Ten Years After

There have been many times where I thought I should blog some idea only to back off when it occurred to me that what I wanted to say was too personal and fit more for a journal than this forum.

I've used this blog as a journal of sorts in the past, but it was more as a commentary effort than mere self-expression, though I suppose you could argue that all writing is some form of self-expression.

It was never my intent to become a well-known, largely followed blogger. The reason this blog exists in the first place was to create a venue with a link back to my website for SEO purposes. Because it is a blog, it needed content so it became a repository for mental meanderings.

Since my website has become irrelevant, most likely due to the rise of Facebook, I have decided to not renew my subscription with GoDaddy next year. All the things that can be found on www.thejeffhowe.com (and there's a bunch as I've been using it for storage of files) are being migrated elsewhere.

So when the website goes dsrk, that means this blog will have no remaining real value outside of what it is - a blog.

I have lived something of a Mayberry life. That is over now starting with its gradual demise in 2005. Oddly enough, that was about the time I started writing. It began with a couple poems and, as situations started to unfold, escalated from there until I found myself recording as many memories of the past and impressions of the present that I could.

Stories were written, poems by the dozen came pouring out, this blog became quite active, a novel was started.

It just seemed like there was a backlog, a reservoir of words waiting to burst down the spillways. The accumulation of years came to a nexus as I entered into the phase known as middle-aged.

Some say there's no such thing as a mid-life crisis. I disagree with that. It may not be significant to most, but I think everyone deals with first actual realization of mortality and time slip in their own way. Some buy sports cars. Others have affairs. I chose to write.

Confluent with my struggle with middle age acceptance was a spate of deaths which included my wife's parents as well as significant medical problems for me and her. So, it has been a tumultuous ten-year period to say the least. Through it all the idea flames burned brightly. The result was fifteen books on Amazon that are still available for purchase today.

However, with the last passing of a friend and fellow writer (four over the course of five months starting December 2014), I find that the motivations, the inspiration to scrabble words onto a page - or into a text document - have pretty much vanished.

These ebbs are not unfamiliar to me. Usually, I could expect a return to writing desire within a few months of the initial slow down. I'm not sure I can say the same thing this time.

Kurt Vonnegut's strongest work is found in his first six novels as his experiences in World War II established the energies, pathos and imagination that commonly threaded those stories. After his magnum opus, Slaughterhouse Five, the edge of his storytelling became dulled. Even so, he still wrote eight more novels, but he had publishing agreements to fulfill. And perhaps, he still felt as if he had some juice left.

The same can be said of other authors.

I'm not trying to compare myself to Vonnegut, but I believe the creation process works quite similarly for most, if not all. Look at the earlier works of those who write, those who make music and other artforms and see how they evolve to the point where they lose the original freshness which made them stand out from the rest.

That is how I view my present circumstance. It seems to me that most of what I write about these days can be distilled down to one to three topics. With such a fixation, the creative endeavor has become how to differently address these topics so as to make the written pieces seem fresher than they really are.

All things eventually come to an end. And while I'm not willing to officially stamp "Finished" on this whole project, I am realistic enough to admit that the motivations which started the gears turning in the first place have come to their logical conclusion over the passage of time.

Now that an era of my wife's and my life are done, then the mystery of the future opens itself up to us as we wonder where we will go next.

Perhaps when we find out it will spark a whole new spate of writing exercise. However, until that happens, I can look back over the course of fifteen books and say it has been good.

It has been worthwhile.