The retirement era

My Mother’s retirement was evident. She not only put in more than thirty years with the state of Oregon’s Department of Human Services or “DHS” as it’s known today. She started working with the state, shortly, after our move to Oregon from California in the late sixties early ‘70’s.

She continued to work in the medical field as a hospital surgical tech until she started working with the state in the 1970’s. I was just starting public school during the “Nixon/Ford years” in the White House. The Nixon presidency was interesting, because, I remember watching in the news during the time of the 70’s, when President Richard Nixon was facing “The Ugly Truth” for his role in the “Watergate Scandal.”

The son of bitch literally gave up the role in the nations highest executive office and walked out on the American public, even though, two hungry reporters of the Washington Post, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were hot on Nixon’s ugly truth trial at the same time. Their incredible journalistic reporting brought down the Nixon White House in the smack burst in the middle of the Vietnam War, “Watergate” Nixon’s legacy of scandal during his tenure as President.

But, the Watergate years, didn’t stop my mother from working her future years in life and raising her only Son with the help of her sister and brother-in-law and her loving parents.

Life served great things during the course of her sixty five years of being a “working girl.” Imagine the lifetime of working long hours and tirelessly for many years since the age of 18, fresh out of high school, college and med school for being a surgical tech in her heyday.

He life has forever been change with tragic events that have given her memories and worries of being on her own without a buddy or a shoulder to lean on since my Aunt Birdie, her only sister and sibling. I watched the struggles through the years since, the day my grandfather passed away and saw the dramatics of life take place in various deaths in the family, my grandfather, uncle, aunt, than than finally my grandmother not too long ago back in 2009, just two two days shy of Christmas – it would be a holiday to remember of having a holiday without her last surviving parent.

The buddy system was long gone and lost somewhere in time where change eventually has taken over lives most precious dramas and encores. Shortly after my grandmother passed away, her life began to change, she fought an infection with diabetes in her left leg, that result in three surgical amputations of her toes, foot, than her leg below the knee.

I’m shattered to threads and beats down the path to see her life change in such a sudden way – perhaps, it was a way of getting her to “slow down” a bit with life and enjoy the scenery and to rejoice the smell of the roses once again in her retirement years.

I miss the daily email chats we’ve had together since, her on the job accident took things into perspective and the amputation of her leg and foot took place in these few short months. However, the surgeries didn’t stop there, she also lost her middle finger on her right hand as well.

She sounds so spirited with life as she recovers from her surgeries and looks forward to walking once again as she gets her new prosthesis leg after she heals from her surgical wounds her life would be wielded for the better of life. It’s more amazing how peoples lives change with a disease and how they adapt to the changes for the better and the merrier to achieve their goals and strengths and weaknesses into positive lights of life.

“It’s only curable, if you want it to be – for some, its just the opposite of life with a reality to survive.”

An American heritage: The Caves and the Battlegrounds

I dream of camping in the woods along a spring of water for life. There’s no danger of flooding or the fierce howling winds in the fall and winter and the sweltering heat in the summer months, I’m literally sheltered in my own cavern network where the warmth and shelter is amazingly astounding to believe.

The howls of living in a cave is mere fantasy, but, real in the natures life for those that actually live in a cave of their own. I once read a story out of Phoenix, Arizona or somewhere there about, where some folks have a home of their own in the caves.

It would’ve been something out of a western novel, where the history of the wild west still rules in the shadows and the spirits of the night. The Indian spirits run among the quiet sands of the desert dust of where America’s past time lays in spiritual peace.

The spirits are the rested souls that protect the land in question. The medicine men were the tireless souls that were called upon to dwell the spirits of those whom have passed on into spirit to protect the country’s fast treasures of history.

Imagine, the life of roaming buffalo and herds of cattle drives to survive the winter months of cold to survive on the last remaining frontier tribes, long and far from civilization.

When we look at our past in history, we wonder about the lives that have been changed since, the day, the Indians roamed the great deserts and forested lands of the great country, they called home. Their search for the great land they call their own, until the breakup of their frontiers and tribes of state, they raged war against the “White eye” and the armies that came to fight their existence to bear lands of their own in common peace.

