Shinn the Writer

...And a New Writing Project 

​

Okay, things are going to look a bit different. I’ve eliminated the updates box on the front page, because it really served no purpose. I’m going to add a date to the section buttons that link to other sections to indicate the most recent change. As always, feedback is welcome.

 

Lots of stuff has happened, but nothing of great importance. I’ll probably add it as the month progresses and not change it until late May or early June. We’ll see.

 

My reading of late has been stymied, so I brought no book to breakfast one day recently, but instead brought a pen and some paper to see what might come out. I started by capturing things that had happened since my last web update to see if I could do a full one. The answer is that I can, and I will (soon). That actually went down rather quickly. But I came up with an idea that might be worth pursuing.

 

I was in a bit of a down mood. I’m 74 now, and found myself thinking of what I haven’t accomplished and what mistakes I made along the way. I started about the requests on Facebook for people to list things like your top ten record albums, or top ten books, or top ten movies and pass them on. Well, I wondered what my top ten life errors were. And I made up a list.

 

I’m not going to go into them here, for two reasons. First, I want to let the list sit for a while, and maybe add, delete or rephrase items. The other is that some of the entries are likely to be too personal to me or involve specific people I don’t want to mention in such a public forum. This was never meant as a “tell all” website. I want to keep it light.

 

I had a bit of a realization as I was writing my shortcomings on paper. I was really engaging in a form of beating myself up. So, I decided to come up with a parallel list, a list of things I got right. And I was almost surprised how easy that list came together.

 

What to do with these lists? I’m likely not going to go public with them, at least in their final form. I’m certainly not going to post them on Facebook as a challenge for others. What’s more likely, is that I’ll do what I did with my 300 writing prompts book. Namely I’ll write an essay on each, perhaps alternating the good and the bad, just to keep the project (and my sanity) balanced.

​​

Anyway, I’ll keep y’all appraised of this project. I’m thinking it will keep me productively occupied and may lead to some insights about myself, which may leak into this website. Even if it bombs, I’ll no doubt learn from the effort.