with the thought that I’d like to read them someday or I’d like to learn how to do that someday.

Though I’ve thrown out several books on electronics and other areas I would have loved to read and digest, I’ve actually managed to carve several projects that I’ve put off for years, finally applying some of the many art classes I’ve taken since high school, and finding the process truly rewarding.

When I started my webpage three years ago I had books that had been sitting waiting to be read for over 30 years. And while I’ll admit that there are still a few of them left, I have now read nearly all the books I own. Now when I find a book I’m interested in, I put it on my Amazon wish list and buy it right before I want to read it. Strangely enough, I’ve found it much more rewarding to actually read the books I have than to put them off until later.

Perhaps most fulfilling of all, I’ve actually finished, though I use that term loosely, some of the poetry I’ve had laying around in various journals and notebooks for years. After years of teaching writing to others, writing every day has made it easier for me to write every day and, hopefully, even made my writing more enjoyable to those who read it.

Carving away
what is not —
reveals what truly is.