A Writer's Life

The Writer's Life

I suppose the first valid interest which led to my career in writing was my composition assignments in high school. Some required me to do research which is a necessary skill in my current line of work. Other homework papers gave me the liberty of fashioning my own story, and at the time I preferred these.

I recall that I once held the position of paper boy in the small town of my youth. Upon my green bicycle, I used to take to the sidewalk each morning, speedily delivering the local newspapers to the front doors of my neighbors' homes. My family and I were good friends with the mailman who made his rounds on foot via the same route I took. Those were good days from a time and town in which everyone was neighborly, and a parent did not have to worry about a suspicious stranger.

Little could I have guessed that one day I would be writing the news instead of placing it on someone's stoop. I am a columnist. I still bring news to the public. Only now my job is more demanding, more straining, more a part of me. A scribe paid to scribble: that is the lot I have chosen. Like any job imaginable, it is not without its hardships. As every human being, at times I am tired and simply nauseated by my work and what it involves.

Then I see some of the jobs and conditions that my fellow Americans have to undergo in order to survive and support their families. And I thank God for blessing me with a good means of providing for my family because I know there are numerous other people that would make better journalists than I. I am also quite thankful for my family, those in my life whom I am closest to. I love them. My wife and our children teach me many things and remind me of simple pleasures I had forgotten. And they show me humility.

I have so much to be grateful for, yet I can still manage to grumble once in a while. It is life, my responsibilities, anxieties, and weaknesses. There are many personal areas for improvement: my intimate marital relationship, my paternal relationship with my kids; my social life outside the home; my faith life; my physical health; my mental health; the ways I use my down time. And whenever I improve in one of those areas, I seem to grow lax on myself in all the others. It appears I can never achieve a perfectly well-rounded lifestyle.

Well, times change, and the people as well. And with the people, the media and forms of expression have altered. I have had to adapt myself to learn new techniques. The world of today is such a drastically different place from the one I lived in as a boy.

I love the rich scent of an old paperback book. It is probably because I often dive into a book, traveling to another place and time, forgetting my own troubles. And in many instances, when I am sitting alone by myself without a book, I will relish in fond memories of past events in my life and wonder what lies in store for me in the future.