The aging process

Back in 1972, Neil Young wrote a song entitled: Old Man.

Here we are 46 years later and I feel like Young is still singing to me.

I have a curse...well, I call it a curse. I doubt I'm not the only struggling writer who has it. My mind never takes a day off. I simply think too much for my own good.

Luckily, I'm an old man now and I have slowed down enough to stop and smell the roses and take everything in. My favorite pastime is interacting with people -- especially the senior citizen. After a question or two, I'm off and running and I'm smack dab in the middle of their lifetime, gathering information, and I eventually leave the conversation with so much more than I had started out with.

We are all connected. We battle through life together, from one end of it to the other. A journey -- probably a short journey, if you consider the grand scheme of things. We all have a story to tell and if you take the time to listen...to feel...to absorb, chances are you'll walk away with a better understanding of the person you just said hello to.

In my case, I take it a bit further. The people I have met in the past eventually became characters in a book. Their stories took flight in my head and suddenly I had a beginning, a middle and an ending to the next piece I was writing.

The interesting souls I meet now, may include an old man at the end of a bar, or an old woman, who is sitting on a bench in the park, meticulously going about her business, feeding a gathering of birds. Chances are he, or she, is my age or younger. But, who's counting? Certainly not them.

Instead, I'm doing all the adding up. After a question and answer period, I say my goodbyes and head off. A successful outing. Suddenly, their story is safely tucked away in the back of that overused brain of mine.

This craziness started when I was a little boy. My parents had stopped at a small diner thirty miles north of Phoenix, out in the middle of nowhere. A gas station, a restroom and that was it. Nothing for miles in either direction.

Someday in the future, I'd end up building a town in my head, complete with a courthouse, a library, a cemetery and 10,000 townspeople scurrying in the streets. I'd come up with a hero, a good guy, a bad guy, a catastrophic event and eventually a happy ending. Thus, my third book, The Legend of Bucket Smith.

I no longer write novels. It takes so much time and energy and if you want to know the truth the pay is terrible, unless your name is Grisham or Hemingway. But what is so great about getting older, I can pretty much do what I want...whenever I want to.  I choose to have a conversation with people, sit back and enjoy their tale. And that's it.

And, I have discovered that we are, in fact, all in this thing together. Whether I write down my thoughts or whether I don't. It's the meeting that counts. The interacting. The willingness to listen. To compare and realize we are so different, but yet we are so much the same.

I recently attending my high school's mini-reunion -- 55th to be exact. I went home after the event and journeyed through all my yearbooks. I left the reunion that night with a clear mind. I didn't need to sit down, build characters and write another book. The tale was right in front of me that night. It was a night to cherish...and to remember... and to smile and understand just how far we have come.

Such an amazing journey life is.