TILTING WITH WINDMILLS, SEARCHING THROUGH THE JUNGLE

                       Note: This is the view from my desk.

Being a writer and getting published give me a great deal of pleasure. Sure, it would great if it made me rich, but as I go about my non-writing business, so I can scratch out a living, I often have a smile on my face. There's this satisfaction that nobody can take away from me.

I can never explain this to people who don't have it.

How did I end up a writer? I'm not really sure.

Decades ago, in a creating writing class, the teacher said, “If we're lucky, one person in this room will get published.”

Guess what? It was me.

And I don't really know why it was me. I wasn't the best writer in that room. It might have been that I wanted to be a writer more than the others. I did dedicate my life to it. Made sacrifices. And I never gave up.

I've always lead a quixotic life, tilting with windmills, like a crazed explorer searching through the jungle for a fabled lost city. It's the way you make dreams come true.

It ain't easy. Not everybody can do it. Most people never have that smile I get when I think about what I've done. It's easier to give up and lead a normal life.

What's it like to live this way? I recommend the documentary House of the Tiger King, with Tahir Shah demonstrating what it's all about:

If you don't have time for that, here he is talking about the film:

Meanwhile, it may look like I'm sitting at my desk, doodling away at the computer, but I'm really tilting with windmills and searching through the jungle.