On the Road Again (with apologies to Willie Nelson)

(Saturday, September 9)

We are once again in travel mode. This time we are headed back to south Alabama to deal with my father-in-law's belongings. And there are a lot of them, including cars, car parts, and airplane parts, as well as every tool known to mankind.

That last one might not be an exaggeration.

Today was our first day on the road. We had a bit of packing still to do this morning, so finished that up, made a breakfast of the last leftovers in the refrigerator, and were on our way shortly before noon.

Two hours later we had only gone about 70 miles, and the frustration was growing. We had tried to take Highway 101 - the Pacific Coast Highway - for the first leg of the trip. The distance and estimated time aren't that much more than going 60 miles inland and hitting the I-5 freeway, unless the coastal traffic is bad. Which it was. There was one point when we were stuck behind a giant RV that was literally driving at 25 miles an hour in a 55 zone. On a two-land winding road where there are almost no opportunities to pass. When he finally found a turnout and pulled over Steve muttered, "Your parade thanks you."

We made our first stop in Florence, got a quick lunch and switched drivers; the traffic on the coast had taken its toll on Steve. We drove a short distance south and abandoned the coast route, heading east through the Coast Range, finally joining up with the I-5 freeway.

The final straw that drove us to the freeway was the presence of several groups of bicyclists on 101. As I said, the road is two narrow lanes, and winds along sea cliffs in many places. There is a bike lane, but it's very narrow, sometimes almost too narrow for a cyclist to ride safely. While I understand the appeal of biking that gorgeous coast, having to pass a cyclist in those circumstances is beyond nerve-wracking.

Once we were on the freeway we rolled up the miles quickly. There was traffic, sure, and there were a lot of trucks, but there were always opportunities to pass. Bonus: no bicycles on the freeway.

There was also a gorgeous sunset, though a quick photo from a moving car does not do it justice.

On previous road trips we often took turns reading aloud from a shared book. But in our newest car we have the ability to stream podcasts from our phones (or tablets). Downloaded over wifi, we carry many hours of information and entertainment with us without any concern for signals, wifi, or added expense.

These two signs show our progress so far!

We didn't listen the whole time we were driving, but here's what we did hear:

Criminal podcast episode about some British POWs in WW I who ran a spiritualist scam on their captors;

Joy, a podcast from Craig Ferguson. This episode featured a conversation between Ferguson and Josh Robert Thompson, the actor/comedian who brought robot skeleton Geoff Peterson to life. This one, in particular, was quite interesting as the two men are both wildly creative and the wide-ranging discussion touched on many facets of creativity and self-doubt;

Another Criminal episode, about the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone, and the killing of Wolf 10. By now I think most of us are familiar with the story: how the Yellowstone ecosystem suffered when the hunting of the wolves eliminated them from the park, and the revitalization when this apex predator was re-introduced. But this episode covered a story I hadn't heard before;

And finally an episode of The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong. This was Psych Out, Part 1, about a horse that could tell the future.

By the time we got through with the psychic horse we were close to Redding, California, and our hotel. We arrived, checked in, and Steve went to get a burger while I got us settled in and ate my leftover chicken from lunch (we have a lovely new cooler, so leftovers were just fine).

This sign is right before the agricultural check station at the California-Oregon border. It comes at the end of four miles of downgrade. The first two miles are a 6% grade, and the next two are a 4% grade - which means a truck may put a lot of wear on the brakes in those few miles. I think our Dash Dino may be as terrified as I am at the necessity for this sign!

I will be trying to write while we are on this trip, and I brought some knitting, so I am not letting my creativity suffer. I hope. Tonight I put together this post, but anything else will have to wait for tomorrow, 'cause I am tired!

It Wasn't Nothing

You know that little voice in your head that keeps telling you that you haven’t really accomplished anything, and maybe it’s just time to admit it and give up? Admit it, you have that voice. We all do.

