John, this time the tables were turned, and you were on Kelly Buckley’s podcast instead of your own. And, I learned a great deal more about you that I never knew before.

In your podcasts, you always seem to have great emotion and thoughtfulness going on as though you are struggling with something and now I know what it is. Those losses that you experienced early on in your life. Something that I did not have until I was 20. I can see how the suicide of your sister and the overdose of heroin by your son would affect you greatly. And how you used writing to help heal your anxieties and help you move forward like you always have into better forms of yourself.

My situation is entirely different. About the age of 10, I took charge of my behavior even though I was always impulsive and adventurous to the point of taking risks. So when I was told that surgery would help improve my weak left hand and arm, I said basically, go ahead.

And then, when I was paralyzed completely in the hospital my attitude was that I would work my way out of this and not be too emotionally concerned with it except for the time when I heard Christmas carols being sung outside my door and I started crying because I was happy that I was alive not because I lost something.

Writing became natural to me at an early age, especially letter writing. Unfortunately, I thought that diaries and journals were for sissies. That probably was detrimental to my writing and also detrimental when I wrote my autobiography because I could have used that information instead of my memory.

The most trying time for my family was about three months after I was paralyzed. I came back from physical therapy with my grandmother and met my parents leaving. My mother had that terrible look on her face. They needed to borrow my car because they lost the transmission in their car and my twin brother was in the hospital suspected of having polio. When they thought he would need an iron lung, they life flighted him from Menomonie to Madison by 90 mph ambulance. At University Hospital, it was determined he had cellulitis and underwent four weeks of antibiotics to get well.

While I was depressed with little prospects to get back to college, in August 1964, I got a hand splint made for me in Madison that gave me the ability grip a ball point pen and write again. That hand sprint has carried me through all my writing even today where I use it a lot for editing my poor voice dictation, like this.

So, my writing started with chronicling all of my journeys and adventures in letters back to my mother and anyone else who would read them. Also stemming from all of those papers I had to write both in school and then throughout my working career where 90% of what I did was write reports, plans, memos and the like until I retired and was able to focus entirely on my love for non-fiction where I can follow my dreams.

Finally, I don’t ever think of my writing as helping me overcome any anxiety. Although my mother showed me my twin brother’s paper in his freshman psychology class where he described how he managed to stay out of trouble by letting me take all of the blame for anything that happened to us. I laughed at that one, because it was so true… I accepted all responsibility for having thought up what we were doing even if it was wrong.

Kelly said that we can’t control our dreams. I disagree. From time to time in the middle of a dream my mind will suggest that it take a certain direction and it does. It’s as if I’m observing the dream and recording it for maybe later writing a story from my memory. When I steer the dream, the story is going the way I like it.

Ron