The Preciousness of Time

I regret to report that my mother in law's friend, who made the decision to no longer use the device needed to keep him alive, passed away on Sunday.

Hemingway said "Write hard and clear about what hurts".

I have a story to tell.

Once upon a time, there was an author, a retired college professor up in Alaska, who I cyber-met during an author's blog challenge.  I started to read her blog, and enjoyed a couple of her weekly writing features. One was a book she was writing, one weekly blog post at a time, about an alien stranded on a prehistoric Earth. She seemed like the Iron Woman of Blogging.

She had blogged daily for some 10 years, despite being treated for cancer.  Sometimes she talked about that, but not that much.  She continued her writing, her tweeting.

One day, she admitted the cancer had returned, but remained upbeat after treatment.

One day, seemingly out of the blue, she stated, matter-of-factually, that she was terminally ill, and was trying to find a "literary executor".  The weekly book suddenly accelerated, but the writing was weak and sloppy - the writing of a woman who was trying to do too much in too little time, with a body that was no loner supporting her efforts.

The blogging stopped.  A couple of months later, she was dead.

The tweeting continued - obviously, the tweets were scheduled far in advance.  It was sad, seeing those ghost tweets, and knowing the person behind them was dead.

She's been dead almost a year now.

Why am I thinking about her today?

It's because I have blogged daily since 2011, but I've lost my reason for the daily blogging, a reason that was intensely personal.  Suffice it to say that the reason no longer exists.

I'm afraid, with the blogging habit so ingrained, that if I miss even one day, I will never blog again.  I don't think that is true. I've put so much work into this blog that I don't want to lose it.  I don't want to lose my readers.  I enjoy many of them, even if I don't respond to all my posts.

There's really no need to blog daily.  Many bloggers have successful blogs publishing on regular schedules, several times a week.

But I think of that woman, and her ghost tweets, and the rapid end to her 10 years of blogging.  In the end, it meant nothing.

I should be upbeat - I should be taking inspiration from writing this post.

But I'm not.  Time is more and more precious every day, and less and less of my time is my own.

But, like so many other bloggers, I have a story to tell.  And for now, I will continue to tell it.  Whether it remains to be told daily, that is a decision I will make in the coming days or weeks.