I can only imagine, the battles that raged across the heartland, the south and the Pacific Northwest in search of the promised land. Their heartfelt anger and the trouncing moments of war with thongs of US Army Cavalry soldiers only made things worse as they sought their place in history.

General Custer lost the battle in his division where war was undisputed between the two factions of life, soldiers and indians. There were no clear winners in his last battle, but large losses of life, that changed the tides of history. The General was underestimated to begin with in the battle to drive the indians back to their reservations. It was brutal and fatal, Custer and his men were out numbered and went down as the worst epic battle disaster in history of the United States Army.

Dreams and stories of the old west hold the keys to the mysteries of the caverns of America, where the rich history and spiritual acclaim once told the amazing stories of courage and sacrifice to survive the battles of life, where heritage was once promising – the battle raged onward for a lifetime.

Life’s cherished moments just a memory

I’m getting a bit middle aged tacky wacky these days. As I go into my far reaches of my forties, I wonder what my fifties would be like, compared to my forties? I never married early in life – although, there’s the dream of someone, which lays way ahead into light years of the future.

I stumble on the bricks of life, thinking? – there’s no cure for a changed man with a hearing loss and a shredded lifestyle that reads like a scene in the movie, “Down and out in Beverly Hills.” Life is sure tacky in ways, when you wish it was all perfected as if it was made in a Hollywood movie. So, senseless and meaningful, it doesn’t feel the same as it did during a childhood dream.

I’ve got two junior high school friends, I’ve not heard from in years, since my days were numbered in the same middle school we attended back in the late 1970’s and early 80’s. Sure they’re on Facebook like everyone else, but, they’ve never friended me into their adult lives.

Sadly enough, you call them “friends” – but, are they really, friends to began with? I miss the interactions and conversations with those, I went to school with during my junior high school years and never to see many of them in your adult life. Perhaps, I was lucky to have enough to have the friends, I had growing up with, rather than schooling with in another neighborhood?

My life was like a war zone in junior high because of the belief’s I had and the ambitions I sought, that were important to address. Having a hearing loss wasn’t the answer, but having friends were – you’d be lucky if you had any from start to finish from middle to high school to college and finally to adult life.

I felt screwed at the end. But, the future held for better things in life. I was lucky enough to have the friends I made growing up and graduating from high school with and those, I graduated with became the life long friends of a lifetime, even into their adult years. Some weren’t so lucky and decided to be idiots instead of something common as friends.

But, life altered history in ways you could have ever imagined. You win or you lose the gamble of having cherished friends from the upbeat of the beginning to the ultimate time of death. Many have taken life for granted and are never forgiven in their quest to become friends.

Those memories are somewhat boxed into history as reflection to begin with. Their amnesty of youth is quite simple, you value the friends you have or you don’t – the outcome is still the same as if you had no friends at all, no matter what they say later in life.

Perhaps, those light years may soon fall upon the morning star and the curiosity of life will lay upon the ranks of life and become a reality?

Practice makes perfect

You finally think of a topic, but, you really don’t know what to do with it – to begin with?

Why it, that writing is so had to begin with in the first place? That’s why they call it “Writer’s Block” to begin with. When you think of a topic your going to pen, you eventually got some sort of idea where you want to go with the story to being – but, you stumble upon some blocks that lead to nowhere.

This is where the writer’s block comes in. Ouch. Yeah, very catchy isn’t it?

While trying to pen this blog post, I had written several paragraphs in the course of my work to find the right opening salvo to start with and provide, a “hook,” to entice the reader to keep reading what I had written. If you can’t entice the reader to read your blog or article in the first few paragraphs, that your writing doesn’t work – they’ll looks elsewhere. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen, even with the first ten minutes of a television series, if you can’t hook then with first 10 minutes of the show, the remote control takes over to find the ten minutes to keep the television viewer entertained and hooked on watching the rest of the show.

