Better than nothing; the substitute I wrote after my computer froze

The computer ate my homework. Does that count as writing with adversity?

A lot of professional writers have gone back to writing on typewriters--a Selectric or some such, and I understand why.

Wrote a good blog last night on aging candidates,  the future, health expectations....it was a really good one. Reread it just a few minutes ago, and I liked it this morning as well. But BlogSpot had frozen. I couldn't save it, publish, nothing.

So I deleted it.  That train of thought has ended and I can't get back on board. I never dreamed that the adversity of creative writing would be the actual loss of my work periodically.  If I am in the middle of what for me is original thinking--even though someone else undoubtedly has thought the same--I don't seem able to stop, save my work, re-enter creative thinking and go on.

It may be a skill I will have to learn.  The frustration of losing last night's work is something I am pushing down and down. I'll take a walk in a bit and let that frustration evaporate with movement.

I am trying to get back to this writing from my personal viewpoint.  There's a kind of rhythm, a music to the words that is satisfying to string together.  It is handwork as surely as carving or sewing, or rolling out piecrust. The piecrust used to be another handcraft of mine, but that skill is gone now. I never carved. I never sewed, except reattaching buttons.

But I have done and still do, write.   The computer freezes intermittently, probably one in ten outings. Negative reinforcement; in other words, the most powerful discouragement.

I woke up this morning, and everything works.  I still have critical thinking in my head.  And I am grateful for that.  With my hands on a keyboard, I still have a voice. Even when my computer sometimes mutes it.

I once started a poem, writing, "My life is a river, strong, and deep, and wet--I don't know where it's going yet."   I never finished the poem past those words because, you know, I didn't know where my life goes. I still don't know, except that it goes on, and it goes forward.

I still am trying to see what is around the bend ahead.

I still want to know.

 That may well be my favorite thing about myself.