The last thing I did on my birthday was check CNN to see what was up, and found the first news coming across of the Japanese Tsunami. That was a bummer and a half, of course because I don’t like seeing anyone suffer like that, and because I have a deep admiration and respect for all things Japanese. Since then I have kept off of my blogs and such for the most part, because of a sense of lacking what to write with such news in the press.
Two things I love are writing and Photography, but I am not always sure in which order! I think that I have been lucky in many ways since the days of college, and my English and writing courses there. Okay, so they don’t gleam through in my writing now, but let’s just ignore that for a moment, and look at the two mediums I love most in juxtaposition to one another. Both are used to create images, often printed on paper, often kept only on computer. Both are a powerful representation of something real or imagined, and both are an expression of art or journalism. Both can be used as documentation as well.
In short, both are in many ways, the same thing. They are both expressions of thought. Writer’s block is therefor easily defined lack of thought, or perhaps more intelligently, lack of intelligent thought!
With that in mind, that’s where I have been for the last week and two days. When faced with the news of Japan, and of Libya to be fair, I have lacked in intelligent thought and expression to put down in the blog, or in pictures.
Today’s resolution is to get the brain back in gear, and get back to work on all things creative.
Turning away from the international events, which are sadly local to someone, things here have been pretty good! The only thing out of the ordinary was my grandmother’s trip to the ER yesterday brought on by a trip over David yesterday afternoon. She gave herself a hairline fracture in a rib on her right side, and wanted it looked into because of the pain. Unfortunately, the ER on a Friday night in Mesquite is actually surprisingly busy! One poor fellow had two family members in on completely unrelated events! Isn’t that how life goes sometimes though?
There was one other small event here too. Yes, I turned 40.
I have always looked forward to my 40th birthday with anticipation of what I have always heard people say of it. “Life begins at 40.” I think I can very well understand the depth of what that means, and when I cannot understand, I am sure I will figure out in short order. I am happy, and I do feel secure in my skin. I do not know just where I am going in life, but I am confident in it being either pretty good, or someplace I can handle in one way or another so that I can continue to be happy.
At last, 40 is here. It is right on my face, and there is nothing I can do about it but celebrate it and take it with gratitude! I am for one pretty damned excited to have made it this far! I have an awesome family! I am not even close to financial security, but I am not so insecure that it consumes me. I realize that I am still learning, and that not knowing everything is absolutely okay. I also realize that the years go by, and as they do, death comes closer, but I don’t fear it. How can I? So many people have done it before, and so very many were so much younger than I. If they can do it, then how can I fear it? Sure, pain scares the crap out of me, but that is a different issue, and there have been some things in my life that have sedated me in even that fear.
So that is a brief summary of what 40 has brought me to.
Yesterday a good person whom I have never met announced that she is cancer free. I got my birthday wish! It felt so liberating for the first time in my life to make a wish that was completely for someone I did not know for my birthday. I made a wish that was not at all for me, and it has come true! That is what 40 has brought me to.
So, here I sit, 40 years, 1 week, and 2 days older. My beautiful daughter is lay asleep on the bed next to me, and my lovely wife will be in soon. Two boys sit watching movies in the next room, and for just this minute, and I am so content. Maybe the contentment is also a lack of intelligent thought. Or maybe the muse of life is the ability to grasp whatever you have got and make the best of it, in writing, photography, or just living.
Kelsey J Bacon