It is a constant struggle for creatives, to keep moving ahead, to keep trying, to keep creating, even when that little voice becomes a shout. And especially when you reach “a certain age,” where another voice may join in and tell you that you’ve “earned a rest.”

In the warts-and-all department, as I promised in the very beginning of this column, I am forced to admit I have been listening to those voices. I have been buying into the narrative, telling myself that I am just resting, getting over the years of driving myself to do as much as possible, taking a breather after decades of a full-time job, family and household responsibilities, and trying to create in the cracks of time between obligations.

The bigger problem is that when we buy into this narrative we devalue what we have created, and that leads to devaluing that which we will - or at least could - create. We devalue that creative urge, procrastinate giving ourselves time to create, and flatten our creative selves.

I am trying to fight back against that stagnation, finding positive ways to move forward. I have talked about using one creative outlet to feed another, filling the well by consuming the output of other creators, and being kind to ourselves. 

Just recently my friend Kristine Kathryn Rusch wrote “Reading and Writing,” about the need for writers to read for pleasure, to dive deeply into the work of another writer and to read for the sheer enjoyment of the story. She knows what she’s talking about, and I highly recommend you read her thoughts.

One other thing happened this week, and it has been a powerful tool in fighting the feeling that I haven’t accomplished anything.

In the course of putting in the new rug, and moving the bookcases in the living room (I may recover from that someday…), we tidied up what we writers lovingly refer to as our Brag Shelf. Now I freely admit that not all the books on that shelf are mine; some are my husband’s, and some are books where one or the other (or both) of us shares a Table of Contents with other writers - like the anthologies to which we have contributed.

When you put all those books, magazines, computer games, and videos together, it gets pretty impressive. This is the "nothing" my little voice is talking about. (Hint: that little voice is a big liar.)

Once we got the bookcase straightened up, with the duplicate copies tucked into the bottom shelf, it was a visual reminder of what we have accomplished, and it isn’t the “nothing” that the little voice kept telling me it was. 

My husband, as we were working on this project, summed it up perfectly: “What you didn’t do today, doesn’t negate what you did do yesterday.”

Don’t let that little voice take away the value of what you did do yesterday - and don’t let it keep you from what you will do tomorrow.

Let's Review

You may have noticed that there hasn’t been any new content here for several months, and for that I apologize. I can only say (rather lamely) “We’ve been busy.”

More than busy, we haven’t been home. Shortly after the last post we left on the delayed visit to Steve’s family following the death of his father. It was a trip fraught with potential emotional pitfalls, starting with the simple fact of walking into the home where he grew up - and for the first time in his life his dad isn’t there.

We ended up staying a month with his brother and spending time with his mother, time that they all needed. Because we drove - from our home on the Pacific Ocean to Alabama, with excursions to both the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic Ocean - we were gone a total of two months. About 9,000 miles by the time we were through, and 14 states. (For the record: Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Nevada.)

For what should be obvious reasons, I did not post about our travels on a public blog while we were away. We had a house sitter, but still … However, I did do a daily Patreon post on our travel days, with a lot of pictures of the things we saw driving across the southern part of the country. Over the next few weeks I will try to repost those adventures to this page, so I can share them with you.

I will also bring you some of the creativity posts that have been on my Patreon feed during the last few months. You can subscribe to that feed by clicking the button on the right, to get all my content and to get it at least two weeks before it appears here.

Thanks for waiting for me to return. I hope the next time we have an adventure it won’t take me away from the blog.

And now on to new content!

A Permanent Reminder

My living room has a new rug. Finally. And it’s that finally that carries a message for all of us.

Let me explain.

Twenty-four-plus years ago we had the good fortune to find a small house for sale in a coastal town at a price we could afford. We lived 100 miles away, looking at beach houses as potential retirement homes - with plenty of lead time to prepare for the eventual move - and weekend retreats in the meantime.

I had a decent job which, along with our cheap rent, made the scheme possible.

