Character Building
We near the end of the ninth year for these little essays. It is a record setting year, and it’s not quite done. I’ve published 338 of these things in 2022 besting my previous record set in 2020 of 330. My average over the nine years I’ve done this is 277 a year. The total number of essays is 2,493. I wrote the first one in 2014. I started on Facebook and moved to my current platform last year.
I might slow down a bit in 2023. Maybe take weekends off as I used to do in the beginning. In the last three years, which featured the death of my wife midway through 2020, I believe I felt compelled to write every day as if falling silent might be a harbinger of my own death. As if my audience might desert me. As if my friends might forget me. As if I would disappear, float away, disconnected from the rock that anchored me and gave me purpose. My wife.
Maybe in a way it worked. Maybe we suffer too often in silence. I wrote about my grief, about life. My friends gathered. I received encouraging words. By putting my thoughts on paper, I kept them from festering inside me. Counselors always encouraged me to journal. So, I did it in public. Of course, the grief is still there, but I’ve learned to live with it. You might say, I walk with a slight limp, and it bothers me when the weather changes or I see a picture. But over all I feel pretty good, just an old guy with wounds, that give me character.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale