Top five answers:
1. Writing.
2. Editing books and screenplays.
3. Adjunct professor-ing a class of one at a British university.
4. Starring in a 28-minute documentary about my charity organization, the No Bats Baseball Club. To see it, go to YouTube and search for No Bats Baseball Club. Click on the “Documentary” link and enjoy it. Helped thousands of people through the years. Great effort by director Madeleine Farley piecing the story together while the club was visiting the Field of Dreams movie site in Dyersville, Iowa.
5. Biting my knuckle with disciplined resistance to the temptation of rancorous political expression. Is that a “thing”? If it’s not, skip down to #6.
6. Reading my friend Jay L. Clark’s fine book, Build Your Ballpark. Jay shares a couple dozen wonderful stories about people who envisioned, then created, something amazingly significant to bridge philanthropic opportunities with substantive solutions. His message is clear: You don’t have to know anything to make something happen. A little plug for a very fine man who tirelessly promotes doing good deeds as we navigate life:
Okay….catching up:
~ Years ago I wrote that the presidency does not give a man character, it reveals it. Turns out…..I was right. The begrudging acceptance of truth acceptance is forcing the American pendulum back on its long, slow swing toward decency. Currently the USA floats and floats through an uneven section of Class III-V rapids. The nation will emerge as convicted felons are removed from public service.
~ Writing and editing projects have ranged from curriculum design and new content to non-fiction, fiction, screenplays, and short stories. With luck, we’ll have a couple new books out later in the year. As they approach, I’ll blurb the progress.
~ Teaching and coaching is always fun, assuming the student(s) wish to learn. The young man I am working with in England has made great progress with his skills thanks to a winning blend of attitude, talent, and willingness to embrace the work required to get better. We have our moments–all creatives do–but he knows that chasing your potential means that learning never stops. It won’t for him, and it doesn’t for me. I am hard but fair. His work reflects two things, one I can shape, the other I cannot. The one I cannot is most important: He has what I call “the storyteller’s gene.” This is a gift.
These days it seems everyone with a keyboard thinks he or she can write the great novel. Without the storyteller’s gene, and the willingness to learn how to structure story, characters, dialogue, and all that goes with it, they will waste precious hours of life typing pablum indoors when they would be better served being outside getting fresh air and exercise.
I was working with a different writer who wanted me to critique her work. I could see the story but no more clearly than a logger sees a finished totem pole when he stares at a large tree. She paid me fairly to edit the piece and I did; but it is debilitating to slit a vein and do that meticulous work month after month when nothing I explained along the way was ever applied. The woman loved to write but refused to learn. A machine gun of fingertip smoke flew from her keyboard, making the same mistakes over and over. From a teacher’s point of view, her dismissal of improvement during creation was maddening.
Net/net? Give me a young person who wants to learn and I am all in, all the time. Throwing money at me to clean up repetitive mistakes? That fuse burns toward one big ka-boom!
In closing, it was fun to see one of my books in a house professionally staged for sale, especially a title and character I loved so much as I brought her story to life:
That’s it for now. Sorry I’ve been gone. Took the road less traveled, meandering and unpaved.
Happy New Year to all.