We bought the house as-is, with the idea that we could come out on weekends and fix it up to be the retirement home we always wanted. We had so many plans!

There were some floor and window coverings in the house, none of them particularly to our taste, but serviceable. We declared them acceptable as “temporary” and focused on other things, like paint and minor repairs - and a new roof.

Then, as so often happens, everything changed. I wasn’t making a serious effort to find a new job, but I kept my eyes open; and I was offered a wonderful new job at the beach. The one I just retired from after 23 years.

That temporary rug has (until just a few days ago) been in the living room ever since. It got older, more worn, stained, and generally disgusting. But it also got covered in furniture, and we did our best to ignore how terrible it had become. The cost of changing that “temporary” carpet had become so high we couldn’t bring ourselves to tackle it.

It became, in the words of Jimmy Buffett, A Permanent Reminder of a Temporary Feeling. Buffett’s lyrics perfectly capture the essence of allowing a temporary decision to become permanent; the expediency that allows a temporary fix to calcify into a permanent, though perhaps not pleasant, situation.

Finally this week we found a rug we liked at the local Habitat for Humanity Restore. Actually, we found two matching rugs in different sizes which would cover the room. The price - in dollars and cents - was right and we decided it was time.

Getting the old rug out and the new one in took a lot of work. We had to move furniture, sure, but more difficult was dealing with the bookcases. You cannot move a full bookcase, I don’t care who you are, and you certainly can’t move it if you’re a couple senior citizens who haven’t been working out. So we spent hours putting books in boxes and bags, culling a few shelves in the process. For the record, there were seven tall bookcases, all of them packed full. The five shopping bags of books that are set out to go away? Didn’t seem to even make a dent.

The old rug ended up in several pieces to make it easier to remove and roll up, and the foam padding underneath got stuffed into trash bags. For two days the living room was like a giant sliding puzzle as we slid chairs and bookcases around to get to the floor. At least I got the chance to clean behind every piece of furniture in the room, and in the hard-to-reach corners.

We are a little the worse for the wear (Steve hurt his back and is having to take it easy for a few days), but this morning the local garbage company hauled away the pieces of rug and bags of padding that I had dragged to the curb, and we can gaze lovingly at our new rugs.

Until they get covered up with more furniture and bookcases.

This is just a long-winded way of telling you not to accept a temporary situation that doesn’t make you happy. You’re free to make your own rules, and to arrange your life in a way that works for you. 

I think this is the message at the heart of everything I write here. You have the right to be happy, to have a life you love, and to honor and nurture your creativity. 

Don’t let a temporary feeling lead you to a permanent reminder that you settled for less than you deserve.

Well, I Did That Thing

I checked back and found that the post where I talked about setting up an online sales site for my beaded and bead-knitted creations was more than two months ago - time flies, etc.! I had said I would update you as the project progressed, so here’s a quick status report.

This week I launched the site, with a few dozen listings, and there are more to come. For the moment I am the only one with live listings, but I do expect my partners to be putting their items on the site in the next few days, or weeks.

For those of you who might be curious about what I have on the site, here is the link to ShorebirdCreationsOR.

Lessons so far:

The name We wanted to call the store ShorebirdCreations, and the Etsy system (our hosts) allowed us to register under that user name. But when we tried to use that for our store name it said the name was taken. Apparently, if anyone in the history of the site ever used that as a store name it cannot be reused. Never. I can’t even find a record of a closed store with that name, but no dice. 

So, we ended up adding OR (for Oregon) to the end. It is definitely not an elegant solution, but once we named it - mistakenly thinking we could use it as a placeholder while we figured out something better - we were stuck with it.

Paperwork Good heavens, there’s a lot of paperwork! I should have remembered from setting up the publishing company, several years ago, that there’s a lot that has to go on behind the scenes before you’re ready to go, but (perhaps like the way the pain of childbirth fades, or we’d all be only children) my memory said it was pretty easy. And maybe it’s become more complicated in the years since; I know it has certainly become more expensive.

