JIM “PAPPY” MOORE: Tell Your Story in Words or Art

By Jim “Pappy” Moore

I have written and published over eight hundred copyrighted items. Most of them have been published the past eighteen years. My number one rule is: write for your own amusement. Write something you want to say, want to tell others about. I don’t want to write anything I wouldn’t care to read. If others enjoy what I’ve written, good. If not, well there’s always next time. 

It’s important for all of us to have opinions and to state them. Is it not important that we all agree on everything. How boring would that be? I don’t expect others to agree with me, so when they do it’s a bonus. 

I know you feel strongly about abortion, trans, marriage, religion, and most of all politics. I do, too. It’s truly important not to allow our beliefs to foul real-life relationships which are important. Here’s a truth I want you to think about: you have never made a vote which really mattered, standing by itself. No one we have voted for has ever won by only one vote. 

Nothing saddens me as much as people who throw away important, sometimes lifelong, relationships over differences regarding politics, religion and social issues. To thine own self be true, but don’t expect everyone else to agree with your every whim. Take joy in those who do agree with you. Be understanding of those who don’t. 

What is the story you are writing? What important do you have to say? We are all making this journey at the same time, experiencing many of the same things. For those of us in my age group we are learning to live with ageing. Physically and mentally, we know we have slowed down. We know every year there will be things we have taken for granted which may be impaired in some fashion.

We Boomers have our retirement time, but we find we have to carefully handle our money. It isn’t as plentiful as when we were younger. We also have more time for our extended families like children and grandchildren, but we find our children and grandchildren have full lives of their own. They cannot talk to us as long as we can talk to them. Life is adjusting to new circumstances, because life is never static. 

Life on Planet Earth exposes humans as always wanting to be older when we are younger, and always wanting to be younger when we are older. We can still remember how as children we longed to be like the older kids, who could stay up later. When I get to Junior High. When I get to high school. When I get to college. When I get a real job. When I get my own place. When I buy a house. When I have kids. 

Then we wake up one day and we’re forty. We got the job, the house, the kids, and other accoutrements of success. We are harried. This raising kids is way harder than we thought it would be. We discovered just how much our parents had to deal with which we never realized as children. 

Life is more than a marathon. It’s a marathon that never ends. Every day we have to get up, get motivated, get the kids out the door, get ourselves out the door, and do it all again next week, next month, next year. 

Take time to satisfy your need to express yourself, whether by writing prose, or poems, or songs, or by art, or by photography. After you are gone, your kids and grandkids can mull over the things you have left behind. Leave them some nuggets of thought and feelings.

Copyright 2023, Jim “Pappy” Moore. All rights reserved.