Update, now at Seventy-Three Years of Age!

 I've been retired for eight years. Everything changed when I retired, in all the ways I expected and happily anticipated, but also in other ways that are not admirable. I've aged, in both body and mind. Is that why I've lost much of my ambition to express myself in writing? In the past, I've always gone back to writing after a hiatus, no matter how long I swing away from it. Has the urge resurfaced? Now, I've just rediscovered this blog, and I like it. 

I'm no longer interested in leading writing workshops. My retirement activities have excluded all people except my immediate family, kids and grandkids. I've become a recluse, almost, and I am happy. Have I written? Yes. I've written a manuscript, that I need to polish, edit,  and seek to publish,  even though I avoid these tasks due to fear as well as my natural tendency to start projects and put them aside. That is not a good quality, and my manuscript really is good, if I do say so myself. I'm afraid of that, however, more afraid of it being good than of it being not so good. 

Anyway, this blog started out focusing on Progoff's ideas and methods. I no longer use them strictly, though their principles underlay much of what  I now write. I no longer attend workshops, mostly because they are so expensive and time consuming. While I still believe in the Progoff method, I believe even more strongly in my original notion that his method is too cumbersome for today's population. 

I suspect journal writers continue to write their journals with or without guidance from the journal gurus of the last decade, while we who need more intensity have gravitated toward the memoir movement. Perhaps the popularity of memoir has grown organically out of the popularity of journal writing.  Memoir writers differ from strict journal writers, though, in that they want to share their work; they think they have something interesting and/or illustrative to say in the recounting of their own stories.

My current manuscript addresses my efforts to get back into the saddle, to resume horseback riding after a thirty-two years hiatus. My involvement with Progoff's methods underlay much of what is really good in this manuscript. When it is finished, I've got two more memoirs fogging up my mind, so...