First things first, that’s what they always say. What if you don’t know what the first thing is? That’s okay, at my age anything will suffice, just as long as it needs doing. So, let’s get this party started.

I’m ready to start the new year. It’s hard to feel if it’s a new year because the world is continuing to do in 2023 what they have been doing since COVID arrived. See right there I have figured out where to write vs. FB or this blog. I can freely talk about COVID here but not on FB or they’ll flag you if they don’t like what you say. Even harder is figuring out what they like or don’t like. This probably should be the year I let FB go as a casual social medium goes. There are business aspects to it that may yet prove to be useful.

Writing, that is my FIRST thing that I need to move to the front of the line, or class, or list. Procrastination or Resistance is the first thing I must come to grips with. Overcome if you will. I have a grasshopper mentality. All the time jumping from one thing to another and before you know it I have 15 tabs open and I’m jumping from one thing to the next. So I have personal challenges before we even get out of the box.

Let me go and put my days attire on so I can roll up my sleeves, ala Ed Norton and get ready to work.

I need to revive my use of my Simpleology program that helps me organize my ‘to do’ life that enables me to organize my work flow. Peppered among all these activities is fighting the resistance that creeps in there every morning and before you know it all my good intentions are down the drain.

There, sitting on top of the printer is my Stories from GRANDPA, A fill-in journal and family keepsake, that my daughter gave me a few years ago. She has 2 boys and I am sure she was hoping to have it completed in their youthful years so they could know about their Grandpa. Ruth, was over here yesterday, having brought the boys over to make cookies with Grandma (she too has a book) and while sitting in my bat cave/Magic Room, she noticed the book sitting on the piano bench. Opening it she saw that not much had been entered in it and moved it to a more prominent place on my printer. I mention this because its sitting there makes it a distraction, the very sort of distractions that are going to throw me off course of what I want to get done today. But it does have its place on THE LIST.

For me, writing is like swimming, and swimming underwater. I have to come up for air and just now I veered off course and spent a couple of minutes looking at a new writing course that I will be taking. Writing With Confidence: Writing Beginner To Writing Pro. Now to some, the veering part, will be a distraction, on the other hand, it’s me coming up for air.

In another part of my 78 years I could write, long hand, feverishly across 12 pages of legal sized paper, a letter to a loved one. both sides mind you. Now most of my activities are interrupted with nothing more than boredom. I can get bored quite easily. This too, is resistance and as stated earlier I must over come.

So why, at 78, am I taking on new/old routines as if I have discovered the fountain of youth and I am set off to write a best seller. WHY NOT? I am retired, actually I am tired all the time. I have no obligations minus the death and taxes thing I was told about a long time ago, so, again WHY NOT?

I’m going over to my emails and see what’s come in, and then stop by and look at what if any news has happened in the last hour since I started this, and perhaps another look at one of the 2 minute videos that goes to the Writing With Confidence: Writing Beginner To Writing Pro course. Call this FIRST THINGS FIRST an opener in a poker game. I’ll be back for the next hand.