I registered the trade name with the state, which I could do online. The name Shorebird Creations was available, and with the application of my credit card it was in my name. But it took a few days before the registration was recorded, and I needed confirmation before I could open a bank account under the company name. A debit or credit card was required to set up our store, so we got a new account in the company name, and then waited for the actual debit card to arrive. One thing I found surprisingly easy was setting up an account with Square to allow us to accept credit cards for in-person sales, like at art fairs. 

Photos If you’re putting your work online, people will want to see what they’re buying. Taking good display photos is an art all its own, and I am a rank amateur, but I did my best. Digital photography was a boon, as I could take dozens of shots and then pick and choose the half-dozen that were best. I am still not happy with some of them, but getting them up on the site eventually won out over getting the perfect shot. Eventually, for the 35 or so items I posted for sale, I spent two or three days doing nothing but setting up backgrounds and taking hundreds of shots.

A few tips about photos. Scrapbook paper comes in a huge variety of colors and patterns, and for a few bucks you can get a selection to use as backgrounds for small items. If you have some skills with replacing backgrounds, you can buy a piece of green fabric at a craft or fabric store and use it as a poor man’s green screen. And if you’re putting pieces on a stand of some kind (like the neck style stand in some of my pictures) cheap children’s T-shirts will transform the color of your stand; I got mine on sale at a craft store for about $2 each, which was a lot cheaper than buying - and storing! - stands in several colors.

Time Here is the heart of the matter. No matter how simple you think your project is, no matter how prepared you think you are, no matter how thoroughly you research each step, it will take longer than you expect. 

Estimate how long you expect each step to take. Double that estimate. Determine what steps can be done simultaneously, then discard that list because it’s never going to happen. There is always going to be something that gets fouled up, and if the next step is dependent on both those simultaneous processes being complete - they won’t be.

Those are a few of the lessons so far. I believe that last one applies to almost everything we do as creatives. Each new project, each creation, is different from every other one. Even though we have written dozens of stories, painted scores of pictures, sewn everything from a simple apron to an elaborate ball gown, or baked thousands of cookies, each time we create something new it will be different from every other creation. Each creative act is a little miracle of its own, and it will take the time it takes - no more, no less.

That is the lesson I am trying to take from this. Be generous with my time and patient with myself and my process. That’s a hard lesson; just ask my husband, patience is not one of my virtues!

Now for the big ask:

You have listened patiently while I have rambled on for the last three years (Ha! Yes, this is our third anniversary. Did you think I might have forgotten?). Now I would like each of you, in the comments, to tell us about what you create; and if you have a site where we can admire your creative projects please share it. Have you run a Kickstarter? Do you have your books, or art, or music, available online? If so, please share the links so we can support each other! 

I would love to know more about what each of you is making; and that goes for all of you who are right now saying, “But Chris, you know what I do.” I may know, but I will bet there is someone here who doesn’t know, and they just might want to.

A Blast From the Past

A few days ago I was reminded of a trip we took to the Redwoods. I thought it was just a few years ago, and remember it vividly because despite its relative short length - just six days and 1,200 miles or so total - it was one of those Very Good Times that don't happen often enough.

One of my most treasured memories is a small moment on Day Four. We had spent the day sightseeing and were back at our B&B, eating a picnic dinner, enjoying a glass of wine, and feeling relaxed and content. We had dinner plans the next night and then planned to start the drive home, stopping somewhere along the road for the night.

But instead of following the Plan, we extended our stay at the B&B for another night, trading one more night of contentment for a somewhat longer drive the next day.

This is why we decided to stay an extra night. Sitting here, eating bread and cheese and sipping local wine - we never wanted to leave!

Was it worth it? You bet! But more than that, the experience gave me the first push toward being less rigid, less determined to stick to a schedule, less wedded to a Plan and more able to act spontaneously when an opportunity presents itself.

