JOY, THE REASON FOR EVERYTHING

When I am writing it brings me joy.  The act of creating the pieces that fit together and communicate what I have in my mind is joyful.

When someone tells me they liked my books, I feel joy and know they experienced joy also.

I have gotten better at finding joy in the smaller parts of life.

When I was younger I was looking for the big events in life to experience joy.  This left the rest of my life, which is the majority, apparently without joy.

I can see how people could be depressed in life if the majority of their life appeared to be without joy.

In fact the majority of life is joy.  If it was not so there would be no reason to live.

Now days many people have their “Bucket List”.

They seem to be in the mode of looking for joy in the Big events.

The other evening my wife and I went out for dinner.

Everything about the evening filled me with Happiness.  The waitress the atmosphere and the food.  Each bite, each smell, every part of the evening.

Yes it may be great to check something off your bucket list but I am confident I would enjoy it more if I was finding Happiness in each moment.

Paris Is Always A Good Idea

My favorite author is Earnest Hemmingway.

His style of writing is what my books are modeled on.

At a young age I had that seed of being a writer planted by Hemmingway’s works which was then nurtured by other books that I read.

One thing that stood out to me was that he wrote about the places where he was living or had lived.

His short stories about the woods and fishing are

You Have an Author Hiding Within You.

When I tell people I have written a book most people say, “I could never do that” or “I wish I could write a book”.

For years I had those same thoughts.

I loved to read and was a frequent visitor to the library. Once I had exhausted all the books by one author I would look for another author.

In school I waded through basic English but it was not my favorite subject. I would rather study math or history or physics.

I dreaded taking English my senior year of High School as I knew it would be a very involved study of sentence structures and how to diagram them.

Karma stepped in....

Research or How To Obey The Rules Of Authenticity.

As I am writing, ideas come to me for the story I am working on. Most times I have no real facts about the idea and use research to make the facts fit the idea.

Some authors have the benefits of having been to the location they are writing about. It adds authenticity to your story to be able to give correct descriptions of the structures or landscape as the backdrops to your story.

If you had not been there before you would ...

Pizza Delivery Is Destroying The Ozone Layer

Headlines:


Pizza Delivery Is Destroying The Ozone Layer


Obesity Caused By Low Fat Diets


HGTV Saves US Economy

Do you remember the scene in the movie Men in Black, where he grabs the tabloids and takes the headlines to find the aliens.

Next time you check out at the grocery store browse the current headlines. They are guarantied to

Taste Buds And Fat Cells

On first hearing these words you might think that there is no connection between these two items.

Without any scientific degrees to my name I can only present some thoughts and observations that I have made through the years.

Current news is full of stories about the State of the Weight of the Nation and the theories and blame for the poor health of the masses would fill volumes.

Since the issue persists I think the answer has escaped detection to date.

I think I know (or at least have an opinion) as to why.

Vain Imaginings

Many years ago I was introduced to the works of Florence Scovel Shinn. The first book I read was, "The Game of Life and How to Play it”.

She uses the phrase “vain imaginings” quite often to describe the blocks and barriers to achieving what you want. These are the self-imposed barriers we humans often attribute to others.

Published in 1925 it was the “Secret” before “The Secret”.

There was something about the phrase that always stuck with me and I have thought about it at different times trying to get to its true meaning.

A completely different meaning came to me while watching a movie yesterday.