The Fog of Daily Living

Life can get pretty complicated at times. Then unexpectedly it can flip around and become so simplistic that it dulls your creative juices. The trick is to see past the everyday and recognize the unexpected. Life is too short to let opportunities pass you by. So if they’re not present, you have to create them.

A lot of folks I know have slipped into retirement without a clue as to what might lie ahead. They let their daily lives dictate their future. Gradually the evening news, morning coffee and grocery shopping dominate their time, life and psychological mindset. They become trapped in their own routine and clichés dominate their thinking. It’s a sinister time warp of old algorithms with their daily life clock slowly running out without they’re even knowing it. A lot of them are not prepared for what lies ahead.

Eleven years ago, I found myself a full time writer in lieu of retirement. On the surface, it seemed unplanned, unscripted and just fell into place. Yet in fact, it was a subconscious, subliminal pattern of behavior that had governed my life since the beginning. I was never meant to live a nine-to-five existence. I just didn’t know it at the beginning of this race called life.

Despite that first tentative inaugural step into non- retirement, I’ve managed to pound out ten novels, one real estate investment guide, four screenplays and seven plays, four of which have been produced. All in less than eleven years. Not to mention, over 450 blogs and counting. Truth be told, I just can’t sit still. My addiction to running has been replaced with an addition to writing. It’s as simple as that.

But I find it’s not enough. I still find myself muttering ‘screw conformity.’ Forget what an old man of seventy-five plus is supposed to be doing with the rest of his life. I’ve got an agenda and I mean to stick to it. I want to find what excites me and peruse that agenda. I take small bites every day, and that is every day.

On the surface it sounds terribly self-serving and narrow minded…and to a degree it is. On a personal level, it means creating a real theatrical experience around my plays. It might be musical theater, comedy dramas or some other form of theatrical expression. It’s exploring other genres in my novel writing or the possibility of a comic strip involving my grandchildren. It means digging beneath the surface of my own creativity and finding what’s there.

And I’m not alone. For Sharon, it began with welding metal things together. Then it morphed into alcohol ink, acrylics and now even more new approaches and techniques to explore in her paintings.

In the end, it’s taking the concept of retirement and tossing it out the window along with old assumptions, expectations and other people’s paradigms. I’ll live my life my way and others can live their lives how they choose.

Best of luck to the both of us.