I published two blogs on Sunday, which took more than five hours to write, along with the editing and constant rewrite’s, before, I published them on WordPress.com and Blogger.com.

With a blog your not limited to the amount of words you can write. Most articles I write on blogger and wordpress can amount anywhere between 500 and 1000 words each per blog post. Some writer and bloggers limit their blog posts to 500 words or less – but, 500 to a 1000 seems to be more realistic as long as your not under contract from another publication with a word cap and grand royal contract.

Depending on your niche of writing, I would suggest keeping your word count between 250-500 words, if your just starting out. In some cases, you may feel it might not be enough to tell the story, so, feel free to open it up and grow the count higher until you feel its safe enough to stop the writing process and publish your work to your blog. Remember to edit the post and check your spelling for errors and grammar kinks before publishing.

It’s simple as a grain of salt. But, it take time to develop a good niche to what you want to cover and what you want to inspire and entice your readers to come back for more, day in, day out, week after week until you call it quits and hang your wide brim writers cap.

Don’t forget to become acquainted with editing tools of both blogger and wordpress or other blog service you plan to host your blog with. Most blog services are free and offer free hosting services for you blog.

Whatever you plan to write, it’s supposed to be fun, not a hardship. It’s all about the learning process of being a writer and blogger.

Writing, blogging makes a goal

Have you ever wondered what your ultimate goal would be if you set a goal for a year? Six months or maybe even three months down the road? What do you feel it can achieve in your ultimate timing as a blogger, writer or just for ultimate kicks in the “let’s see where we go with this project and more?”

Fame? Loathing the rich into chaos? Rubbing shoulders with Perez Hilton or perhaps landing the ultimate dream blog column of the year for a major scribe? The possibilities are endless – your mind is wondered into the chime of cyberspace with a ultimate goal to become something of a sensation that people can relate too with a voice.

You’ve probably seen the movie, “Julia and Julie,” about a women who blogs about making every ultimate recipe in Julia Childs Cookbook within a year. She achieves her goal, but, never gets the chance to met her mentor, Julia Childs herself in the course of the year she spends making the 500 plus recipes in Childs book. Not only does she stop there at making those recipes her goal, she also blogs about that challenges and ordeals of making Child’s precious recipes as well.

As a writer and blogger there are many goals and feats we’d like to do with our work. But, the ultimate goal we put forth is to make the ends meet at the end. Not, just by writing or blogging for money, but – for the ease of writing the written word and the harmony of realizing that your work is actually being read on the internet and around the world.

You’ve become a voice of sorts – something that people can relate too. Something that makes people talk and drives traffic to your blog or website.

You could be sitting in a cubicle in the middle of nowhere, far and centered from New York’s Central Park on the 26th floor of a high rise, over looking the Hudson – writing and blogging, a dream that most bloggers and writers would attempt for a chair of the money to write for a scribe many floor high above Manhattan.

“Cherished and noble,” it brings sweetness to my ears, that the world is watching from the far reaches of the world, where internet and computer access if available. The blogs we write, pick up followers, you get noticed in your prime as a writer and the more merrier as a blogger as well.

Something like Facebooks, Mark Zuckerberg did when Facebook was still in its infancy along the way of its birth in the early days of social media.

Your deadlines are those you set yourself, your time at the keyboard is the time you set, day or night – ultimately, it’s the creative process that sets your desire on fire to write and to blog the ultimate idea, that brings you the ultimate pleasure of putting your work forth to those on the internet and cyberspace audience that makes you known to the world.

I’m skeptical as to what I want to do with the project or how to master the goal into a known reality. I know that every blogger strives for readership, traffic and followers. For some the seriousness of writing and blogging full time seems more like a leap into the unknown a daily routine of sorts, right out of boot camp.

So let’s see where this goes and how we take and manage the topics along the way? Perhaps, I could take a sheet out of the “Julia and Julie” play book and post the goal of how how many blog posts I can do in a six months to a year? Tough choice to pick, but, it’s a start to begin with, so how about hoping on the stagecoach and enjoy the ride.