Tag: Maya Angelou

The master craftsman sits down and contemplates what the blank canvas before him will hold. He often thinks about creative endeavors when he sits down in front of the ancient manual typewriter, for the times when he is creative are the times he feels most alive.
The challenges of writing and filling pieces for deadlines are never that much of a challenge for him. He knows so much of contemporary reporting is fluff, free of attribution and no better than someone’s personal ramblings. Some person’s personal ramblings are easier to read than others he quickly agrees.
Awakening each morning is his own special tribute to his continuing existence. What lies ahead sometimes bothers him; more often than not it does not. Acceptance so often elusive when we are younger is easily his now and so is his tolerance for differing viewpoints. Some call it wisdom. Some call it resignation. He just feels that if you go around the block enough times you know the only two things you can really control are your attitude and your actions.

He let his attitude get the best of him as a young man and gratefully felt the negativity of thought slipping away with the passage of time; to hold on to it would be to surely grow bitter in old age. Although he can’t remember specifically now, his mind searching his past, in his youth he thinks he referred to at least one elderly gentleman as a bitter old man. He laughs at the thought of being called one himself someday. It is almost a stereotype—the bitter old man. Are there any other kind?
Pondering that for a moment, the word doddering comes to mind. If an old man is not bitter, he most certainly can be at least doddering, no? Doddering is independent of bitter he thinks out loud as it can be somewhat of a term of endearment. Bitter and doddering are at odds he concludes.
If this is so, asks the Devil’s advocate in his mind not letting this matter rest just yet, how would a bitter old man walk? “Good question, Devil,” he speaks aloud to himself once more. Bitter would seem to imply some form of confidence, uprightness, while simultaneously being a word with negative connotations. He abruptly dismisses the Devil by seeing the bitter old man as walking more surely, fleet of step and concrete in balance—ready to snipe at any of his would be detractors.

His mind quickly diverts to the notion of never growing up—the stunted development cycle if you will, that is highly bantered about but with no conclusive studies ever undertaken as to the pros and cons of never growing up, he wonders if an adult living life perpetually as a child (even if only figuratively) is ever both practical and healthy? Perhaps it can be one or the other at any given time in one’s life as an adult, but if we are too liberal in our thinking as adults, he feels, we never reap the benefit that is conservatism in our investments—both financial and personal.
He unevenly switches gears again, asking himself, “If a conservative mind when it comes to investments is more conducive to stable personal wealth situations in one’s senior years, who advises financial advisers?” Do they call on their peers or do they just advise themselves—a form of self-help (or deception?) taken to extreme? He chuckles out loud at what others would refer to as a feeble attempt at humor—picturing the financial adviser advising him or herself with the help of the E*TRADE babies.

While it comes in second to love and being in love, feeling creative while working trumps any other feeling he can think of as he breaks away from the rhythmic clickety-clack clacking of his trusty Underwood. Morning coffee awaits him. He is older, he is not alone and bitterness may never find him.