On the top shelf of my mother-in-law’s glass-fronted secretary, I keep an imaginary jar filled with invisible nickels.  I give one of these five-cent pieces to my inner soul every time someone responds to a blog-entry by telling me that I should have been a writer.

I get that message from a lot of people.  When I read this damned-faint-praise, I wildly  gesture to the virtual world in which the conversation occurs.   See?  See?  What’s this?  Oh, wait — it’s me, writing.  Me, myself.  A writer.

I know what they strive to articulate, of course.   They suggest that instead of being content to blog, I should  become a real writer — by which they mean, one given money for their words.  And yes, Virginia, there’s a difference.  A real writer pays his or her bills with the fruits of his or her creative effort, while we not-real-writers give what we write to the universe for its enjoyment, expecting nothing in return beyond the occasional favorable comment.

I wanted to be a real writer.  I truly did.  Even now, as I sit looking out the loft window of Angel’s Haven, I scroll through Craig’s List and Indeed.com, trying to find a way to make money as a real writer.  Everybody says I should.  By everybody, I mean all of those folks who love me, care about me, want me to be ecstatic about life, and secretly think that I should never have quit practicing law or left Missouri,  Why not write, since I can’t find  a job?

The same people who don’t want to hire a 62-year-old out-of-state attorney don’t want to pay a 62-year-old semi-has-been to write.  I have “worked” in the field.   I sold a few essays and a handful of newspaper articles.  But — and this is a HUGE but —  this occurred before I hit twenty.  That’s a young person’s game.  My son sells articles now — my twenty-six-year-old son.  The real writer in the family.

As for myself, I’ll just keep plunking those invisible nickels into my imaginary jar. I’ll continue to spin my yarns, to paint my verbal pictures, and share the vagaries of human life in the only way I know.  My words demand to be tendered to the page and sent into the internet.  I could not stop the flow even if I ached to be silent.   So keep those cards and letters coming, people.  Your appreciation remains more than adequate compensation.

It’s the first day of the fifty-third month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

A certain glow lights the area under the willow tree behind my house.  From the writing loft, I watch the tree’s lush tendrils sway in the wind.  As the sun sets, a coolness settles over the park.  A chill will rise in the air of my house.  I don’t mind.

A little while ago, I sat on Pattie Whitaker’s porch talking about life in the Delta.  I have never lived anywhere quite like this.  Rivers wind themselves around the ground on which we stake our meager claim.  We have only to point our vehicles upward from the valley in which we sit to  find ourselves at the river’s edge.  We drive five miles on winding levee roads to get to town.  It reminds me of Martha’s Vinyard in some ways, with its dual-slotted post office:  “Island” and “Off-Island”.

When I drove to Lodi on Sunday, Amanda at Secondhand Rose left the front of her store to embrace me.  We spoke of my recent trip to Missouri.  Earlier I had met the folks in the neighboring vitamin shop.  They suggested that I try CBD for inflammation, but as an alternative, I bought Frankincense.  They cheerfully mentioned that if I am over 55, I qualify for a 10% discount.  I laughed and admitted that I am.  They put me in their computer.  “You’re a customer now!” they chortled.

I spend my days closing out cases, writing, and looking for work.  At the post office today, I realized that it has been four months since I abandoned the Midwest for Northern California.  My sense of place and time has nearly shifted.  Surrounded by my trinkets, my angels and my old books, I might have grown whole in this place, born of the river silt and the shifting sediment from which the island arose.  I feel at home.  This land has taken me into its heart.

It’s the thirtieth day of the fifty-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues