Time Goes Whizzing By

What occurs to me today is the speed at which time passes as I grow older. As a third grader, I believed that I would be nine forever and that summer vacation would never come. As a sixty year old, time leaves me sitting in the dust wondering how did it get to be April 20th, 2010—one and a third years into my retirement, and I haven’t done so many of the things that I thought I would do: travel, volunteer, decorate my home, plant a showcase garden, blah, blah, blah.

I have already reached a halfway point in the first year of my blog. I started on my 60th birthday, October 20, 2009. My pledge was to blog once a week whether I had a blog-worthy thought or naught. Now some 26 weeks and 30 posts later, I still haven’t run out of things to blog about.

Sometimes a blog post spontaneously spews forth with no editing. I just type it into the template for new posts and send it on its way. Any poetry I may write is inspired and as unpredictable as a volcanic eruption. For longer posts, like this one, I start rough drafts as word files. I read them over a couple of times to tweak the word choice and to shorten them. Occasionally, I add an illustration in the form of a digital photo. I usually have 3 to 5 blog ideas in progress, and I keep a folder of ideas for blogging including notes, clippings, etc. This past winter I wrote exclusively about Florida. I became fascinated with the flora and fauna and cut out about five articles on invasive species before I wrote about them. As a wise person once said, “Your subject chooses you.”

Other writing that I currently do consists of a journal of gratitude, a collection of favorite quotes, and email posts. Although I am not writing anything significant, at least creating a weekly blog keeps me thinking and writing. Who knows? Maybe a post on my blog will turn into a magnum opus one day.