Legacy and Other Ephemera

At age 71, I figure I need about another 30 years of life so that I could finish everything I want to do with my creative projects.* Most of those are writing projects; a number of books I want to write / revise. I also want to get back to painting.

But who knows how far I'll get. Like most farty old men my age, I'm concerned with legacy. I have a shit-ton of stuff in my files (some of which I almost lost last night due to some flooding in our basement during a heavy rainstorm), much of it artwork -- I do have some manuscripts, but since switching over to computer-based word processing about thirty years ago, pretty much everything I have written exists on floppy disks or in digital files on a hard drive.

The problem with digital files is that the damn technology keeps evolving. You know, a typewriter was a typewriter, and if you could work one you could work pretty much any other (unless it was in a different language), but we started losing our way with electronic storage. I mean, why bother to print out a manuscript when you could revise the thing onscreen?

In addition, most magazines and book publishers these days accept electronic files, so there is rarely if ever a need to print out a manuscript. One good EMP would wipe out years of my work. Sure, I have copies of my books, and some of my stories -- but overall I'd be up the creek.

I basically am not playing music any more, but I could do if I somehow got involved in another band. I still love music, and although the last organization I was involved in was a jazz outfit, I could still get a lot of joy from banging my drums along to, say, Cult of Personality by Living Colour. So who knows? The thing is, I don't know if I'm up to playing a long night's bar gig any longer. Probably not. I quit the last rock band I was in, which was a very good band that got a lot of work, after having a stroke. At my age, it's too much to ask.

But I ain't selling my drums.

I'll stick with writing and art. Now, I may have some interesting writing news soon, so there's that. This has nothing to do with any of my ghostwriting; it'll be stuff published under my own name.

Which reminds me -- one of my stories, Kitezh, which was published in the first issue of a magazine called Me First -- presenting only stories told in first person, has gone under, orphaning that story. So now I have to figure out what to do with it. Having been previously published, it'll be hard to find another home for it.

And so it goes.

And with that... here's some more art. This is the garage at the Fonthill Estate in Doylestown, PA. Oil on board.

*Assuming reincarnation isn't a thing. Even if it is, one doesn't tend to remember past lives, which is aggravating and should be dealt with somehow.