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I haven't been writing again. I'm unsure why. There's always enough time in 24 hours to squeeze in even a bit of production...15 minutes a day is suggested as a minimum for wannabe Hemingways, Twains, Shakespeares, and the like.  I'm fairly certain that these gentlemen dedicated much more than this amount of time to their craft, since they were unlikely to be taking care of much other business. My favourite approach has to be the Hemingway. It involves such activities as travelling to Paris, Africa, Florida, and sitting in Cuban hotel rooms, drinking, writing, wandering, smoking, drinking and writing some more.

I think that perhaps I created a certain amount of pressure for myself in the previous blog when I committed to writing more about Iceland and parts of Europe. I didn't want to continue. The photos alone take forever to insert into blogs. That's time consuming and boring for me, so I thought it time to go back to the basics. It also occurred to me that anything I'd write could be found elsewhere on the internet, so why bother?

Instead, I want to get back to my favourite blather, insights (feeble when compared to the world's great thinkers), nonsense, recipes, book reports, and fun. That's not to say there won't be future travelogs, Galapagos, Bora Bora...maybe even Iceland Part 2...just not right now.

For me, writing can be therapeutic. The pressure to write or produce (especially in retirement) is not.

This week, a woman kept staring and smiling at me. She was a cashier at Canadian Tire where I waited patiently in line. When it was my turn to deposit my monthly purchase of that magical clean-all Lestoil on the counter, she smiled and said, "You're the one."  http://rockinrobinsramblings.blogspot.ca/2015/10/indispensable-products-i-know-and-love.html 

My puzzled look and the fact that I seemed eager to find out whether I'd won a prize, encouraged her to elaborate.

"You're the one who writes the newspaper column aren't you?"

I answered with, "I was. I mean, I am, but I no longer do them." I wondered whether I should elaborate or whether I even owed an explanation for abandoning this activity.

"Oh," she responded looking disappointed.

My point, and there is one, is that even though I was only contributing one column a month for a couple of years, the pressure to produce existed. There was a deadline, and there was the dreaded word count (I always went over and was unceremoniously edited, often turning my words to nonsense). I hate that. I'm not sure whether it reminds me more of school, or work, or school work. It's something I don't want or need in my life now. There's enough stress in just getting basic day to day things done.

So, no pressure. I'll write when I write. I'll write what I want. It will be long, short, ridiculous, interesting, or not. I don't really have followers so it's all about me. That's how it's going to be from here on in.