Summer's Here

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And it's time for the Missouri weather to start getting hot and muggy.  We have been lucky so far with fairly cool temperatures and quite a bit of rain.  I feel so sorry for the people in the western USA who are experiencing record droughts.  The droughts, of course, affect us in the Midwest because the price of everything has gone up.

As a common Joe, I see so many things that trouble me about the world we are living in.  Terrorism and civil war all over the place. Extremist groups killing innocent people. I know a lot of religious people say we are in the end times.  I know, people have been saying that for years. I wonder sometimes.  Of course, I have quarrels with religious people who are so close minded that they cannot accept others who believe differently. I always remember that in my interpretation of the life of Jesus that the people who were the religious leaders were the ones he disliked. I started to put down the ones he despises.  However that might be too harsh. I think they disturbed and disappointed him.  I don't judge people unless they hurt other people.  If that makes me an apostate -- that's a word I am hearing thrown around a lot lately -- then I guess I am one.  I can only hope I am forgiven for it.

I do not want to go into a rant today because people will get their hackles up and send me all kinds of nasty messages.  I am merely making some observations.

My birthday is coming up in a couple of days.  I'll be 56. A few years ago I said that if by the time I turned 56 I had not reached a place that seemed satisfactory to me in my writing career that I would give it up. I am not satisfied with my writing career, but I cannot give it up.  I'll be one of these people who think -- right up to the moment they die or the moment they can't think anymore -- that my break is just around the bend, my ship is the next one to land, my success is that next email or phone call. I will likely never achieve the dreams I had when I began writing 30 something years ago. I don't know if it just wasn't mean to be, if I didn't have the right connections, didn't write the right things, didn't have any talent -- whatever.

What I do know is that I get restless and discontented when I am not writing, and the fever of restlessness burns me from the inside out.  It is like being addicted.  You write something and the restlessness goes away, but if you don't do anything for a while it comes back until you have another fix.  The problem is as I get older I lose more and more of my concentration and, I think, my creativity.

Do not think me depressed and disillusioned.  Think of me as looking into reality's  face and deciding if I want to spit  in it or kiss it.  Well as always if you want to comment please feel free.