I wrote about our daily adventures during that trip, giving myself time each night to process the things we did during the day,  and to preserve my impressions of each day. After we got home those daily ramblings were posted on my blog. (ChristyMystery started in 2009, when I published my first mystery novel, and all the posts there are still live. I'm sure a lot of what's there is way out of date, but it's still there if you want to take a look.)

Those posts are linked below. It was kind of fun to go back and see what stood out at the time, and look at the pictures - we take a LOT of pictures, but there's a fair sampling of the trip on the posts.

The biggest shock was that this trip was TEN years ago! It was supposed to be a shakedown road trip for a longer trip planned for that fall; a trip that didn't happen until the summer of 2021. You see, we took that lesson in spontaneity to heart, and ended up bailing on the planned fall trip, for a lot of very valid reasons. Having given ourselves permission to abandon the Plan had shown us that the world didn't fall apart just because we didn't try to stubborn through A Plan just because it was A Plan.

I have not regretted learning that lesson - though it has had to be reinforced time and again in the intervening decade - and I try to apply it to my creative life as well.

Which is why I am going to now go toss several pages of a story that isn't working, and head in another direction. Because I can.

Day One

Day Two, Part One

Day Two, Part Two

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

Day Six

Estate Battle Update

A primary resolution of the Aretha Franklin estate battle came after only an hour's deliberation by a jury, but there's plenty of questions still up in the air.

The jury ruled that the will from the couch (2014) took precedence over the one from the cupboard (2010) in the Michigan court case. Here's a quick article from Vulture regarding the outcome. That leaves a lot of details to be worked out among the heirs. I doubt this is over yet.

A more general article about estate planning, using the Franklin case as a bad example, can be found on the Investment News website.

On the 30th, when I made the post about the trial, I noted that her intellectual property had been assigned the nominal value of $1 - a ridiculous valuation for the creative output of someone like Franklin - which has contributed to wildly conflicting reports of the value of the estate.

In an article from a year ago, Forbes reported her estate to be valued at $80 million at the time of her death. As I wrote on the 10th, the estate income reported in March 2023 was $3.9 million for the previous 12-month period (according to CBS) but the estate itself was valued at $4.1 million, primarily in cash and real estate (and that $1 for her creative output). And the Independent pegged her estate at $18 million.

Who do you believe? How do you know what your intellectual property is worth? That's a question we need to answer, for the sake of our heirs, but it isn't easy. To tell the truth, I couldn't make any kind of guess as to what value to place on my IP - but I need to figure it out.

The Forbes article in particular is interesting as it touches on the question of estate and income taxes, and, as the author, Robert W. Wood says, "when it comes to the IRS, they do tend to persist and to collect." He also makes a good case for creating a trust.

I found all of this with a few minutes of searching, but each of these articles cites other sources, and I can see the rabbit hole looming in front of me if I let it tempt me. I am trying to resist the lure of reading about estates and wills and trusts (Oh, my!), but if you don't hear from me by this time next week, send help! :-)

Another Estate Battle

As always, this column was written for my Patreon followers 2 weeks ago, so the time references are outdated, But the information, and the warnings, are timeless.

On Sunday the New York Times ran an article about the embattled Aretha Franklin estate.

Is Aretha Franklin’s True Will the One Found in the Couch or a Cabinet? 

(This story may be behind a paywall, but it's worth reading if you can get to it. I have tried to summarize it below.)

The story is a familiar one - creator dies without a will, heirs battle each other over the estate - complicated by the fact(s) that the estate valuation was in question, a large tax bill was owed to the IRS, one heir was under a legal guardianship for mental illness, not one, but two handwritten documents were found in the year following the singer's death, and there is evidence that a new will was in process at the time she died. The attorney preparing that final document has stated that he was under the impression that she had not reached a final decision about at least some of the terms of the will, and therefore felt it should not be considered in the disposition of her estate.

