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Saturday June 1, 2019

We can easily look backward at life’s work and disappointments, convinced our best work, best projects, are all behind us. There was plenty. It was good.

Yet every morning at this keyboard, motivation vacillation – clearness is elusive within this consistency, these metaphors describe my ‘why’, best …

Spanish explorer Cortez upon landing at Veracruz, Mexico in 1519, ordered his ships burned as a “no turning back” message. Great guidance for old material – good history, the practicing, the honing to be ready for other things now, prepared for my future. Heaving to metaphorical trash bins, all things I was never going to do anything with to focus better on what is on my plate now. And whatever erupts from or leak out of my brain tomorrow.

I was reading about and feel inspired by this story – when Hemingway lost the novel he’d just written and all his work except two short stories he’d sent to publishers – through a lost or stolen piece of luggage everything was gone. He was resigned to giving up, so the story goes, until someone gave him encouragement about one of those two short stories – and he began writing again.

These elements crossing paths in my head convince me finding a solution for all that old material isn’t important. My better writing is now. My best writing is ahead of me. This got me pondering, for everyone, if our better work is what we are doing right now, that our best work is ahead of us.

Neither quitting or coasting satisfies – my best most valuable work is ahead of me – what I do now, what I’ll do tomorrow …

 
 
 
     
 
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