Hello, and thanks making this forum available

I am always awkward at these online introductions. Wouldn't you think that after posting on Bulletin Boards and Forums for something like 30 years I'd be better at them by now?

I live with my wife and two children in a small town in northern California, not far from San Francisco.

I write professionally business articles and booklets and provide sales and marketing support for a small specialty publisher.

As far as I am concerned, reading and visiting bookstores and libraries saved my life. This is hyperbole, I know. However, books and bookstalls were my only refuge from the short but intense heartbreaks and injustices that a small child experiences, and never forgets.

A few years ago, I passed my fiftieth birthday. Fifty, which Dumas described as the 'youth of old' age, came and went but I didn't feel any younger. Just last month, I celebrated number fifty-six, and I have finally decided that I want to write something other than stories for business. So I am starting to look for a way to expand. I don't know what genre I will end up in, and I am uncertain about whether I have anything significant enough to say that anyone would bother reading what I write.

I have at least twenty years of living left me, however; I think it might be time to try to do something during that time that I can look back on and say "It was worth it."

Thank you for reading my post. I hope to make a few friends here.

Hi Steven,

Welcome to the forum!

Welcome Steven.

Hi Steven,

Welcome to this fine forum. I am a friend of book stalls in the olden days, myself. I hope you have found peace.

Love,

Betty

Hi Steven, nice to virtually(if even possible) meet you.

I remember my sister-in-law saying at 55, "I lived the first 55 years of my life for everyone else; the next 55 are mine." Enjoy your next 55...with lots of writing and welcome to the forum.

How often do you just let go and journal? I find that letting go and letting my pencil or my fingers do the work leads me into stuff that takes hold and insists on being written.

Ann