Following me so far?

Normally I would take my time to write about this for next Sunday's column, but by then the situation may well have changed again - because the battle goes to court beginning today.

There is a long list of potential witnesses, conflicting claims from three of her sons (the fourth is represented by his legal guardian, who has reached some kind of agreement with the others and is not involved), and lots of attorneys.

According to Billboard (the music industry publication):

The last public accounting filed in March showed the estate had income of $3.9 million during the previous 12-month period and a similar amount of spending, including more than $900,000 in legal fees to various firms.

Overall assets were pegged at $4.1 million, mostly cash and real estate, though Franklin’s creative works and intellectual property were undervalued with just a nominal $1 figure. [emphasis mine]

Two things to note here: the spending in the latest financial report is equal to the income, and the estate spent nearly a million dollars in legal fees. That's a million dollars that could have gone to her heirs, a million dollars for her sons and her grandchildren that instead landed in the pockets of the lawyers.

I am not arguing that the attorneys aren't doing the work, or that they aren't entitled to be fairly compensated for the work they are doing. I'm just pointing out that the estate is paying for a lot of legal services (and, I suspect, the heirs are also paying their individual attorneys though I have no proof of that), and a great deal of this is expense that could have been avoided if there had been a properly executed will and/or trust.

The other point of interest is the valuation of her intellectual property at the nominal amount of $1. Do any of us believe that even a single bar of music or line of lyrics is worth only $1? I know I don't; I believe that the real value of her estate - far beyond the cars, the houses, the gowns and pianos and jewelry - is in the music she created, which is performed every day, all around the world.

I have no idea how this will end. Most likely we will never know because there will be some out-of-court settlement reached between the parties and the details will remain secret. 

But this serves as another reminder that each of us that produces intellectual property needs to keep our will/trust agreement/power of attorney current and readily accessible to our heirs. Our heirs need to know, and deserve to know, what our wishes are, clearly and directly. They all need to know the same thing, and they need to know that the other heirs know what they know.

For heaven's sake, don't scribble a note and hide it under the couch cushions!

Tonight's Dinner!

Yesterday I got my latest Covid booster, in anticipation of another cross-country trip. Our plans are not set, but I figured I should get it done before we are ready to leave, just in case there were side effects. And since I had to pick up a prescription it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get my shot and pick up some groceries.

This morning my arm was a little sore, but otherwise I felt fine - until late afternoon. I felt a little “off” and decided I better get dinner prepped in case I started feeling worse.

I splurged on some shrimp yesterday with this recipe in mind. After I mentioned it to a friend online, I promised him a copy - but since I was writing it down anyway I figured I’d share it with you. Just a little bonus post for a quiet Saturday night.

(Spoiler alert: Water and Tylenol seem to have staved off whatever was threatening, dinner was delicious, and the dishes are done already. Hope your Saturday night was as good!)

Here’s the recipe:

Shrimp & Tomato Pasta

1 clove garlic

¼ oz fresh basil

3 ½ oz cherry tomatoes

½ jalapeno

2 oz  whole wheat spaghetti

4 oz broccoli florets

8 raw shrimp

Olive oil

Salt

This dish goes together in just a few minutes, once the prep work is done, so be sure you have everything ready to go before you start cooking! 

Cut the tomatoes in quarters, rough chop the basil and garlic, and slice the jalapeno into thin strips. Mix together in a  bowl with 1 teaspoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Set aside.

Boil a pot of water (about 8 cups) with a teaspoon of salt. When it reaches a full boil add the spaghetti and cook for 7 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep it from sticking or  clumping.

Just before the spaghetti is done, put a medium saute pan on to heat with a small amount of olive oil. From this point on everything will happen quickly!

While the pan heats, drain the spaghetti and set it aside. For convenience it can be added to the bowl with the tomato-basil mixture.

