Not that anyone might (or should) have noticed, but I’ve recently begun a cautious reemergence from a self-imposed 5-year hiatus from public life, which included a complete withdrawal from social media, particularly Facebook, within which I had previously been quite active.
It’s been — shall we say — an eventful five years, with many challenging moments, and beginning with this journal entry, I’ll attempt to document the highlights and lowlights of the past five years.
As Henry David Thoreau wrote in his venerable masterpiece, Walden, “Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life”.
Any sincere account of the last five years of my life would have to include:
- December 15, 2021 — I had the pleasure of having my sternum sawed in two to receive a quintuple bypass at Columbus Regional Hospital… immediately followed by a nasty case of Covid at no extra charge. The China Bug was in its heyday back then. In total, I was in hospital for six weeks, with several more weeks on an oxygen generator at home. Not a fun time.
- July 30, 2023 — It started out a lovely summer day. Rhonda and I were out for a joyride on our Harley Fatboy, taking in some dinner out at the Story Inn. On the way home, for some reason I deviated from my usual route, turning off on Salt Creek Road. The next thing I knew I was waking up in a hospital bed. I had been lifelined by helicopter up to Methodist Hospital in Indy after a nasty fall on the bike, with no memory of the event whatsoever. My back had been fractured in a few places, I had two brain bleeds, and a nasty scuff mark on my left foot where I had landed with the Harley on top of me. And believe it or not, judging from my behavior in the hospital, somewhere along the line I had contracted a bad attitude. Wifey (thank God) was thrown off early and had only suffered a few scuffs and scratches. Truth be told, it could have been much worse for both of us, but clearly a couple of God’s angels cushioned our fall
- March 21, 2024 — Conditions were apparently perfect, and somehow a rogue ember from the old ash pile up on the hill grabbed hold of some dry grass, spread in a truly eerie fashion, and had soon engulfed our entire home. We lost pretty much everything, including all the musical instruments I had managed to collect over 50 years in the music biz. That one hurt, but as you will see in subsequent journal posts, everything turned out okay in the end.
- Later in 2024 and 2025 there came more surgeries, most of which resulting from a diagnosis of metastasized Stage 4 colon cancer, leading to several months of chemo therapy (which happily has recently ended) and an ongoing fight for my life
- and generally speaking… not much going on to slap a smile on a man’s face, exactly
- More on ALL these events in subsequent journal posts.
For the few who will visit this page out of curiosity (boredom works, too), in the next few journal entries I will endeavor to provide a brief summary (acknowledging that brevity isn’t my strong suit) of these events. I’m journalling this material not so much because there’s anyone out there who needs or might want to read it, but for reasons of my own, I guess. Hopefully I’ll get it right, as well as mostly over with and done… though I suspect some topics will require elaboration and thus revisited as time goes by… assuming I have much of that left at my disposal at this point.
What a load of misfortune, you might say. And you’d be right! One of the first things I did after the insurance settlement came in and finally buying our 1901 bungalow over in Bedford was to reread the Book of Job, which helped put things into perspective.
And yet in spite of all this — I remain positive, optimistic, hopeful, playing guitar again and working on a rejuvenation of my music, filled with faith and expecting a healing from the One True Healer. Amen!
It would seem my attitude has improved markedly.
We will see why as these updates develop.
FWIW: No AI is being used in the writing of these narratives. Being a die-hard tech geek, I actually tried it, but ChatGPT just threw up its virtual hands and said “This is as good as it gets, post the damn thing”.
Intro | Part 1
