I just met myself on the way out.

I wrote the title of my blog (see above) and started to look up shank . Not much help, so I googled “shank of the year” which is what i want to discuss—and there it was, here I am:

shank of the year - betty jane wylie

bettyjanewylie.com › new-blog › 2013/12/30 › shank-... [but it’s November 30, 2020 today]

I already wrote about it seven years ago! (And I have such a fear of repeating myself.)

HOW DID I END UP IN A GOOGLE?

It has been a strange, frightening year so I’ve been thinking of the end of it a little early. I had a much more detached view seven years ago, merely playing about with our minds’ metaphors. This time I’m writing before the end of December. Time is short and threatens us all.

Don’t look back. Don’t look ahead.

Look up.

Here’s something by Clive James (1939-2019) that I saved and want to share:

“The biggest drag about being old and ill simultaneously is that you fall behind the literary action so that you wind up trying to help launch the career of Chaucer.”

Every arts and creative organization that I know is attempting to remedy the current shortfall with podcasts and webinars and virtual presentations, discussions, dialogues, skits and plays. I can’t take them all in. I’ve reached the saturation point, I suppose because I take so much more time than i used to for naps, never more than half an hour, but more frequent than they used to be.

And I keep on discovering me. (I guess I have to because no one else is going to.) Just this week I was poring over my journals and diaries kept since about 6 hours after my husband died—over 47 years of bleats—and i came across a supernumerary diary, filled with ideas of mine and clippings and notes of others. Many of the ideas have been realized in one form or another, and I can see the seed in clippings that germinated in saleable (sold) products.

I guess I’m still trying to keep up with me, still trying to launch my career. Ah, well.