Sitting in the darkened theater with my two sons watching “Skyfall”, something hit me.  A major portion of the storyline for the movie is how much the world has moved on and that age will eventually catch up with all of us in the end.  Since my mind is prone to wandering, it started to really think long and hard about those themes running in my life.  The whole thing really was triggered a few weeks ago on my birthday.  Sitting at a few years from 40, the realization of age and mortality begins to set deeply in.

I’m not going to sit here and say, “well, I hiked 20 miles in the snow for a cold biscuit”, to say how old I am.  I will sit here and miss the days of my innocence.  Looking at my sons, I feel bad for them.  I’m not saying they have it rough, believe me…they don’t, but their childhood compared to mine is so much more complicated.  I have to shove them out the door in the summer when we used to get in trouble for not being back when it got dark.  We didn’t have phones, iPods, our own computers, the internet, and the vast amounts of video games.  We played on a playground, we rode our bikes for miles, we played baseball and football games that lasted all day, and the occasions we did play video games was only for an hour or so before we turned them off and went outside again.

I think this is more the rambling reminisces of a man who is creeping to the mid-way point and the memories from the simple days of youth come roaring back.  The increased burdens life throws on makes the mental jaunts back to the bygone days more and more welcome.  Raising a family, working a job, doing volunteer work for the kids, and trying to keep the writing gig going takes a toll on you after a long while.  Believe me, I feel done most of the time anymore.  I think the thing that weighs on me the most right now is the writing.  The balancing act between working on a story, looking for markets, the social media aspects, and trying to sell your work is trying.

But for those times when the world seems to suck the life out of me, I fight back with Star Wars (I will also be doing a podcast interview soon where I know they will ask about my feelings on the whole Star Wars-Disney thing)…

Goodnight…

(OK, I realize that is in fact not night, but it seems to have become my sign-off line.  Now bugger off, it’s night somewhere in the world right now…)

Yes, that is me in a Yoda ears hat and posing with my R2-D2 Pepsi cooler, get over it…