My Morning Musings

I’ve had several people ask how and why I write what my someone I’m close to calls my “morning musings”. To tell you the truth, I get a bit nervous when asked these questions and never quite know how to answer. Hopefully I can summon a proper response as I reflect early this morning.
First the disclaimers: I don’t consider myself a writer. I love people and enjoy communicating with them from my heart. I do that by any means possible with the intent of making their lives better through my sharing. That may verbally, by using pictures, in writing, or even with a rare personal slight smile or squeeze.
I guess in reflection, I have a heritage that encourages trying to communicate in writing. Many of you in my hometown received hyacinths with a small booklet of analogies originating from my late father’s Remington manual typewriter. I am not sure he always had my mother proofread his work although she was a gifted English school teacher. My wife also has a unique love of the fine points of the English language and serves as my proofreader (between proofreading manuscripts for authors). I worked for her when she was our High School newspaper editor (at least until she fired me for missing meetings or something).
Actually, my wife is one of the main catalysts for my starting to write. I consider her to be a gifted (but reluctant) writer. She has an amazing ability for coming up with analogies and word pictures. Many folks from small group settings where she participated would ask me for a copy of her story about “Peeling the Orange” or “The Rose Petals,” or something similar. Unfortunately she’d seldom write them down and her memory for these “unimportant bits of trivia” is overshadowed with much more important stuff. Because of that, I made up my mind that if I ever had any thoughts or observations I’d write them down. Last year when I journeyed to Kolkata, India, I had a chance to test my intent with a daily e-mail diary. Many folks passed those along to friends and I volunteered to add those friends directly to my e-mail mailing list. When I returned home several folks said they missed my e-mail accounts and suggested I continue writing here even when I wasn’t doing a travelogue.
I was a bit reluctant because I was pretty certain inspiration was hit or miss at best. I took the rest of the year to accumulate a backlog “safety net” of written thoughts. I wanted to start 2009 with the security that I could give this a try and would be prepared for a “drought.” When I needed to resurrect those archived thoughts because of a scheduling conflict last month, I couldn’t find any that I thought was usable; So much for my “safety net.” I write as I go, hopefully one ahead most of the time.
Most of my thoughts come early in the morning and some apparently when I am sleeping since I have them when I wake up. My thoughts sometime wander or hyper-focus because of a bit of ADD (attention deficit disorder) history. My intent is to encourage folks and stimulate their thinking about “mundane” and “trivial” thoughts and issues. It is not my intent to force my thoughts or beliefs on anyone but to stimulate their own. I am sometimes chided for ending abruptly but do that in hopes that folks will continue the thought process and draw their own conclusions. I am amazed and inspired by the e-mails that I receive with additional thoughts and applications I never considered.
Thank you for permitting me to share with you. I am always happy to accommodate your desire to take someone off or add anyone to my e-mail list and enjoy your returned thoughts.