It’s a new year and I’ve decided to start the blog again. This time I won’t expect anyone to follow it, it will just be my personal occasional comments on what I see. Sort of like the diary I kept when I was fourteen. I only did it for six weeks, but when I look at it now, I wonder if I’ve actually advance any.
I stopped my full-time job of publicity a couple of years ago and since then have been waging a one-woman war against the word “retired.” If you’re not working ( and have not summarily been let go or fired) do you really want that tag of retired stuck to you? I’m a writer, active in politics, involved in Jewish World Watch which supports projects to aid women and children in The Congo and Darfur, do animal observations at the LA Zoo and once a week mentor a schoolgirl in reading. And believe me, there’s still time left over.
To me the word retired means you’ve given up, not participating in life. You can do that at age 20, you don’t need to wait until you’ve stopped working. But why would anyone want to give up? We all get into a blue funk, but there’s too much going on in the world that needs us, to stop everything.
The writing of course is the most important. I’m on the second draft of the second novel and feeling unsure about the whole process, but that’s a blog for another day.