September 2025

I know that time shifts as we grow older. I see that at 53 that weeks last a day, days an hour, and time is just slipping away. I open my eyes on January 1, and by the time I blink it is September.

I just wanted to write something of little consequence and without too many images just to make a post so that I can justify calling myself a writer. I don’t have much time, as we know, it goes fast.

How are you?

I only ask that because it feels like the world is in a strange place, but maybe it is no stranger than it has ever been. Everything is relative, and as we move forward in time (if there is really such a thing) we always feel like “this is the time” that whatever is going to happen is going to happen.

The most important thing is to stay healthy and try to be as happy as you can be at any given moment. To take a bit of your happiness and share it with the world. To make others a bit happier than they would be if you weren’t here. Ease their pain.

I am fine.

I really am doing fine. I have a good job, and I have enough good people in my life to fill the time ‘twixt this time and the next. I have thoughtful, meaningful conversations. I think I am a better listener now than I have been in the past. I am trying to live by a mantra: slow down. I have found that most of the mistakes I make in life are because I move to quickly. Take that for what you will.

Contemplation

As summer ends, and we bear the weight of yet another winter (Latvian winter at that!), we should reflect on what we have done and what we have left undone. My big accomplishment so far this year is that I joined the Stafford Poetry Writing challenge. I have written a poem a day for almost every day this year starting sometime in January. Today was poem 235 of 2025. It was about the silver Namejs ring that I think I lost. It is not a good poem, but it is another poem that I have written, and that itself is something.

One of my students is reading a book called “Atomic Habits” and I really took to heart the excerpt she shared. There is the idea that small changes over time can make a large difference. My patience is so weak, that I just want everything to happen right now, but that is not how change works.

I have also been working on my Latvian for about 8 months, and I feel that I have definitely improved. I still struggle to speak and fully understand, but I know that I know much more than I did before. In the moment, it feels hopeless and as if nothing can be done, but after awhile, if you step back and take note of your world, you might see growth and change. Recognize these good changes for what they are. For everything is always changing, and we can only hope that we are continually changing for the better.

With that, I close this note. I hope, still, to finish my writing about my travels this year, so I have written this just to show that I still can put words down to permanence.