Perpetual motion

This is my first exclusive post on Substack, and I am reminded that all things in life are in perpetual motion.

In 2020 I created a blog using Word Press. It was a pandemic project for the most part. Something that I could indulge outside of the work hours when travel was limited and social distancing had become the norm. I had previously used Word Press some years earlier, discontinued it, and so I thought I’d return to it and jot down whatever random thoughts flowed through my head. Mostly, they dealt with various sports related opinions -- nothing significant. It was a deliberate attempt to distance myself from the prevailing news story of the day: upticks in COVID-19 cases, fatality rates, and the overwhelming tensions that were drowning the world as a whole. Sports, as well as a handful of other topics, were an excellent escape. We all need that unique hurricane room to retreat during these moments of stress. They are personalized - no two are the same. They are our refuge. In 2020 the playground that was my blog was mine.

That was six years ago. How long ago it all was! Yet six years isn’t that significant of a time period in the grand scheme of things. A true paradox, and it reminds me of the line from Raiders of the Lost Ark when Marion tells Indiana Jones that he has significantly changed in ten years. “It’s not the years, honey,” he replied, “it’s the mileage.” Quite true.

In those last six years I have had to bury both Parents (they passed twenty-months between each other -- they were non-pandemic illnesses). I re-adjusted my life to new sets of responsibilities and priorities. This was a bit awkward at first filling the gap after having been a care-giver for the previous four years. When you assume the care-taking role so much of the time is soaked up one barely realizes it. When it ends, an odd quandary begins. What am I to do now with these gaps in my schedule? That seems almost trite to say, but it doesn’t make it any less true. There is a sense of bewilderment to it all. To take it a step further, I barely noticed the raging pandemic at the time. I knew of its existence, of course, but I was preoccupied with that mantle of care-giver that I had taken up. The pandemic years are a blur.

Now, no longer bound by that constraint, and the pandemic crisis fading, there became a fog of conclusion. In order to fill this gap I returned to a hobby that has washed into and out of my life like the tides - writing.

It started the following Christmas when someone very close to me gave me an autobiography of a famous actor. I will not say who, because, to be completely honest, I found it an absolute bore. While it contained various anecdotes and some interesting passages, they were for the most part too few and far between. I discovered I could have cared less. However, the book is one of the best Christmas presents ever given to me because of what came next.

As I was reading it, a motivation swelled inside me that, I could write this. Not that my life contains anything significant. Quite the contrary, I felt. I can write this because I am just as boring of a person.

So the logical progression that I asked myself, Oh yeah, Ace? Then why don’t you?

After finishing the book I took out my laptop and began writing what was on my mind. Following my Parents passing it became apparent that I had a few things I had to work out in my head. Not that I had experienced anything wicked or villainous in my life. As I said, my life is linked by a series of similar unremarkable events as those of the book I had just finished reading. The question I had given myself, now that I was standing at the boundry-line of one life ready to cross over into another, How did we get here?

The answer has various levels of complexity to it, but a recurring theme did develop, and while it seems simple in its foundation, it has its own labyrinth of mirrors to it: Life is perpetual motion. It is really that basic. We make decisions that are proven wise or foolish at later dates, but the most important aspect is to keep the perspective that everything is moving in a positive direction. Forward progress is key, and never dwell on the mistakes for too long. Correct them, move on, and don’t repeat them. This is something one realizes as the years stack up in the rear-view mirror. Youth only sees the road ahead.

To my astonishment, after roughly nine months, I had completed my own autobiography tapping out 466,532 words. By comparison, Stephen King’s It comes in at 437,781 according to Wordcounters. It was never my intention to create such a literary monstrosity, but I had done it. I also found that the discipline of writing had assisted me with organizing my thoughts by providing me with a new perspective on events -- both in the distant past and those that had been more recent -- that I had not previously contemplated. An unintentional outcome had been a greater self-awareness combined with analysis, and I hope that has given me growth as a person moving forward.

I have no desire to publish the autobiography. It is detailed as it is highly personal. A private work, and meant at some point in the future for friends and family; not for public consumption.

After completing the project I felt empty-handed. I had been writing after work and on weekends with this new found time for months. What would be next?

Life, as it is often said, gets in the way. Maybe that is a cliché? Still accurate, though.

I can’t actually explain it, but I always wanted to write a book of my own. I had spent decades reading the likes of Clancy, le Carré, and Fleming. Those clandestine authors that entertained millions with their shadowy worlds, and were definitely a big influence on a teenage boy growing up in a rural town. England, Eastern Europe; the Soviet Union were as distant as other planets. It was escapist reading and a far more exciting universe than anything occurring in such a mundane community called home. How cool it would be to create a fantasy world of one’s own? It was a notion that stuck with me for decades, but one that I had never been able to actualize. Oh, I had started manuscripts on more than one occasion, but life gets in the way.

Tom Clancy is often quoted as saying, “Writing is work,” and in one interview, “Just write the damn book.” He’s not wrong on this. Thinking about something isn’t doing it. However, I had now reached a point in my life where I was more settled, and the obligations of a care-giver had since expired. I had even finished that autobiographical manuscript. I look back on it as a ‘proof of concept’ endeavor.

I challenged myself again. There were no longer any excuses not to, or outside distractions to pull me away. It was time to sit down, and write the damn book.

So I have. I completed the initial manuscript, shown it to a couple of close people, and asked quite sheepishly if I should move forward with it. The feedback was positive, and said I should. Now for the last six months I have been going through the editing process while at the same time finishing the second book which is in the queue to be edited. Frankly I am glad to have a second manuscript in the can ready to enter the assembly line, and I have started work on a third.

The first book, Into the shadows, I hope to have ready for publication in the next few months. There are some operating procedures that have nothing to do with actual writing needing to be ironed out first. So I humbly ask, if you are interested in espionage and geo-politics, to please watch this space for when it becomes available. I hope, of course, that it will be well received, but even if it isn’t I am not going to take it personally. The goal has always been to check such an accomplishment off my bucket list, and while it still has yet to officially happen, it is the closest I’ve been. Please stay tuned.

Life is perpetual motion. Embrace the accomplishment of distance covered in the rear-view mirror, but don’t dwell on it. Instead, keep focus on the road ahead.