When the pan is at medium-high heat, add the broccoli florets and saute for 3 minutes. 

Move the broccoli to a bowl (you can put it in with the spaghetti if you wish), add another small amount of olive oil to the pan and bring it back to medium-high. 

Add the shrimp in a single layer and saute for 1 minute on each side.

Immediately return the broccoli to the saute pan, along with the cooked spaghetti and the tomato-basil mixture. Saute for 1 minute for the ingredients to reheat.

Plate and enjoy!

Tomato, basil, garlic, jalapeno, and olive oil mixture, ready to go.

Ingredients prepped.

Begin the cooking. Love how green that broccoli gets in just a couple minutes!

Yum! Yeah, that's more than 8 shrimp. I told you it was a splurge.

Steve loves mushrooms; I don't. So he got an added side of ‘shrooms sauteed in garlic, olive oil, and a little butter.

Act Your Age, Part 2

Because I am at a point in my life where I am losing friends to death with increasing frequency, I have tried to follow Joe Alsop’s advice and example to keep developing younger friends. I do that both because I enjoy people of all ages, and also to guard against loneliness.
Katherine Graham, Personal History, p. 619

A few weeks ago, spurred on by my 75th (!) birthday and the loss of two close family members, I wanted to talk about aging - gracefully or not - and how I was thinking about it at my advanced years. (Yes, you may roll your eyes at that. I know I do!)

But a funny thing happened while I was trying to pull together my thoughts. I started sounding like a really cranky, judgemental jerk. I tried to write about choosing to stay active and engaged with the world around us, using that engagement to keep us young at heart and mentally stimulated.

That was all well and good, but when I tried to contrast it with those who choose to relax and enjoy their so-called golden years, it felt, well, cranky and judgemental. And while I do believe being active and maintaining friendships in all generations is a good thing, I found myself talking about stereotypes I didn’t like, or even believe in. 

I was applying value judgements to the lifestyle choices of other people, and it wasn’t a good look. Worse, I think I was judging myself by those same values and stereotypes and finding myself failing.

What was I thinking? We all have a right to the retirement we choose, and I most emphatically do not have a right to judge other people for their choices. I can disagree, but I don’t have the right to judge.

Realizing that that whole train of thought was making me angry at, and judgemental of, myself, I put the column in the trash and delayed the post I was trying to write. No sense continuing a post that even I didn’t agree with!

So, when I came across this passage recently, while reading Graham’s excellent memoir, I felt a sense of recognition. In many ways this is what I was trying to talk about, and I am doing much the same thing. Most of my friends are younger than I am, some of them by a generation or more.

But while I do share her motivations I think there is another, even more important, element. 

I truly believe one of the things that keeps us going as creatives - and as human beings - is being curious. 

Another part of creating, something I talked about early on, is consuming art. Whether that’s a visual arts show, a television series, a book, a movie, a gourmet meal, a garden tour, a concert - we need to expose ourselves to other people’s art in order to feed our own creativity. (I wrote about this in a column titled “Filling the Well,” nearly three years ago.) 

To that we add courage. The courage to try new things, to experiment with unfamiliar media, to venture into the unknown.

Those three - curiosity, consumption, and courage - are what I see as the basis for being a lifelong learner; and being a lifelong learner, I believe, is what keeps us engaged with the world and moving forward, no matter how many candles are crammed onto that birthday cake (For the record: I did not have candles. The fire marshall would not have approved them indoors.)

I have people in my life who say I don’t act my age. Well, as the saying goes, I don’t know how to act my age, I’ve never been this age before. 

I only know how to act like myself. I go places and do things to satisfy my curiosity. I read, and watch, and look, and listen to enjoy other people’s creative efforts. I am learning to be more daring, more willing to try new things. All of these combine to feed my own creativity.

It’s a process, as life always is, and one that I plan to continue for as long as I can. And that is something I can celebrate without judgment.