Spitting rain today. I distributed books just in time, that is before the rain started spattering. Keeping up with distribution, it requires time and effort. But I do it.

I just lost what I wrote – it was the best dispatch ever. I was on a roll. I have learned to quickly move on when this happens because otherwise, I will be wasting time. What I wrote might be saved – it is in the bowels of this aching – but then again not. And so 15 minutes of my life will be lost.

And I now know that my time on this earth is finite and that I can count the number of years I have left. Many if I am lucky, few if I am unlucky.

I was writing about curiosity and how I am generally curious about most things. More so, I said Pete, who questions everything. He has always been this way, but he became more so when he went to graduate school in I am not sure that my education contributed to my inquisitiveness. It was not a great education. Sitting in a classroom, daydreaming, getting in trouble for daydreaming, this was no education. It was intellectual robbery.

I continued to go to school because this is what I thought I was supposed to do. I did acquire some arcane facts about livestock when I went to a two-year ag school, and some arcane facts about literature when I went to a 4 year liberal arts college. And I bought time to write in working on my MFA. I will stop here.

Alys with Flat Aly

The question is, what else would I have done with my time? I suppose that now would be a good time for me to go to school because I am wiser and am better able to “see into the life of things” (Wordsworth), now that I’m older.

I think sometimes of going into other professions, like radio, but I know I would not be hired because of my age. You have just one go around on the merry go round, to reach for and maybe get the golden ring. Just one go around. A sad but true analogy.

For my next act, I am going to (a long pause) get into better shape, do less in terms of heavy lifting. I have been doing less and it’s hard because this is habit. But I do have it in me to again to be an athlete, or if not an athlete, be physically active.

And I still have some time left to bicycle, run, sea kayak, horseback ride; although, with the latter, I will not be a part of the show jumping circuit.

There were many long pauses and a dinner break in writing this dispatch. Some nights writing is easy and others it’s hard. It’s harder when in my day nothing that I see as being momentous has occurred. But oddly enough, in the days ahead, something from today may surface as being momentous.

And the earth will continue to revolve around the sun.

Next: 249. 9/19/26: The New Routine