First and foremost: Happy New Year to all of you finding this little bit of prose. I hope you all have a great year ahead of you generally, and more especially if you are a reader or writer (or both) on Medium. I aim to be busy reading and writing this year, and hopefully that aim will be realised, and I wish that for all of you, too, to whatever degree works well for you.
Writing is never a waste of time to me, and when there are people present in my life, it almost becomes essential. I want, then, to empty my mind, or to begin to explore the themes present. Sometimes that is about other people, but sometimes it is about me, my state of health, my decisions, the things I have planned. At other times, it can be a chance remark, from someone passing by on the street, or someone telling me their plans for the year ahead.
All-in-all, it is about life, and what we humans do. It can spark-off some essay or poetry or fiction, and before I know it, I have a first draft on my hands, that I hadn’t actually planned, just as starting to think about all of that has led to this piece of writing.
So, in a sense, writing has been a part of my life, not to the point where I am constantly planning output and aiming for publication, or desiring to constantly create content, but it is more an activity to maintain my mental health, or to try and make sense of the world, or sometimes to try and understand how the world is making sense of me (or isn’t).
One way or another, I don’t have much time left. I’m not saying that from a ‘poor me’ or ‘doom and gloom’ perspective, but more of a pragmatic assessment of not having the best of health, combined with the normal life spans of human males. The point I am feeling my way to making here is that I don’t want to waste any more time, so just want to keep on writing, with hopefully a thread of interest for other people.
Beyond that, if I then describe my focus, it is to write for wellbeing, both my own, and eventually, in some way to extend that into a shared experience with other people. For that reason, and hopefully to bring improvements to the quality of my writing, I embarked upon a master’s degree in creative writing and wellbeing during this last year, and it will be my reality (all going well) until September 2025. I know that some people will consider me somewhat mad to be doing that at the age of 65 years old, but from my perspective, I don’t just want to sit down and watch TV until I die, and couldn’t even if I wanted to as I find myself compelled to keep on writing, whether good or bad, or purposeful or pointless.
As far as writing goes, I am here for the long run, and although I have some vague plans to develop another website within the next year or two, that will be in addition to my presence on Medium, so I am not planning any exit from here, but to expand width-ways by hopefully starting to submit to publications this year.
Thank-you all who are still with me here. I know this post has been a bit of a think-out loud experience on my part, but I share it because I think of the process as having value, and maybe it has for some of you too.
Whatever you are thinking, feeling or doing today, I hope that 2024 brings you the kinds of improvements in your lives that you desire, or at least some steps towards those goals.
Happy New Year!
Fraser
December 2023