Strange how this feeling can just come over me on rare occasions. A sort of melancholy. Maybe the latest birth brought it on. She is probably the last of my grands.

But, it's more. Sometimes I'll read a blog or two and marvel at the writing and creativity. Many people who have blogs go on to write books. Then I wonder what I might have done had the internet/blogs/YouTube/American Idol been around when I was growing up. Would I have been a writer, actor or a singer? Would my path have been much different?

As I wonder about these things, I feel a sense of "left-behindedness" (my new made up word). Left behind by technology, by my children and grandchildren as they make their lives while I am so far away. By the world at large.

I think about the things I "should've" when I was younger. If I only knew then what I know now. I would have lived alone. Waited longer for marriage. Finished college. Traveled abroad to places that now are too westernized like Thailand or Scotland. Maybe backpacked around Europe.

I feel a sense of restlessness, of wanderlust. When the last lottery winner ($30 million)was said to be from our city, I allowed myself to dream of the things I would do and see.

I watch as our family and friends grow older and I tend to get lost at times in old memories.

Sweet fleeting moments in time plucked out, examined and put back away. The day you got that puppy or the day your own children were born. When blowing bubbles was high entertainment and watching the clouds an art form. Eons ago, yet just yesterday in our memory banks.

Then there are the dark memories. Things you would do much differently if you could. Some you wouldn't change, for they were personal growth opportunities. Others you would absolutely change. Most of those involve other people.

In between are the sad/bittersweet memories. The last weeks you spent with a loved one after a terminal diagnosis. The day you watched them draw their final breath. The day your first and/or last child walked out the door on their way to a new life without you being the center of it. To school or college, moving far away for work, or into the arms of a spouse.

Now that I've lived twice as long as I will, I think about these things. Memories sustain me. Future plans energize me. I know that there are many things I'll never do, but many things still left to do if granted the opportunity.

Thus is the burden and also the joy of living to this age and beyond.

Who says you can't do most of those things now. If you want to write a book, write one. Go skiing in Burundai or build a church in Paskistan. My real life hero is my secretary's grandmother. She's a deep in her eighties native lady who spent most of her life living in the bush around Ft. McMurray. About fifteen years ago she saw an opporturnity with the oil sands opening up and realized there were going to be a lot of people wanting sandwiches, their clothes washed and a ton of other incidental services. Today she's moderately wealthy and, in the past year, has gone on a safari to Kenya, made a trip to China and another to Europe. Last summer she made a canoe trip up the Athabaska. The point isn't that she can afford this stuff. It's that somebody forgot to tell her 80 something was too old to be leading an adventuresome life. She's one of those people who, as they say, will go skidding into the grave screaming "Yahoo! What a ride!"

lol jim. True. That lady sounds like a firecracker!

I guess if Eric Rudolph can write a book, so can I. Of course, he has a little more time on his hands than I do.

http://blog.al.com/wire/2013/02/convict ... er_default#incart_m-rpt-2

Terrific writing, roseanne ~ I [and I'm guessing most of us] can relate to a lot ~

Sooz

Thanks sooz. I always seem to be able to write better when I'm "blue". I wrote some fairly good poetry that stemmed from sadness and grief in the past. Some of it was written in a notebook that got left behind when I came up here and probably burned by the ex. The rest of it when a computer geek formatted my hard drive without making a back up.

Maybe I could write a book if I were blue all the time or at least more often, lol.

Er... you might want to pay attention to what you just wrote.
It's great!

Well, thank you kind sir!

with posts like this and your humor and passion, there is a book in you....a really good one.